“I am so usele-e-e-esss!” Ashley whined, while Alex pulled her up a particularly steep bundle of tree roots.

“You’re not,” Alex was swift to assure her.

“I am!” the petite Asian insisted, after getting her feet on top of the elevation. Immediately she scanned the environment. “My good eyes aren’t worth much if I can’t take shots of things worth keeping.”

“It is unfortunate that we lost all our tools,” Tess agreed.

“It is more unfortunate for some of us…” Sofia mumbled. “You’re at least tall and most of us are trained in something that is always useful… me, Ashley and Blair? I guess, uhm, we’re fit at least?”

“That’s already worth a lot,” Alex stated and led the way down a pathway that Ashley had just spotted. “Plus, you do have that.” He gestured at the stick Sofia kept with her.

“It’s not going to last long,” the fencer stated.

“Still, you have something.” Ashley let out a long sigh. “No camera, no microphone, how am I supposed to archive Master’s ascend to godhood for posterity?”

“When did I develop that ambition?” Alex wondered.

“I-i-i’m just saying….” Ashley scratched where her animal ears were growing. “That would be kind of cool… but, uhm, yeah. I just didn’t think I would ever be without any kind of camera and now I feel naked.”

“You are naked,” Tess pointed out.t

“You kn-know what I mean!” the short woman complained.

Alex turned to the Estonian and the Asian American. “I do know what you mean, but you shouldn’t beat yourself up over it. You’re fit and you’re competent. That you don’t have the tools of your trade does not make you useless. They were only ever extensions of your natural talents.” He paused for a moment, to lift up a branch that hung in their way. One after another, his trio of companions wandered through. “You didn’t mention Selana, right?”

“Well, Selana is…” Sofia made a wide gesture. “You know?”

“I do know,” Alex assured her. “She’s a mountain biker by trait, but she’s a general survivalist and mountaineer too. That’s what I mean. You’re not just one thing.”

“Worst case, you’ll always be good cocksleeves,” Tess weighed in again, her tone so dry that it was impossible to say if she was joking or not.

“That’s true!” Ashley declared enthusiastically.

“I guess that is a silver lining,” Sofia mumbled, then nodded to herself. “I’ll always be Master’s sex slave, I only need to keep myself pretty for that.”

That this argument worked to cheer them up only spoke to how wonderful these two were.

_______________________________________________________________

They spent almost three hours in that part of the forest.

Sofia was certain they were in the right place, but could not pinpoint them to a certain spot, so they just had to keep on wandering about randomly, following the fencer’s whims. They took the occasional break when they came across a water source or when Alex felt like the butts of his companions looked a little too alluring to just keep walking.

“Yes! Yes! Yes, Master!” Sofia cried out loudly, while he took her from behind. Her slender frame shook under each thrust. Fingers dug into the moss that covered the tree she was leaning against. The carpet of soft green was a perfect backdrop for this endeavour.

Grunts and moans mingled in a moment of unified bliss. Alex’s cock tensed inside her, delivering his seed into the depth of her tight cunt. “That’s a good cocksleeve,” he let out a relieved sigh, while his orgasm abated. She responded with slurred giggles.

Both of them were snapped out of their post-orgasmic haze when they heard a loud snap. They turned to their other two companions first. Tess and Ashley had both stopped touching themselves and were scanning the environment on their own search. Wood cracking should not have been an unusual sound in a jungle, but it was in this one.

Alex pulled out. “Can you walk?”

“I’m sturdier than I look,” Sofia assured with a shy smile. The first few steps were still a bit wobbly, but she proved herself by keeping up, even with his cum running down her legs.

Another loud snap gave them a direction to follow. Alex was not sure if this was related to their current search, but he wanted to investigate either way.

What they found was just another piece of supernatural fauna.

Lumbering its way between the massive trees was a tortoise. From head to tail, it was two meters long and about as wide. Its back was as much shell as it was craggy rock, out of which several swords protruded, as if they had grown from the creature.

The tortoise raised its ancient head and regarded them with steel grey eyes.

“Is this what we were searching for?” Alex asked Sofia.

“Yes,” the fencer answered, eyes fixated on a rapier that jutted out of the creature’s back. “I… think it will let me approach, but just me. It’ll let me take what I need, but nothing more.”

Alex glanced up at the variety of swords on its back. It may have been worth it to attack the tortoise to try and get all of those into their hands. Having a variety of sharp instruments would certainly make their life a lot easier.

However, this was an enormous animal and they were unarmed, not to mention out of their depth. That they had learned and accepted something magical was going on hardly prepared them for dealing with it. Maybe it was best not to overthink it and just take what intuition suggested?

“Go ahead, we’ll keep our distance,” Alex decided. Attacking this patient animal was not worth the risk and felt wrong to boot.

The tortoise lowered its head and began to munch on some mushrooms it had found, evidently undisturbed by Sofia’s approach. Reluctant at first, then with more confidence, the fencer got closer, then climbed on the massive animal’s back. She stood on the craggy shell of rock and bone and reached for the rapier.

It was a sleek weapon, silvery in its colours, with a one-handed grip of some kind of black bone. Sofia pulled it out with one smooth gesture, causing it to vibrate and sing like weapons usually only did in movies.

Sofia weighed it in her hand for one moment, before suddenly blushing. She jumped off the back of the tortoise, then bowed towards the animal’s head. “T-thank you for your patience!” she  declared, before dashing back to the rest of the party.

