Damon worked with Vel up in the glass cabin to plot a reasonably safe course away from the tasslinettes. He felt slightly empty handed in the face of her questions about where, exactly, they could divert their path, and how they’d know once they’d returned to the right heading.
“Myr is the one guiding this journey,” he said, shrugging.
“Well then, would you be so kind as to ask Myr how I know if I’m steering this ship the right way?” she snapped.
“Tell her that we’re getting close,” whispered Myr. “It’s hard to know… exactly how close.”
“She says we’re getting close,” Damon repeated.
The words didn’t seem to alleviate Vel’s irritation. He went back out on deck, walking with one hand sliding across the guard rail as he continued his whispered conversation.
“There must be a way for you to sense when we’ve arrived though, right?” he asked. “Otherwise, don’t we risk speeding right past whatever island or artifact this Ocean Klykia happens to be set within?”
“There is a way,” said Myr. “I suppose now is as good of a time for us to try this as any. I need to… commune with you in order to show you.”
“What?”
“Can you bring me, er, yourself… somewhere cold?” she asked. “That’s the most straightforward way to start the process.”
Damon gave it some thought. It was midafternoon, and the coolest place within the ship would be down below deck. Still, Myr had specified somewhere cold, and no place truly seemed to qualify amidst the warm ocean weather.
He made his way below decks. Lilian and Ria were busy with their training, and he had to force himself to ignore the intriguing scent of their sweaty bodies. Instead, Damon headed into the bathing chambers and began filling one of the baths with cold water.
“I’ll use ice to cool it down further,” he said. “I’m assuming that will be enough?”
“It should be,” said Myr. “Just be careful not to fill it up high enough for you to accidentally drown yourself. You’ll be in a trance while I’m showing you the Ocean Klykia.”
He nodded, slipping a few fingers into the water and cooling it down to a temperature just short of freezing. In truth, the temperature was more concerning to him than the risk of his head slipping under. He’d always found that it took him a force of will to commit to lowering himself into genuinely cold water, to push past the way it made his hairs prickle, and various parts of his body retreat inward.
“Alright.” He took a breath, stripping his clothes off. “Here we go.”
As soon as he stepped into the tub, he began to miss his old resistance to the cold. He remembered sleeping out in the snow on occasion. Now, he was literally struggling to sink his leg into the water past the calf.
“I mean, I have all day, but do you?” whispered Myr.
“Shut up,” he muttered. “I’m going.”
He stepped into the chilled bath, though with a few less than manly noises that he was thankful no one else was around to hear. Slowly, torturously, Damon began lowering himself deeper, feeling the relentless way the ice-cold water licked at his bare flesh.
The gap between mid-thigh and waist level, a space which included all his favorite body parts, was by far the most difficult. Damon exhaled a shivering breath as he felt his manhood all but freeze on contact, his balls pulling inward like mice retreating into their holes.
“Oh boy,” he said, teeth chattering. “Tell me that it at least won’t feel this cold while you’re showing me whatever it is I’ll be seeing?”
“It won’t,” said Myr. “One last reminder to make sure that you have your head set comfortably.”
He nodded, dropping the rest of the way into the water. He was shivering uncontrollably, but he leaned his head back against the tub’s lip, closed his eyes, and tried to let Myr take him away.
***
Damon felt normal, or at least, not overly cold, as he descended into Myr’s strange, crystalline realm. It had been a while since he’d visited, since before his encounter with Lascivious, before the breaking of the world.
She looked much as she had when he’d broken her last chain, minus the chains. She smiled at him, totally unconcerned by her own nudity, dark hair hanging long across her shoulders. Her lips looked frostbitten, dotted with tiny ice crystals that made him keen on kissing her.
“Hey,” he said. “It’s been a while since we’ve really…”
He made a gesture with his hand, unsure of which word might best end the thought.
“Yeah,” she agreed, grinning at him. “We don’t have all that much time, unfortunately. Your body will still be affected by the cold in the real world. I don’t want you coming down with a sickness over it.”
