Islands of Wet Dreams, Chapter 6: Dreams of Water and Fire
Story by draconicon on SoFurry
And so we return to the Islands, this time to show just how bad Toby can get when he's off his meds for too long, and Carl's way of trying to help his professor.
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[b][u][center]Islands of Wet Dreams
Chapter 6: Dreams of Water and Fire
By Draconicon[/center][/u][/b]
Carl slept, and his dreams were not happy ones.
[i]Fire...fire everywhere…
The island is consumed with fire, and he stands in the middle of it. His eyes move from one place to another, seeing the trees swallowed in flames but not broken by them. He sees the centaurs from earlier, their manes replaced with strings and streams of heat, their eyes flaring with infernal light. They run by him, tripping him with a rope.
He looks around the forest, seeing his friends. Seeing the Professor on his back, getting reamed up the ass by a feral dragon, his eyes distant, fire consuming him from the point of contact.
He sees Studley, sitting on a mountain and talking to it, grinding on it while fire runs from his tail to his head.
He sees Lupe, fighting minotaurs who work to suck his cock, whose touch is naught but flame and smoke, as his fur catches fire.
Everything...everything burning…
And nothing hurt. Only lost...lost in the heat of the moment…
The centaurs return, backing up towards him, their rumps on display and their eyes looking him over. They throw him the vial from before, the cock growth potion. It burns in his hands, but it doesn’t hurt. It’s a comforting heat, a heat that sends more warmth all the way down to his cock.
He looks up, the dark, puckering rumps. Where prior they were slick and ready, now they are shimmering with the same heat as everything else...drawing him in…
And as the heat reaches for him, setting his clothes on fire, circling his cock, he screams -[/i]
“AAAAAAAAAGH!”
Carl sat up, his eyes wide in terror, only to find himself still on the bed of moss with the Professor, still in the dim forest, still away from the fire. He shuddered, pulling his legs up tight. The feeling of his clothes stretching around him, pulling tight with his movements, was more comforting than he had ever imagined it would be. It meant that it was all a dream...all, all just a dream.
As he panted for breath, Professor Toby sat up, rubbing his eyes lightly before looking at his watch and sighing.
“Looks like we got about four hours there. Not that long, really, but - eh, who cares? I’m up, you’re up. Let’s get up.”
Shaking his head, Carl grabbed the coyote before he could get up. His professor looked down at him, one eyebrow raised.
“I...I don’t think…”
“Bad dream, Carl?”
He nodded, and the coyote sat down beside him.
“What was it like?”
“...Burning. Everyone...burning.”
“Oh, like a disco inferno?”
He started nodded before realizing what the coyote had said. Slowly, he turned to stare, only to find the older man blinking himself.
“Huh. I’m not thinking like I was before.” Toby chuckled. “Studley must be somewhere else. Anyway, you were saying.”
“I...Look...I just saw everyone on fire, and just...just fucking away like there was nothing else to think about. Like...like everyone was just burning up…”
“Like they were on fire with lust, hmm? Fascinating. There were myths about that, but...hmmm…”
The coyote settled in, muttering some theory about how a mountain god might pull as much energy as possible from others, dragging at the heat and ardor of people for his own uses, but Carl barely heard him. All he could think about was how...how consumed everyone had been in the dream, how out of themselves they had become.
It wasn’t right. People weren’t supposed to just lose themselves to a good time like that. It was like seeing them become something else. Something...something wrong.
Slowly, he looked towards the edge of the forest. Even through the thick trees, he could make out the peak of [i]Maunga[/i] in the distance, seen through the tree tops. It was a huge mountain island, and from what he’d seen during the boat ride over, it was bigger than anything that he’d ever climbed back at home. He could only imagine how long it would take them to get to the top, if they even could. After all, why would anyone leave their home unguarded? Whatever else this [i]Maunga[/i] was, he probably wasn’t stupid. And he’d bet even Studley would have a hard time getting through that.
