“It might not be that bad,” Henry said. “Maybe you regained your affinity for magic.”

Ada gave him a light tap on the cheek. “Please.” She was currently sitting on Henry’s chest, her legs outstretched and leaving his head sandwiched between her thighs.

“The mark of an offgiant remains on your neck.” Henry smooched her left thigh. “There’s still a lot of questions.”

“I suspect the answers won’t be good.” Ada’s index finger trailed over his nose as she shaded her eyes looking up, the sunrocks giving daylight. “I don’t know what happens next, but with that giant’s power, I’m ready to just kneel. Subservience and hope for mercy. At this point, I’ll be happy just to be alive.”

Henry’s mouth stayed at her thighs, savoring her delicate flesh.

Ada smiled, patting his head. ”And as long as I’m with you. But…” She scanned the surroundings briefly, not able to see much. “How will you tell this to your friends?”

“You are not the same as before,” Henry said, “I’ve seen that. With time, they will too.”

“Maybe. But you and I are quite…” Ada’s tongue rolled along the inside of her cheeks, a sly look. “Lecherous, lustful, active. We’ll have to be on our better behavior around them. At this point, if a day goes by without your magic mouth adoring my body, I’ll feel strange.”

Henry’s mouth parted from her thigh, leaving a moist circle. “First thing you’ve got to do is quell that language, because it brings me in like the bee to a flower.”

Ada giggled. Her left knee bent, folding her leg to bring the foot in. The juicy sole hovered over him, her mature toes flexing. Henry reached up, Ada pulled back, and for a while she teased him that way. At last she let it fall, plopping her supple toes into his mouth. For a while, his tongue wrestled with her toes, sucking and kissing. Ada recruited her other foot and said, “Stick out your tongue.”

Henry extended it as far down he could, trying to touch his chin. His tongue made the perfect runway as Ada swiped her soles over it, alternating between them, left, right, left, right, heel to toe, heel to toe. Gradually, her soles stole away the moisture from his tongue.

“Keep it out,” Ada said. “It feels different like this. It feels…” Ada turned her eyes up absently, index scratching her chin, rolling her mouth around as if she were tasting wine. “Rough, scratchy, right where it needs to be. It can strike my hard ankles and stimulate them, yet without being overly rough on the soft arches.” Henry tried not to laugh, keeping his mouth and tongue still for her usage.

When her soles were done brushing him, Ada was quick to say, “Wait. Keep it out. I’ll be the one to moisten it.” Ada turned around and planted her feet to either side of him. She used his tongue the exact same way, as a runway, this time for her pussy, and this time each swipe added moisture instead of taking it, and Henry became damp with her liquids. Ada humped him faster and faster.

“Hey! Henry!” Rennard’s voice, full of distress.

As if sobered up by a bucket of ice-cold water, Ada jumped straight up, Henry following suit, emerging from behind the bush that hid them. “Rennard?”

Rennard had run out from the portal, an expression of sheer terror, one Henry had never seen on his otherwise fearless friend. Henry jogged down the slope to meet him. “What happened? Where’s Milton?”

Rennard clutched Henry’s forearms. “She, she ate him!” The frantic quiver of a cry was in his voice. “She fucking ate him! Swallowed him whole before my eyes.” He threw a finger towards the portal. “She’s coming. We can’t do anything.”

A giant arrived, not the one they expected. With a rush of crinkling leaves and branches, Ester stepped out from a wall of herbage, a section Henry could have sworn he had checked and found nothing. “Who’s that?”

“You!” Rennard ran towards her, every two seconds with a hectic peek back at the portal.

Henry followed him, Ada trailing last.

“Your goddess is nothing but a power-hungry devil,” Rennard bellowed. “The devil herself. She swallowed my friend, she plans on killing us!”

Ester’s shoulders rose shyly, a glance at Rennard, Henry, Ada, a quick scan of the surroundings. “Uhm, what do you mean? What did the Goddess do?”

“Talk some sense into her! She ate my friend and she’s planning on ending us all.”

Ester had no proper response.

