Harpy Core: A Fantasy Harem Adventure Read online

  ‘What the fuck…?’ I muttered to myself, taking my hands away from myself and running them across the defined lines in my body. ‘How did this happen?!’

  I looked back up at Ariadne and Princess Evelina, who both looked sharply away from me in random directions the moment that I saw their faces. I couldn’t help but grin in my cockiness, but could I really be blamed? A freaking princess had just checked me out.

  ‘Get yourself dressed,’ the princess said, dragging her gaze back up to my eyes and fighting to keep it there. ‘We depart in one hour.’

  She turned swiftly and left, her feet clapping against the stone floor of the passage and out of earshot. I only clicked onto the gravitas of what she had said a few seconds later.

  ‘Wait, we?’ I said, turning to Ariadne. ‘What the hell does she mean by we?’

  ‘She is part of the scouting party,’ Ariadne said matter-of-factly.

  ‘But she’s the princess.’

  ‘Just because she’s the princess doesn’t mean that she doesn’t have duties as a fighter. She is a formidable foe. If we needed the queen to fight, she would also do the same. Even if she is our leader, it is still a required duty to participate in combat.’

  ‘If only my world were like that,’ I scoffed. ‘It’d probably be a much more peaceful place.’

  ‘Ours is certainly not peaceful. Although I suppose you don’t have insane creatures that could rip you apart in your world, do you?’

  ‘Metaphorically,’ I said. ‘But no, I guess not.’

  Ariadne departed and returned a short while later with my armour, my sword and my shield. It was composed of worn, scratched steel that had evidently seen more than its fair share of battles.

  As I figured it out, tightening it around my body piece by piece in the morning light of my cell, I tried to think of my new body, of this world and of the newfound confidence that seemed to have come along with it all… But that confidence had been a fleeting shadow that had only appeared with my new, formidable figure.

  In the quickly approaching face of battle, I felt like garbage. Once my armour was tightened I looked down at my sword and shield upon the cushions on my bed. I ran my hands over my neck lightly, feeling the sensitivity of my skin beneath my touch, and thought back to the battle that I had witnessed yesterday.

  The unnamed harpy who had fallen on the bloodstained grass of the battlefield had had her neck ripped open by those things. Snatchers, Ariadne had called them.

  That harpy had likely trained her entire life in the ways of combat, and she had been taken down in seconds by them.

  Now here I was, about to face the same enemies, with a single night’s combat training and a serious, serious lack of wings compared to both of my so-called allies and my prospective foes.

  The door to my cell opened and Ariadne appeared, looking me up and down.

  ‘You ready, Kit?’

  ‘I think so,’ I lied. ‘There’s just one more thing that I’ve gotta do.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  I stared down at my sword and shield for a moment before my chest heaved and I wretched violently. The next thing I knew I was bent prostrate over my previously unused shit-bucket in the corner, chucking my guts into it relentlessly.

  Finally finishing, I staggered back to the table in the centre of the room and took up a final glass of water, clearing my mouth out, before taking up my sword and shield and turning to her for what would likely be the last time.

  ‘Okay,’ I said, gutting up as best as I could. ‘I’m ready.’

  I walked alongside her to the end of the passage and up the steps into the light of the early morning. Together we walked through the streets of the citadel as the already familiar presence of the harpies appeared one by one. They followed us along passages and narrow roads, some waiting for us in the doorways to houses, others looking down from their rooftop perches.

  This time, though, the girls had reached an unspoken truce in their expressions; there was no smiling or laughing, no looks of fear or scepticism or apprehension.

  Every one of them looked upon me with welcoming, sullen faces. I had yet to speak to a single one of them beyond Ariadne, Queen Athina and Princess Evelina, but the familiarity of their woeful, longing stares took the fear away from me for a few long, fleeting moments and replaced it with a strange sense of regret.

  I had just arrived in this world, and I was likely about to be taken from it.

  In the plaza we joined with three other harpies clad in armour. Not a second after I arrived I watched as Princess Evelina appeared at the head of the steps, giving her the queen a final look before she descended the steps to meet us.