He pulled his legs a little tighter to his chest, trying to calm down, but it just wasn’t working. The dream was too much on his mind, and even the professor’s ramblings - odd as they were - weren’t enough reality to bring him completely back. But at least they were something of a distraction.
“- and of course, there’s the whole idea of a woman going into a perpetual heat, with her being edged by various creatures. I have heard of variants of succubi and incubi that would feed off of that, though of course, they would need a proper dungeon for that. Unless they had the magic, I suppose, but then they would...need…”
The professor trailed off, and he looked over at the coyote, surprised to see him holding his hands to his head. He reached out, resting one palm on the older man’s arm, only to have it pushed away.
“What’s wrong?”
“I can’t...damnit...It’s coming back.”
“What is?”
“Studley.”
“Wouldn’t that, um, be ‘him’ coming back? I mean, I know he’s a werewolf, but…”
“It’s not that. Something else. Something...weird about him.”
“Well...he is that, but, well, wouldn’t anyone that summoned boots out of the air be weird?”
“Ugh...It’s hard to explain.”
The coyote looked like he was in genuine pain, which surprised him. He hadn’t seen Toby like that in a long time, not since -
Oh. Dear.
“Uh, when was the last time that you had your medication, professor?”
“Two, maybe three days ago? Hard to remember - no, 60 hours ago. DAMNIT!”
Toby slammed a fist into the ground, while Carl slid a few paces away. He was already trying to remember if he’d stuffed any of the professor’s medication in his bag before they’d left. He had, but had he brought it with him?
Unfortunately, no. It was still in the hotel room...which meant that they could have a problem.
[i]Trust him to stop taking it before we get here. Not even a buffer in the system left anymore, at this point,[/i] he thought, shaking his head.
He remembered the last time that the coyote had gone without his medication. The entire history department had been turned upside down, with books torn apart, pages rearranged to show some crazy theory that had tied different events throughout history together with enough twine and thumbtacks to tie an entire department together, and render the hallway between classrooms a trap akin to an insect traversing a spiderweb. A spiderweb hundreds of feet long.
When they’d finally found the coyote again, he’d been...out of it, putting it mildly. Shouting at anyone that tried to talk to him, refusing to let them interrupt him, angry as anyone had ever seen him. It was like seeing some monster in the place of the treasured academic that most students saw him as. They’d ended up having to call police, and get him tranquilized before taking him away.
If that was starting again…
[i]If it’s starting again, he’s going to be worse than I am out here...I can’t...I can’t let that happen.[/i]
He slowly reached out and squeezed the coyote’s shoulder.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s Studley. It’s something...ugh…” The coyote slapped his hands against his forehead in obvious exasperation. “I can see it. I can just about see it. It’s right there. Something so obvious, something weird...but I can’t because he’s getting close and it’s messing with my head!”
“What if we just...just forget about that for now, huh? Maybe just, maybe let it lie. You can always figure it out later, when -”
“No!”
Carl could barely resist the urge to punch the coyote when he was suddenly grabbed by the shoulders, yanked in close. He’d always been used to Toby as an eccentric, brilliant, occasionally pervy professor. This…
This was why some humans were terrified of anthros. There was a madness in those eyes. A ferocious, consuming madness, that made those teeth and snapping jaws, those claws on his arms feel so much more than just a different version of his own teeth and nails. He held very still, very, very still as Toby continued to rant.
“It’s more than that. He’s here. [i]HE[/i] is here. Something different. Something...different than he used to be. I...I can just about remember him, from somewhere. He did [i]something[/i] then, too. I didn’t know what he was then, but I almost have it now, and if he goes away...if he leaves before I figure it out…”
“Figure what out?”
As suddenly as he’d been grabbed, Carl found himself released, the coyote determinedly looking away from the wolf that had joined them. Studley walked over, sitting down on a nearby rock with a smile on his muzzle, his arms crossed over his chest.
“Come on, what are you trying to figure out.”
“How a smug wolf like you feels so familiar, how you managed to figure out that it was all taking place on [i]Maunga,[/i] and what the hell you’re doing to me...for a start.”