“Neither do I, but I’m sure we could spare a few minutes.” He reached out, taking her hand. She let him pull her in, though she turned to offer her cheek when he tried to steal a kiss.
“After,” she said. “This is more important. I didn’t just bring you on this journey for your own sake, Damon. I…”
She turned away from him, shoulders rising and falling in time with a sigh.
“There’s a form of power here which I suspected and now know to be what I would need to…” She turned her palms up. “To be real, again. Not as I was, as an ice elemental, but embodied, all the same.”
“That’s all the more reason for us to push onward, then,” he said. “If that’s a possibility, I want it for you, too, Myr. From how you explained it, it’s not as though keeping you within me would make much sense in a world without magic.”
She blinked, staring at him as though she wasn’t quite sure she’d heard him right, or perhaps just simply not letting herself believe it.
“Well, let me show you, then.” Myr took his other hand and leaned her head forward.
A great crystal of ice formed around both of them, a smaller version of the chamber itself. Bright light blinded Damon for an instant, and when his vision returned, he was still within the crystal, floating in the sky.
“Wow.” He tested his feet against the floor of the ice crystal, which was clear enough to offer him a beautiful and terrifying view of just how high up they were. “This is just a vision, right? We’re not really this high up?”
He wasn’t afraid of heights. His myrblade had let him fly at the peak of his power. Still, it was a little unsettling to be suspended by the force of someone else, facing the potential of a drop over which he’d have no control.
“It’s a dream of the past,” said Myr. “What I now show you is an older time, truly ancient. Long before the current age, before even those you claim as the True Divine, Leandra and Rovahn, had been born.”
Myr’s eyes glowed bright blue, and her hair swirled around her bare shoulders. She raised a hand, and the crystal flew forward through the sky, though Damon could only tell from the way the clouds shifted. They were over the ocean, and the endless expanse of blue barely changed as they traveled over it.
A shape appeared against the distant horizon, resolving from a white splotch into a massive island of sheer ice across the span of a few seconds. Myr stopped them once they drew near, saying nothing and staring ahead.
Damon took a closer look, trying to understand what she was showing him. “Is this the Ocean Klykia?”
“This is how it looked long ago, when it was dormant,” she whispered. “So much ice. The scale of it may be hard for you to understand, without a proper reference, but my sisters and I could sense this place from halfway across the world.”
“This is our destination,” muttered Damon.
“Not as we see it now. Watch.”
The sky overhead seemed to accelerate, days passing in less than a blink of an eye as the blue of day skipped back and forth with the black of night. The ice seemed to shrivel in on itself at the edges, but the effect was minimal… to a point.
Myr stopped time from passing at an accelerating rate. If she hadn’t, Damon truly wouldn’t have appreciated the scale of what he was seeing. The ice began to shatter into pieces, chunks falling off that seemed to drop in slow motion, simply due to how much time it took for an object to fall of its own weight. Chunks the size of cities.
“…How?” he muttered. “That’s so much ice. How was it even there to begin with?”
He looked at Myr, more curious than suspicious. He understood enough about ice after his experiences to pose the question, at least.
“I don’t know,” she said. “It may have been created by a greater force. Or it could have been natural, or naturally magical, or…” She shrugged. “I just don’t know.”
The ice continued to fracture away in chunks. Myr sped up the pace of time again, and over the course of perhaps a week, all of the ice broke off in shelf-like pieces that floated off on the current.
There was a true island of land underneath, tiny in comparison to the ice which had covered it, but substantial enough. It rose from the water like a small mountain, and cracks along its length dripped with fresh lava in places, bright orange with heat. An answer for how the ice had melted, perhaps, but the sheer difference in scale between the tiny island and massive frozen sheet made Damon skeptical.
“This is the Ocean Klykia,” said Myr. She waved a hand, and the two of them floated down until they were directly in front of their target. An archway near the center of the island’s craggy rockface, seemingly leading to a cave-like interior.
“What’s inside?” asked Damon.
Myr shook her head. “This was all I could see through the ice. I know this is the right place, and I know that we… you and I… have the power to make a change here, for ourselves and for the world. But I can’t tell you anything more.”
