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A TEAR IN THE WEAVE

Lecture Room B16, 27th August, 2015

Blake strode purposefully towards the front of the lecture theatre; threading his way between groups of first-year students, chatting nervously to each other, and around the inevitable loners, too shy to strike up their own conversations. He wondered if he should go and try to gather a few up into a group and get them chatting; he remembered how utterly awkward his own first day had been, two years back.

That was why Blake had volunteered to assist, today. Maybe he could even volunteer to mentor some of the freshmen; that'd be good experience, and he was getting far enough through his course that résumé material was frequently on his mind.

His train of thought was derailed as one particular youth caught his eye, standing apart from the others, and looking really weird, out of place; pudgy, and strangely dressed in a thick woollen jumper despite the late summer heat; looked homemade, probably something an indulgent mother or aunt had made... thick threads, with a strange and rather poorly-knitted crocodile motif on the front, like something from Lacoste - but clearly no designer wear! There was something else on the back, but from his position Blake couldn't see what.

The young man's appearance was so strange that it made Blake cringe a little inside to see; that guy was either extremely foolish or extremely brave to wear that jumper in public.

Brave seemed most likely... there was something in his bearing that set him apart. He was uncertain, as was everyone... but confident. His expression as he looked around the room was almost one of disdain, close to a sneer. Perhaps several people had already remarked on his attire; surely the group must have done something to earn the anger that the young man radiated?

The youth looked across and caught Blake staring. The younger student's eyes narrowed; instantly hostile.

Blake gulped. He wasn't very used to people taking an instant dislike to him.

"Hey, watch where you're going!" cried the young pullover-clad freshman, slightly too late. There was an ominous *crunch*, and Blake stumbled, his foot caught in something.

He sheepishly raised his foot from the backpack he'd just unwittingly trodden upon. "Ah, crap... was that anything valuable? Whose was it?" he said, cursing his stupidity, he should have been watching where he was going - one never knew when some moron would leave a fragile backpack in the middle of a crowded aisle.

Blake stood tall; a mature student, already a man, he was confident he could handle whatever came next - yet he soon began to look worried as the bag's owner strode forward - the angry loner he'd been watching only a moment before.

The youth, little more than a boy even at 18, strode across to him with a surprisingly confident stride, the air of a man used to being in charge... any pretence at nervousness gone. He grabbed his bag roughly, almost toppling Blake in his haste; the fabric was soaking through with liquid, and was dripping copiously; some drink bottle smashed inside, to judge by the tinkle of glass.

"Fuck... fuck! You utter fucking asshole! Why did you do that?! My notes, my digital camera... my notebook PC, it's all ruined!" He rounded on the elder student roughly. "You total dipshit, thought I'd make an easy mark, did you?! What the fuck is your problem?!"

The room fell rapidly silent as the loud abuse carried over the hubbub of conversation. Blake looked mortified; he was supposed to be here to help the fresh student intake adjust to their new life on campus, and within five minutes he'd managed to wreck what might well be this guy's most expensive possessions - and this guy evidently thought it had been deliberate.

"Er..." he began, unsure how to respond to the vitriolic abuse, or to protest his innocence without making himself sound guilty. "I'm sorry, I really didn't see..."

"Like fuck you didn't!" yelled the youth. There was a strange glint in his eye; almost madness - yet there was also a tear, a rapid moistening of his eyes. His face was so red, Blake honestly worried for a moment that they guy was about to pass out.

"Now, now, gentlemen..." said the Professor, striding over. "...let's take a deep breath and keep calm. What's happened?"

"Well, sir, I...", Blake began again.

"This fucking... RETARD just smashed my computer! Fuck, I.... that had everything on, it, EVERYTHING!" The younger man screamed, almost sobbing, cutting him off.

"Adam, isn't it? Calm down and please don't swear..." the Professor began, startled by the vehement reply.

"This asshole's been eyeing me ever since he walked in, looking for some way to... to get at me! Fucking... bully, just because I feel the cold!" the younger student continued, grabbing at his pullover, talking loudly over the Professor; angry sobs wracked him.

The whole damn room was watching. The whole damn freshman year thought Blake was some total asswipe who picked on vulnerable students.

Blake was aghast; humiliated, embarrassed, mortified... and pretty upset. It was an accident, why couldn't this freak see that?! Did he have to make such a scene, couldn't they settle this privately...

"That's not what..." Blake began.

"Blake..." the Professor interrupted, folding his arms and frowning darkly. "I think it's best if you leave for now; come back for the afternoon session, and we'll discuss paying for any damages before lunch. You... it *is* Adam, isn't it..? You come with me, let's get you somewhere quieter..."

The Professor strode away, putting a friendly arm on Adam's shoulder to guide him... Blake saw Adam tense at the contact.

Geez... what a freak.

He looked around; everyone was staring, mostly dark, hostile glares. They believed that guy's insane, paranoid ranting?!

Blake wrung his hands for a moment, then turned and walked briskly out of the room, away from the judgemental gaze of his peers.

Maybe that kid's jumper was more like a warning. Hidden, murky depths, with a monster waiting to leap out and savage anyone who got too close, too curious.

Like a crocodile, on the hunt.

Freak.

_ _

* * *

THE WEFT

_ _

Crete, 17thJuly 2019

Blake aimed carefully, waiting for his target to walk unsuspecting right into the path of the incoming attack.

With a sudden but seemingly casual motion, he brought his elbow backward sharply, catching it quite deliberately in the young man's ribs.

"Oof!" exclaimed Adam, stumbling backward slightly. His rucksack fell from his hands, the contents tumbling out as it hit the ground.

With a gasp of horror and a startling lack of grace, Adam tried to turn and catch the falling bag, but the only thing he caught was his sandal-covered foot on a sharp-edged rock, and before anyone could react he overbalanced, and landed flat on his back on the side of the trail. Blake, despite being the cause of the incident, was aghast; he'd intended it to be a bit of fun, not a serious disruption to the hike!

Adam MacMillan was an irritable loner, and often the butt of jokes, both verbal and practical. He had a deeply arrogant streak to him, he frequently laid veiled insults against his colleagues and acquaintances, he regarded socialising as somehow beneath him, and had little sense of humour; added to which, he was clumsy, nervous, and prone to overreacting with angry outbursts at the slightest provocation. He made sure he had few friends, and plenty of people who wanted to see him get his comeuppance.

Many people respected him for his intellect and academic success - but his colleagues were divided between those who pitied him, and those who disliked him, as a rule.

It made him a good target for a bully.

Blake Foster would have been surprised to hear himself described that way. After all, he got on well with other people; he mentored younger students often; he did first aid training and was proud of having the capacity to save lives, if called upon; he was strongly liberal, and had no qualms about it; he was an Anthropology postgrad, actively studying for a doctorate. None of it suggested a mentality that took pleasure in making others feel pained, and he certainly didn't believe himself to be that kind of person.

As far as Blake saw it, it was little more than an almost professional rivalry - and he'd decided Adam deserved it, ever since they'd first met, on Adam's first day. Blake had never been so humiliated; even if, thankfully, most people who heard the story took Blake's side, once they'd met Adam. Still; plenty of people still harboured overt suspicions about Blake as a result, and that made it... tough, sometimes.

The irony is that Blake could, therefore, easily be considered a bully - and in some ways, he was the worst of them. There was no deliberate malice in him, merely a lack of understanding - a failure of the imagination, from a man who'd never been made to feel excluded, never felt the pain of an immediate and unfair rejection of an outsider trying to fit in.

He felt rather guilty right now, of course. He'd intended the soft blow to be more of a friendly nudge; something to break the tedium of the long walk, rather than a public display and a direct cause of injury, even if it was only slight. It was an impulse; a puerile, foolhardy act that had not served its purpose - and, he knew, wouldn't have been a good idea even if it had.

He bent down and picked up Adam's rucksack. "Here, I'll help repack..." he began, slightly sheepishly, stuffing a few wires and pieces of miscellaneous electronics back inside the flap.

Adam was on his feet with uncharacteristic speed. "No, leave it, I'll manage", he said, with enough emphasis that Blake paused, surprised, before he realised that Adam must be thinking Blake had pushed him over deliberately, to take something from his bag.

"Oh, er..." Blake began, not sure exactly how he could politely reassure Adam without sounding guilty. If he denied he was going to, it proved he'd been thinking about it; the danger of pleading innocence to an unspoken accusation.

Adam took a firm hold of the bag's strap, a cold, forced smile on his irate face. "I said, I'll manage, Foster!" he said, icily, snatching the bag away.

The large group of undergraduates and postgrad researchers chuckled, finding Adam's irritation mildly humorous more than serious, and to Blake's relief the group turned and started walking away.

Blake, for an instant, glimpsed a barely-concealed anger in Adam's face as the chuckle washed past, before Adam turned away and started walking up the path once again. The rest of the group was already moving away, the incident forgotten.

Georgina Hobbes, a pretty PhD student who Blake hardly knew, fell into step beside him as he slowed down, letting Adam gain some distance on him. "So, there some reason behind that little exchange?" She asked.

Blake shrugged, his face flushing. "Er, not really. Adam just being Adam, I guess."

Georgina's expression showed she clearly didn't believe him, so Blake decided to change the subject quickly. "How much further is it? I feel like we've been trekking for hours..."

Georgina gave a snort of derision; she hiked long distances regularly, and couldn't understand how or why some people didn't much enjoy long walks with heavy packs. "We've barely been going an hour, you big baby. We're less than a quarter-hour away, it's just over the next ridge." She raised an eyebrow, thinking. "You know, like you can see on your map."

"Ah, I never look at maps. Takes all the fun out of exploring."

Georgina looked disdainful. "Bad habit. I know Crete isn't exactly a huge island, but getting lost is plenty possible out here - and don't forget the dig site's only known entrance is underwater, getting lost down there could be damn dangerous!"

Blake wondered whether to respond by asking for more details, or by pointing out he was an experienced scuba diver. He mused for a long moment, not wanting to be patronised nor confrontational.

As an anthropologist, Blake was more interested in living, evolving cultures; poking around dusty tombs trying to piece together irrelevant asides of history was not his fondest hobby. He was under no illusions, he was here because it was a chance for a paid summer vacation in the Mediterranean, not because he found digging up ancient ruins inherently interesting.

It could be fun, of course, as he'd found last year on a trip to Egypt; but he'd never even heard of the Minoans, the subjects of this dig, and he'd not even made the connection with the myth of the Minotaur until it was pointed out to him. They'd contributed little enough to history, beyond a myth or two, and there was almost nothing known about them.

Blake, who included scuba diving amongst his hobbies, had been quite enticed at the prospect of a working holiday involving an underwater cave entrance, giving up a month of his summer vacation to rush off to Crete and help the university's archaeology team at the dig. On his pay, he wouldn't otherwise get many opportunities for foreign travel.

He had been strongly advised to read up as much about the Minoans as he could - but he hadn't, and now wished he had, if only to have something to talk about with an attractive woman, who didn't seem much interested otherwise.

"You're studying a Doctorate in Archaeology, right?" he asked, deflecting the issue.

"Nope," came her reply, surprising him, "graduated last year, and got a job in the department. I'm a lecturer now." She shrugged. "Field work's interesting, but I'd much rather just teach, honestly. But, until I'm established in the department, I need the money." She paused several long seconds. "So, what's your story?"

"Me? Oh, nothing much. Studying anthropology, getting used to fieldwork, needed some extra money, kind of like you. Er, I'm afraid that proper archaeology is a bit new to me..."

Georgina gasped. "Really? I'd never have guessed!"

She spoke so deadpan that it took him a moment to realise she was being sarcastic, and he blushed again. She chuckled, apparently taking pity on him. "Nah. You look rather fish-out-of-water, so I guessed it wasn't your major degree."

"Oh, I'm actually doing a PhD", Blake dropped in, proudly.

Georgina's eyebrow rose a notch, and he could see her re-evaluating him suddenly. Score! "Really? I'd not have guessed, you look too young. I'd have put you in Adam's year, actually; you seem to know each other.

Blake paused; his interactions with Adam were not exactly his finest moments, and he knew it. It wasn't a topic he much wanted to discuss with a woman he'd only just met.

Georgina herself saved him. "Hopefully you know plenty about Linear A and B? That'll be most of the work here, I think."

"Er... yeah. Kind of. Er... Let's see... one's... the..." Blake struggled to remember.

She rolled her eyes. "The Minoan language. It's called Linear A, because only a few samples have ever been found, and there's a Linear B which was found at the same time. Looks very similar, but they're different languages."

"Right", said Blake, slightly confused, and wishing he'd read the briefing notes more thoroughly. "I knew that. So, we're translating it all?"

Georgina smiled, amused. "You didn't listen at the orientation meeting, did you? Linear A's never been deciphered. The funny thing is, we know how to speak it; Linear B is basically ancient Greek, which we know all about; but, it uses the alphabet of a totally different language, Linear A, that came from a much earlier era, when the island was independent from the mainland. So we know how to say words in Linear A... but we've no idea what they mean!"

Blake felt both interested and disappointed. "Oh. So... we can't translate any of it? No way to read it?"

Georgina screwed up her face in concentration. "Hmm... well... not exactly. What we're hoping is to find..." She paused, and gave a girlish giggle. "...well, a tourist attraction."

Blake did a double take. "Eh? You want to open the place up for tourists already?"

Georgina laughed again, louder this time, evidently enjoying Blake's confusion. "Ha! Oh, no, no. What I meant was, we need to find a major site that might have been made to entertain foreign visitors. Diplomacy and tourism are some of the oldest professions in the world, you know; not having cruise liners and cars and airplanes didn't stop the ancient world's merchants, scribes and Princes travelling a very long way, and spending a lot of money. People built specific buildings to cater to overseas guests, even back in ancient history."

"So... what use would a tourist attraction be to us?" Blake asked, still uncertain what she was getting at. Georgina was evidently very amused at showing off her knowledge, but being proved out of his depth at his own - temporary - job was not a pleasant experience to Blake.

She smiled, evidently enjoying the explanation. "Well, if they had lots of visitors, they might have had someone translate their signposts so that foreigners could understand. You see? If they did, we could find a signpost in a language we do know, and there might next to it be a sample of, say, Linear A - and it'd be the same sign, same words, same meaning. Once we've got a few words worked out, the rest is just a matter of time. You've heard of the Rosetta Stone?"

Blake nodded, relieved at last to be asked a question he *did* know the answer to. "Oh, yes! The stone tablet they used to decode Hieroglyphs for the first time! Of course... wasn't it a letter from a Pharaoh to someone in Greece?"

He thought back to his days on site in Egypt. He'd got quite good at reading Hieroglyphs, actually; where it was initially just a job, he found it an interesting diversion learning how to read them without continual use of a textbook. Once he returned home, it became an interesting icebreaker at parties, too. It was quite fun, scoring one over on friends with a bit of obscure knowledge, and he loved flummoxing people who thought he was writing down a simple code that they could break - hieroglyphs were anything but simple.

It wasn't exactly at the top of his life-skill list, but a chance to show off some knowledge, and maybe impress this not-unattractive woman, was welcome.

Georgina's eyes brightened a little at Blake's newfound enthusiasm. "Yes! More or less exactly, except it was more like... a newspaper, really; an announcement that a new Pharaoh had been crowned, written in two languages so that Greek diplomats could copy it and send it to their homelands. So, yes - once we know what a given sample of Linear A actually says, the rest is just code-breaking, really. That's my job", she finished, beaming.

Blake paused, thinking of how to broach the topic of his own skills with ancient linguistics, and hopefully surprise her again, when he abruptly lost his opportunity.

"So... you and Adam. There's a bit of a history, I take it?" She asked.

"Er", Blake started, not sure what to say, but sensing that the topic he wanted to continue with had passed on by. "Well... sort of. He's doing a minor in anthropology, and I do some mentoring work with the undergrads, to help out. We, er, don't get along *that* well, but, you know, it's nothing."

