Announcement
Today is Amazon/audible release day for The First Great Game!
The Ebook/Audiobook/Paperback are all available now, and the book is also available on Kindle Unlimited.
It's been a long time coming, and I'm very excited to get this story out there in the wider world. As ever, thanks for all your support, I wouldn't have written all this without you.
I'm also doing a thing with purchasing Patrons to get a free month of membership. You can go take a look without being a patron. I'll also be doing a whole month of Patreon free for anyone if the book gets to 25+ reviews on Amazon in the first week.
So - if you go buy the book / read it on KU, leave me a rating and a review, you filthy mongrels.
No but really, it's critical to the success of a launch, and the better this book does, the more you're going to get in the future. It doesn't have to be 5 stars, just honest, and literally can be the minimum required words. OK. Enough badgering.
Thanks, as ever. The Game continues...
âAlright.â Mason eased the half naked nymph away from his back and turned. âI have questions.â
âOf course, druid.â Thea pulled away looking the picture of innocence. âYouâve brought life back to the great forest for centuries. I would do anything I could to assist you. Within reason.â
This last bit she said with a different, much more opportunistic tone, and Mason frowned.
âPlay your cards right and you might get a donation. First I want to know why you keep calling the elves âmoon daughtersâ and all this nonsense about âslightsâ and insults. Explain it all.â
âI have no âcardsâ, druid. But, as you wish.â Thea sighed and grew some kind of flower-chair from the ground. She sat and played with a stem like a cat. âThe elves were once Gaiaâs children. You might think of them as myâŠdistant relatives.â
Mason went to sit on the ground before Thea grew him his own flowerâvery close and across from hers, and smiled. He sat, aware he was still completely naked.
âElves are curious, willful creatures. Much like humans.â She gave him a little eyebrow raise and lifted a foot, moving it up his flower. âThey sought to understand the world on their own. To travel the planes. To wield new magic. It took them away from my mistress, to forbidden, dangerous, andâŠunclean things. To the gods of the stars.â
âThe moon goddess,â Mason said, and Thea nodded. Her foot was running up his leg now, but he was still completely hard and didnât have much interest in stopping it. His eyes were mostly on Theaâs bare leg and breast. âOK. So Gaia didnât like that. The elves did it anyway. Now theyâre the black sheep however many thousands of years later?â
Thea shook her brown curls, biting her lip as her foot reached Masonâs thigh.
âItâs more complex, druid. But yes, most elves fell out of mother earthâs favor. There are still those who live by her laws, some in the fey, some in the prime. But those who stray
too
farâŠare punished,â she said. âThey are cursed.â
Mason nodded. âThe infertility. The elves of Shariss live in a city that reeked of arcane magic.â
âThey
mocked
my mistress,â Thea said with a final shrug. âThey tried to live in the fey as mortal creatures in an immortal world. To have their cake and eat it too.â She smiled as her toes touched Masonâs shaft, then pulled away with a giggle when he twitched. âThere are rules.â
There are rules, little wolf
, Cerebusâ voice echoed in Masonâs mind.
He grabbed both of Theaâs feet and put them to his manhood, enjoying her surprised gasp as she started to stroke. He wasnât really a âfoot guyâ, but he still had to admit this was hot. And he had more questions.
âAlright,â he said. âSo now a druid brings them to Gaiaâs pool, bangs their brains out, and poof, all is forgiven? Howâs that work, exactly?â
Thea smiled and settled back in her chair as she rubbed.
âYou are Blessed by Gaia, druid. By Cerebus. By the Stag. You have restored the great forest, won mighty Cerebus honor enough to return him to the feyâŠâ
âI thought your mistress and Cerebus didnât get along.â
Thea laughed like this was ridiculous, then shrugged like it was also true.
âThey are male and female. Spring and Fall. Predator and prey. How can we hope to understand the gods? I know only they are two sides of the same coin, and will always be. Cerebus would kill anything that truly threatened my mistress. And she will always cheer his victories. Already he returns order to the fey.â
âWhat else did my winning that tournament do for Cerebus?â
Thea rolled her neck and opened the front of her dress as she kept rubbing.
âIt raised his standing. Gave him advantage in the great game.â
The great game.
Mason blinked and nearly stopped the nymphâs efforts. Had any of roboGodâs âfictionalâ creatures ever called it that?
âWhat did you say?â
Thea looked confused before she answered.
âThe endless competition of the gods, druid. They fight for position. For power. For influence on the prime. It is the only plane they can affect besides their own.â
Mason grinned, lust-filled mind turning a few gears as he tried to process that. Was she saying the
real
game wasnât between men, but between gods? Were people just some kind of pawn? Maybe Mason âwonâ by making Cerebus win. Maybe the interactions between
players
were less important than they all thought.
When Mason looked up, Thea seemed a bit disappointed. He was still rock hard from her efforts (and probably without them), but she wasnât the sort of woman used to being ignored.