He nodded slowly. “I came this far. I want this, a world where the Forsaken aren’t a temper tantrum or sociopathic thought away from breaking the world. We’ll reach the Ocean Klykia and do what needs to be done.”
Myr grinned at him. “Thank you, Damon.”
The scene around them faded, and they were back in her realm, staring at each other in the silence. Damon felt a smile of his own creeping onto his face. He took Myr’s hands and pulled her close.
“I’m sure we could get away with a few minutes of fun,” he said.
“Well…” She wiggled herself playfully and stepped in closer. “You took in what I had to tell you so quickly. I suppose that’s true.”
He ran his hand over her pale blue body, finding it soft and unexpectedly warm. He cupped her breasts, and they fell into one another, kissing madly.
***
“Is he drowning?” asked Lilian.
“His head would still appear to be above the water, but he is sort of… thrashing about,” said Ria.
“Do you think he’s fighting in whatever experience Myr is showing him?” asked Vel. “He’s, um, grunting a bit.”
“Does he usually have an erection when he fights?” asked Lilian.
Ria snorted. Vel clamped a hand over her mouth, trying and failing to stay quiet.
“Well…” said Ria. “To be fair to him as a man, it is not uncommon for the masculine body to experience such a state during sleep.”
They watched as Damon reached a hand out and seemingly cupped the air above his manhood and started bouncing it up and down.
“We shouldn’t be watching this,” said Vel.
“He should have shut the door completely,” said Lilian.
***
Myr’s mouth was, in fact, just as warm as any other woman’s, with a few incredible caveats. She didn’t need to breathe, and her neck and throat seemed to have a rather unique sort of flexibility. She was sucking him off fast, and there was an increasingly worried look in her eyes.
“Damon,” she whispered, pulling her mouth back. “Are you close?”
“Here,” he said. “We can switch.”
He pulled her toward him, lifting her slender body by the thighs.
“That wasn’t what I meant,” she said. “You’ve been in the freezing water for too long.”
“W-what?” His teeth were chattering, and it was suddenly hard to speak clearly. “I’m… f-fine.”
He tried to grab at her glorious body only to find his fingers moving lethargically slow. Myr’s worry became outright fear, and she stepped away.
“You need to wake up,” she whispered.
***
“Damon! Wake up!”
He blinked, feeling numb all over, but dimly aware of still being in the water. Vel and Ria were standing over the tub, looking much like Myr had in that last second before the trance had stopped.
“What… happened?” he muttered.
“Your head went under,” said Ria. “It was only when we went to lift you that we realized what a foolish thing you were doing with this water. You are not immune to the cold anymore, husband!”
“We need to get him up,” said Vel. “Help me!”
Lilian stepped forward from behind the others and, with the aid of three sets of arms, he stumbled to his feet. Someone wrapped a towel around him, and he was gently escorted to his cabin. Ria dried him off before helping him settle down onto his bed.
“He needs to be warmed,” she said. “I will sleep in the bed with him.”
“What?” snapped Vel. “No! I mean… how is that fair? I’m concerned about him, too.”
“I think I’ll leave this to the two of you to, erm, discuss,” said Lilian. “Play nice, girls.”
She shut the door on her way out. Damon was awake enough to see the way Ria and Vel were both staring each other down.
“Velanor,” said Ria, in that older sister voice she reserved for such fights. “It is the health of Damon which matters here, not which of us contributes more to helping him. Now, I am planning on getting in bed with him. Naked.”
“Ria!” said Vel. “Come on. I can warm up just as capably as you can. It’s not as though it requires skill.”
“Both,” muttered Damon. “I want you both.”
They stared at him, and then back at each other, and then at his conspicuous erection poking up from under the blanket which had started the mess in the first place.
“I’m really cold,” he said, truthfully. “And I love you both. You teamed up to save me.”
“Lilian also played a part,” said Vel, shrugging.
“If that is what you wish, husband, I have no objection.” Ria started stripping out of her clothing.
“Neither do I!” said Vel. She pulled her dress up and over her head as though in a race to be the first nude.
