Tomboy Island

“We’ll do a quick swing northeast, then wrap back around to go home,” Alex explained his plan.

Trudging through the ash-scape again was bothersome, but not quite as bad as before. Shiulrach had taken with him the magma chambers beneath the earth. There was still some odd heat beneath their feet, but it was even now, like a radiator the size of a city turned up to maximum.

As for where the great spirit had gone, there was a clear trail in the soot of where he had emerged and where he had moved. It went northwards before disappearing between the trees. It appeared that he had learned to control his fire after leaving just a few black handprints on the mighty trunks.

Wherever he had gone, he was too far to catch up with. Alex instead directed them east, to map out a bit more of the jungle.

It was trees and trees - until it was not. On the eastern fringe of the jungle, where it transitioned into shores and grassland, was a forest of a different kind, a strip of tall ferns that produced oils that ran down the underside of each leaf and made it pool on the ground beneath them.

“Careful, it can act like quicksand,” he warned the women with him. This was the same kind of fern that Tess had almost died because of. Saving her from it had been the catalyst for her turning into his willing sex slave, so he couldn’t say he was too mad about it. Being annoyed at a plant would have been stupid anyhow - unless this one began to talk.

Though the last service the ferns had rendered him had been a happy ending to a nerve-wracking situation, Alex considered that there may be more good that could yet come from them. He knelt down at the edge of the slippery soil and dragged his finger over it. He tested the viscosity.

Alex had the privilege of massaging a woman once or twice in his life. This secretion of the plants had a similar consistency to the oils used to that end. They also already knew that it didn’t cause any adverse effects, otherwise, Tess would have experienced them after she had been mouth-deep in the stuff.

“If we could bottle and filter it somehow or drain it straight from the plants, it would make for a good aid in massaging you all.”

“Of course that’s what you’re thinking about,” Kiara snorted.

“What else is there?” Alex asked, with a raised eyebrow.

“Can you really not think about any other use for lubricant than rubbing flesh bits together?”

“...Fair point,” Alex conceded. They had magic now, but there were probably matters easier solved with a bit of engineering, which ready access to lubricants would indeed help with. “We’ll have to figure out how we can exploit this another time.”

With no containers on them suitable to transport even a sample, they could only turn around. It was too late in the day to explore further east either.

Finding their way back to the Tree of Harem Life was easy, even inside the jungle. Its supernatural presence in the jungle was easily felt by its owner and the large clearing it created was as eye-catching as the red leaves on its expansive canopy.

By the time he entered through the large gate in the gargantuan trunk of the tree, the sun had set and the world was about to go dark. Instead, he found himself in the brightest place in the world: where his harem dwelled.

______________________________________________________________

In anticipation of his return, his women had already gathered in the usual chamber. “You are late today,” Tess observed. “Did anything happen, Master?”

“A lot, actually,” Alex responded and got seated on his throne. A bath would have served him well, the various crystal-fuelled rinses he had taken throughout the day having left him reasonably clean but not thoroughly scrubbed. His dick was spotless though, something the angelic goth made sure to inspect and then to make use of. While she was waiting for his report, she might as well be bobbing her head.

The trio that had accompanied him lingered around the throne. Janette and Kiara were pulling out the spoils of the day on the table.

“Why don’t you tell everyone what happened?” Alex asked Ashley.

“M-me?! I would just stutter throughout it all!”

“Just try to think about it in terms of a book report,” he encouraged her with a smile. “Go on.”

The petite Asian woman stared at him, then the crowd. Sure, she was the shyest of the bunch by margin and she did have a bit of a stutter, but she was still a tomboy at heart. Faced with a challenge, she ultimately needed little encouragement. She cleared her throat, then began speaking in that same tone of voice she used during her overflowing descriptions.

“Today, Master decided we ought to explore the nearby ashlands. We had barely entered them when Kiara was turned into his carry-fuck sleeve, which had the added side benefit of turning her into a metaphorical compass needle pointing towards a deposit of mysterious metal.

Janette put the suggestively shaped double spheres of pink-blue metal down on the table. Its lewd aura was immediately noticed by all, though that did not stop some chuckling at Kiara’s expense. “So what if I am a sex-powered metal detector?!” her response, aimed at no one in particular, only caused further amusement.

“Following that we found a few unfinished totem poles of the heat-transporting design. Master elected to leave them where we found them, for now. After that, we checked out a miniature volcano that laid at the heart of the ashlands. Though it produced lava, that lava was of a thankfully lower temperature than regular molten rock, so we could navigate the landscape with relative safety.”