  The queen’s stony expression remained, but I knew it wasn’t out of a lack of love for her daughter. It was a requirement for such a situation. This was what the harpies had become, after what Ariadne had told me. This is what they had to become in order to have a chance of surviving.

  Silence reigned over the plaza as we headed out, the rest of the harpies following in our wake. Princess Evelina didn’t lead. Amongst our group she was just another soldier, wearing the same armour made of the same steel.

  We approached a pair of large wooden gates that were pulled open by two harpies standing either side of them, and out into the undefended world we went.

  ‘You really think this is going to work, Evelina?’

  Ariadne broke the silence only a minute after the gates had closed behind us. We had emerged onto a grass verge marred by a makeshift series of steps that clearly indicated we weren’t in the safety of the citadel any longer.

  Only now did I get a decent view of the sheer size of Aries Island – it was a gigantic land mass, stretching out at least a mile from where we stood in every direction. Rolling cliffs and hills were interspersed haphazardly with patches of tropical forests, ranging from small and bare to large and deep, one of the latter of which we were heading in the direction of.

  Weirdly enough, though, that wasn’t what I was focusing on.

  ‘You looking to get your ass kicked?’ I said to Ariadne.

  ‘Well if I am, I doubt you’ll be the one doing it.’

  The rest of the harpies laughed from behind their helmets and masks.

  ‘You just referred to the princess by her first name,’ I said. ‘I would’ve thought you would be ended for that.’

  ‘It may be the case inside the walls of the citadel,’ Princess Evelina said. ‘But the moment we don our armour and step beyond those gates, I am a solider like any other. In combat we are all equals. A sword hits us all the same way.’

  I was completely taken aback, understanding the logic immediately but struggling to wrap my head around it.

  Out here in the wilds of the island, she was just Evelina.

  ‘Damn,’ I said, ‘Well, if that’s the case, I feel the need to say the following; fuck you, Evelina. Really, fuck you.’

  ‘I don’t really think that I deserve that,’ Evelina said, not even dropping a beat.

  ‘Don’t deserve it?’ I said with exasperation. ‘You’re escorting me to my death. Don’t worry, I’m not gonna make a run for it or anything. Your mother made that situation pretty clear. I’m just weighing up my options, but that old vulture hasn’t really given me many.’

  She moved so quickly at the drop of that final sentence that I hardly had time to stop. The next thing I knew Evelina was pointing the sharpened end of her spear straight at my Adam’s apple. I screeched to a halt just in time to avoid slicing me neck open and bleeding out, at least prematurely.

  Ariadne and the rest of the harpies all stopped and turned in our direction as Evelina stared me down hard, a look of pure thunder flaring in her eyes.

  ‘I may be just another soldier out here, Kit,’ she said slowly through teeth gritted so hard that they could have chewed through my armour, ‘but if you talk about my queen like that again I’m gonna turn you into a suckling pig and personally feed you to the Snatchers myself.’

  I didn�
��t need to say anything in response to Evelina. She could probably guess from the flat expression of regret on my face that I took back every fucking word that I had said. Slowly, she pulled the spear away from my neck before carrying on in the direction we had been heading, along with the rest of the harpies.

  ‘And,’ she continued, a smile returning to her voice, ‘she’s not my mother.’

  I hurried after them, keeping a tight hold on my sword and shield. By my estimations I was probably carrying at least a hundred pounds of weight on my person, but it felt like less than half of that. My newfound muscles weren’t just for show – they actually worked.

  ‘What the hell does that mean?’ I whispered to Ariadne. ‘That she’s not the queen’s daughter? I thought she was the heir.’

  ‘It’s a long story,’ Ariadne replied. ‘Not now.’

  I let it slide, but the situation still baffled me. I had never heard of someone unrelated to the royal line becoming the new leader, in any monarchy. Wasn’t that the point of a monarchy in the first place.

  ‘Wait,’ I said catching up with them. ‘What is the plan?’

