Studious Serpent

There was a scene like this in a couple of movies, one very old, the other more recent. James Bond, that’s the series. Doctor No had the original scene, and in, uhh, Die Another Day? Yeah, in that they made a reference to it. Paid homage, as it were. With Halle Berry. The original was Ursula Andress. Halle’s skin colour was much more in line with the Salamander rising up from the turquoise sea now. Her bikini was a bland lilac, her hair black, her scales a reddish orange, her hair a dark red. She was fixing it into a ponytail, her legs spread, and the posture gave a nice view of her toned body and clean armpits. Her type didn’t grow body hair.
Her lips parted, she licked her lips, her eyes were half-closed as she looked at him. Bedroom eyes, yes. Her lust barely kept at bay by the cooling effect of the dip in the sea she just had. Now she was out of the warm water, and soon enough her tail was starting to sizzle, steam rising off of it. Apart from that and the sound of the waves, all was quiet. She walked up to him with her hips swinging, her untamed bosom jiggling with every stride, and oh how she grinned as she leaned down to…

“Get up Osric, it’s your watch” said a gruff voice, accompanied by some pain as the grumpy, impatient man prodded him with a stick.
“Grh!” Osric replied, sitting up. He wasn’t at a warm beach with a beautiful woman, oh no, no sir. He was in a stinky, damp bog. It was his turn to mind the fire. And he was going to jerk off into the fire while everyone slept.  As soon as Godwin fell asleep.
“ZZZZZzzzZZZZzzz”
Well that was quick, wasn’t it?

Osric sat on the big log they kept lugging around to chop firewood on and tried to squirm and shift in such a way as to be as close to the fire as possible to enjoy the warmth but not burn himself when he rummaged for his erection. He grabbed a couple of twigs off the pile, broke them up quickly and tossed them all in. The fire was much smaller than he’d have liked, and his nose was runny. There chills running up and down in his body, and he disliked that. Of course he couldn’t notice it while asleep, but when awake it was downright horrible. Godwin was not a good fire keeper in that regard. Sure he kept the fire going, but he’d been raised by those religious types who considered every comfort a luxury and thought life’s hardships brought you closer to God. Osric sneered at such notions. The gods he worshipped were all hedonists and laughed at people who made their own lives more difficult for such reasons.

“Aahhh” he moaned, trying to catch the good feeling of his interrupted dream.
“Thinking about me, paleface?” asked a husky whisper, making Osric clench his fists in surprise. It wasn’t so bad.
“No. Go to sleep, Sanna” he whispered back, doubling over to make sure his reddening face was fully hidden under his hood.
“Just thought you might want me to keep you company” she said, the volume of her voice a hint above a whisper.
“I don’t. Go to sleep” he insisted.
“Hmph” said the voice with a pout, and with some shuffling she turned her back to him. Osric hazarded a glance towards her and admired the curves visible from the depths of her sleeping bag. The Lesser Succubus tried hard to keep up her Succubial ways, but in the end she was still better as a warrior than a lover. As far as he knew.  Osric swallowed nervously. Not like he’d ever tried her out himself.
It was around then he realized he hadn’t turned the hourglass. Drats. Almost forgot about that. How else would he know when to wake up the next keeper? Feeling like an idiot he reached for the small but ever o important object and flipped it around.
There were five of them in this group. Osric was a scholarly young man who had been caught trespassing in the library of a wealthy but demented man, and during his arrest it had been discovered that the items he’d attempted to get his hands on were quite… licentious in nature. The town, being of the more zealous type, had seen fit to lock him up awaiting a proper trial and burn the materials while the actual owner got away with everything by virtue of old age and, well, money. While in captivity he’d been found necessary by this particular group, and Godwin, being a figure of authority in certain circles, had secured his release into his custody.
Osric didn’t miss the dark, damp cells. He didn’t consider the dark, damp bog much of an improvement. He had found the few brief moments of performing the duty for which he had been shanghaied to be the only pleasant experience during this entire undertaking.

The four original members of the group were Godwin, the de-facto leader, Sanna, a cheap mercenary whose presence showed they were not an affluent party, Nathaniel, one of those young men who believed pleasure-rune tattoos and two short swords made them appear heroic, and of course The Magnificent Bertrand, a wizard. It was as the assistant of this last figure that Osric had been employed.

Ah yes. The Magnificent Bertrand, a wizard. The MAGNIFICIENT Bertrand, a WIZARD. HE didn’t mind the fire at night. He didn’t have to take turns cooking. He didn’t help put up the tents. He didn’t chop firewood. He didn’t walk, either. No, he stayed in his pavilion that moved about on a flying carpet. It could have carried all of them, sure enough, but did it? No. It carried him. The rest of them walked. Osric had to climb up into that pavilion – that was, looking from the outside, barely big enough to stand in but on the inside it had several rooms and a bath tub – and back out again as he ran errands for the feeble old fool. He was a real wizard, alright. He had the beard and the pointy slippers and the fancy bathrobe with cosmic embroidery, and the pointy hat, and he could shoot lightning off his hands and turn things into other things. But he was useless. Completely useless.

Osric hated all of them. Well, in varying degrees. Sanna he might not have hated so much as resented. And Nathaniel kept telling him to "call him Nate, dude". But Godwin he definitely hated. And The Magnificent Bertrand he hated most of all.

He didn’t feel like finishing his fap, and so Osric got up and went to chop up more firewood. It wasn’t really necessary at this point of his watch, but he wouldn’t have to get up again if he did it now. Hmh. Life’s small victories. A while later, his arms aching at the strain of work he still wasn’t used to, the young man returned to the stump and stared into the fire.