The professor sounded angrier than Carl had ever heard him, and more venomous to boot. He squirmed a few inches away from him again, unable to help himself after seeing those fangs so close…
Studley, however, immediately took his place, smiling as he sat down on the moss beside the coyote.
“Come on, it’s not like I’m doing it to you on purpose.”
“Oh no?” Toby narrowed his eyes. “You might not control it, but you’re using it to your advantage here. I’m thinking clearly now. You’re wanting something. You have clues, but you need someone else to figure it out. Someone like me, someone that knows the island. Someone that knows gods. Someone that knows...things like you.”
The expression on Studley’s face was something akin to surprise, excitement, and a little bit of worry all at once. Carl wanted nothing more than to leave his professor and the werewolf to have it out, but...but loyalty made him stay. If Toby said that there was something wrong, than mad or not, the coyote was probably right. He was that sort of person, that kind of professor that figured things out and understood them on a different level.
This, though...This was not right. He’d never seen his friend go this analytical about something…
And he was still going.
“You know that we had to go to [i]Maunga,[/i] Carl confirmed that. You haven’t batted a lash at everything that’s happened so far. Not once. You summoned those boots out of nowhere, randomly. No, no, not randomly...that would imply more chance than we saw. Chaotically.
“Which leads to a myth of a wandering creature, something that warped the world around it to advantage and disadvantage. Changing tides, warping people, warping entire countries. Not intentionally, but happy to take advantage of it.”
“You are most well informed.”
“With a friend. You had a friend, something that some said was split from you, something that some said was a relative. Doesn’t matter. You…UGH!”
Toby leaned forward, clutching at his head again, shaking it as he ground his knuckles against his temples, the coyote rocking back and forth.
“I’m so close. Why can’t I just figure it out?!”
“Studley?” Carl sat down by the rocking professor. “Could...could you give us some time?”
“Sure...Yeah, I think that might be best.”
The werewolf stood up and walked away, leaving the two of them alone. Once Studley had gone more than a few dozen feet away, Toby stopped rocking, taking a couple of deep breaths before shaking his head.
“Sorry you had to see that, Carl. That was weird. He was just...doing something. Like all the different pieces were coming down in order.”
“Isn’t that a good thing?”
“Not for me. I don’t like it. I like this...shimmering fall, I guess I could describe it as. Lots of little pieces coming down, from somewhere far away. I can make it all out, and draw little lines from them to make the pictures of my thoughts. I don’t want to see it all coming down and adding up. I don’t want all these neat little piles of thoughts. I want...I want to see it right...the big thing, not the little pieces…”
“Well...right now…”
Oh dear, how did he even do this? He looked back at Studley again, saw that Lupe was walking back over. The two werewolves were chatting about something, talking about this, that, or the other. Who knew what…
But it didn’t matter. What mattered was that his friend was hurting, and he had to convince him to keep trying this so that they could get out of here in one piece.
“Toby...could you...could you do that again? The fast thinking thing, if you had to?”
“I don’t want to.”
“But if you had to...could you?”
“I...yes, I could. But it wouldn’t go well for me in the end.”
“I…”
Carl looked down. He hated to ask this, but if he had to...if he really had to...if it was the only way to get out of here, he was the only one that could ask. Everyone else would just make him laugh - in the case of Lupe - or piss him off - in the case of Studley - or simply make him go off on his own.
No, it had to be him, much as he hated it.
“Will you come over there, again? If you can figure it out that fast, talking around Studley, then maybe we can figure out a way to get out of here.”
“There’s no way out without dealing with [i]Maunga,[/i] I’m afraid. The legend was very clear on that front.”
“What legend?”
“Oh, it’s one of those long stories that we don’t really have time for, right now. But…”
The coyote paused, in a rare moment of self-awareness, and sighed.
“I don’t have a choice, do I?”
“I don’t think any of us do.”
“Alright...Alright. But this is gonna hurt.”
He squeezed the coyote’s hand, and the two of them walked over to the others. On their way, Toby asked him.