Georgina nodded, suddenly turning curt. "I see. You're very helpful, I'm sure", she said, sounding coldly distant.

Blake felt confused at the reaction, and opened his mouth to ask what she meant by that, but then thought better of it. The last thing he needed on his first day was to sacrifice his dignity by arguing with a woman he'd tried to chat up, in a public hike.

They drifted apart, and continued the slow journey towards the dig site.

* * *

_ _

Blood. Blood running out of his nose; he could feel the warm trickle. He tried to reach into his pocket to get a tissue; it was several seconds before he realised that it was a forlorn search; he was still clad in his wetsuit, slightly damp. No pockets, and no useful tissues even if he'd had pockets.

Events were still confusing to him. What had happened? Had he fallen?

His ears were ringing. Ringing hard, almost deafeningly. And... they *hurt*. They really hurt!

"Help, please!" he said, barely able to hear his own words; everything was muffled. There was someone else there, he was sure...

In short, Blake was in a real mess as Adam's trembling hands rolled him onto his back. Adam. Of all people..!

"What... happened?" Blake croaked.

Adam gave him a strange look; Blake couldn't focus, couldn't read his expression. "Uh, do you remember?" Adam asked. Blake inferred the words as much from the lip movements as from the sounds.

Blake realised he was wearing a wetsuit; and so was Adam. His suit was damp; not recently used, though. He was wearing a pair of dusty trainers, while Adam wore battered plimsolls.

Why was he wearing a wetsuit?

Blake shook his head. "I can't remember... W...what day is it?"

Adam choked, and gave a strange sound that was half-gasp, half-sigh. "Fuck... it's Thursday. You really don't remember? What's the last thing you recall?"

Blake thought; memories came back faster, but still confused, fragmented. "Um..." They'd all arrived on Tuesday. Two days missing. No wait... one day? Or was it only earlier today? Had he slept one night, or two?

So many events jumbled up; could he even be sure he was remembering them in the right order?

Ah. Crap. The supervisor, Georgina Hobbes, had assigned him and Adam to map out the cave complex properly, and catalogue the rooms that hadn't been fully documented yet... and since Adam had volunteered for that job and Blake was the only first-aider whose skills weren't already needed elsewhere, there'd been no opportunity to protest without disrupting the whole day's schedule. But... which day had *that* been..?

Events came back to him, slowly. Yeah; they'd had to come in through an underwater entrance at low tide... snorkel under some overhanging rocks and through the short passage to the entry chamber...

His ears were recovering slowly; he could hear Adam more clearly as the young man responded. "Never mind. We're in trouble; the roof collapsed... are you okay? You're covered in blood..."

Adam, ever timid, was pale and trembling, but seemed largely unhurt besides a few grazes.

"My leg... left leg... it hurts, just there..." Blake pointed down his leg to his ankle. He wondered if the wet sensation there was water; he couldn't tell against the dark fabric of the wetsuit, and wasn't sure he wanted to find out; though the plimsolls seemed dry, and weren't bloodstained - though his left foot felt extremely hot, swollen...

Then Adam gently but unwisely touched the spot, and Blake grimaced with sudden pain.

"Fuck, fuck, stop it!" he exclaimed. Adam snatched his hand away as if he'd been burnt.

"That sounds bad..." he said, "Um, there's a first aid kit here somewhere..."

Blake remembered that he was the designated first aider here, and the prospect of Adam guessing at appropriate treatments focused his mind quite well. "Yeah... ah, give me that... I think I can manage..."

Adam nodded, looking relieved, and picked up a small first aid kit. "Good; I don't really know much about first aid." He paused, standing up, shifting from foot to foot, without handing the small package over. "Um, the roof looks okay where we are. That was a hell of a jump you managed to get all the way over here!"

"Can we get to the others? Do they know? Are... are we trapped?" Blake asked, groggily. Most of the caverns only had one way in or out; if the roof had collapsed, they might be trapped.

Adam shrugged. "Well, there's another tunnel leading off, at the other end... but there's no proper maps of the place yet, I don't know if it's a dead-end. At least the power is still on. We'd be stuck in the dark otherwise." Blake was startled at how resigned, morbidly calm Adam seemed. Shock, he supposed.

Adam gave a slightly hollow-looking smile. "I'm sure they can and will send someone to look for us. It looks fairly localised, the cave-in."

Blake took a deep breath, willing himself not to panic. "No other ways around the cave system? Or to the outside?"

Adam looked thoughtful, as he handed the first-aid kit over, absent-mindedly. "Probably no way to link up with the rest of the team, given the layout we've seen so far. Other exits, none known, but there presumably were some, at some time. Are you okay to come and help look for them?"

Blake gritted his teeth, sitting up and feeling his leg gingerly. He felt sure that he'd broken a bone; at the very least, he'd fractured something. Adam must, surely, be able to see that?

"No, no I'm not", he growled, opening the kit. "I'm stuck, pretty much right here until someone gets a stretcher. Which means, until that lot gets shifted." He gestured to the passageway, blocked by untold tonnes of rock.

Adam shrugged again, but his calm demeanour was starting to crack. He seemed to be shivering slightly; the adrenaline was wearing off. "Um... I suppose. Maybe I'd better go and have a look around, the place hasn't been totally mapped out yet. You can stay here for a while."

With that, he walked off hurriedly, leaving Blake stunned; how unworldly could the guy be, to just wander off like..? Maybe it was stress, it affected different people different ways. He gritted his teeth, and got ready to try and treat his leg.

Prodding and poking at it to test the bone was agony, but it was reassuring; no breaks, as far as he could tell, but he'd still give it a 50-50 chance of being broken - risking pain to one's self made for poor diagnosis. It could be a fracture, or it could be a damaged tendon; either way, it wouldn't be available to walk on for some days.

He looked at his watch. The glass was cracked, badly, and the casing dented, the LCD display blank underneath. Damnation, now he couldn't even tell the time, he thought, as he took the useless strap off and laid it down to one side.

Telling the time, though, was the least of his worries as he tried to put a splint on his ankle - it was the rations situation that concerned him most. He had a sandwich in his pack, and a single slab of the mint cake that had been a favourite military staple for over a century. He'd probably be getting pretty hungry by the end of this, as would Adam.

More seriously, he had only one small flask of water. As he'd been repeatedly told in Egypt, the human body can survive perhaps four to five days without water - less in the desert, but this place was cool and humid. Give it five days at most.

If nobody had noticed the rockfall right away, and if they then had to send word to the mainland for specialist equipment to dig the place out - taking care not to disturb the site too much, too - it could be many days before rescue would arrive.

That meant... trouble.

It was only a minute or so before Adam strode back in, grinning and carrying a thermos flask and two small black plastic cups. "Some good news, at least - I found a natural spring! We've got water... here, have a drink!"

Adam handed a cup to Blake, who took it slowly. Was it safe to just drink from...

"Cheers!" Adam said, downing a cup of his own before Blake could voice his concerns. "See? Water shouldn't be a problem. How are you feeling?"

Blake shrugged, figuring it was the least of his concerns if the water wasn't totally clean; he likewise downed his cup, and nearly choked on it. "What the..?! This is full of grit!" he cursed, spitting. "I want water, not fucking gravel!"

Adam shrugged. "No choice at this point. It's not a big spring, and there's loads of rubble down there that it's running through, old statues, something. Maybe early Christians smashed the 'heathen' temple up; or maybe water just took its toll, this place is thousands of years old."

"Doesn't matter much," said Blake, sipping the gritty, grimy water carefully, noting the slightly bitter taste, even as he avoided the worst of the silt. "No ways out, though?" he asked, changing topic.

"Er, not yet. I'll keep looking later... I might see if I can translate these, too, if there's no other way out." He gestured around at the frescoes and murals of pictograms all around the large chamber. "You never know, there might be a discovery just waiting to be made! Damn, the team really hired the wrong cavers to put these lights up, or we'd have been all over this room on day one... hell, the room next door's pretty impressive too, but you know, local yokels, no clue. Didn't even make a map while they were down here", Adam sneered, genuine bitterness overcoming his excitement.

Blake bit back a snappy reply, in the interests of not being potentially trapped for days with someone he was in the middle of a divisive argument with. Of all the damned luck...

Adam continued, not noticing Blake's irritation. "Well, I'll finish looking through the caves for an exit. Place is big, may take a while; you should get some sleep or something."

Blake felt horrified. "You're just going to leave me here?!" he asked, incredulous.

"Well, yeah, I can't take you with me..." Adam said, slightly perplexed, as if genuinely not seeing the problem. "You're not fibbing about only having broken your ankle, right? You can't die from a broken ankle!"

As Blake well knew, one could, actually, die from a severely broken bone; sharp splinters created by the break could move, puncture veins and arteries, and kill slowly and silently through blood loss and haemorrhage. But, maybe it was better for Adam not to worry about that, the nervous youth might go to pieces.

Blake forced a chuckle. "Uh, I just mean, it'll be pretty boring in here..."

"You could read a book. I saw your Dickens in the bag, it should take a while to get through."

That was true; Blake hadn't read more than a dozen pages of Charles Dickens' epic novel 'Great Expectations' yet, and the remaining pages were numerous and densely printed. Adam must have seen it.

"Oh. Yeah, I suppose..." Blake started, trying to work out how to say he actually wasn't sure he wanted to spend all day reading Dickens while he might be dying.

"Good! Look, I'll leave the bottle, here..." Adam set down the thermos flask next to Blake. "The grit will probably settle out if you leave it a while. In the meantime, I'd better see if I can find a way out back there. Okay?"

Again, Adam seemed in an unseemly hurry to leave, and did so right then, picking up his bag and turning away without waiting for Blake to reply. Blake wondered if he could blame the lad; they hadn't exactly been the best of friends, to put it mildly. It was, at least, more peaceful without him there, less stressful; but, he wasn't sure he could stand being left alone, not stranded like this.

He looked around the walls; it was covered in the Minoan language - Linear B, was it, or Linear A? Linear A, he vaguely recalled, had never been translated, even though it used the same alphabet as Linear B - which was just a Greek dialect - and half the point of the dig had been to try and find a multilingual bas-relief, to help decipher the enigmatic Linear A, and the secrets of the Minoan language...

Wait.

Those sections on the far wall... they weren't Linear A or B. They were Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Egyptian hieroglyphs, in the middle of a mass of Minoan text. If it was a multilingual signpost... well, that was the big discovery, surely, right there. The kind of thing that had the discoverers going down in history.

He sat bolt upright, fast enough to cause angry twinges all over his body, and a painful shock through his ankle. Yesterday... yesterday, he'd been doing something like this. Trying to translate. It was coming back to him, slowly...

He recalled the irritable Professor Rickman handing him a small notebook computer with a digital camera attachment, a digital camera with a zoom function and some character-recognition software for Linear B... to keep until the dig was done, and to photograph any interesting features with, for preliminary analysis.

Maybe... maybe there was some work he could do after all.

He settled back down, ready for a quick nap; feeling unusually pleased with himself. When he woke up... he'd get to work.

* * *

_ _

"Ambition."

_ _

The word was spoken softly, and almost mocking in its tone; impossible to tell if it was male or female.

_ _

"Conflict. You need peace... protection..."

_ _

Blake spun around, the sunlight gleaming on the rocky mountainside all around him. "Who's there?" he called.

_ _

"I am."

_ _

"Who's 'I'?"

_ _

"'I' is... I mean, I am... difficult to explain to you. My *name*... is Eleuthia, as you mortals say it."

_ _

"Mortals?"

_ _

"People who die, like you. Or who die long after you will. Your time is soon."

_ _

Blake laughed nervously. "Oh? W...what makes you say that?"

_ _

"*Remember*, mortal. Push beyond the dream, you lie dying in a forgotten cave... and your time will come in thirty-two hours, fifty minutes and twenty-two seconds. If I cannot aid you."

_ _

Blake didn't know what the voice was talking about. He wasn't in a cave, he was on a mountain...

_ _

Dimly, a sickening tug of memory pulled at the back of his mind, a twinge of pain from his apparently-uninjured leg. But he *was* injured... and this was... a dream?

_ _

It felt wrong for a dream.

_ _

"What are you?!" he asked again.

_ _

"I am - was - many things to many mortals. I desired to end pain; I gave succour to those in peril, sought to end strife, and nurtured new life wherever it could be found... but it has been untold ages since any mortal set foot here, longer still since any remembered me. You are in peril; you are going to die, without some change in the pathway that is written in the threads of Fate. You sense it; you fear it. That has awakened me, and brought me to you."

_ _

Blake felt a peculiar chill. The sense of absurdity that characterised the dream was fading, but instead of wakefulness it was replaced with *normality*...

_ _

...and he believed it.

_ _

"I'm... dying?"

_ _

"All mortals are; but your thread will end soon." The sentence was without emphasis, curiously flat compared to the dreadful message it bore. "But this place is... damaged, my connection here is weak, my shrines, my sacred writings damaged... and Apaepi is awakening."

_ _

Blake kicked a nearby rock, fairly hard, in frustration. "Stop being so cryptic, and help me, damn it!"

_ _

His foot started to hurt; everything seemed less real, more and more dreamlike.

_ _

"You are waking yourself up; counterproductive, I cannot speak to you while you are awake, not without a greater link, but no matter. I am a healer of conflicts; there are many conflicts in and around you, as there are in any mortal life, yet they, and their ending, help empower me to act and intercede for you."

_ _

The voice sounded distant, and Blake had a dizzy sensation, like the ground was shaking below him. "But what does that mean? And what was that about Apaepi?!"

_ _

"No time... Hurry..."

_ _

"Hurry?! What do I *do*?! What..."

* * *

Blake awoke with a start, and felt wide awake immediately. That was *weird*... so real, so, so...

Apaepi... he'd heard that name before...

It came back to him, slowly. The day before, Wednesday; he'd been using his translation device on a Linear B bas-relief. It'd described ceremonies performed to Apaepi, the sacrifice of a criminal at an annual festival to invoke Apaepi's protection from enemies who would make war...

He remembered Rickman theorising about whether Apaepi was a corruption of one of the Egyptian, Greek or Phoenician deities, or if it was a coincidence of naming... and, yes, Rickman had mentioned Eleuthia, too; wasn't she supposed to be a major Minoan deity, a goddess of the harvests, or something?

Maybe it was all just a dream.

Still; fight the inevitable, that was the message. Well, he sure wasn't about to meet his end in this God-forsaken shithole in Europe, he was getting better; he WAS going home!

He looked up at the walls, and their mixture of languages.

At the very least, he was going to be famous, or die trying. Even translating the hieroglyphs might be enough to earn him a place in archaeology's hall of fame.

On a whim, he looked across the room; Apaepi... what would that be in hieroglyphs..? The names weren't always easy to interpret, they might change between languages...

It was worth checking out.

The slow shuffle across the cavern on his ass, with his rucksack dragged behind him, was boring and painful as hell, every time his swollen and dangling ankle scraped over the uneven ground. No pain, no gain, he reasoned, deciding he was close enough to the wall to see it clearly.

He copied down the hieroglyphs onto his paper notebook, and slowly pondered over their meaning.

It was hours before he was getting a complete picture put together, and even then he'd only managed a few lines of the text. The relief described... the Peacebringer; Ender of Wars. No... strife? Yes, Ender of Strife, he felt sure; the Egyptian hieroglyph referred to conflict in general, not just warfare.

Then, the Peacebringer was subordinate to... 'Tawaret, who is also called Eleuthia'..? He remembered the name Tawaret from his Egypt expedition - a goddess of the water, harvests, fertility... evidently the Minoans shared a few deities with the Egyptians - heck, Tawaret, he recalled, was a corruption of the Egyptian phrase "She Who Is Greatest". He remembered Rickman theorising about that, or maybe even that the Minoans taught the Egyptians some of *their* gods, since Tawaret otherwise seemed out of place in the Egyptian pantheon, being apparently a minor deity...