Magic. Osric was indeed young, but he still remembered a time when magic was still unusual. He had been born after the Happenings and Events and Conjunctions and whatever the theorists called what had changed the world had changed the world, but he’d seen things become more magical and less mundane in his own lifetime. The society he’d known as a child had relied on technology and his parents and grandparents spoke fondly of the old days. He never learned what was so great about it. Good movies they made, yeah, but all the women were so… well, bland. Not that he ever had a chance to try the difference down there, but non-human women simply had it going on, you know? And to become a wizard, like Bertrand, he’d have to keep it that way for a while yet. There were, of course, other ways to get that kind of power. Osric had ended up in this damn bog just because he’d tried to get his hands on some eromancy manuals. For purposes of magic. Phenomenal cosmic powers, arcane knowledge, deeper understanding of the nature of reality… that’s right. That’s what he wanted. The, uh, the sex stuff, that was just there because, because magic and ancient pagan rituals and, and uhh… anyway, he’d lost his chance without even deciphering any of the codes in those books. At least he assumed they were codes. There were very few letters. So many runes and symbols to accompany the illustrations. He’d mostly looked at the illustrations. And then they’d caught him with his pants down. Literally speaking.

He let out a deep sigh. These people he was with now were looking for what they called “an ancient ruin”. It came from another world, from another time. There was something or other there; he didn’t know what, some kind of treasure? Or was it something about destiny? Nathaniel was after his destiny. Sanna was after payment. Godwin was after… huh. He was here with Nathaniel, maybe? The Magnificent Bertrand wanted something out of the ruins.
Osric was ignorant of these things because he didn’t really like to listen to their blabbering. He was quite obviously pouting and angsty because his life back home had been quite ruined, and what on earth was he going to do after this whole affair was over? He couldn’t go back home, and he didn’t know about anywhere else. Well, on a theoretical level he kind of did. Of the old world. Of history and pop-culture and such. But what good was that? He knew nothing at all of how much the landscapes had changed. Someone once said that the continents looked completely different now. Old nations didn’t exist anymore, either. And it’s not like he could live as a wandering mercenary like Sanna does, he couldn’t fight at all. Or do any kind of useful work.
Magic. That would solve all his problems. If only he had magic, he could do anything, never have any more problems. But where to get it? At the moment he saw only two possibilities. One was waiting until he was 30 while still remaining a virgin. That was a far-off day, and it would not be easy in a world like this, not when he couldn’t stay hidden in his safe community. Because that’s why he’d never had sex, the community. It was religious and conservative, that’s why he’d never gotten any. Yeah. It’d be hard. Keeping bitches off of him now. Like Sanna.

Slowly but with the gradual certainty of a glacier, Osric let his head turn and his gaze fall on the shapely bundle of the Lesser Succubus. She was making quiet purring noises. Snoring gently. From what Osric understood, based on memories of his mother, women snored just as loudly and obnoxiously as men. Well, human women did. Sanna wasn’t one. Anymore. Hmm.
“Mffm” she moaned.
Ah!
With a quick move Osric returned to the fire. She was awake. And busy enjoying herself. That damned demon was ruining his fun.
Or was she? Masturbating in company, with someone else doing the same, well, that was something, wasn’t it? And it would have no negative effects on the future of his magical prowess. Yes. Some of that… he could go for some of that right now. His hand made its way back into his pants.
“Took you long enough” Sanna whispered.
Dammit.
			***
Another day of trekking was well on its way now. Osric had just finished emptying out The Magnificent Bertrand’s chamber pot (which did not help him achieve great sorcerous abilities) and was trying to think of an excuse to avoid having to spend time near the muttering old coot while also not having to walk. He was unable to do so, and to avoid the awkwardness of confronting Sanna after what had happened at night, he fell in step with Nathaniel. Or as he liked to be called, Nate, dude.
“So we was all like, and then I says to Mabel, I says…”
Nate, dude’s inane blabbering kept flowing in one ear and flowing out the other. Osric was thinking about the insides of Bertrand’s pavilion. All those rooms, all those books and scrolls and things. He could snatch one, copy it, learn what was in it, and then replace it before the old coot noticed it was missing. Unless there was some kind of spell that warned if something was removed from the pavilion. And what wizard wouldn’t? Bertrand hadn’t lived to that ancient age with his powers intact if he didn’t know what he was doing. Misplacing things from your personal library was a sure-fire way to failure. Yes. Osric knew he’d never let such a thing happen if he had any magical tomes. Even the previous senile old man he’d tried to steal from had set up a burglar alarm. And he hadn’t been a wizard, just a lecherous geezer. One could but wonder what an actual wizard would have prepared?

“So then this one time, at band camp…” Nate, dude, kept on and on, and Osric, being lost in thought, almost tripped on a root.
“Hey, careful there, man” Nate, dude, said and caught him by the coat.
“’m fine…” mumbled Osric, brushed Nathaniel’s hand off and walked ahead with an increased speed. He didn’t feel like getting mothered over by some condescending would-be hero. This guy had probably been a jock at school, a brainless fuckboy who got it on with every girl whose cunt he caught a whiff of, and then he got the first of those tattoos when he was passed out after drinking with some Oni and then he’d just rolled with it and gotten more and because he was fucking all the time he stayed fit and lean and because he had a six-pack he thought he was a hero and he got those swords and that stupid armour that looked like it was made in Roman times but was actually some kind of Kevlar-composite that could stop a Manticore-barb.

Osric bumped into the backside of Sanna, who was standing still all of a sudden.
“Hey, what gives?” he snapped, trying to ignore the way her hair smelled so nice or how soft her ass felt against his crotch. Even through all that camouflage stuff.
“We’re here” she whispered, slipping down the visor of her tacticool helmet and removing the safety of her assault rifle. “Stand back, will you?”