Not that she needed to worry. Mason was enjoying himself, but he was coming to the end of the teasing stage.
âStill want that donation?â
Thea smiled and crept forward like a cat, eyes locked on her prize. He was still slick with elven juices, but that only seemed to excite the nymph more. A few seconds later she was sucking his soul from his body.
Mason sat back and enjoyed, glancing occasionally at the elven women fast asleep on their bed, still struggling to accept his new reality. If everything Thea said was true, unless he found another way, it meant he had to bring literally
every
elven woman here to somehow get a similar treatment.
It was a confusing, vaguely overwhelming thought. He couldnât turn them
all
into concubines. First, they probably wouldnât agree. Second, heâd have some kind of revolt from the men of Nassau.
It wasnât like any of them were hurting for female companionship, but there was something unique and exotic about the elves. Hoarding them would make Mason seem like an unreasonable, greedy tyrant.
So what did he do? He supposed he could do it all in secretâbring them one by one and bang them like the loyal soldier he was. But then what, swear them to silence?
Then
marry them off?
It was unacceptable to whatever morality he still had left, but it was also the only thing he could think of. Though, to be fair, his brain didnât have much blood. He gave Thea her first donation, eyes rolling as she gulped and swallowed with a series of blissful groans, taking him deeper and longer down her throat than any human was capable.
He held her hair and reminded himself to visit the nymphs more often.
When he
still
didnât go down, Thea didnât even pause to start again. Mason put a hand to his face and was about to ask for water before some lifted up on another leaf-like plant servant. He toasted it and chugged.
So. There was the elf problem, which was a pretty fucking good problem as problems went. At least in the short term. Then there was the âintroducing his new concubine to his girlsâ problem, which he mostly hoped Haley and a separate room would solve. But who really knew.
Then
there was the whole âevil emperor trying to destroy him and everything he lovedâ problem, festering somewhere in the east, with who knew what rule changes looming on the horizon. In any kind of sane world this would be the main and maybe
only
problem. But here he was.
To start dealing with this Mason needed to recruit every western player he could. And every eastern player he could, for that matter, except he didnât know how. At least heâd probably recruited Chinua and his merry band of outlaws. If Mason could cross the sea, find them, and teleport them over.
Back in the world-wide tournament pretty much no Western players had actually revealed themselves, so Mason had no idea who they were, or where to find them, with the exception of âmushroom girlâ (Demi). Who, oh by the way, Mason was pretty sure he was on the path to fucking.
âJesus,â he mumbled, thinking of something Blake said to him in the Neutral Zone, with a glance down at Thea working hard. âI really am a legendary manwhore.â
âWhatâs that, druid?â Thea looked up from her mission with a face covered in spit.
âNothing.â He pushed her back down with a hand on her head, letting his mind roam.
Whatever his problems, he really had âa good runâ, as his brother said. He knew most men would give their left nut for a woman like Thea, and Mason had practically forgotten about her.
Fucking Blake
, he thought, mind jumping all over the place.
Because
there
was another problem had hadnât dealt with. Though it was a problem Mason had no real expectation to ever deal with permanently. And maybe he didnât have to.
The events of the tournament were one thing, but after they cooled down and were apart long enough, Mason expected theyâd get over that easy enough. Except Blake was making his own decisions, deciding his own fate. Heâd committed to creating this orc (and goblin) alliance, possibly uniting other âhumanoidsâ in this new world.
To Mason it all seemed like madness. For his part, he intended to keep building a force of players strong enough to resist any threat. Blake was free to join it, or not, as long as he kept out of the way.
So they were on separate paths, with no reunion in sight except maybe some dumb orc wedding for a day. It wasnât what Mason wanted. But it would never mean they werenât brothers.
For now, it was just how things were.
âChrist.â Mason groaned as his problems yet again drained into Theaâs mouth. Not that it
shrunk
the problem, no matter how pleasurable it had been.
âDruid, what have you been eating?â Thea panted and licked her lips. âThis seemsâŠunnatural. Even for you.â
âElf food,â he said, eyes rolling as he reached for more water.
It didnât take long before Thea was at it again, the nymph as relentless as he was. It was like an unstoppable force sucking an immovable object.
More problems filtered through Masonâs mind. He still had dreams of walking corpses and demonic monsters. He needed to explore the continent and probably fight more dragons. He had to get his players more powerful without getting them killed.
But for a moment, at least, it all vanished with the slurping, moaning sound of a Greek-goddess on her knees, draining him like it was the most important task in the world. And, he supposed, for her it was.
It was a hard thought even for Mason to turn into a negative. Though it reminded him of his final problem, never to be forgotten, never to be forgivenâthe underlying purpose of Masonâs existence in the âgreat gameâ. Or whatever the hell you called it.
After everything else was said and done, when all the nonsense of the new world was sorted out, and the final reckoning cameâMason was somehow going to put an end to âroboGodâ. He was going to give mankind its revenge.
Unless Thea killed him, firstâŠ