“So there is a volcano,” Sofia muttered. “Makes enough sense… did you encounter the… uhm…”

“The elemental,” Valeria helped with finding the word.

“Y-yeah - the elemental again?”

“We are getting to that,” Alex grunted, one hand on the back of Tess’ head and the other on Ashley’s ass. A squeeze of that pert, firm butt prompted her to continue the report.

“We found a dungeon… and Master decided we ought to go inside,” Ashley moaned while a finger teased her slit. “We found some… shiny rocks while we explored the upper layers.”

Kiara put them on the table, puffing out her chest as she did. For some reason, perhaps to do with her dwarven nature, she was really pleased about these stones. To be fair, the other women at least partially shared her enthusiasm, inspecting them one after another.

“Then we… ah…!” Ashley took a moment, gathered herself, then continued strong despite her quaking legs. “Then we found ancient mechanisms moving lava around. We theorise that it was originally there to pump water instead. All the same, we found a crystal that produces water in the control room.”

Janette put that crystal on the table, next to the other items. Charlotte and Amethyst were, predictably, interested in it. “How much water?” the French vixen asked. “Is it hot, cold…?”

Alex answered while Ashley took the little break to cry out in orgasm, riding his large palm shamelessly. “Lukewarm and we don’t know how much, though there are some energy reserves to it. We have been using it to clean ourselves. Thanks to it, we aren’t covered in ash.”

“Useful… hope it recharges,” Charlotte hummed.

“It will,” Amethyst assured.

“After that!” Ashley snapped back to recounting the day. “Master took on three golems by himself!” She shivered, in aftershock and awe both. “One had to have seen it, his muscles rippling as he expertly played around the distance in the underground chamber, using his superior reach and his limited defences to defeat all three of the wood-stone enemies! The first slash damaged one golem, the second cut in twain and a second one with it, the third shattered the last enemy.”

“It was pretty hot,” Janette drawled.

“...yeah,” Kiara muttered, squirming where she stood. “I-it’s also where we found this bag!” the brat swiftly deflected from her masculinity-fuelled arousal. “It’s bigger on the inside!”

The distraction was successful. The big leather backpack was passed around, each of the women taking a turn inspecting the oddity that was its space.

“Deeper down, we found a library.” Ashley rolled her hips and squeezed one of her nipples, now fully using Alex’s hand to ‘masturbate’. Despite that, she continued to talk fluidly - even more fluidly, even. The sexual gratification motivated her to keep going. “It had been rotted away by unnatural maggots, as Janette identified. Master combined clues to find the origin of them, discovering a forsaken root of the Death Willow. He ripped it out of the wall and took it along.”

Kiara reluctantly retrieved that item from her backpack and put it on the table in a smooth gesture. It had lost much of that immediate disdain that Alex had instinctively felt towards it, but they all had a clear reason to actively loathe the enigmatic entity that hung over these islands, preventing human procreation.

“Any reason you did that?” Jane asked, green eyes remaining on the item for a while.

“I like taking trophies from my enemies,” Alex responded simply. “It is dead, truly dead. The purpose the Death Willow had for it, it had long since fulfilled.”

“As Master says, all we could find that had survived the library’s scouring was a singular page, imbued with magic.” Janette placed that page on the table.

“Which, like the other books we found so far, will belong to Ashley,” Alex was swift to say. “She is dedicated to translating the language and intuition tells me that this empty page holds answers.”

Astrid laughed lightly. “I mean, it’s clearly magical, doesn’t take a genius to figure that out, dude.” She would have given him a well-meaning knock on the shoulder had he been in reach of her knuckles.

“And then… we reached the bottom of the dungeon,” Ashley said, her foreboding voice immediately refocusing attention. “Where we found a great elemental entity with skin like hardened slag, six arms, and the head of a dragon. It thrashed in pain but was bound by ethereal, blue chains. Master addressed it and-”

“He told it to hate the Death Willow,” Janette interrupted.

“I was getting to that!” Ashley declared.

Alex gave the dryad a reprimanding swat to the rear. “Ashley does the report,” he told the martial artist. “Don’t interrupt her.”

For a moment the cold woman seemed annoyed, rubbing her posterior, then she sighed and relented with a nod. “I apologise.”

“You told the bound elemental to hate? Did you learn nothing from anime?” Selana asked and shook her head. “Power comes from love, dude.”

