Day 8 – Between Two Shores – Part 4
Noon came and the air became hotter, so Alex decided that they would go inland next. In the distance, he soon spotted jungle trees. A fairly expected fixture of the tropical island, but not one they would reach within the hour.
Instead, they kept on walking between the pink, bulbous berry bushes. They treated themselves to a few ripe fruits in passing. There was no reason not to, they were hanging right there and being bipedal had the advantage of eating and walking at the same time.
What was not an expected fixture of the landscape was a crater. “Careful,” Alex told everyone and led the way. The crater was old, much of it covered by grass, but the crest of the depression was still very visible. Wary of anything that may hide behind it, the head of the party stretched his head as much as he could. Height had its advantages. “Nothing there, except for a rock.”
With more confidence, he crossed over the corona of the crater. The ground was a bit rocky, but still mostly covered by grass and shrubbery. At the bottom of the crater, doubtlessly the item that had created it sat the aforementioned rock. An outstandingly black thing that stood about half a meter tall in a shallow pond of rainwater. Its original size must have been much greater, scattered out by the impact.
“I think the answer to the obsidian may be a volcanic eruption,” Alex suggested.
“Whaaaaat, nooooooo,” Charlotte cried out sarcastically. “Get out of here! Volcanic glass and now volcanic rock scattered about with kilometres between them and you suggest there may be a volcano around? No shot!”
“Sarcasm is unbecoming of you,” Tess remarked, equally sarcastically.
Cackling, Selana gave her fellow big-titty tomboy a slap on the back. “Sarcasm is like half of your personality.”
“What’s the other half?” Tess wanted to know.
“Annoyedly raised eyebrows.”
Tess raised one eyebrow, then pulled both together when she realized what she was doing. While his women were bantering, Alex stood at the edge of the shallow pond. ‘Should I touch it?’ he wondered. Odd things happened sometimes when he interacted with outstanding pieces of the landscape like this. Maybe this was another such case?
Before he could come to a decision, his eyes fell on something nearby. “Huh, now that’s useful,” he said out loud, before picking up what he was talking about.
It was a stone rod, about as long as his forearm and as thick as the branch of a young tree. Its surface was almost impossibly even, making it easy to hold on to. It was heavier than wood or metal would have been, but not by so much that Alex struggled to keep hold of it. Giving it a testing swing, he nodded to himself.
‘Best to hold onto this,’ he thought.
“Let me guess, you’ll touch the thing now?” Tess asked.
“...Yes,” Alex confirmed. “How did you know?”
“You keep touching things and it keeps working out for us.” The gothic woman sighed. “Go on, we’ll drag you out if you pass out.”
“Always there for me,” Alex spoke with genuine gratitude. It was enough to make the pale goth blush and tug at her hair. An adorable sight from such a toned woman. Trusting her and the other two tomboys to have his back, he turned to the stone. His feet disturbed the shallow water. He knelt down to touch the top of the stone.
Immediately he felt the power. It resonated with his blood, specifically a part of it that was already wide awake. It barely took any concentration for him to reach for the might of the earth and pull it into his veins.
“RAAAAH!” Alex let out an instinctive war cry. “DO NOT WORRY!” he added in a booming voice and gave the alarmed woman a wide grin. “I JUST:.. FeEl… STRONG!” He tried to keep his volume down but failed. The power pumping into his muscles, especially his arms, made him feel like he was a titan reborn.
An impulse to clench the hand resting on the rock was eagerly followed. His digits strained against the stone, porous from the bubbling heat that had formed it yet solid as rock should be. Suddenly, the stone gave under his palm, the shards failing to pierce his palm. The cracks swiftly spread, causing the entirety of the stone to collapse into small chunks and black dust.
“Jesus!” Selana exclaimed.
“No, just me,” Alex joked as he straightened back up. Swirling patterns of a colour two shades darker than his tanned skin now covered his lower arms. Crossing them, he gave his women a confident smile.
Watching him crush a boulder and confidence had the expected effect. Tess cleared her throat, Selana openly touched her cunt and Charlotte strut on over. “What else can those hands do, mhm?” she asked.