So was 'Apaepi' this Peacebringer, then? He wasn't even sure if he was translating right, and some parts he had to skip; but something nagged at his memory, something elusive that wouldn't quite enter focus when he tried to recall it.

He glanced at his wrist to check the time, before remembering his watch was broken - and in his pack. Damn.

Ah, but the notebook had an internal clock; that would work! He booted it up, and stared with amazement at the time. 4pm? But, he was sure it had been longer than that since the incident, it had been at least noon when that had happened, and he'd spent at least two hours translating the hieroglyphs...

Date, what was the date? It must be at least a day later...

His jaw dropped. The date was unmistakeable; it was Saturday! Two full days since the accident on Thursday?! But he'd been conscious for, what, four hours at most? This was fucking *impossible*!

Unless he'd been unconscious way longer than he thought. Unless he was misremembering, missing a day, or worse: more injured than he thought.

Well, damn, he thought, taking a swig from the thermos... before he got a shock as he got a mouthful of silt and grit. He choked, coughed, cursed for forgetting the quality of this water, and started to feel pretty sick again as the silt and gritty sediment settled in his stomach, which churned violently in protest.

Ugh.

He lay down on the floor, coughing and spluttering, waiting for the paroxysm to pass.

* * *

"Time is short."

_ _

"Where am I?" Blake asked, recognising Eleuthia's voice and the mountainside around him. He didn't remember falling asleep... that was kind of worrying.

_ _

"This place is... complicated. The Otherworld. A realm of spirits, malleable and strange; this place is Earthlike, for it is where it touches your realm; if given enough impetus, enough faith, spirits can break the barriers down and enter your world to fulfil our tasks, assigned by mortal priests and summoners... or could, once. Few know or care anymore, and we do not walk your world now."

_ _

"...None of that helps me," Blake pointed out. "Tell me something that can."

_ _

"You now have only 18 hours, six minutes, and eleven seconds until your last breath... and your only succour is that perhaps you might be remembered after your demise. A poor substitute for actual survival."

_ _

"But... you said you'd help me!" Blake said, increasingly fearful.

_ _

"I wish to intervene; but I cannot, myself. I am not powerful, I am an observer; I cannot even speak to you unless you are asleep, we are not... connected. It is hard to explain."

_ _

"You keep saying you can help, then saying you can't... can you connect more, or something? Do more?"

_ _

"...I can... if you wish..."

_ _

"Wait, are there any drawbacks?" Blake said, suddenly hesitant.

"Not as such; though I doubt you would wish me to manifest using only you as a focus; it would be... disruptive to you. I can be closer to you, however; enough to speak when you are awake, though only a little."

_ _

"Okay... do it, then!" Blake said.

_ _

Nothing seemed to happen; but then Eleuthia spoke again. "Very well... my thanks; this allows me more leeway, and... it is something of a relief to be allowed to touch the mortal realms again." Her voice did indeed sound relieved. "And since you have now technically awoken me from a long slumber, I must grant you the Summoner's Boon: three wishes, bound by the strictest laws of our realm. However, since you only want a small connection, I can only grant you... two wishes, though for now I will ask that you only use one. You do not understand sufficient to make a fully informed decision, and time is short enough that I cannot explain *all* the rules and preconditions - but since your first wish will doubtless be for your physical health, I see few problems. More complex wishes can be... dangerous if poorly conceived."

_ _

"Riiiight..." Blake said, playing along with this impossibly weird hallucination. "Well, obviously, I think my first wish would be to survive!"

_ _

Eleuthia hesitated. "There is one caveat for you: when changing Fate this way, results are not guaranteed. I can heal you and guide you, but preventing the immediate threat of your death does not preclude it recurring - and to some extent, the actions of other mortals are beyond my power to change. The danger persists."

_ _

"There's always a catch... wait," Blake said, realising suddenly just what Eleuthia had said. "So... other mortals are going to cause my death? Sounds important, can't you tell me what..."

_ _

"You have already discovered it once...", Eleuthia said, cutting him off. "...and forgotten, mortal brains are fragile things. Remember."

* * *

...and Blake awoke with a start, again feeling weird, not tired as such, but... groggy somehow, foggy, slow. His stomach churned painfully, and he felt thirsty...

It occurred to him like a start; the fucking water bottle, maybe it was full of lead, full of arsenic, full of *something*...

It was poisoning him. And he was going to die because of it.

The fear hit him like a revelation. The dreams, he realised, were something he *believed* on some level... and something was badly wrong with him. Was it the water, was it his injury, was it the combination of both..?

His stomach lurched, and for a horrible moment he thought he was going to be sick; but the nausea passed. Then he wondered if vomiting might be better, eject some poison from his system...

He opened his eyes fully, and gave a gasp of surprise; he was not in the cavern where he had fallen asleep.

This new cave was dimly lit by a single string of electric lights, and looked like it was some sort of chapel; with a large raised dais on one side, and a broken stone table atop it, clearly an altar of sorts - and next to it was an alcove on the wall where a statue about twice the size of a man had been smashed into unrecognisable chunks. A small stream ran through the statue's remains, and through channels on the floor around the dais - whether built intentionally or eroded over the centuries, it was impossible to tell. More writing in many alphabets lined the walls - but he didn't stop to look this time.

Several small doors led off from here, and he could hear more water running somewhere in the distance.

How the fuck had he got in here?! What was the time? How long had he been asleep?

Wait, had he slept? He didn't remember... sleeping, as such, in fact he didn't even remember trying to or wanting to... had he blacked out?

His rucksack was next to him, as was the thermos of gritty water; he booted up the small notebook again, and stared aghast at the date and time. It was almost 4am on Sunday morning..! Had he just slept for nearly 12 hours?

Something was *seriously* wrong here. He'd spent most of two days unconscious; and someone had moved him. There was only one culprit, surely!

"Adam? Adam!" He shouted, forgetting momentarily that he should be cautious of cave-ins.

No answer. Where was Adam, surely he couldn't have just walked off for two whole days..?!

Adam...

Blake felt a chill pass over him. He recalled the bitterness in the water, strong enough to be notable. He'd put it down to the grit and silt in it; then been afraid of a natural poison. But, had it been intentional? Adam had given him the bottle... and he'd passed out shortly after he took a big drink from it, twice.

A drug?

Surely, Adam had taken a drink from the flask as well, so that couldn't be right.

Or... had he had the cup in his hand before Blake woke up? Had he drunk from a different source?

Blake took a cautious, small sip of the bottle. A definite bitterness; a slightly gritty feeling in his mouth, sure, but the bitterness tasted more... medicinal.

He felt anger brewing in him. The little fucker was... drugging him?! Why, why the fuck would he do that?!

He tried to think. Revenge, somehow? He and Adam didn't exactly get along, but it was hardly sensible for Adam and Blake to be fighting here, now...

"Remember..." he heard, resonating, somewhere in his head, under his conscious thoughts. Eleuthia?

He could only vaguely remember the accident; and his recovery afterwards. His ears had been ringing, and he'd moved a long way from the rockfall... and... he remembered... remembered seeing...

...wires? And... something he'd recognised, something he'd seen in Adam's bag, before Adam had snatched it off him in a panic. Had he been frightened Blake was going to rob him, or had he been scared Blake would recognise what he was holding...?

The accident, it wasn't an accident. It was a blasting charge; a blasting charge whose wiring Blake had seen in Adam's bag, that Blake had seen in the corridor around him... had tried to run from... an explosion... like Eleuthia had said!

What the fuck was all this?! Why would Adam trap himself in an underground cavern for days, why on Earth would he do that?!

It made no sense!

"A potent conflict you have found, but a deadly one if you handle it wrong. He means to kill you..." Eleuthia's voice whispered, darkly. "You understand now. You remember."

"Why would Adam do this?!" Blake said, aloud. "He's stuck down here, too... why wouldn't he just kill me while I was asleep? Why... fuck, this makes no sense!"

"Perfect sense," Eleuthia said, "If his goal is not to kill you. His goal is to sacrifice you."

_ _

"...What?" Blake said, stunned.

"He is clever, cunning. He knows enough of the ancient forms, prayers, a ritual to summon Apaepi for his own ends. But he needed to sacrifice a criminal - and he chose you. He is not trapped; even now, he is on the surface, through a narrow cave entrance that he discovered on the first day. This created conflict and danger - and that, in turn, alerted me. My involvement means you have a chance to avert this."

Blake stammered. "I...I...N-no! This is insane, how would he know that, why would he do that?!"

"You know much of the tale already. But you have a chance to survive, since I pity you, and loathe his black heart... his preparatory ritual was filled with mistakes, and you are no criminal. Apaepi is going to awaken - the question is whether Adam awakens him and kills you in the process... or you find a way to prevent it. Act, or in 17 hours, 55 minutes, and 22 seconds it will end. Take care... or it may even be sooner. Adam's actions are in Apaepi's sphere of influence; I cannot alter them now. That is what I was speaking of earlier, when I said I could not protect you from your fellow mortals."

"O...okay..." Blake said, hesitantly, and far from certain... but, he planned to live through this, and he knew that this *had* to be real on some level, he was being spoken to by something, and Adam was surely up to no good...

Blake's stomach gave a strong lurch, and he writhed in monetary pain; his bowels felt quite uncomfortable, and he realised he might soon need to use the bathroom. How to manage that without the use of one leg?

Wait, if he'd been here for two days, shouldn't he have needed the bathroom ages ago? Yet he'd not soiled himself, his bladder wasn't full...

"You wished for survival. This is part of that, a slight edge, but it may be crucial; and I stress the effects are temporary. You need no food, nor drink - your body was altered to use all material with perfect efficiency, temporarily; all that was in you that could be used, was used. No waste, no hunger and thirst, no starvation. You are... healthy."

Then something deep inside him startled him by, without warning... starting to move; to writhe and slide somewhere in his gut.

"Whaaa..?" he said, startled - feeling kind of sick, but recognising that this was no simple digestive disorder, it felt like an alien presence was slithering through his belly! A sudden terror gripped him; he remembered the movie 'Alien'...

"...Though there are some side effects, but not dangerous - merely uncomfortable."

Blake writhed on the floor as the strange, heavy, shuddering sensation settled lower in his gut, the feeling suddenly not sickening, but still deeply uncomfortable.

"What... is this?" he said, gritting his teeth.

"It will pass; it is a side effect of the channelling of my power; leave it be, it will get better after a time has passed. You can control it to some extent. Now..." the voice sounded almost weary. "I must be silent, there is little enough power left in this place, and I exhaust it with idle speech... the rest, you must learn for yourself, for now."

"What are you talking about?!" Blake asked, harshly... but there was no reply.

The strange spasming sensation was distracting and concerning, but thankfully it wasn't so bad he couldn't function, and at least it wasn't painful...

Was his ankle healed? He tested it experimentally... and it felt fine. Slightly tender, perhaps, as if it was bruised - but not broken.

He shivered, the weird shaking in his rectum intensifying. Uncomfortable, but, well... apparently the voice could deliver on some of these promises, if his ankle had healed, and it had said this was a harmless side effect...

He tried, hard, to make it stop; clenching his bowels, clutching at his stomach, *willing* the sensation to cease.

To his surprise, it lessened, as if in response. Eleuthia hadn't been lying about that, at least - apparently he could control it, to some extent.

It took him a few tries, honing down what worked and what didn't, but he found that, with an effort of will, he could make whatever thing was in him, keep still, as long as he focused on it.

Professor Rickman's words echoed in the back of his mind, over and over, a terse, irritable lecture Blake had overheard him giving a student before the incident, now transformed into a stark warning.

"Don't be so stupid, girl!", he'd chastised, "Don't confuse modern notions of 'God' with the ancient Greeks' ideas of deities; their 'gods' weren't any sort of moral compass or absolute arbiter of right and wrong. They were powerful but fundamentally immoral beings, to be outwitted and placated; arrogant entities that meddled in human affairs for petty reasons and impulses, usually in no way admirable, even if they were usually 'good'!" he'd snapped, to a young student who seemed quite upset at the public humiliation.

Blake shivered; what if, whatever was awake and stirring here, was something that would have been better left buried? He was following its advice, but swept along by events... hardly time to think...

"Hello?" came a voice from nearby. "You still there, Blake?"

Adam's voice.

"Still here", confirmed Blake, his heart rate rising.

Adam walked into the room, still in his wetsuit, looking none the worse for wear. "Well, I spent a while exploring. Doesn't look like there's another way out... plenty more caves, though, so I don't think we need to worry about running out of air."

Blake hadn't even considered that problem.

Adam continued. "You sleep well? You were pretty deep under when I came back last; there'd been some more parts of the roof that had collapsed, so I dragged you down here; I couldn't wake you at all."

Blake nodded, hoping his rather forced calm wasn't too obviously fake. Deep down, he knew, Adam was lying. He still half-hoped that it was a real accident and there was help coming, that Adam was maybe adding some painkillers to his water thinking it an act of kindness, that maybe everything was a big, paranoid misunderstanding.

Yet, airy voices in his head told him otherwise - and he remembered the wiring in the passageway. The picture was still a jumbled, confused mess - but he remembered.

"Blake?" Adam asked, making Blake realise he'd spent a long time thinking, without responding to Adam at all. "Something wrong?"

"Yeah"... Blake admitted. "How'd you get that watch?"

Adam blinked. "Eh? What?"

"Your watch. That's not the watch you were wearing when we went to map the caves, you had a diving watch on. Remember?"

The picture In Blake's head was clearing quickly. When he'd first woken after the... bombing, Adam had checked his watch - and it was the scuba-diver's watch, a bulky, waterproof, clockwork affair. Now, it was a slimline digital watch, different size, different colour.

Adam hadn't had his rucksack with him. Where did he get a new watch..?

Adam opened his mouth to reply, then closed it again slowly. Blake could see him thinking, fast - and he knew he'd caught Adam out. Something was going on, something Adam didn't want to admit to.

"No! No, I... er..." Adam said, wriggling his shoulders as if stretching, with far too much nonchalance to be normal. "Well, yes, I mean... I had the watch in my bag, I swapped after the rockfall."

"So where's your bag?" Blake asked, pointedly.

"Right there?" Adam said, pointing across the chamber to where his rucksack sat amongst the broken remains of the statuary. Blake had dismissed it as another rock in the dim light.

"Wait, no..." Blake said again, "You left your bag back in the main chamber, with everyone else's scuba gear. I only brought mine because the first aid kit's a pain to carry without a rucksack, you didn't have your bag at all. Where'd that come from?!"

Adam didn't answer.

"You set this whole thing up, didn't you? Brought yourself a bagful of stuff and left it down here beforehand, and used a bomb or something to bring the roof down! Right? You remembered to get dressed in a wetsuit so it looked like you've been down here the whole time, but you forgot the watch? Right?"

Adam seemed aghast. "What?! You're... you're completely mad! That's not..."

"I remember, Adam!" Blake interrupted. "I thought you were worried I was going to steal something from your rucksack, back on the hiking trail - but you wanted it out of my hands before I recognised that little blasting charge you'd got hidden in there. I'd not have realised, but I remember seeing it in this passageway, before... before the *explosion*, that's why I was thrown so far, that's why my ears felt so damned sore. You could have fucking killed me! And, let me guess, you've got a way out you can use, anytime you want, right?!" he said coldly, anger taking hold. "You're not so dumb you'd trap yourself down here!"

"I... that's not..." Adam said, suddenly seeming very flustered and confused. "Backwash was bigger than I thought... I didn't account for the sealed cavern space... fuck!" he said, wiping his hair.

"So you admit it!" Blake crowed, triumphantly. "You drugged my water so I'd stay here nice and quiet... and, what, you decided you'd try out some ancient pagan rituals? Why? That's totally barmy!"