Evelyn rolled her eyes fiercely. “By Master, never say that again,” she groaned. “I might cringe out of my scales.”

“What? You don’t get power out of loving our man?”

“I… mhm…” Evelyn crossed her arms under her quite large breasts. She also eyed Selana’s enormous ones with a degree of envy as she did. “I relent. Still, I think Master’s plan will have worked out nicely?”

“I hate to disappoint that trust, but I did not really have a plan. The entity, named Shiulrach-”

“Shiulrach?!” Amethyst blurted out, causing everyone to look at her. The slime and sole native of these islands among them, blinked a couple of times. “Shiulrach…” she muttered to herself. “I know that name, deep in my essence… he’s the origin of the rivers of this land.”

“He definitely looked more like a lava spirit,” Janette remarked.

Amethyst slowly shook her head, her eyes reflecting memories stirring that she had never had to put into a sapient context before. “He is the origin of rivers - of all that flows,” she explained. “Water and lava are both in his domains… though water should be the dominant one.”

“Ah… I see…” This bit of information was all he had needed to understand. While cumming down Tess’ throat, the epiphany hit him. “There seems to be some… broken heat channelling circuit that he was at the end of. His bindings kept him in place as the heat accumulated over however many years he was bound there. When I encouraged him to hate the Death Willow, it must have finished that transformation into a lava spirit.”

“And… what then happened to Shiulrach?”

Alex sighed and scratched the back of his head. “At first, he extended his hatred to all of humanity.”

“Classic,” Selana drawled. “Though that must have ended well, considering you are very much not charred? Did you kill it?”

“Even Master could not kill Shiulrach,” Amethyst declared. “Not as he is right now.”

“He was like twice my height and tore the chains away once his nature had changed,” Alex said, in agreement with Amethyst’s assessment.

“A-and then?” Sara asked, her rabbit ears twitching nervously.

“Then Kiara managed to talk him into giving mankind another chance,” Alex said, giving the due credit to the shortstack. “Though he did ask for some concessions in return. We are to kill the Death Willow, we are to build a shrine, and my first child with Kiara will have a pact with Shiulrach.”

“Like… a Warlock from Dungeons and Dragons?” Yahui asked.

“I prefer Pathfinder,” Alex said, “but yes.”

“Surprised ya know about DnD stuff,” Charlotte chimed in.

“I never got the chance to play, but it intrigued me. I watched Critical Role.”

Tess released her suction envelopment on her Master’s cock to utter a singular word: “Normie.”

That caused widespread amusement. Everyone laughed, even if they weren’t entirely clear about the context. It swiftly was less about getting the joke and more about sharing in the genuine amusement of the wider harem. The man of the island was holding his stomach. He just loved them all too much not to find the greatest joy in their laughter.

‘Ah, to be part of this found family,’ Alex thought and cleared his throat. “So Shiulrach then left, we found some traces that suggest he went north. Ashley, if you would summarize the rest?”

“O-okay… so… Master said we had enough time to explore a little bit more. We found the eastern edge of the jungle on this island, or at least that arm of the jungle, and we also found some oil-producing ferns there. The ones you know, Tess, as Master made clear.”

“Could we bottle it?” Tess did not think about her brush with death for even a moment. In delightful tomboy fashion, she jumped straight to practicality. “My skin was quite smooth after. Also my tits would look amazing all oiled up.”

“Mhm… massaging Master’s whole body with our oiled-up breasts…” Evelyn tapped her chin with a sharp fingernail. “An excellent idea.”

“We will need bottles and perhaps a way to filter it,” Alex said. “It pools on the ground and mixes with the soil. Not optimal.” He made a dismissive gesture. “We can talk about that tomorrow. For now, I would like dinner and a bath.”

Their black-liquid servants seemed to have only waited for those words, streaming into the room with trays of food ready.

Alex was all too eager to dig in, but there was one more thing to mention. “After he left, we also found this… crystal,” he said, prompting Kiara to place it on the table. It immediately had the attention of Charlotte and Amethyst again, in addition to Blair and, to a lesser degree, Yahui. It was easy enough to make the connection. Those associated with water and fire felt a connection to it. Yahui, being more of an ice woman, only had a faint connection to a crystal born from the presence of a spirit of flowing water.

“What are you going to do with it?” Amethyst asked.

“I don’t know yet… I will sleep on it.”

The slime tomboy nodded approvingly.

Then they got to feasting.