“Your dream. You said it was everyone on fire, and fucking.”
“Yeah?”
“Was I fucking a dragon?”
“...How did you know?”
“Well, one, it’s the coolest thing there, so of course I’d be fucking it.”
“...Point taken.”
“And two, I had the same dream.”
#
Carl sat down with the werewolves as his professor took a spot on a tree stump. He could already see that focus coming back to Toby’s eyes, that fearfully painful focus, and the tightness around the eyes that came with it. The coyote looked them all over for a moment before letting out a deep breath.
“I’m going to keep this brief, so we can try to deal with this before it’s too late. There’s one major legend of [i]Maunga,[/i] though he goes by a different name. It isn’t important what he was called, what is important is what happened.
“The legend said that the great god of fire and earth was sealed away in his own elements, locked away in fear of his power and the gifts he could give those loyal to him. The other gods feared him, and decided that he would serve better as a monument to the excesses of power in the world. That was opposed, in some quarters, mostly by...Chaos...but it was still put through.
“Here’s the important part. The legend said that the god would only sleep, that his power was too strong to be drained completely and destroyed. Instead, he would sleep, and wake again when the world was ready for him. That he would reach through his dreams, and bring the dreams of all around him to life. When enough people gave themselves to fire and passion, when enough people slept on the earth that was his, he would return.
“Carl and I shared a dream. An important one. He’s not planning to consume the world...just heat it up. Now, that might be a lie - probably is - but…”
The coyote had to stop, and Carl got up as the older male started to rub at his head again. Toby stopped him, holding up his free hand, taking several deep breaths. Each one was a bit more ragged than the last before he pulled his hand down.
“But here’s the thing. He knows what we want. He’ll offer it to us as we get closer. So. Anyone that has any fantasies, get ready to have it come to life. Anything that you wished had happened or wondered if it might, it’ll be there. And we’ll have to resist that every step of the way.
“Of course, with this headache you’re giving me, Studley, that should be no problem whatsoever…”
The coyote bit off a pained laugh, and the werewolf winced in turn, before the professor continued.
“Now...As best as I can figure...we have a chance. Not much of one...but a chance. We’ve got four people that can get to the mountain. Four people that can get to where [i]Maunga[/i] is sleeping.”
“So, how the fuck do we kill a god?” Lupe held up a shotgun. “Pretty sure this thing doesn’t have big enough bullets for that.”
“We don’t...kill him.” Toby shook his head. “We wake him up.”
Carl’s eyes went wide. As Lupe rolled his eyes and Studley started laughing, he shook his head.
“You...you can’t...he’ll burn…”
“No, not quite. He’s not got everything. And the legend said...the legend said that he needs to bring everyone to the dream before he can wake up. If we get inside...if we wake him up first...then we break the chain. We break the pattern, the ritual, the, the whatever you want to call it. We snap it apart before it can finish, and we get a demi-god at most and we can deal with something like that and - ugggh!”
“Okay, okay, that’s enough. That’s enough.”
Studley was already walking away, putting distance between him and the coyote, while Carl got up and gently pulled the professor off of the stump, letting him hold his head and get through the headache that had come on. He slowly shook his head, trying to imagine how it must be for the coyote.
[i]What would it be like? If the only way you could think clearly caused you pain? No wonder he doesn’t like being on the meds, or anything else…[/i]
He held the older man, while the coyote squeezed at him, holding him tight in a desperate grip.
While he waited for the professor to calm down, he looked up at Lupe, who was still holding his guns. A rag that looked like it might have once been underwear was being used to polish the barrel of the shotgun, and he shook his head.
“I’m sorry...for the professor.”
“Kid, I’m just glad he’s not bouncing on my shoulders and humping my head anymore.”
“...Was he really that bad?”
“I’m used to perverts, kid. I know how they work, I understand how they think. Hell, half my assignments deal with taking care of this one guy...but this coyote is something else. His brain’s so far off this planet that I don’t even know if he’s seeing the same things that we are.”