Adam glared at him and opened his mouth to reply, before he realised quite what Blake had said. "Wha... how the fuck did..." he began, before he shook his head. "Ah, shit, it's not worth arguing about now, you fucktard. I was planning my 'big reveal' a bit later, but if you're so eager to see what the rituals in the Minoan Book of the Dead can do, get comfortable; with that ankle, you're not going anywhere, not until I've got the power of a fucking *god* under my command!"

Blake's expression hardened, as he bit his tongue to avoid retorting that his ankle felt much better now. That might be an edge he'd need. "I don't get it. Adam, you're a sane guy..." Blake lied, "...what's all the talk about gods and rituals?"

Adam smiled, coldly. "Just 'cause I'm a fucking genius. I put the pieces together; a few old manuscripts, some carvings, some occult lore - bet you didn't know that was a little side-hobby of mine! I've known about the beings the ancients once called 'gods', ever since I was young, ever since I found, and *touched*, the dead remains of Quetzalcoatl, in Mexico..." Adam laughed, looking into the distance, a strange avaricious gleam in his eye. "It was years before I worked out how to tap any of that ancient power... then how to get more, so much more, from deities that slumbered in this last and most sacred of the enchanted caves of antiquity... and I knew I had to make sure *you* were here for my triumph today, once the opportunity presented itself..." Adam said, still gazing into the distance.

His voice sounded almost resigned as he continued. "I helped find this place, you know, I knew where to look, I could sense the power... and once I'm done, I'll be able to command nature itself! You made my life hell, turned everyone against me... it's only right you be the first to suffer when I take the power of the Minoan Gods!"

He was totally insane, Blake realised; not simply a little eccentric, not even harmlessly weird - a dangerous lunatic, murderously unhinged.

Yet Blake was the one hearing voices, voices that had warned him of exactly this outcome.

But that didn't really change anything; even if Adam was right about his magical ritual and his ability to summon mysterious occult beings to do his bidding - he was totally insane, or at least a psychopath.. or was it a sociopath? Blake never could remember the distinctions between those two.

Adam was *dangerous*.

Blake realised he'd been playing with fire, taunting Adam all these years - and prompted the youth to act out some sick, twisted revenge-fantasy. All over a few harmless pranks! So they didn't get along, so what?! It wasn't worth killing over - or dying over!

Adam's gaze snapped back to Blake, and narrowed. "You know, it's probably a bit too dangerous for me to just leave you like this until nightfall, when I was planning the next part. I'd better start the ritual right away. Wait here a minute," he said, "and I'll get my knife..."

He turned and started to walk carefully towards his rucksack, on the far side of the room - paying Blake no attention.

"Fate has changed, but your actions have speeded the peril, not reduced it!" came Eleuthia's voice. "I warned you of this possibility. You must act fast..."

"What do I do?!" Blake said, aloud, panicked.

Adam spun at Blake's exclamation, perplexed but amused at the edge of fear in Blake's voice. "What's up, Blake?" He chuckled. "Not so much fun now the worm has turned?"

"I am using up more of the power here to speak with you; I cannot speak for long, I can be of little help - and Adam can hear you, so take care. But... desire can create its own conflicts, especially when it is denied; you can help empower me further, allow me to intercede before he cuts your heart out with his dagger..."

_ _

"Desire...?" Blake said.

Adam shook his head, perplexed, and continued walking to his rucksack.

No response from Eleuthia. Well, that was worse than fucking useless. Blake guessed it was up to him to do something.

Though...

Adam had always seemed unusually fixated on Blake, jealous, angry, more so than with anyone else... never had a girlfriend, never obviously shown an interest in women, sexual or otherwise... in fact, the purely negative, spiteful fixation Adam had in Blake was one of the strongest interests in other people Adam seemed to have.

All this... because Adam secretly desired him?

It made a certain twisted sense. Blake was a serial womaniser, something of a terror to the female students - to such an extent that he was actually pretty frustrated these days, he had too much of a reputation as a one-night-stander to attract either a steady girlfriend or a new girl who didn't just brush off his attempts at a chat-up. But, Adam must have known right away that men didn't feature on Blake's wish-list, never had, never would. Plus, they'd kind of fallen out right from the start, got off on the wrong foot, and had this dumb vendetta ever since, slowly snowballing to this awful confrontation - maybe Adam was frustrated it hadn't gone differently?

Gay men did kind of repel Blake - he wasn't even interested in lesbians, though some men seemed obsessed over them. He was, however, open-minded enough to keep such thoughts entirely to himself, and to feel a little guilty for even having them.

Hmm... maybe that was a conflict of a kind, too. Might be useful to consider. Though it wasn't a *huge* conflict; live and let live, that was his philosophy.

But, Adam had no intention of letting him live, he reminded himself. So, escape, buy time, survive.

He could stand, he thought; maybe walk, maybe run, depending on how healed his ankle was. Maybe he should wait, surprise Adam when he came back with the knife... no, maybe that was a bad idea, maybe he should make a run for it while Adam was distracted.

But his ankle didn't seem *fully* healed; he could probably limp, but Adam would catch him. Or maybe Blake could catch up to him before Adam was armed; he felt sure he could overpower the pudgy young man in a straight fight, ankle or no.

He hefted his rucksack and started to search through it quickly. The notebook computer, a softcover copy of 'Great Expectations', the first aid kit, his rations... No, nothing much useful; though the whole rucksack fully loaded would pack a decent punch if he gave it a good swing, he thought, getting slowly to his feet; he needed the option of mobility.

He felt that awful churning, writhing sensation in his gut again as he lost focus in his panic. This time, it kind of hurt, too; his gut writhed and twinged as something inside him shook and shuddered. He couldn't tell what, or how big - just that this was no normal bodily function of his, this was that 'side effect' Eleuthia had told him about.

Then the object started shaking.

He thought he heard a strange rumbling sound echoing around the chamber. Surely, his imagination, he thought, willing the thing desperately to stop; it began to abate, slowly.

It was, all told, pretty damned uncomfortable - but he was out of time, as Adam reached his bag and pulled out a wickedly sharp kitchen knife in his right hand, and a rather old-looking cloth-bound tome in his other hand; it looked like an early 20th-century printed book, but it was hard to tell - and Blake spent little time examining it. Adam gasped as he saw Blake, standing now, hefting the rucksack like a sling of some kind.

"D...don't come over here, Adam!" Blake warned, trying to ignore the writhing of his gut. "I'll fight, I won't go without a fight!"

"The fuck did you... sly bastard, guess those painkillers worked better than I thought, I *knew* I should have smashed a few bones up myself while you were KO'd!" Adam said, clearing his throat; and placing the old book carefully to one side, keeping himself a careful distance from Blake. Apparently Blake's stunt had caused Adam some worry about how difficult this murder might be.

"Charming", Blake said, dryly.

"All right, wise guy..." Adam said, his expression darkening. "You had the chance to make this nice and easy..." Adam took a careful step forward, picking his way over the rubble, knife raised. "Sit back down, put the bag down, and I'll go easy on you. Promise."

Blake blinked, his heart racing; but even with his rucksack's longer reach, and his better physical prowess than Adam's, he didn't feel confident of tackling Adam barefisted in a knife-fight - and with his ankle only half-healed, he certainly couldn't outrun the other man.

"Eleuthia... help!" Blake said, softly, backing up past the stream and towards the nearest wall. "I... *wish* you to help!" he said, hoping that this was a good use of another wish. She *had* said that he had earned two, right?

Adam cocked his head in slight confusion. "Wha... Eleuthia? That's... What are you talking about..?"

"No, that wish won't work. But your actions have forced the most lethal part of this conflict to the fore, too soon. There is a way... but it is far from perfect."

_ _

"What way?!" Blake said. "Tell me!"

Adam seemed genuinely confused, caught off-guard; he paused, hesitating. "Way? Tell you... what? You're not making any sense..."

"Apaepi is awakening too - and he seeks retribution for his awakening. Adam will not be able to deal with the consequences of that as well as fight and kill you. I can awaken him sooner..."

"Then do it!" Blake nearly shouted.

"But I can only intervene through my connection to you... you can allow me to intervene, and Wish for me to awaken Apaepi, but you don't understand all the consequences. I cannot accept a wish made without the opportunity to..."

"Fuck the consequences, I don't have time for this!" Blake growled, taking a cautious step back. "Just do it!"

"You're a fucking looney..." Adam said, stepping forward faster with the knife, barely half a dozen paces away. "Maybe I need to tie you up so you don't make this difficult..."

"Are you... really sure?"

"Yes! Yes, I wish that! What you said! Do it! Help me!" Blake shouted.

The thing in Blake started to shudder, stronger this time, very distractingly, very insistently...

"Help? Why would I hel- Erk!" Adam exclaimed suddenly, as his confused expression suddenly deepened to abject shock. "The... the fuck is this?!" he said, his shoulders shaking slightly; he cupped his groin, bending double as if he'd been kicked there, and spun around as if searching. "What was that?!"

Blake, rather distracted, didn't reply; it physically hurt as the alien presence in his gut churned, shuddered, and settled suddenly, pressing close to his anus from the inside of his body, scraping his sensitive inner walls harshly. It felt like he was trying to pass a fucking rock, and the damn thing was practically dancing like a cricket on a hot plate!

Adam was looking kind of confused, and his face was flushing a deep red. He looked more like a student caught cheating at an examination than a murderer intent on performing an unholy ritual. Then, to Blake's surprise, Adam rose upright again, and adjusted the wetsuit over his crotch; the bulge under the wetsuit there was unusually pronounced now. Was he getting a hard-on at the prospect of killing Blake?!

"You sick little fucker..!" Blake exclaimed, his jaw dropping. "Are you getting off to the thought of murdering someone?! You're fucking insane!"

"Hey!" Adam spat back, trembling. "Murder?! Only if you... only if you get in my way, you damn maniac! I... fuck it, I wish I'd not brought you in here, I should have tracked you down afterwards!" He said, swaying uncertainly. "What did you do to me?! The fuck's the matter with *you*, acting so weird, talking to yourself..?!" he demanded, suspiciously, through gritted teeth.

"But...you need a... a sacrifice... for your ritual..." Blake said, himself distracted by certain events. "Not gonna... let you kill me..."

Adam wiped his brow, sweat soaking into his wetsuit's shoulders. "Kill *you*? No... it's to kill the aetheric being..."

Blake looked around, too distracted to think things through; willpower wasn't stopping the thing's wild vibrations any more! He squeezed his buttocks clenched, hard, hoping to stop the awful movements...

Adam gave a gasp of surprise, flushing even redder - if that were even possible - and the knife dropped from his hand, clattering to the floor. Adam cursed, looking around for it... and Blake could see Adam's cock twitch, pretty darn clearly, through the folds of the wetsuit.

With so much adrenaline and terror in his blood, it didn't bother him that he was looking *there*, not at all - it was just a tactical advantage.

But, damn it. Eleuthia had kind of warned him that this... sensation was a side effect of her actions. He'd not really considered all the consequences of that wish for *his* comfort and convenience... this was painful and pretty damned fucking embarrassing...

...But it sure beat dying at the hands of a knife-wielding maniac.

"H-having trouble, Adam..? Getting distracted, are we?" Blake said, taunting more by rivalrous instinct to gloat than from thinking it through. He felt oddly triumphant; Adam was clearly having trouble, his wetsuit tenting uncomfortably, his complexion beetroot red, and sweat dripping from his brow, soaking into the suit's collar.

"F...fuck off..." Adam said, seeming distracted and perplexed, kneeling to grab at the blade; he missed, giving a frustrated grunt, as the knife slid across the floor.

Blake, heedless of the distracting inconvenience he could feel, stepped quickly towards it, before Adam could recover, and kicked it further away, into the pile of rubble beside the ruined statue; the prodding in his ass slowed as he moved, and Adam seemed to recover a little, standing as well and trying to pursue Blake.

Blake, without Adam's problems with a random erection confined in tight latex, was less impeded, and hobbled swiftly after the knife - grabbing a rock from the rubble nearby, and powering it down onto the blade from his full height. The metal gave a satisfying *snap*, twisting slightly as the knife-blade snapped in half, much of its lethality gone.

Adam, this time, gave an actual, definite moan, dropping to his hands and knees; the fight had evidently gone out of him with the destruction of his makeshift sacrificial dagger.

"God..." Adam moaned. "Ffffuck, what is thiiiiiis?!" he said, breathing heavily and moaning into his words, making them almost unintelligible. "Iiiiiit's not sttttopping...!"

Blake stood and stepped back, a good pace or two away from Adam - just in case - and sat, heavily against the floor, pressing his legs together.

"Hah", Blake chuckled, trying to will the vibrating object back into quiescence, but this time it wouldn't respond to him at all. Damn it; it made it surprisingly difficult to have a conversation!

"I'm... uh... just guessing... but I think... you're feeling like... someone's having sex with you...? Probably up the back passage." He cleared his throat, remembering Eleuthia's talk about desires being denied. "Not sure if you'd know what real sex feels like... you know, with a woman."

"Fuck you!" Adam spat. "I've had sex with girls! You... always... oooohhhh... fuck, you always try and put me down...! How'd you think I got Ms Hobbes to assign us to map the caves?! We've been visiting each other for months.. I asked for a favour! And she... she wasn't the first... shiiiiiit, what is this?!"

Blake was genuinely surprised; he'd not considered that coincidence, nor this resolution. Georgina Hobbes... he'd tried chatting her up, and she'd seemed pretty receptive, even though it had never gone beyond casual flirting - *something* always distracted her before he could ask her out for a coffee. Was she really so desperate she'd gone to bed with *Adam*, of all people, one of her own students?!

"I'm not sure..." Blake lied, not exactly wanting to admit that he had the suspicion that Adam also had something up his ass, pleasuring him; and from the reaction, Adam was obviously the kind of guy who enjoyed that. A lot.

Still, Blake didn't plan to delve into *why* he guessed that; he had little intention of saying anything about his own predicament. He was starting to feel a bit odd, himself; that constant motion inside him was... jangling up a few weird nerves, not entirely unpleasantly, but... totally alien to Blake.

"Why? How?!" Adam exclaimed, through gritted teeth. "It was going perfectly!"

Blake blinked, trying and failing to make sense of that answer. "...wha?" He asked.

Adam didn't reply for a long moment, then spat, "Fuck, I won't give in! I won't give in to your damned games! I've not lost yet!"

"Lost? What..." Blake began.

"He speaks to Apaepi",_came Eleuthia's voice again. _"His body desires the pleasure he is receiving... but he knows he is marked. He resists..."

Adam looked up at Blake, an expression on his face of confusion, pleasure, hate, and...

...and his eyes were *yellow*.

They weren't even human eyes. The iris was huge, with no white visible at all, and instead of a normal pupil he had a vertical slit.

Blake recoiled. "The fuck?!"

"The statue that would once have become animated, is in ruins; a new vessel is needed for Apaepi's essence, and a *human* body is too weak... did you not realise? Our kind are not corporeal, not as you know. Apaepi wishes to manifest, is manifesting, and Adam is marked now. As per your wish."

"He's... turning into Apaepi?!" Blake gasped in horror. Adam's expression looked momentarily horrified too.

"Yes. Adam's mind and soul will be housed in a spirit-shell in the realm you dreamed of, for a hundred years and a hundred days; as was the law written in ancient days! Don't be too worried about him, he will not age while there, and he should have cause to enjoy it, for the most part - though always with the regret that he didn't get his own way, didn't *win*. Once the time is done, his body will return to its current state, as will he."

Blake felt surprisingly little sympathy, despite his instinctive reaction, and the knowledge that he was responsible. The bastard had been planning to kill him in cold blood; arguably he deserved rather worse than being banished to a realm where he'd stay young and, apparently, have some fun.

All told, actually, that really didn't sound like much of a punishment.

"Will he... Apaepi... hurt me..?" Blake murmured, worried about whatever creature Adam was becoming.

"No. I will prevent it... he is my husband. It is his place to obey. It is through him that I can awaken fully; it is he who was being awoken by your conflicts, his power that granted your wishes; but as his wife, I can channel it in his absence, or slumber. My connection with you was all but insignificant before this..."