“I told you to stay in the throne room, Ester.” Helga stepped out of the portal, marching towards them.

Rennard signaled to where Ester had emerged, Henry and Ada running after him. Just as he shouldered his way past the first layer of herbage, a green glow bloomed from the vegetation and blasted him, Henry, and Ada back, thrown all the way to the waterfront of the pond.

“Goddess, what’s going on?” Ester said as the three collected themselves.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Helga said, “now return. I shall explain later.” Helga opened her closed fist, releasing a flying thread resembling Milton’s tethers. Like a bird of prey, they homed in on Rennard, ensnaring his legs. He tripped over. Henry returned to his side, but before him he saw the great green dress, knees hitting the ground, then two palms, and then Helga’s face descending upon them.

Henry activated his arts, clutched Rennard’s wrist, about to throw him over his back. Before anything of what he had in mind happened, Helga’s lips clamped around Rennard’s torso, another jerk ensuring her teeth had him too. With his art of the fighter, Henry did compete with the casual hold Helga had on Rennard, but it ended with a slurp sucking Rennard inside. Slivers of flame trailed out between her lips, Rennard’s efforts in display, but Helga didn’t flinch. Henry punched her chin, cheeks, nose, throwing blasts of pure energy. The helplessness washed over him, draining motivation, arresting all further attempts. Henry wasn’t pounding into a resilient thigh or back, this was her nose, her cheeks, what ought to be sensitive targets, yet his attacks didn’t even make Helga raise her head to escape his reach. She simply remained down at ground level, taunting him with her inaction, toying with Rennard in her mouth.

Ester stood frozen, not having obeyed Helga’s command to leave, yet not helping either. She observed, her fingers fidgeting together. Ada stood with her mouth open in shock, cowering next to a boulder. Henry saw the fear in Ada, understanding this fate awaited them as well.

“Fucking bitch!” Rennard yelled, muffled from within her mouth. Henry gathered all he could into one strong dropkick, pounding into her cheek. Her lips parted momentarily, and Rennard had grown drowsy just like Milton had before being swallowed.

Amid the hurricane of panic that kept hurling frenzied thoughts around Henry’s mind, of his friends dying, the end of his future, the complete flip from his delightful time with Ada to the horror this was, one phrase stuck out like a needle and took his attention for a second.

The miracle stone on her forehead.

Arm ready, Henry jumped up over her eyebrows and swung his arm. It wasn’t a punch; his index, ring- and middle finger were poised forward, arm shooting forward. Henry struck the tiny globe on her forehead, right on its side, and angled his wrist to hit it with an outward scoop.

The miracle stone was displaced, launched away by Henry’s strike. A network of blue veins cut through Helga’s face, gripped by sudden seizures, groaning, her skin graying. The miracle stone sailed through the air and cracked onto the boulder next to Ada, shattering into a small and large piece. The large piece flied straight into Ada’s open mouth, settling in the back of her throat, and with a convulsed choke and reflex, Ada gulped it down. She doubled forward and held her throat, barely able to as much as grimace.

Rennard threw himself out of Helga’s bottom lip, Henry catching him and retreating from there. Helga’s face was demented, drawn-out, a horror-painting, her skin crepitating like dry clay. One could notice the fight she tried to make, her tremulous, decaying hand reaching for Ada, trying to remain upright. But she collapsed, her dress and skin turning to ash, and she shrunk rapidly, from her hundred feet height to seventy, fifty, thirty, down to a gray, pallid, human corpse, like a painted mannequin, the corpse she would have been had the miracle stone not sustained her life for so long.

Amidst the piles of ashes, Milton surfaced with a sharp gasp, stumbling forward.

“Milton,” Rennard groaned, returning to his senses as Henry let him stand on his own. Despite his own condition, he reached for Milton. “Thank God.”

But the spectacle wasn’t over. Another groan took their attention, but unlike Helga’s feeble, dying sound made of a person in sickbed, this one was vitalized, an energetic war cry. Everything was the exact reverse. Ada’s skin turned a vibrant, young hue, little welts and scars vanishing, and before Henry finished the thought, it happened.

Ada grew.