“He’s not...he’s not always like this.”
“Doesn’t matter what he’s usually like. We gotta deal what he’s like now, or we’re all fucked.”
“I know. I know.”
Looking down at the coyote, he saw some of the stress lines around the professor’s temples fading away, gradually going down. He’d be back to normal, soon enough. Whatever normal was, anymore. He shook his head.
“I don’t suppose you happened to see some pills when you were at the hotel room?”
“Saw a couple of bottles.”
“Did you grab them?”
“...Kind of.”
Carl looked up. There was hope. There was a god.
“Where? What do you mean, kind of?”
“Well…” The wolf sighed. “I grabbed something. I stuffed it in a bag with everything else, and then we were running. We lost a [i]lot[/i] of stuff between the coast and the cabin, so it’s probably somewhere out in the forest.”
“We’re going.”
“Now?”
“Right now. Right [i]fucking[/i] now, before this gets any worse.”
“Kid -”
“When I say now, I mean it. I mean right now, before I see him collapse and start gibbering from pain or, or insanity, or whatever the hell else is going to happen on this island.”
“...Do you really know who you’re talking to, kid?”
“Considering I’ve been choked out by nagas, raped by tentacles, body-swapped with that wolf, almost abducted by centaurs, and been mind-fucked by a fire god, I don’t really care. Unless you’re gonna shoot me, you’re coming with me, because this is something that I can actually do to help someone. So, let’s get GOING!”
He was on his feet, had gotten up sometime during that whole tirade. He wasn’t sure when. Even so, he was barely on eye-level with the seated werewolf, and was more than aware of how stupid this looked. Carl panted, holding his ground...because what else could he do?
The werewolf looked at him for a few seconds, staring at him the whole time, until he finally dropped the cloth and stood up.
“Alright. You got a bodyguard.”
“Thank you.”
“Hey, thank yourself. Ain’t seen a speech like that since the otter spoke up for his last client…”
He had no idea what was going on, but at least he had someone to keep him from being abducted as he ran through the woods. Carl gently set his professor against the stump, and ran off in the direction Lupe had come from, earlier. If there was any chance of the medicine being anywhere, it was down that path.
#
The trek wasn’t quite so easy as they had all hoped, though he had found a number of things and given them back to Lupe. Two grenades, a couple of ammo clips for the shotguns, and a rocket without the launcher. It was kind of terrifying to pick up that much ammunition and that many weapons, but he figured that Lupe could probably use them.
But so far, despite going a good half mile down the path, they hadn’t found the bottle of pills, despite Lupe’s best attempts to sniff it out. When Carl asked him why he couldn’t smell it, he just said one word.
“Mare.”
Carl had no idea what that meant, but they had a lot of walking to do, and a lot of places to look. They passed by a satyr den - something that Lupe was able to warn him away from - before heading down the path towards an open glen. They were about to pass it by when...they saw her.
He immediately understood what Lupe meant. It was one of the centaurs from before, a female one, with a human top half that almost overbalanced the rest, and a horse bottom half that seemed to shimmer in the light that came through the trees. She turned to him, and immediately turned around, presenting her back end.
Groaning at the temptation that came with it, Carl looked over at Lupe.
“She’s got…”
“Yeah...that’s a hell of an ass.”
“I didn’t - look at her hand!”
The werewolf’s eyes shifted, and he nodded.
“Yeah, that’s the bottle...looks like it’s pretty - oh fuck…”
Carl turned around, just in time to see the centaur wink as she shoved the pill bottle inside of her. It squelched as it slipped between the lips of her sex, getting worked in good and deep as she looked at them.
“...What?”
“I don’t think she wants to give it back, Carl.”
“Well, she’s going to give it back!”
“I could shoot her.”
“No...no, I don’t think that would work...and it wouldn’t be...right…”
“You thinking with the big head or the little head here, human?”
“...I think the big head. I think.”
“Alright. Go on, I’ll cover you.”