Wife... a faint memory half-stirred in the back of his mind...

'Eleuthia, also known as Tawaret' the inscription had said... Tawaret, the Egyptian goddess, wife of Apep - the God of Chaos, Discord, Strife...

...Eleuthia had said her husband fed on conflicts... that fitted. Apep was the Egyptian version of the Devil.

This could, actually, be bad. He really, really wished he'd read up on the Minoan mythos and learned more while he had the chance. Eleuthia had said her husband ended conflicts... maybe it was a misunderstanding, maybe he was a protector of some of Egypt's enemies, so they demonised him?

"Do not worry so; you are correct with the latter. Those to the south demonised him for protecting their enemies. Though so you know, I was also known in the lands to the North, as Echidna - the thought would have occurred to you eventually."

"Echidna...Mother of Monsters?!" Blake said, remembering an answer from an old game of 'Trivial Pursuit'. Echidna, wife of Typhon, who between them birthed most of the evil and wicked mythological creatures in Greek myth...

"Yes; they, too, demonised me, for protecting Crete from their invasions... a legend, the consort of the demon Typhon, entombed in the Earth and charged with protecting all that is sacred... though I reside here willingly, and protect the Cretan's sacred places, no punishment this..."

Blake mumbled something noncommittal; blast it, was that right? He didn't remember much about Greek myth, was she right..? This could be really important!

But despite the undoubted importance, complicated ethical quandaries were not something he could really grasp while his ass was being stimulated like this. Damn it, it *hurt*!

Adam clutched at his head, into which his already-short hair was quickly retreating; within moments he was completely bald, his strangely slitted eyes looking around in panic, his wetsuit tented obscenely.

"Blake! You... you fool... you made a bargain with them..?!" he croaked. "Idiot! You... ruined it... everything..."

Blake didn't reply; he didn't have time to reply as Adam suddenly gave a strange groan. "Ffffuuuuck... I... it's too... intense..!" Adam said.

"Yesssssss..." came Eleuthia's whisper. "I sense his pleasure, his desire... it's sooo goooood... so long since I experienced it... it's beginning..."

Adam gave a strange, strangled cry, nearly collapsing to the floor; and Blake felt a weird sense of relief wash over him as a cool, wet sensation flooded his bowels, soothing the abrasive shaking of the rocky object inside him. Was he bleeding or something?! What the fuck was..?

He gave a faint gasp of relief as the shuddering slowed, the discomfort fading along with the motion. Adam gave a grunt, still seemingly incapacitated and leaning heavily on his hands and knees. Adam's face started to elongate, his nose flattening into a growing mound around his mouth, and a deep crimson tint spreading across his skin...

A strange glow in the air caught his eye, and he half-turned; the shattered remains of the statue were evaporating, somehow, turning into a faint, glowing vapour, and it drifted languidly towards Adam, seeping into his eyes, nose, mouth... some tendrils of it even seeping through the zip of his wetsuit, despite Adam's efforts to wave and waft it away. As more of it pushed towards him, his slitted eyes bulged, and he gasped, accidentally inhaling yet more of the stuff...

Blake's jaw dropped as he saw Adam's flabby body, hidden under the wetsuit, take on new definition, arms and shoulders swelling with muscle, causing the material to creak and groan as it was forced to take new loads and strains!

Adam's toes burst out of his flimsy plimsolls, sharper nails - nearly claws - shredding the tip from the shoe as his feet elongated; his fingers were likewise tipped with sharp clawlike projections, and both limbs looked discoloured, the skin flushed a sickly-looking reddish-black...

Adam clutched at his suit's shoulders, arching his back as more of that odd, slightly-luminous statue-mist flowed toward him. "Fuck! Too tight... can't..." he gasped, before his sharper claws bit into the foamy spandex, and it started to tear under the pressure inside. Adam's torso almost literally burst out of the suit as the shoulders tore away from the neck - assisted by Adam's desperate tearing of the material - and his shoulders were thick-set, heavily muscled in a way they had *never* been before. He took a deep breath, inhaling a thick cloud of the mist, and gave a groan that sounded *very* pleased, making him gasp yet more...

Blake felt himself flush with embarrassment, but to his surprise a little more blood started flowing into his groin than was entirely normal!

Adam's hand flew to his crotch, and gave his tented length a grope, so quickly that it seemed almost like an unconscious reflex, like he didn't realise he was doing it. Blake shivered uncomfortably.

"Fuck... feels like my... erk... buried in something... What's ha...happening?!" Adam mumbled, giving his hips a thrust, and another moan.

Blake groaned inwardly as the strange shuddering object in his backside started to slide, rather than merely shuddering; a gentle, languid, back and forth motion...

"Yesss... my husband, it has been so very long..." came Eleuthia's voice again, sounding unusually blissful! "Can you but marvel at his form, human? The raw, powerful masculinity, the desire, the *need*... my husband flows in his veins, yes, oh, to feel his touch once again..." _ _

"Sh...shut up!" Blake said, probably confusing Adam, though he seemed not to have heard, "I don't want to hear your... weird... female fantasies!"

"You don't lust for his touch? The feel of his maleness against you, inside you?!" Eleuthia said - sounding surprised, of all things.

"The fu-?! No! Of course I fucking don't!" Blake countered, slightly distractedly, watching in confused but somewhat helpless horror as Adam's body warped further.

Adam's skin was darkening, fast; a smoky, dirty red all across his ever-more exposed flesh. His nose had vanished entirely; in its place was a definite muzzle, looking very much like a snake's, but very short - albeit, growing longer, slowly but surely, and it seemed to be developing an odd, glossy sheen, almost like scales of a dark, smoky crimson...

Adam's backside seemed to squirm oddly, and for a moment Blake thought there must be some creature inside Adam's wetsuit - just for a moment, before the snakelike and scaly impressions of the rest of Adam's body made him think: tail. Adam was growing a tail!

Adam's shoulders and upper body had extended nearly a foot out of his wetsuit, now, and he'd grown even taller; surely, upright, he'd be nearly seven feet tall now! Powerful muscle was visible even through the thick foamy rubber suit; and his plimsolls were reduced to a muddy white band of fabric around a large pair of feet that seemed, increasingly, to resemble three-toed paws, with the still-human first and fifth toes shrinking back, strangely... yet the overall effect was kind of awe-inspiring. Surely no snake had... hind-claws... like that?

Blake glanced back to the straining tent, and the clearly damp patch at its apex. Adam grunted and huffed, more and more of that strange, glowing mist sliding towards him... and some of the tendrils were clearly fading in through the wetsuit's fabric, particularly around Adam's cock, and his backside...

Adam's meaty, clawed hands were mostly planted firmly on the rocky floor for balance, but now and again, he'd give a small thrust of his hips and grope himself with one hand or the other, clearly trying not to enjoy himself, but, regardless... enjoying himself.

Blake breathed in slowly, and oddly he felt his own cock started to harden... why, how, this was sick!

But that odd sliding sensation in his gut was getting stronger, and, for some reason, it felt... kind of nice, now. As it moved it stimulated something inside him, something that made him feel a peculiar, familiar, alien erotic tingle... and that made his cock swell faster, and something inside him swelled too, became more sensitive, and made that tingle stronger!

"Yessss... you *do* feel it!"_Eleuthia whispered in his ear. _"It's why I spoke to you... felt kinship with you... you yearn for a man's touch, even though you fight it so..."

Blake gasped. "N...no, I'm not... that way, I want..." he began, unable to think clearly with the increasing level of stimulation he felt. He'd not got off in days, barely had time to think about sex, with all that was going on... it made the call of *that* nature very difficult to ignore...

...yet... he found himself staring at Adam's changing body, his muscle, his strength and size and power... his tented wetsuit and concealed maleness...

...and it *was* kind of enthralling. It *was*... enjoyable to see. Even in these circumstances.

A thousand fragmented images flashed through his head; he'd had to deny himself for days before he could sleep with any of his girlfriends 'properly'; he'd always spent a good deal of time furtively glancing around in locker rooms, 'to check what's normal', or so he told himself; his secret fantasies always involved a paragon of masculinity bedding a woman, even some of his ex-girlfriends, but it was never Blake himself with the girl... he always felt kind of strange around tall, broad-shouldered men, kind of nervous, his stomach a-churning... and whenever he'd looked at Adam, *ever*, he'd felt some strange energy, a need to *act*, do something... anything... but always felt like he was doing the wrong thing, even though teasing Adam was a good laugh...

Holy hell.

He denied instinctively, but...

But was he... he couldn't really be...?!

"You desire males. Did you not know this? It is not uncommon, many of the ancient cultures even celebrated it... Ah, but I sense yours does not? Yours prefers to suppress, and focus on oppressive normality..? Perhaps that is why there is such a rich vein of conflict in you to feed my husband on, perhaps I should have seen it earlier... but hush, you know now, and there is no need for agonising... let it be... let your body respond, feel his touch..." Eleuthia said, soothingly.

_ _

He must be bisexual, he realised; nursing a deep, unfulfilled, never-acknowledged desire that was nearly consuming him until he could think of nothing else. Or maybe he was, had always been, just outright gay and too stubborn to realise.

And, he realised with a shock, he'd always kind of liked Adam - but Adam so clearly disliked him, it hurt. Deeper than he'd dared admit.

He wasn't, couldn't be, gay, it was some magic, some trick...

Yet, something in that realisation felt *right*... cutting past the shock, the hurt, the turmoil; he felt a strange kind of relief at the admission.

Like he could stop pretending.

A strange kind of excitement, even... a sense that he'd always been missing something crucial and that maybe, now, he could feel *properly* fulfilled...

He realised that, maybe, he should just enjoy eyeing Adam, rather than just pretending he didn't like it. It was kind of cruel, but... Adam was kind of a bastard, and it wasn't exactly undeserved; it was him or Blake.

Or... was he watching Apaepi...? Apophis..? Apep..?

...The Devil?

With a loud ripping sound, the back of Adam's wetsuit gave way as well; strange, sharp protrusions on the squirming tail had caught in the suit, torn and sliced, and opened the way for a thick, two-foot length of tail to emerge... Adam's muzzle was nearly six inches long, and his body had grown nearly another foot of height... his arms held an odd musculature to them, somehow 'off', and were just a little too long... he looked almost like he'd be as much at home on four legs, as two...

...but regardless, he was a prime male specimen... an aroused prime male specimen, Blake reminded himself, as Adam groaned and groped his changing body again.

"D...dragon..?" Blake mumbled aloud. Apep was a serpent, so the Egyptian mythos went; a serpent who flew, and breathed fire, and consumed and destroyed... serpents, in ancient myth, usually doubled as dragons...

"Yess..." hissed Eleuthia, eagerly. "I was the serpent-mother... and he, my husband, was taunted by being called the serpent-father! But, no... he is this, most powerful of creatures, a fusion of dragon and man... come, can you not sense his lust, his strength, his masculinity..? Do you not desire it..? Hush... and let it be... you could have all you wish from him..."

Blake was a fantasy-novel buff; and, he admitted, he did find dragons quite appealing... this was... frightening, and yet... kind of... interesting?

Blake's cock reached a full, painful hardness, constrained under the wetsuit.... And the sliding, shifting, shuddering in his ass wasn't a painful, irritating distraction now; each time it moved it touched something in him that set off little fireworks of pleasure, made his erect cock tremble and leak precum... and he had a sense that now that he'd gotten hard, no matter what, he wasn't going to lose the mood quickly, that stimulation inside him was too *intense* now...!

He looked around for a moment, seeing that nearly a third of the statue had dissolved into mist by now, and was already airborne, flowing languidly towards Adam - who didn't seem to be resisting it any more, gleefully inhaling, letting the mist flow into him... change him...

Adam's gaze met his, and those slitted, reptilian eyes seemed to be pained, yet so lustful, fighting and gradually losing some internal battle...

Adam's large, meaty, clawed hand - nearly a paw! - flew to his tentbound maleness. "Need to... need..." Adam hissed, and nearly whimpered in frustration; Blake could almost feel Adam's resolve break, and - for a brief moment - fantasised that Adam would break because of Blake's own lust. His erection strained at his wetsuit at the thought...

...but then Blake realised that there was more. Another tendril of the slightly luminous mist separated from the rest... approached him... flowed under his clenched buttocks from behind... and now that he thought, he could feel a really strange tingling sensation from his anus, almost electric, but so delicate and easy to miss, to ignore...

He felt a sudden pang of fear, was he changing too?!

But then something else clicked... Eleuthia, talking about her husband's touch, surprised that Blake didn't desire the feel of her husband's maleness *within* him... had, somehow, the statue's... member... entered him..?

"...wife? No... He's..." Adam whimpered, to himself. Or perhaps, rather, to Apaepi.

Blake looked back, and again his eyes met Adam's slitted gaze again; Adam was staring at him, some internal battle visible as a twitch in his eyelid, a hesitation, uncertainty...

..Adam's gaze lowered, steadily, as if appraising Blake; and Blake felt unnerved, what was Adam, Apaepi, whoever this was, what was he doing...?

Blake glanced down and gasped with sudden shame, realising that his wetsuit was so very clearly sporting a tent of its own... a tent that the reptilian gaze had fixed on....

His hands flew to his groin to cover his shame, and he flushed a deep beetroot red; but as he looked up, Adam's gaze met his, again... and this time there wasn't any more uncertainty, there was just... a strangely drunken, unfocused look, filled with *need*... one of Adam's clawed hands groped and fondled at his own throbbing cock more firmly, more certainly, more *purposefully* than ever before... stroked eagerly but slowly along the length, the muzzle bearing an expression that seemed almost amused...

Blake felt a sudden surge of arousal at the thought that maybe this huge, magnificent, changing creature felt motivated to jerk off to *him*...

The flood of mist seemed to be slowing, Adam's wetsuit sleeves seeming more like armbands now, his wetsuit-legs turned to tight, revealing shorts... big swathes of the fabric hung loose where they'd given up the ghost around the growing hulk of reptile, and torn open; and with the tail still lengthening, tearing away the suit from the rear, surely it would fall open soon... and reveal the growing maleness, which must surely be nearly eight inches long already..!

He was suddenly aware that Adam was moving; crawling forward with inhuman speed, an almost mad, lustful gleam in his eye, fragments of wetsuit and plimsolls falling away as he pounced...

Blake didn't try to flee, even though a large part of him feared he should. The remaining part - the part that wanted him to grab his own throbbing cock and *stroke* until this strange new desire exploded from him - was interested, even eager, to learn what the lust-addled dragon might do to him...

He was knocked onto his back on the rough ground, suddenly finding the half-naked reptile hunkering low over him, the powerful chest and much of the belly clearly exposed, the back hunched so that the slitted eyes and slowly elongating muzzle could look straight into his eyes too...

The strange sliding in his ass intensified, elongated, until it was pressing gently against his anus from the *inside*... and it felt so good...

Apaepi moaned at the same moment, and Blake felt a strange thrill at the thought that somehow this creature could *feel* the object inside him somehow.... A strange, inexplicable, yet intimate connection to the alien creature Adam had become, was becoming...

Blake felt both terrified and excited as he felt something solid bump against his straining cock; Apaepi's member, rubbing against his.

Apaepi gave another groan, and thrust his hips, the large maleness rubbing against Blake's, his weight suddenly pressing Blake down against the solid rocky floor. Blake gasped as the uneven, half-dry wetsuit slid against his in a staccato stop-start motion, vibrating strongly against his shaft, sending strange ripples of pleasure through him...

The object in his ass seemed to increase its motion in response, and the gasp became a long, almost painful inhalation; on its downward stroke the thing seemed ready to burst out of him... and then did, with a painful pop! But even though it was clearly sitting lower in his ass, the tip seemed still able to rub and prod at that same pleasure-spot deep inside him... it was *growing*...