“That is going to be useful,” Alex said when she proudly presented him with the weapon. As a fencing instrument, it was not an optimal slicing tool, but they probably could use it to sharpen some sticks at least.

“Yeah!” Sofia was still blushing, squirming even, and Alex could not help but notice that she was getting wet again. “I, uhm… think picking up the sword did something to me…” she confessed.

Just before Alex could ask what she meant by that, he saw her breasts expand. Before his very eyes, her flat chest grew to a pair of small tits instead. Not an enormous difference, but a difference nonetheless.

With all of the certainty that a man in charge of a sex slave was afforded, Alex cupped Sofia’s expanded chest. The fencer inhaled excitedly. She was always excited when he touched her and yet this was different. His fingers glided over the smooth skin of the pliable mounds and she bit her lower lip. They hadn’t just grown in size, they had become more sensitive as well.

“You’re becoming even more delightful to play with,” he told the happy sex slave.

He wanted to look back at the tortoise but found it gone. The enormous animal had seemingly disappeared into thin air. Not even a depression of its footprints were left. Tess hummed. “I wonder if we just missed everything so far or if these supernatural displays are getting more frequent as we get exposed to them.”

“Still not sure if I should panic because magic is real or be really, really excited,” Ashley mumbled. “Hey, uhm, Sofia?”

“Y-yeah?” the Estonian olympian moaned. Alex was steadily circling her pretty pink areolas with his thumbs.

“Where did your sword go?”

That question had Alex look down. Sofia’s hand was, indeed, empty and the rapier nowhere to be found. Before anyone could panic, the fencer raised her right hand and gripped the air. The weapon appeared in a lightless flash of mana, or something similarly mystical.

“It’s just… with me now,” Sofia answered the unspoken question. She opened her hand and, rather than falling, the weapon disappeared again. “I can’t really explain it…”

“Wouldn’t be magic if you could,” Tess drawled and poked at her halo. The ring of light wobbled left and right like a pendulum, before coming to a still again. Once it rested above her head, its brightness went down to near-invisible levels. “That’s this mission done?”

“Seems so,” Alex confirmed, still wondering where that tortoise had gone. ‘The better question is what else is out there that we cannot see yet?’

They were slowly being introduced to a different world. It was equal parts exciting and terrifying. Always better to face the unknown excitedly than to be frozen in fear though.

“There’s still six of the passengers missing, so let’s walk around and keep an eye out,” Alex decided.

The direction they went was north-east. There was no particular reason for this, although it did make more sense to search away from the camp. Anyone wandering the southern shore was likely to stumble over the rest of them eventually.

‘I wonder if the jungle itself is in flux,’ Alex thought to himself. After four days, he was starting to recognize some corners of the jungle, but by and large they were always improvising their route. That could have been pure perception. The jungle was certainly big enough that them maneuvering with nothing but the sky meant they rarely used the same way twice. Another few weeks were required before he should have enough of an idea about the lay of the land to make an educated guess.

Not everything that was happening should be attributed to magic, but he did not want to rule out magic.

A fog descended on them at that moment. One moment they were wandering, the next the white mist fell from the treetops like a sudden downpour. “Stay close!” Alex ordered. They quickly got back to back.

The visibility went down to two metres. Anything beyond that was, at best, weird shapes. Every breath felt moist on his lips and in his lungs. Pleasantly, the amount of water in the air washed some of the sweat from his skin. The women with him were turned into gorgeously glistening versions of themselves.

Still, Alex would have much preferred seeing where he was. He could not see the sun, so his sole orientation point was the single tree they could see at the moment. He knew what direction he had been facing, but that would do him little good once they started to move.

“What do we do?” Tess asked.

“I’m weighing our options,” Alex answered. “This feels like normal fog, so I think we could just wait it out. Alternatively, we try to walk out. That’s basically what it comes down to.”

“...Even if it’s not normal fog, it’s not like… you know, uhm… the aphrodisiac would make us do anything unusual…” Ashley whispered. “F-forget I said anything!”

“No,” Tess stated.

“Awawawa…”

Alex pat the easily flustered reporter on the head. Then, he made a decision.

“We’ll walk. Form a line, we’ll go hand in hand. Ashley, you take the rear.”

“W-why me?”

“Because you have the best eyes,” Alex reminded her for the third time that day. “We trust you to see anything that comes up behind us, okay?”

A trusting smile had the petite woman blush. “Like I can say no to you, Master…” she mumbled and glanced up at him. “I-I’ll be a good girl.”

The line quickly formed, and Alex took the lead. They advanced slowly, so he could keep himself oriented between a new and an old point at all times. As long as they did not get spun around, they would arrive somewhere eventually.

The first thirty minutes of walking were nerve-wracking. Various landmarks looked nearly identical. Ashley assured them they weren’t, pointing out differences here and there. Trusting her, the quartet kept on walking.

Eventually, the fog cleared up a bit. Visibility improved and with it the certainty of their steps. Three, then four, then five metres, the distance Alex could look ahead continued to get better and with it the certainty of where to go. A curtain of light before them was the sign that they needed.

They emerged from the jungle and into the bordering plain. The grass under their feet was wet from the swirls of fog that left the dense treeline. They could, however, see the open sky.

Alex turned around, to look at the jungle. The mist that confused them lingered between the tall trees for a moment. Then, suddenly, it retreated. It pulled back deeper into the jungle, until disappearing entirely from the man’s vision. For a moment, he saw prismatic lights flash. Then, that too was gone.

“Alright, we made it out,” he announced and sat down. The girls mimicked the motion. They had earned themselves at least a moment of rest.