Damon was reasonably sure that he could have warmed up on his own with just the blanket. He was also reasonably sure that the circumstances necessary to get Vel and Ria into bed with him, all three of them naked, were rare enough to be worth seizing this opportunity tight within his cold, pruney fingers.
Ria slid in to cuddle on his right, her naked breasts sliding into place against his shoulders. Damon turned and kissed her. She made a face and touched his lips.
“You are still frozen,” she whispered. “Your lips are practically blue.”
Vel spooned herself against Damon’s back, tiny and warm and wonderfully nude. One of her hands began fondling Damon’s manhood, and he blinked and groaned in reaction, still staring at Ria.
“Do you feel warmer at all down here, Damon?” Vel whispered in his ears.
“Warmer and warmer,” he sighed. “Your hands are so hot, Vel.”
Ria kissed him again, tongue swirling into his mouth. Her lips traveled, pressing across his cheek, down along his neck. She wriggled forward, and then hesitated, one of her thighs brushing Damon’s cock… and Vel’s fingers.
He set a hand on her breast, gently tweaking her nipple. Still fondling Ria, he leaned his head back. The angle wasn’t right for him to kiss Vel over his shoulder, but she pressed her lips to his cheek, almost right where Ria had just been kissing.
“Mmm…” moaned Vel. She stroked her hand faster along his cock.
Damon felt Ria reach down, joining in with a gentle brush across the tip. She brought her finger up to her mouth and sucked on it.
Any further attempts at warming him up had been set aside, if the idea ever truly had been more than a pretense to begin with. Vel pulled at his shoulder, letting go of her grip on him down below to ease him onto his back.
Damon allowed it, playing up how passive he was rather than taking control. That would require him to pick one to focus on, and he was aware enough of their feelings, both toward him and each other, to know how easily that could go wrong.
Ria slid down, running her hands across Damon’s body, slow and deliberate. She watched Vel as she licked her lips, as though giving her time to accept her move, object to it, or perhaps join in.
Vel gave a shy smile, turning to kiss Damon instead, one hand rubbing his chest. He wasn’t looking down as he felt Ria’s tongue start to run up the length of his cock. His lips were against Vel’s, though concentrating on moving his mouth in time with hers while reeling from the pleasure Ria inflicted upon him was a challenge in itself.
He grabbed Vel and pulled her closer, burying his face in her petite breasts. He sucked on one of her nipples, automatically matching Ria’s pace as she sucked on his tool and bringing the pace of pleasure full circle.
“Oh,” she moaned. “Damon.”
He loved it when she said his name like that. He wanted to hear it again. He shifted her upward, ignoring the curious look she gave him as he posed her so she was all but sitting on his face.
She inhaled sharply as he ran his tongue along her womanhood, teasing her tender folds. She flexed her hips forward, moving in time with his licking and kissing. He luxuriated in her reactions, feeling so close to her, to Ria, as well.
The stray thought of what their aesta would think, were she to walk in at that moment, buzzed inside his head like an annoying fly. He’d done as much with her, more, in some ways. Yet still, he couldn’t shake that sense of shame of having disappointed her on a fundamental level, and it fed into his arousal in a perverse manner.
He felt Vel tense up, a wave running through her body as she all but melted over him. Damon kissed her as she slid sideways on the bed, submerged in pleasure. Ria crawled up the bed toward him, and they were against each other in an instant, kissing and grinding and getting deep into the motion.
The fact that Vel was still right there, on the same bed, catching her breath, didn’t matter. Though, in a paradoxical way, it was impossible for it to not matter. They were all complicit in this same crime. She watched them with glazed, half lidded eyes, and slid one hand down between her legs to touch herself.
“Ah!” cried Ria. “Damon! Husband!”
She growled the last word into his ear in a voice quiet enough to be just for him. Damon drove into her faster, listening to the dirty, rhythmic slaps of their bodies.
“Ria!” he cried.
He unloaded in her, his entire body pulsing with pleasure as he gave her his seed. Vel slid in next to him, kissing his sweaty shoulder as he caught his breath.
He rolled onto his back and hugged them both to him.
He was good and warm. That much was known.