Apaepi's body was still changing, but more slowly; the clawed hands on either side of Blake's head seemed nearly the size of dinner-plates, and the astonishingly-muscled torso above him was losing its definition, the human abs changing into something else... the scaly texture faded on the belly into large, wide scales like plate armour, thick and impregnable... Blake could hear the creaking and straining of the remains of the wetsuit as Apaepi frotted hard against him, and as the reptile's body grew, changed...

Apaepi gave an angry snarl as he reached up and tore the sleeves off his arms, first the left, then the right, and tossed the aside; the muscle rippled under the scale, and Blake shivered in delight as this powerful, primal male's cock rubbed insistently at his...

"Yes... Closer, my husband, closer...!"_came Eleuthia's mental voice in his head; yet it was barely a distraction right now, Blake's every sense was literally being overloaded! _"Harder... I burn to feel your seed in me once more!"

"This is not right, my love..." came a deeper, resonant strand of thought, filled with frustration, startling Blake for a moment. "Reveal thyself! This is not right... the faintest whisps of thee titillate my senses, now do not torture me with your absence!"

Apaepi looked startled a moment, but then he gave a frustrated grunt, and sat back, the weight of him leaving the prone, winded Blake. Everything was suddenly still; even the object lodged in Blake's backside ceased its motions. The mist had diminished to faint tendrils, whisps in the air... and Apaepi's body was not changing as rapidly...

There was a moment of mutual confusion between the two males; cocks straining in their rubbery prisons, eyes wandering across each other's forms, torn between desire to continue and desire to stop this, whatever 'this' even was. The cocks started to lose their hardness as the seconds ticked by, total silence, both seeming afraid that somehow this strange calm spell would be broken if either of them moved...

There was a last snap from behind Apaepi's back, as the final threads of the wetsuit there gave way; and the torso section flopped ungainly away from him, the suit affixed to him only by the un-torn leg sections, looking more like a pair of tight boxer shorts. But Blake's eye, and Apaepi's, both flew to the dragonhood that sprang free from inside.

It was tapered to a point, but unevenly ridged, knobbly along its length, symmetrical and yet alien; no human skin adorned its length, instead it receded into a vertical slit between Apaepi's legs, the anatomy clearly inhuman... and further, beneath it, with precum freely running down them now that the spongelike wetsuit was removed, instead of a pair of testicles were a simply pair of swollen lumps, hidden under the scales at the base of the slit... yet the slit seemed too long, the shaft protruded from the top of it, leaving a large, empty space below before the mounds of the dragon's balls broke the scales' smoothness...

"My, my, husband... you are yet incomplete, you are missing one of your assets! Come, let us play a little game... you can feel it, can you not? Feel your *second* buried...?"

Apaepi looked confused for a moment. "Whaaa..." he said, in a tone that made Blake's heart sink. Damn; Adam.

Then the dragon gave a strange, strangled snarl, and clutched at his shoulders, scratching at the skin, face contorting in discomfort; and with a sound like tearing paper, two long, bony protrusions erupted from his shoulders... quickly filling out with membrane, scale and muscle, growing larger by the moment... feathers started to appear across them as the great wings grew, like some weird hybrid of bird and bat...

The still-changing dragon gave a roar that started almost like an angry, pained human yell, but deepened and rumbled and developed fast into an animalistic expression of fury and primal triumph, as he leapt to his hind legs, standing easily - if a little ungainly - in a bipedal gait, tearing angrily at the last fragments of the wetsuit, slicing them easily from his body to leave him standing gloriously naked, exposed, every sinew revealed from the tip of his seven-foot tail to the top of his ten-foot height!

Blake's ears rang, and he felt the rumble deep in his bones... and some part of his brain was turned on fiercely by the passion in that sound, familiar somehow even though he'd never heard it before!

Apaepi's eyes opened, the wings twitched as if to test them... and then those great appendages unfurled, seeming to fill the gloomy cavern, as more and more of that mist flowed towards him, into him...! Small spines and horns began to emerge fast from the top and back of his skull, curling into all manner of wicked-looking shapes... and then the mist dissipated, its task complete, the stone of the statue all gone, evaporated, vanished into the body of the dragon!

The alien member seemed to be shrinking, softening... Blake felt a mild resurgence of his own arousal, but this time, he could think a little more clearly - and the thoughts in his head were scaring him.

"Yea, wife, I can feel, I am freed, in body and nearly in mind! Enough of speech and games! I am here, wife! Where art thou?! My need is great after so long alone, I desire to feel thy flesh around *all* of mine once more..." said the deep, frustrated voice that echoed through Blake's skull!

"Here, I am here, husband..." came Eleuthia's reply, sounding almost out of breath, as if... interrupted. "I have claimed this one..."

Claimed?! "Hey, what... what gives?!" Blake said, his voice sounding oddly flat as he fought against the surging arousal he felt, as the great dragon looked around, seeming unconcerned at its nudity...

"Nay, wife, surely this is a jest! Why dost thou not change him, I am not compatible with his form!"

_ _

_"_Hey!" Blake repeated, panting, his arousal fading rapidly... and noticing that the dragon's shaft was visibly deflating, too.

Deep pangs of fear ran through him. Change? Compatible? What the hell was all this?!

"Husband, this one *is* compatible! You saw his desire for your form, his sex strains turgid at the thought of your touch... so touch him, and I will reward you, as will he... but, very well... I shall begin..."

_ _

"H-hey! What?! No, no I don't! And.... Er, no I won't!" Blake said.

"Blake... what did you... do?!" Apaepi said... no, Adam, still Adam, he realised! "You fucking IDIOT! They can't be let out... Don't... don't you... gaaarrrrgh..."

Blake felt the object in his ass begin to move again, and he clutched at the strange tent it made at the rear of his wetsuit; it was solid, rock-solid... stone? Surely if it were just rough stone it would tear him apart?!

Blake felt a strange stirring sensation, a crawling like ants all across his skin... and his wetsuit felt rather uncomfortable suddenly, like it was a little too tight, made his skin itch...

Apaepi, er, Adam's shaft suddenly inflated again, rapidly returning to full hardness from its feeble half-mast!

"What.... what's happening?!" Blake said, suddenly desperate for an escape, some egress.

"Grrrgh.... Fuuuuuck... feels like someone's... stroking my fucking cock... just like before...!" Adam growled, eyes clenched shut, clawed hands holding his head as if to block out the world around him. "Fuck... ack! Can't last... if this keeps up..."

"You are nearly incarnated, my husband! Erode his will further with inconceivable pleasure, and push him to the land of the Otherworld...! You can feel your second, can you not?! It already lies within my claimed host! Pleasure him too, erode them both..."

_ _

"Grghh... I can't... he's so strong..." Adam exclaimed. "I can't... urgh, can't keep him out...!"

Blake clenched his hands, and gasped as he felt sharp points dig into his palms... claws? He had... short, stubby, claws on his fingers! His arms seemed too long for his wetsuit...

_ _

_"Wife, do not torment me with thy powers! Art thou not here? Make thyself manifest! Why dost thou offer me such cruelty as to offer no place for my flesh, no openings for our joining?!"_came the deeper voice, almost pleading.

"This one has an opening, and you already enjoy its embrace..." Eleuthia said, seductively.

Blake gulped, the insistent rubbing and prodding in his ass intensifying, making it hard to focus, or even think clearly. Was he being... offered?!

"Oh... fuck... I think... there's something inside... me..." he cringed as the admission slipped out. "...fucking me..."

"Blake, Blake..." came Eleuthia's mind-voice again. "Of course there is... it's his. He is a serpentkin... and is thus *twice* the man! Why resist? Imagine the feel of his weight upon you, pressing you low, filling you... imagine his love, his all-consuming lust... imagine... you already feel him inside you..!"

_ _

"Fuck, no!" Blake said, horrified... yet, at the same time, despite his knee-jerk response, the thought wasn't so unappealing...

"Gnngh... it's... in you?! This... fuck! That's... fucking... sick!" Adam said, grimacing. "Fuck, stop... moving like that, it's... ugh..!"

"See, husband? This one is ready! This one is mine, claimed... I offer him! Sate thyself!"

"No! I say no!" Blake exclaimed. Adam's eyes widened in horror, looking at Blake with as much disgust as anything.

"Ack! I... don't... you fucking freaks... what are you trying to make us...?!" Adam said.

"Adam, try and... stop it! Stop moving it around..!" Blake pleaded, not sure if Adam even could... or whether the denials were for the sake of form, Adam's exposed cock was throbbing and leaking precum, hard, its pleasure obvious...

_ _

"Nay! Wife, he is male!"_Said Apaepi, in an echo of Blake's shock. "S_urely there is a better way to..."

_ _

"Husband, for me, did you not say you would do *anything*..? My power is not as great for now, my host still strong... but his desire is great! Erode his will, too, and I will emerge to join you from the Otherworld!"

_ _

"Wife..."

_ _

"He has a hole, use it! It is as eager as any of mine; it already feels as good around your flesh! You only torment yourself with abstinence..."

_"_No, I don't... I don't want this!" Blake shouted, in a panic, helpless to stop Eleuthia begging a dragon to fuck his ass!

"Wife... thy choice is wise... he does not wholly wish this, aaaah, his conflict is so delightful... thee and thy strange little games..." Apaepi said, in a voice that was at once loving, contented, eager, full of lust...

Almost at once, the pace of that insistent thrusting of... Apaepi's other shaft inside him, intensified. Blake gasped, trying to grab at the intruder as it exited him, but it slid through his fingers each time.

Adam gave a strangled groan, and fell forward, dropping to all fours, the posture looking almost unnatural, like he *should* stand on two legs... but yet he was clearly as much at home on four, his body a perfect hybrid between quadruped and biped...

"Adam! Agh... h-help!" Blake said, trying to force his legs together and clenching his anus to try and stop the motion. "Pull it out! By... by hand if you have to!"

Adam lumbered forward, a surprisingly graceful gait quite unlike the human he once was, and tried to grab at Blake's 'intruder' with one meaty claw. The large appendage was as ineffectual as Blake's own grip; and the wetsuit foiled any attempt to grasp the cylindrical object!

Blake spread his legs without thinking, letting the draconic creature try for a better grip; but he regretted it almost instantly as the stone cock's motions increased, freed from his flesh's death-grip.

Adam's muzzle contorted, his eyes clenching shut with a strangled hiss; Blake could only wince as a sharp claw sliced through both the wetsuit and some of the skin on his buttocks!

"Gyaaa! Fucking... damn it! Watch what you're doing!" He yelled. "That fucking hurt!"

"Grrgh...! Easy for... you to say... you're not... f...fucking... someone and t...trying not... to..!" Adam moaned, trying again, but only managing to tear away some of the wetsuit from Blake's rear end entirely, as well as adding another thin slice to Blake's skin!

Blake's half-hard cock started to re-harden, fast, despite the pain... the sight, the thought of this creature, incoherent and incapacitated with pleasure, so close above him... a mighty male that found him irresistibly sexy... of Adam, desperate to cum because of Blake's body...

"No... fuck... can't... can't hold back.... I... I gotta... So fucking bad..." Adam said, his voice deepening, closer to the imaginary-resonance of Apaepi.

"Adam... hold on! Try to..." Blake began, but before he could finish, Adam had leaned low over him, pushing Blake's legs back to give himself more access; Blake's legs were quickly trapped and held under the dragon's armpits, the reptile's heavy weight pressing down on him as their bellies touched - and their cocks rubbed together between them!

"Need to ... sorry..." Adam growled, not sounding very sorry at all!

"Don't let..." Blake began, but Adam's sharp claws sliced through the belly of his wetsuit, making Blake cringe with fear at the thought he might be eviscerated at any moment! But Adam's meaty paw simply pulled, hard, and tore the zipper clean away, pulling the wetsuit away from him, baring Blake's belly from ass to neck... and his cock leapt free from the musky, precum-soaked prison, slapping against the chest of his 'assailant', making Blake gasp with stimulation as scales rubbed across his cockhead...

Blake's lower belly had a half-formed scaly texture of its own, he saw, but pale, delicate... tinted a little green, in patches between human flesh, and no hair covered his crotch any more... nor was there a hair on his exposed belly, nor...

He gave a faint sigh of relief as Adam's grip tore the zip of the wetsuit clean open, and a great pressure released from his shoulders; he realised suddenly that he'd been hunched over, a slightly elongated body too constrained in the suit to be comfortable any more...

Blake saw Adam, Apaepi, whoever he was, thrust his hips forward at the air, precum dripping freely from that mighty shaft... a vaguely humanoid shape, but no indication that this beast was once human...

"Pleasure him, let us incarnate our forms, together, as one again..." Eleuthia's voice begged, husky with delight...

Blake was about to protest when he gave a surprised yelp, Adam's huge bulk settling farther upward against his body... and the large draconic shaft rubbed against his own, this time without the rubbery layers separating them! He couldn't help but give a groan of delight as the powerful male's bulk pressed against him, forced him low... he felt Adam's powerful belly and torso press against his own...

"Yes! Claim me, husband, claim us both..! My flesh yearns for you, and so does his..."

Blake started to protest but could hardly get beyond a simple, negative-sounding grunt as Adam began to grind his hips against Blake's, the ten-inch member's uneven ridges rubbing against Blake's maleness, only a little over half the size... and precum dribbled and oozed freely over and between the two burning-hot, throbbing shafts, the mighty dragonhood oozing its pre freely over Blake's changing belly...

Blake felt the wetsuit fabric around his arms becoming taut... yet around his legs it didn't feel any different, maybe it was even looser, or maybe that was the way Apaepi held his legs pinned so far back... as if to expose his ass, widen him to allow a cock to enter more easily, to let Apaepi feel even more pleasure...

His hair began to recede slowly into his scalp as the pleasure rose, his tongue seeming longer in his mouth, his teeth sharper...

The motion of the object in Blake's ass intensified, and he grunted with delight, clenching his ass unintentionally... which made Adam groan as well, and thrust harder!

"Fuck...! Blake! Stop... whatever you're... doing! Stop or I'll... aaagh..." Adam said, his thrusts not even slowing, despite his defiant words. He almost sobbed. "Your... feels so... good... c... can't... resist..."

Blake nearly sobbed, too, as he relaxed his anus... he couldn't resist it either, this was more powerful, deeper, more intense, better than any fantasy he'd ever had, a realisation and an awakening as incredible and shocking as any fumbling teenage discovery of sexual pleasure, the amazing but confused delight of bringing himself to the very first orgasm... he gave strangled groans of delight as Apaepi continued to thrust into him and against his shaft. Blake realised that the object in his ass was keeping pace with Apaepi's thrusts now, not just moving independently...

"Blake! No... Don't! Can't... stop..." Adam said, throwing his head back as if to try and escape... but his body stayed resolutely pressed against Blake's. "Nnnngh... I can't... resist! Don't... want to... but I'll... cum... in you... so... fucking horny...! Gotta cum so bad... Can't... stop..."

Blake felt a surge of desire run through him; the shivering, powerful male above him, not quite able to resist the urge to fuck him raw and fill him... it was so potent, such an aphrodisiac... he spread his legs further, the motion easier somehow, his hips feeling strangely flexible... and a thin finger of flesh creeping out of his spine, starting to flex of its own volition...

"Grrgh..." Adam rumbled, thrusting harder and shallower... and giving a sudden, startled yelp as the object in Blake's ass exited at unusual speed, and slammed into Adam's groin, hard! Yet despite Blake feeling the shudder of the impact, Adam seemed more aroused than harmed! "Yessssss..." he hissed, thrusting harder, slowing his hips' motion and holding his body close to Blake's.

For a moment, Blake was confused... but comprehension soon dawned, as this time the object exited again, hard, and *sank* into Adam's exposed slit! It exited slowly, as if jammed on something, as if stuck in molasses... then on its next movement, it sank in again... and lodged solidly!