  ‘Based on our intelligence,’ Ariadne said, ‘the group of snatchers that we’ve been tracking will be making their way through that patch of forest – there.’ She pointed to the forest in question with her spear. It was at least a few hundred yards in diameter on all sides. ‘Snatchers may be able to fly, but they’ll be wanting to keep a low profile. They’ll stay low on approach. We’re going to stay in the trees above as they approach, then execute a surprise vertical attack the moment they’re beneath us.’

  ‘Now I get why you aren’t flying down there,’ I said.

  ‘Low profile,’ Evelina remarked. ‘And we don’t want to leave your pathetic behind up here.’

  A round of laughter came from the harpies. I didn’t mind being the butt of the jokes though. Perspective has a way of bypassing your ego when your life is on the line.

  We were descending into a heart of darkness as the hill bottomed out and we approached the forest, but the sun had different things to say. As I looked out over the archipelago in the midday light, I marvelled at the sheer scale of the network of islands that stretched out across the ocean. Once the harpies had controlled all of this – now they were confined to this one island and still clinging onto it, even with every single one of the men gone - apart from me. But considering what had happened to all of the other men who had once occupied these lands, I didn’t exactly like the way that this was going.

  A screeching roar suddenly boomed across the island, and all five of the harpies came to a halt. The wings on the backs of some fluttered sharply before settling, like those of a frightened bird. A large flock of colourful, winged creatures exploded from a small patch of forest down the cliffside to our left, soaring sharply into the sky in a frantic upheaval.

  ‘Let’s keep moving,’ Ariadne said.

  ‘What the hell was that?

  ‘It’s not just us and the snatchers that occupy this island,’ she replied ominously. ‘There are things out there that the sun itself is terrified to cast its light upon.’

  I refrained from following it up, only managing a gulp.

  We proceeded on until the undergrowth became thicker and any semblance of a path that had existed gave onto tall grass and thick shrubbery.

  And up ahead, awaiting us, the forest loomed.

  At the edge of the treeline a torrent of raindrops rushed down from a palm leaf overhead, tapping on the shoulders of my armour. The vegetation of the island looked familiar, but all of it possessed a brighter, more colourful tinge than anything I had seen back on Earth.

  ‘Silence from here on out,’ Ariadne said, turning to me. ‘Nothing more than a whisper. And watch your footing.’

  ‘For twigs or dry leaves, you mean?’

  ‘Sure. And traps, too.’

  ‘Traps?’

  ‘Snatchers may look stupid, and in some respects they are, but they still possess reason and the ability to make tools. Be on your guard.’

  I gulped once again, my heart racing in my chest.

  But I had done enough worrying about dying. I thought back to the cliff, and the gut-wrenching drop. I had been a dead man once already in the last 24 hours… It was time to nut up and deal with it.

  The six of us broke through the treeline, and together we trekked through thick shrubbery and between tree trunks that grew thicker and thicker the further and deeper we ventured. I stayed silent, copiously examining and calculating every single step that I took, checking obsessively for any sign of something that wanted to maim or wipe me out.

  I was light on my feet when I needed to be, at least back in Chesterfield during late night jogging sessions, but I was still getting the hang of the strength that I commanded. It was a miracle that I didn’t go toppling on my ass and awakening every single predator that wanted me dead before we came to a halt in a patch of the forest that was a little more bare than the rest.

  One of the three other harpies that had joined us held up her hand, and we all ground to a halt. She knelt down, examining the undergrowth, before turning and nodding. Together we examined it, and after a moment of training my eyes in the darkness of the forest, any glowing overhead blocked out by the thick leaves that hung abundantly from the innumerable branches above us, I realised what we were looking at. There was a makeshift, barely worn path through the forest, with some of the dried dirt even bearing signs of footprints.

  Suddenly, no more than fifty yards off, there was a rustling ahead of us in the forest. The harpies all stood from where they knelt, their wings outstretching. They nodded to each other, before bending their knees and swiftly, silently, taking off into the air above.