The werewolf gestured with his gun, and Carl walked into the glen. The centaur mare didn’t run away, but instead only turned her hips towards him again, her pucker twitching and her sex clenching, winking at him.
He could just barely make out the white-capped prescription bottle inside of her, though the view was...more than a little stimulating. A little shiver ran down his back, remembering the ghost fucking from before, and their temptations in the past. It was...beyond tempting to just have a little fun -
[i]Ugggggh![/i]
The memory of Toby’s sheer pain from earlier, though, kept his pants on. He walked up to her, and grabbed her tail, hard. She whinnied before looking back at him, snorting out her nose.
“What do you think you’re doing? That’s pretty rough to get with a girl.”
“I’m getting my friend’s pills back.”
“You think you can just take them?”
“...Considering there’s a werewolf that wants to shoot you? Yeah, yeah, I’m pretty sure I can.”
“...Are you sure you aren’t the other one?”
“No, no...I’m Carl.”
“The ass loving human, who wants nothing more than to fuck big butts?”
“It...was a daydream, yes.”
“Is my butt not good enough?”
He swore she was pouting, somehow. Both in her face and in her sex, considering how it seemed to sag a little bit. Carl shook his head. He shouldn’t be thinking about that.
“It’s a great butt, but I don’t have time to be fucking anything. I need...I need the pills to help someone.”
“...Oh. Oh, I see.”
“What?”
“I’m not the dream anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not what you want most now. No wonder it’s not working…”
To his surprise, she faded, and the pill bottle dropped down to the ground. He looked down at his fist, where he’d been holding her tail. No sign of hair, no sign of fur. Not even a bit of the horse was left, not even footprints or hoofprints in the grass. Only the pill bottle…
“Ewwwww…”
And it was slimy as one could ever imagine. The seal seemed to have held, but the whole thing was utterly covered in horse pussy slime. He shook his hand back and forth, trying to get as much off of it as he could.
“Well, I guess that’s the difference between fantasy and reality…”
“What’s that?” Lupe walked over. “Ugh, it stinks…”
“Yeah, reality means you have a mess. Fantasy is over before you need to worry.”
“Yeah, you got that right. The pills okay?”
“Yeah...yeah, I think so. Let’s get back.”
#
It didn’t take long to feed Toby his pills, a dose and a half of what he normally took. The coyote wasn’t best pleased about it, but he went along with it, particularly when the half dose took some of the pain away when Studley was around. The werewolf asked him what was in it, and Carl shrugged, handing it over.
“...Wha...That’s a weird blend.”
“What?”
“Antipsychotics, sedatives, and...what the hell? What in the ever-living hell…”
“Well, whatever it is, he’s not hurting standing next to you anymore.”
“Yeah, but I don’t even want to think about why. This...hoo boy…”
He wanted to ask for an explanation, but at the same time, he doubted he would understand it. Studley seldom explained things in a way that made sense later.
[i]Maybe I’ll just ask Toby, when it’s all the way in effect.[/i]
Once he was properly medicated, the trip off-island took about two hours. They crossed the island towards the far end. No boats could be found, but - somehow - Studley walked behind a rock and brought out a couple of giant turtles on a rope. It floated beside the dock as he led it up to it, and all three of them stared at him.
“I borrowed him from a rum-soaked captain. So, shall we go?”
“Is that rope...human hair?”
“From his back, yes. Now, let’s go.”
They looked at each other, but Toby was not there. He was already on the turtle raft, waving for the rest of them to come along. Lupe groaned.
“At least I’m not swimming him over like last time…”
“Uh…” Carl held up a finger. “There’s three turtles, and four of us. How are we…”
“Don’t worry.” Studley chuckled. “I’ll be swimming.”
“...”
“I said don’t worry.”
“We’re going to get there and find you already there, aren’t we?”
“Heh, you’re learning, Carl. See you there.”
He shook his head, getting on the giant turtle and setting off with the others. What else, he wondered, what else could [i]Maunga[/i] possibly throw at them?
[b][u][center]The End[/center][/u][/b]