Blake felt the rough abrasion inside him start to fade as Adam began to move again, the rocky-shaft within him withdrawing, as the cool object started to pulse into throbbing, hot, precum-leaking *life*... Blake's shaft throbbed, dangerously close to orgasm at the feel of the virile male above him, a burning-hot shaft filling his ass as another began again to rub insistently over his tingling cock, a scaled groin scraping over his taunt scrotum, sandwiched between the two titanic shafts... how did they even fit?!

"I said I would not let him harm you... by *any* means... now hush, do not overthink, just enjoy, enjoy... your peak is close, enjoy... feel the lust, the love..."

Blake sobbed with delight, reached up, and threw his arms around as much of the dragon's shoulders as he could, his short claws on increasingly pale, scaly hands scratching harmlessly over the mighty reptile's shoulders; pleasure ran through him like an electric current, he couldn't resist, it felt so strong... he clenched his ass, Eleuthia's whispers urging him on, urging him to milk the seed from her husband's shafts, delight in the feeling, the moment of anticipation...

"Thou chose thy offering well, my love..." came Apaepi's husky mental-reply. "I so dislike males... yet this one's depths are so wonderfully warm and tight... so intoxicatingly *eager* for seed, he even arouses this host of mine..."

"Gnngh... is that... true..?!" Blake whimpered, his voice sounding odd, not quite like his own. He felt like he shouldn't want it to be true... but he *did*.

Adam seemed almost too far gone to care what he was saying. "No! Forcing me... to... so... fucking hot... tight... gnnngh... why are... why are you..?!"

"You hear, human?! And you are so eager to have his seed within... aren't you?" Eleuthia said. "He desires you, desperate to cum no matter how or where... Offer him everything, offer him..."

"Nnnnyghh... yesss... Apaepi... harder..."

"B...Blake... shut... up..."

Blake felt those powerful forearms curl around him, too, hugging him back in a more powerful bear-hug than his feeble half-human arms could muster. Adam's whole body surrounded him on every side, and he pulled his body upward, lifting his ass to angle it better to be penetrated deeper... and in an instant the scaly monster's insistent, solid thrusts were pushing into him so deep he moaned, effeminately, on every thrust!

His tail had grown more than a foot, and it teased outward, pressing against the heaving mass of Apaepi's thighs, then further back, trying to curl around his tail, as the limb grew longer... the rough abrasion of scale on human flesh was starting to be replaced more and more by the smooth rub of scales on scales...

Adam's motions were speeding up, frantic, tension filling every sinew of his new, draconic form, long tail lashing behind him as a pair of huge, dark-feathered wings mantled around him and Blake.

"Y...yeah! F...fuck my ass... harder.... Sssss..." Blake surprised himself by slipping into a sibilant hiss. "Want to... cum..?"

"S...shit! Blake... i...idiot, why..? Guh, so... so fucking... I... I gotta... nngh, don't... don't do this..!" Adam rumbled incoherently, his thrusts slowing for a moment....

Blake's whole body tingled with imminent anticipation, with complete delight; huge, powerful arms surrounded him, exotic, alien, sexy... he was surrounded by scales, male, dragon; he felt the intensity of the love between Apaepi and whatever was in him, the love he *wished* Adam could feel for him... even here, even now, some deep, strange desire, some fantasy was spilling out of him, leaving him helpless...

The dragon fucked his ass, frotted him so hard, huffing so blissfully, so evidently in the throes of exquisite pleasure, trying to resist Blake's allure, trying to resist cumming into him, over him...

"Fuck... me... harder! A-almost... I'm ready... fuck... please... you want to cum!"

"Grrr... y-yeah..." came the reply.

Blake moaned, his toes curling, hugging the dragon so hard he felt like his arms would break, hugged him tight, filling him with a growing sensation of... of...

"Cum... cum in me... fuck, please, cum... don't hold... back... I want... to feel your... sssseeeeed..." Blake hissed.

For a delightful instant, there was a moment of utterly perfect bliss; a moment Blake never wanted to end; a moment so tortuous, so long, so drawn out... forced upon him... so utterly beyond his control...

But all things have their time. A lone ridge slid over Blake's cockhead, and another into his ass; a final tingle ran down his spine as the twin pleasures merged, peaked... and he felt the dam inside him break.

Blake came.

He came hard.

He was clutching Apaepi's shoulders and moaning and writhing like a whore before the first weak spurt of cum emerged from his shaft, the feeling so intense it was almost painful.

Then the weak spurts became as forceful as a firehose, and he all but screamed with pleasure, a feeble echo of Apaepi's roar. His cock shuddered and bucked, his aching balls giving up the struggle and emptying hard over Apaepi's shaft, over Blake's belly, painting their bellyscales with his lust...

"Gnnngh... wha?!" Adam groaned, "...ggggnnnnngh! Fuck!" he continued, his voice taking on an almost triumphant tone. "Yeah... yeah, make me... make me cum! Oh... yeah.... Squeeze, there... like..."

The dragon continued to pound Blake, hard, harder than ever, and Blake's cock continued to spew its load, so intense a feeling it was mind-blowing!

"Ugh, gotta cum... I'm... gonna...!" he said, hilting his cock violently inside Blake, his other cock sliding solidly over Blake's spasming maleness, between their freshly-cum-slickened bellies!

Then a long neck arched down low over Blake's face, even though Adam had to crane his neck and back so awkwardly to reach Blake's lips, the draconic body was so large, so long... but so flexible that Adam seemed not to notice nor care...

A long, thick tongue forced its way past Blake's teeth, and he felt rigid, scaled lips press against his own stiffening mouthparts... his own tongue began splitting into two tines as it wrestled passionately with the intruder, pleasure filling his every thought, every pore, desire filling his thoughts as thoroughly as the draconic cock filled his ass...

The dragon arched his back, and gave another, deeper, muffled roar of triumph with his lips locked solidly against Blake's in an intense kiss... and Blake felt liquid shooting into his ass, almost scalding hot, and so much of it...!

Blake felt the shaft that rubbed so insistently against his, throb and flex... and then hot seed sprayed across his skin, instantly dwarfing his own, by comparison, feeble load, his orgasm redoubling instantly as Apaepi sprayed virile dragon-essence all over him, *into* him..., holding him down helplessly while his own cock still spasmed and sprayed a meagre little load compared to the virile dragon's...!

Apaepi's thrusts continued, and Blake felt his aching balls become almost painful as Apaepi's bulk squashed them against his body... and with a horrifying pop, they slid into him, the dragon's crotch mashing hard against Blake's now-bare groin!

Blake tried to protest, but Apaepi's tongue, the solid kiss, kept him silent.

"Hush..." came Eleuthia's soothing tone. "Just enjoy... I don't usually share my husband's body, enjoy the feel of this most virile of males filling you..."

Blake's orgasm continued as Apaepi ground their cocks together, the dragon's mammoth member growing still larger... no... wait... what was...?

Blake's cock was shrinking!

"Yesss... soon you will have no end of virile males to seed you, though none will be so great as this..."

Blake's eyes widened as much as possible, but his orgasm, rather than trailing off still continued unabated, the pleasure turning quickly to pain with every additional spurt! Apaepi's shaft still throbbed and spurted too, and Blake's body right up to his neck was covered in seed... he felt so painfully, confusedly aroused, like he needed to cum but he was already cumming... he needed to stop, aaargh, it hurt...!

"Relax... relax... he is comforting us, see?" said Eleuthia's voice again.

Blake almost sobbed; the orgasm continued in its all-consuming power, yet it barely held pleasure for him any more, only unstoppable pain, a muscular spasm as unwanted and undesired as a hiccup or a hernia... something was being *forced* out of him, torn away from him...

He felt his testicles churning and clenching somewhere inside his body, sliding deeper... and his cock was growing *more* sensitive even as it shrank, the seed oozing from it rather than spraying any more, the odd pleasure-spot in his ass shrinking and moving even as Apaepi's mighty shaft pounded against it, as if to pursue it...

Yet, the dragon's motions were becoming slow, and deliberate... warm scales encircled him, pressed against him through a liberal coating of cum, very little of it his own... and scales pressed against his lips, hot breath over his face and bare, scaled scalp, a tongue toying with his eagerly, reassuringly...

He felt... a deeper, alien feeling. His own feeling, he realised, his desire for Adam, merged with Eleuthia's desire for her husband Apaepi.

He knew what was happening to him.

He felt his stomach contort and his ribs shiver as more changes began inside them; his bones shaping themselves into a new form fit for the dragon to fuck again... a strange combination of pleasure and agony. No wonder Adam had been incapacitated...

His cock continued to spasm and leak its feeble emission as it shrank so small that Apaepi's titanic member was simply crushing it into his groin with every deliberate rub, the frotting turning into something else, something teasing and exquisitely tantalising... the sensitive head of his cock become even more intensely sensitive, settling into a small nub that he felt sure he'd be familiar with if he saw it...

The orgasm stopped , steadily yet still suddenly, as inevitable and powerful as a runaway freight train rolling to a stop; he gasped with joyous relief as the painfully intense feeling subsided at last. He barely cared that the reason was that his balls had surely given up every last iota of male essence inside him, that his internal plumbing, having purged itself of everything that could get in the way, was reshaping itself, forcing his body to cease to be male at all...

He didn't care, the relief was worth *anything*.

Yet the comforting, blissful embrace of scales around him continued, and he whimpered with humiliated, frightened, eager, ambivalent delight around that powerful tongue that invaded his mouth as thoroughly as the dragon's maleness invaded his rear.

"I am a goddess of fertility, as well as protection... the Mother of Monsters, and indeed, everything, anything else..." Eleuthia breathed, her mind-voice seemingly filled with the afterglow of that utterly - and perhaps literally - titanic orgasm, reeling as much as Blake was!

_ _

"No male can resist you, should you wish for him... and the delight of a male's lifegiving essence in your womb is so much greater than simply feeling it on your skin, or even emitting your own... no male can match the power of a female, they simply donate their emission... but we, we create life itself, we are the *future*... we use males and discard them as we please... we have our pleasure, and it is our very *purpose*... a new world needs birthing, and you, I, we will be the new Mother of Monsters..."

_ _

Blake wanted to protest... but something in the words struck him as so very *right*...

Apaepi's bulk shifted, and his muzzle withdrew from Blake's, licking a small glob of spilled seed from Blake's extending jawline. Blake's tongue lolled from his growing muzzle; male-musk was hot and thick and heavy in the cool air of the cave, and it made Blake's loins tingle in anticipation of *something*...

"Relax... become the object of my husband's desire... let me fill your soul as he fills your body and slakes his renewed lust... you will have all the time you wish in the Otherworld, without a care..."

Had Apaepi comforted Adam like this, as he changed? Blake didn't know... but a slight vindictive streak hoped not. A larger part of him simply didn't care... there was too much else to focus on.

The remains of his shaft seemed to have split, deep inside him, and there was a growing, blossoming divide in the skin of his groin now... a divide he only knew about because he could feel Apaepi's seed slowly leaking into it, deeper and deeper as the great dragon moved and rubbed himself gently over Blake, spreading the seed between them, forcing it into every crevice on Blake's scute-covered belly...

Blake's legs felt odd, weak, spindly, the remains of the wetsuit hanging loose from them... they were shrinking, even as the rest of Blake's body expanded and pushed further out of the great tears Adam had left in the garment! Was he becoming...

"A serpent, my symbol... my form, in this land! Relax... it is such bliss..."

Apaepi slid himself slickly backward still further, his cock sliding delightfully over those sensitive, forming lips... and then started to push forward, testing the shallow depth, as if to see if Blake was yet ready...

"Hrrrrnnnngh..." Apaepi said, aloud, licking Blake's lips a little. "Art thou yet my beloved? Or art thou still... a human?"

Blake didn't have time to answer before Apaepi rumbled a reply. "Human. Pity... but, my goddess... my wife, she is so expert at teasing me... keeping me hard and ready to fill her, even if the limits of a mortal form should intervene..." Apaepi's cock rubbed over Blake's forming femininity, setting the shifting flesh a-quiver! "...She can even entice me to fuck *you*, human, before she has yet changed thee to match her delightful curves... aaah, the bliss of being wed to a fertility goddess, they can bring such *exquisite* pleasures beyond any other of this mortal realm..."

Apaepi tested Blake's depth again, and fully two inches of cock slid in; Blake gasped through a forming muzzle, wondering what he was becoming - and hardly caring, if it made this mighty reptile eager to seed him again.

"Aaah... but I sense I am preaching to a... convert!" Apaepi said, sliding his still-hard cocktip against the lowermost seam of Blake's new, forming sex. "Thou know full well... what she can do! Do thou wish to... be fucked again... human? As soon as *her* femininity has fully replaced thy ugly maleness?"

"Yes, my husband... always..."_Eleuthia answered for him. "_He is mine. He will enjoy it, I command it..."

Blake felt his rib cage stretch outward, his body lengthening as Apaepi pressed another inch of cock into him... his tail was longer than his legs had been, and rapidly thickening, growing in girth until it was a continuation of his torso... but its growth was slowing, and his ribs were popping, his chest expanding and lengthening instead, making the remains of the wetsuit feel like a strait-jacket...

"Hrrngh, aaah, to feel thy flesh against mine after so long, my beloved... away with this human filth, these trappings..!" Apaepi said, dropping Blake from the bear-hug and standing straddling the half-human, half-serpent, half-man-half-woman, one shaft still buried firmly in Blake's rear! Apaepi raised a claw, and slicing easily through the sleeves and hips of the wetsuit; Blake's body popped free like a pea shelled from a pod, and he gave a strangely high-pitched, feminine sigh of relief...

"Art thou ready... my cocks hunger for thy far more *enticing* form, and I have wasted too much seed *on* you, not *in* you..." Apaepi said, testing the depth of Blake's half-formed vagina again!

Blake felt a surge of arousal at that thought, that prodding feeling, and there was another, fast shift inside him. Apaepi grinned at him, his muzzle blowing hot breath over Blake's shifting, extending face... and then the dragon grabbed him under the arms, gave a flex of his powerful hindlegs, and leapt into an upright position, carrying Blake with him!

Blake's arms closed tightly around the dragon's upper chest again, and his legs batted feebly and uselessly at the dragon's hips... the knee joint did not even seem to bend any more, and the limbs were barely more than thin stumps, shrinking fast! Gravity threatened to pull his heavy lower body down onto those girthy shafts yet further...

His grip wasn't *quite* enough, and Apaepi seemed to have little concern for stopping it! Blake gave a yell of pain, his whole body tensing as he felt a sudden *tearing* feeling, deep within him, focused around the head of Apaepi's cock where it pushed into the hole Blake's own cock had left behind as it fled into his body... and then, the instant of pain passed, as Apaepi's leaking cock sank several inches into him, the sharp tip of the dragonhood tearing through the sealed flap that his foreskin had formed into, deeper inside...

Had he just... lost his virginity? As a woman?! He'd had no idea it *hurt* like that, not really... Holy geez, no wonder Andrea had complained when he'd bedded her, with what he *thought* was gentle kindness!

...But this was no time to be thinking of fucking a woman. Not when... when he... he?

'He'... had just lost his virginity. Female virginity, and his anal virginity just before that... Was 'he' really the right way to be thinking about himself?

The thought of Apaepi fucking his ass, frotting hard against him... it was a delicious memory. But he wanted something... else. That had merely been his old self having the first and last orgasm as a gay male, after he realised he truly did desire a cock on his partner... but preferred the thought that there was *not* one on himself!

....so now, *she* realised, that was only right and normal. For *her*.

*She*, Blake, had a cock buried in *both* her passages, she was about to be fucked, by the sexiest, most powerful, most *virile* male in existence...

Apaepi grinned at her, and licked her forming snout; greenish-white scales filled her vision as she tried to focus on her nose, seeing how much it had changed... and greenish-white scales covered her arms, obscuring the fading human colouration beneath them so much faster than had happened with Adam... her tongue tasted the air, the rich scent of dragon, and the feeble scent of human musk fading slowly beneath it...