  Even considering the fear that was coursing through me, I still couldn’t help but marvel at the majestic sight of their white wings striking against the air as they ascended alongside the trees, eventually leaping from branch to branch before they settled in their selected positions, looking down upon exactly where I stood and readying their weapons.

  I felt like the target all of a sudden, but that wasn’t the case – and not all of the harpies had left me. Evelina remained be my side.

  ‘Sorry for keeping this from you until now, Kit,’ she whispered, ‘but I need to request that you stay here until the snatchers arrive.’

  ‘Can’t you just carry me up there with the rest of you?’

  ‘I could, but that would negate our strategy and render our missions useless.’

  ‘… Why?’

  ‘Because we need someone to stay down here and ensure that the snatchers remain in a confined space so that we can take them out quickly.’

  Before I had a chance to say another word, Evelina winked at me, stepped back, looked up to the branches high overhead and took off, her white wings carrying her effortlessly into the air to land upon a branch with the others.

  It didn’t matter, though – I already had the answer to my question.

  No, I wasn’t the target.

  I was the bait.

  And the snatchers were approaching.

  I readied my sword and shield, awaiting the oncoming horde of humanoid creatures that were approaching fast, the rustling of leaves and the tearing of branches and the snarling of scarred maws growing louder and louder.

  The thought of them upon the pasture ripping through that harpy’s neck and leaving her bloodied and lifeless upon the floor came flooding back to me.

  I didn’t know who was my ally and who was my enemy. In this land it could have been either of these groups of beings, but one thing I was sure of; the harpies seemed to want me dead a lot less than the snatchers did.

  Up until now, that was; now it was pretty neck and neck.

  Around the looming tree trunk directly in front of me two of the humanoids swooped. It took a second for them to realise that I was here at all, and from their maws an array of screeching, violent howls boomed in my direction.

  Even if I had seen th
eir work already, even if I had seen the death that they could bring in seconds, the roaring adrenaline rush in that moment made me truly believe that I could take both of them, if only for a second. That lasted until a moment later, when more than a dozen of the creatures came swarming around the trees ahead of me, forming a semi-circle formation around me that said one thing.

  You are well and truly fucked, good sir.

  A shrieking series of war cries broke out overhead, and the harpies descended onto my assailants.

  They not only dropped onto the creatures, they propelled themselves at them, using the force of their wings against the air, fighting against the limitations of gravity in throwing themselves forward with their spears. Each of my five allies – I had settled on that word, considering they had put my life in danger and now saved it – speared a creature each into the ground. Spears tore through tattered feathers, splintering skulls and destroying jaws, nailing their bodies-turned-corpses into the ground before simultaneously ripping them free and turning to the rest.

  I had a chance. I could turn and run. But not a single cell in my body made to turn.

  For some godforsaken reason that I couldn’t even begin to fathom, I wanted to stay and fight.

  So I did.

  The cramped surroundings of the forest made for awkward, brutal conditions to fight in. Moving forward with my sword in hand, I made for a snatcher whose claws were interlocked with Ariadne’s spear. She pushed hard, gritting her teeth, and just as it began to bend I spun the handle of my sword in shaking hands, holding it blade-down like a dagger, and leaped forward, plunging the blade deep into the Snatcher’s throat.

  I had stabbed with all my might, yet the tough skin of the beast still gave some resistance. It was no match for my new strength, though. The blade dug deep into its neck and through its chest, and its body seized up, a splatter of blood coughing from its mouth and onto Ariadne’s armour in the process, before I withdrew the sword roughly.

  I was so happy with my kill that I paused. Mistake number one: hesitating in battle, even for a moment, will get you killed.

  Ariadne grabbed a hold of my shoulder and forced me to the ground at her feet, thrusting her spear over my head. I had just enough time to see the sharpened tip cut through the wing of another snatcher, but she didn’t give it an inch – wrenching her spear upwards with an emphatic war cry, it ripped through the creature’s wing, tearing it up to the bone and breaking it.