And then, Apaepi lifted her whole, relatively small, body easily, and let her slide back down his twin shafts under gravity, a sudden delight filling both of her orifices... the pleasure in her ass was a pale shadow of what it had been as a male, but the sheer delight of the sensation of a cock sliding into her vagina more than made up for it, and she gave a delighted moan of bliss.

It was only when Apaepi's muzzle met hers for another kiss that she realised that, this time, the dragon wasn't having to crane his neck... her body had elongated so much...!

The remains of her legs felt numb as they receded entirely into her body, leaving tiny, scaly spurs at her hips, barely noticeable... she writhed uncomfortably for purchase, supported mostly by her grip on Apaepi's neck, and by his two meaty phalluses...

"Aaahhh... yessss... struggle a little, pleasure me..." Apaepi said, his grip under her arms gentle, close to a hug, and leaving her weight to hang over his shafts.

She panted with growing need... blowing a life-changing load as a human male was a distant memory, and her new organs were not satisfied at mere memories!

Apaepi seemed to sense her desire, pulling Blake's body up, sliding his shafts out of her until only the tips remained... then let her slide back down them, until they both hissed with the delight of it!

"Yesss... ohhhhhhh, my husband... it has been so long, *too* long... seed me truly..."

_ _

"...and not merely by proxy..." Blake heard his own voice say, curiously high-pitched, sibilant...

Apaepi grinned, and held her still for a long moment... and Blake felt the strange itch of scutes forming along her belly, now that the rub of scale on flesh was momentarily stilled!

"Very well, my love..." he said... and this time unfurled his arms from around her, grabbed her tail, then pulled it upward and downward, hard, over his cocks, leaving her body hanging from his shoulders!

Blake gasped, feeling such pleasure wash through her as she'd never imagined... wanting nothing more than to be fucked by this amazing specimen...

Apaepi grunted as he repeated the action, Blake's bulk increasing rapidly, seemingly sped up by the pleasurable action! Blake felt her humanlike torso without any trace of nipples nor bellybutton rubbing against Apaepi's armoured scutes; she felt her ribs extending, the curious pricking sensation as *new* ribs grew in, new *vertebrae*, her spine extending quickly, a silken, perfect model of serpentine femininity blossoming from her old, human form... becoming ever more flexible by the moment...

"S...seed me... my husband..." Blake murmured, eagerly, though not entirely by her own volition, not entirely in her own words. "Give me a clutch of eggs to... to..." her voice faltered for a moment as comprehension, almost memory, dawned on her, Eleuthia melting steadily into her thoughts... "To reform our ancient empire... take it all, without opposition..." she said, huskily, feeling the innermost walls of her womb caress Apaepi's cockhead gently on every thrust, her anus pleasuring his other shaft at the same time, in that way he *loved*... a trick she'd learned long ago to make him cum more, harder, *better*...

She slithered herself around him until she was holding her husband's body from behind, entwining her growing length with his wings a little as she hugged him, her groin and her vent still snugly in his grasp, his cocks still pistoning into her... and then around again, completing her first loop around his body and hugging his shoulders again, locking his muzzle in a deep kiss...

A vague memory stirred and told her that in their heyday she could warp herself around him *three* times... she shivered with delight, feeling the tension in his back and belly through her coiled torso, imagining and remembering what *three* coils might feel like...

She felt a familiar, yet alien, tingle growing in her loins. Familiar, because she knew only too well that it heralded the steady rise to a plateau of exquisite pleasure... and alien because it was not the way she remembered. It radiated all through her being, like something was being *injected* into her blood to make it boil with lust; the pleasure was not focused, as it had once been in her cock, but flowed evenly from the most intimate of her depths to the tip of her tail and the top of her skull.

Something about it was deeper, more spiritual almost, than she remembered from being a male... there, the tingle had been the herald of something frantic, a release of energy, urgent, desperate... yet this was almost calculated, a slow rhythm, a gradual but unstoppable emanation building, without the same urgent *need* that Apaepi was evidently beginning to feel - the need she had felt herself not long ago, when Adam and Apaepi had struggled with desire and horror, cocks frotting together...

Desire remained, strong, but it was not consuming her, it was not overwhelming her faculties, it did not stop her thinking... and wanting to ensure her husband experienced his reward for releasing her from her confines within a human male's limited cranium...

Wait... Blake didn't have a... husband...

She experienced a strange sense of vertigo as she thought that, a strange, alien thought that was clearly not Blake's own. Yet it could barely give her pause; she was still as driven as ever to see this to completion!

Her torso extended further, and momentarily she was hugging the draconic form from behind once again; the feeling of both being fucked, and yet encircling the male penetrating her, was intoxicating and powerful; she strained to coil around him further, trying to force her ribs and spine to grow faster to accommodate her desires... she had worked out how to move her tail, and despite her husband's powerful grip, she still managed to writhe her tail still lower on his exquisitely shaped shafts, her slick, seed-covered body responding and leaking with juices to lubricate and ease his entry to her depths...

As she enlarged to match Apaepi's size, her arms grew still thinner; the muscle she'd built up as a human male seemed to relax, shrink away, and melt into a daintier, more feminine form... just as was right. She didn't want to look like a male... no, her husband loved fragile, delicate-seeming creatures... she remembered well...

She kissed his muzzle again as she reached his front again, her second coil in place... and, secured against his abdomen now, she let go of his shoulders and her freshly-clawed hands grasped his muzzle, kissing him with all the fervour she could muster as pleasure exploded from her loins and ran through her like fireworks... his eyes opened, and he gazed at her serpentine form with a sense of near-relief...

Good that he was relieved, she thought.

The notion that, maybe, he'd kind of liked fucking a human male, it made her feel a twinge of jealousy - but his clear reluctance, his relief now, pleased her; he had done it at her insistence, loved her so deeply he would do even *that*.

Still, at least the offending human was gone, banished to the timeless realm Otherworld until she had kept his body for a hundred years and a day, as mortals reckoned time...

Wait... she *was* that offending human... no, wait... she wasn't...

Apaepi broke the kiss. "Grrrgh... my love... I am nearing my peak..." he hissed and growled, his voice deeper and more resonant than she remembered. She could feel it rumbling through her coils as she dipped below his wing, to drape herself over his shoulders from behind... with her increasing bulk, every move she made had him almost staggering to keep balanced.

Good. She *loved* making him work for his prize...

She used her long tail to curl around his wrists, and pull them away from her... and began simply using her own muscle to move her tail up and down to encircle his shafts, her own inner muscles to massage and caress and milk his members, without him moving a muscle...

Her body wasn't quite long enough, yet she felt the sudden tension inside him, the subtle shift in his aura, in his stance... not even enough time to finish her own changes?

But of course he'd cum quickly, after three millennia imprisoned. *Especially* when she used her power on him, to inflame his lusts...

Blake felt that strange sense of dislocation again as thoughts from *outside* himself filled his head... and then everything seemed to be washed away, as he felt hot seed start to lance deep into him, again, and strange, resonant ripples of pleasure ran through his own body, from head to tailtip, so powerful that everything seemed to go white... she felt such love, such intimacy, such attraction to her dragon, she felt so complete being filled by his shafts...

...then she opened her eyes, with a start like awakening from a dream of falling. She wasn't coiled around Apaepi; she was lying, limply, on a grassy hillside; her long, serpentine body entwined with the long grass...

She felt a dreadful pang of loss and loneliness, missing her Apaepi so much, wishing she felt his shafts inside her, seeding her....

...wait...

She sat bolt upright - or as bolt upright as a snake can - as she realised that she *could* feel a pair of cocks, just like before, and... hot semen shooting into her, the remnants of orgasm trailing off in her depths...

"You're so... sexy... gnnngh!..." said the Apaepi-clone, behind her. The red-scale was cumming hard, and by the slimy feel inside her, the swollen feel in both her orifices... it probably wasn't the first time.

"What the FUCK, Adam?!" Blake screeched, and the Apaepi-clone jumped back, the guess evidently correct. His cocks slid instantly out of her, and to her irritation, cum streaked over her tail.

Adam looked almost comical, twin cocks dribbling cum while he gibbered for a reply.

"E...Eleuthia?!" he said, incredulously.

"Obviously not!" Blake said, hands on hips - or where her hips used to be - angry in the extreme. "I'm Blake, you... fucker!" she said, unable to muster more wit than that... though, a part of her thought, her anger was as much at being cheated out of the intimacy of that contact with the *real* Apaepi, as by finding herself abused by Adam...

Adam looked over the lithe, effeminate, pale-green speckled torso of the female snake before him, evidently confused and rather befuddled.

"Er... why obviously? You look like... er, her... she was... she... er... wanted me to... you know..."

Blake opened her muzzle to respond, then realised she didn't really have an answer. Eleuthia had swapped their places, and probably got Adam to fuck her... and by proxy, Blake... for, what, kicks? Who the fuck knew?

So, this open, endless meadow was that timeless Otherworld Eleuthia'd been thinking of. She'd escaped to Earth, for a hundred years and a day - and taken the original Satan to Earth with her.

She shied away from that thought, folding her arms and glaring at Adam-Apaepi. "Oh... use your fucking common sense!" she said, folding her arms.

Adam folded his arms, too, obviously angry as well. "Hey, you're the fucking idiot who just HAD to interfere! 'Fuck me, Apaepi! Oooh, Apaepi, you're so dreamy!'" Adam said, his voice rising to a mocking falsetto. "Sound familiar? Fucking idiot! You made a deal with those freaks?! Why the hell did you think that was a good idea?! You total moron! We're fucking stranded in... whatever the fuck this place is, the spirit-place, the Otherworld! And they've got our bodies, and they can... do whatever the fuck they like! Fuck, this is a DISASTER!" Adam exclaimed... more angry than fearful, it seemed.

She sneered, and snapped back, "Hey, this was YOUR fucking fault! You expected me to just die quietly to your mad scheme?!"

"Die?! All you had to do was stay quiet off to one side, and you could have just walked out, none the wiser, you fucking moron!" Adam yelled back, his new, deeper voice booming. "I only wanted you there so you could see me when I cast the fucking spell! I was going to steal their fucking power, and banish them back here... ah, fuck, what does it matter, you ROYALLY fucked this all up!"

"You threatened to stab me! With a damned knife!" Blake sneered again. "Like HELL you just wanted me to see your delusional scheme!"

Her knee-jerk reaction to dismiss casting spells as insane mumbo-jumbo evaporated as the words left his lips. She was a snakewoman now, and trapped in some other dimension, or something. 'Impossible' was not what it used to be.

"Hey, that was only to keep you out of the way, after you decided to start sticking your fucking nose in everything!" Adam's shoulders sagged, the fight leaving him. "I was gonna become a fucking *god*... and you ruined it, ruined everything! Hell, you let the fucking Devil out of that prison-place - along with his damn wife!" Adam said, his slitted eyes nearly bulging out of his head. He gestured wildly as if for emphasis, and overbalanced himself, falling back to all fours; his expression of surprise was almost comical.

Blake fought the urge to laugh. This was absurd!

"Hey... er... you..." she said, the momentary amusement derailing her train of thought. "Er... didn't you need a human sacrifice?"

Adam looked incredulous. "Human sacrifice?! Of course fucking not! Why would...? Ohhh, I get it... that's what they told you?! And you believed them?! Fucking idiot! Why would you trust a word *they* said?!" He spat. "I drugged you to keep you quiet, and put all that mud and grit in the water to stop you tasting it! Fuck, I didn't know the damn statues in that shithole came to life like that..." he said, glancing involuntarily - but without shame - at the pair of cocks retreating quickly into his vent.

Blake shrugged and huffed angrily, trying desperately to remember the exact course of events. Was Adam trying to reinvent history? Or was he telling the truth, had Eleuthia constructed an elaborate lie to make Blake feel more endangered than she... well, at the time, he... really had been..?

"Fuck! You idiot... I wish you HAD died!" Adam exclaimed, angrily. "Then at least I'd have got out of this okay!"

"Hey!" Blake snarled. "Fuck it, I wish we'd never even started this stupid rivalry, look where the fuck it's gotten us now!"

"Rivalry?! You fucking..! You barely even met me before you were stomping up my stuff, you fucking...!"

Blake felt a strange tingle running through her, a bizarre, yet familiar echo. Something was happening, some strange unravelling.

The wish.

Three wishes.

Hadn't she, he, whatever, hadn't there been one left..?

"Adam... if one of those things granted us a wish... hypothetically... could it change the past...?"

"Damn you, mortal!" Eleuthia's mind-voice hissed in his head. "Damn your memory...! When bound by this, even Fate's weave can be unmade... you fool, you don't know what you've done..!"

"Hey!" said Blake, feeling oddly triumphant. "You offered it! Shouldn't have done that, bitch!"

"Why couldn't you just wish to be fucked harder, like all the other men I possessed, like I TOLD you to wish for?! Something safe! ANYTHING safe?!"

"Hey, I didn't want to be..."

Blake never finished that thought; reality un-wrote itself around her, him, them... and there was nothing but primal stillness, and, in the distance, the faint tick of a manual Loom, as the world began to re-knit...

A TEAR IN THE WEAVE

Lecture Room B16, 27th August, 2015

Blake strode purposefully towards the front of the lecture theatre; threading his way between groups of first-year students, chatting nervously to each other, and around the inevitable loners, too shy to strike up their own conversations. He wondered if he should go and try and gather a few up into a group and get them chatting, he remembered how utterly awkward his own first day had been, two years back.

That was why Blake had volunteered to assist, today. Maybe he could even volunteer to mentor some of the freshmen; that'd be good experience, and he was getting far enough through his course that résumé material was on his mind a lot.

His train of thought was interrupted as something caught his eye. The image of a red dragon; Blake enjoyed most kinds of fantasy fiction, and was always on the lookout for stuff like that.

This particular image wasn't anything special, though - or at least, not for the right reasons! A young man standing alone had one emblazoned across the back of his crudely-knitted jumper, a sort of Celtic-style red dragon symbol...

Why the hell was anyone wearing a heavy jumper in this heat?!

The young man turned, and his gaze met Blake's. There was something in that stare, curious, yet deeply hostile, suspicious...

Blake slowed his pace, and looked away; his foot hit something, and he stumbled, gasping with surprise. Who left their fucking backpack in the middle of the damn aisle?!

He turned, and saw the ungainly, ill-dressed youth rushing forward, looking horrified. "Gah! You... clumsy fucking oaf! That's *my* fucking bag, it's got EVERYTHING in it!" he shouted loudly.

Blake felt a pang of discomfort. He didn't much like it when people took a dislike to him, and he felt a strange pang of sympathy for the pudgy, irate young man. People were turning to stare.

"Hey! Er... I'm really sorry; I just caught my foot in the strap, I don't think anything broke... sorry, I..." Blake struggled for something positive to say. "I... was just admiring your dragon."

The youth looked startled. "...Sorry?"

"The dragon. Back of the jumper; it caught my eye..." Blake said, inventing quickly. The front of the young man's jumper had a crocodile on it, and rather lower in quality.

"Oh... ah... it was a present." The young man seemed to run out of steam; he'd obviously been psyched up for a fight, and wasn't quite sure how to respond to a friendly-sounding remark. He looked at Blake suspiciously; clearly worried he was being teased somehow, on some level he'd not yet fathomed.

"Blake." Blake said, extending his hand. "I'm one of the final-year students, thinking of doing a Doctorate. You?"

"Adam..." Adam said, looking at the extended hand with confused dismay, like Blake had offered him a dead fish. "Er... first year. Archaeology... do you do archaeology..?"

"Anthropology, actually..." Blake said, breathing a sigh of relief, the easy summary of his career starting to roll off his tongue, the situation defused.

He felt oddly relieved... like, everything was fine now. Like there'd been something... big... that he'd managed to avoid. An odd sense of visceral triumph, tinged with deja-vu.

Weird. But probably nothing.