“I don’t know… let’s find out.” Using his free hand, the other still holding his new rock-stick, he picked up Charlotte. He did it in the most sexual way possible, placing his palm under the bit of skin between her two lower holes. Fingers pressing into her slick womanhood, he raised her up.
“Oh… oh yessss,” Charlotte hissed, riding his palm.
Alex did not feel like she was any lighter, just easier to hold. Any weight imbalance that should have happened was counteracted by some kind of metaphysics, keeping Charlotte nice and comfortable even when he stretched out his hand. His shoulder should have given from the leverage that pose created. It was harder, but still handleable.
“I have you in the palm of my hand,” Alex joked.
“...I’ll forgive you the dad joke!” Charlotte exclaimed with barely repressed laughter. “But only because I’ll make you one as soon as I get to!”
“I’ll remember that promise,” Alex said and put her back down. “Let’s not get stuck fucking under the sun.”
“Right… good thought,” Charlotte agreed.
They went north-west from there, following the shade offered by the edge of the jungle and the large ferns that sprung up around it. They took a little break or three to make sure each of Alex’ current companions were not distracted by their arousal. It also kept his balls from getting too heavy.
“That’s weird,” Tess said and pointed at something ahead of them.
The area they were now entering was largely flat grassland. There were some trees and ferns in the eastern bit, where they currently were. Between the two areas was a large spot of freakishly tall grass and verdant trees.
“It’s not that weird,” Selana said. “Just a spot where the plants grow way better.”
“Is that normal?” Charlotte asked.
Alex knew the answer, but Selana was already explaining things so he let her continue. “Pretty normal, all things considered. It just means that that particular spot is especially good for the plants to grow. Could be that something big died there and all the nutrients seeped into the soil. Could also be that something big shits there regularly. Or maybe the water table is just a bit elevated there for whatever reason.” The cow woman spread her arms in a dramatic shrug. “Take your pick.”
“I hope it’s not the shit,” Tess said drily.
“The smell?” Alex asked.
“I’d rather not run into something that takes dumps big enough to spawn an ecosystem.”
“Doesn’t even need to be that big, just needs to be regular,” the man of the island looked at the big fertile area. “In our case, this could also be fairy shenanigans.”
“Aaahh… yes, the fae,” Charlotte agreed. “Actually forgot about those for a moment… are we checking it out?”
“Currently considering that,” Alex answered.
After only a little bit of consideration, Alex nodded and then led the way. The closer they got, the more apparent it became that it would not be as easy as first thought.
The outer parameters of the freakish green area was a dense wall of grass taller than Alex was and braided vines. Knowing that it would be a detriment, he rammed the stone rod into the ground so it stood upright. “Let’s hope this is still here when we get out.”
Then, they began their advance into the bushland. Alex took point. The grasses were parted by his mass and his new grip strength made moving the vines aside a simple thing. “All smooth sailing back here!” Charlotte shouted, taking slow and measured steps through the tunnel he created. “Good job, big man!”
“Men have to be good for something,” Alex joked, only to almost stumble when he broke through the wall. On the other side of the grass was a jungle larger than what it had appeared as from the outside.
“Well, well, well,” a croaky voice greeted Alex. Every word was ended with the clicking of teeth against teeth. The creature speaking was right in front of Alex, sitting on a toppled, mostly decayed tree.
It was a weird thing. A sort of fusion between the hindlegs of a frog, the long legs of a reptile, and the neck plus the head of a small dinosaur. Its scaly skin was green, the belly a yellow-ish white, and from its back a number of displaced insect wings grew. Its torso was oddly small compared to its neck. Overall, it was barely bigger than a 4-year-old.
“Well, well, well,” the fae creature repeated, then said something else. Alex saw the lips of the sharp-teethed creature move and heard the snapping of its jaw. That was all he heard from it though. Annoyed, the creature tilted its head and then made a gesture for Alex to follow.
Having been blessed by worse things, the man of the island chose to oblige. The frog legs stretched, the fae creature flew, and Alex ran after it. He only turned around to see if the other three were followed. When he had verified that they were, he concentrated on the path ahead.
‘Running after a fairy… if I only had legends to go off of, I would be stopping myself,’ he thought, amused.
The creature kept guiding him deeper into the jungle, before ultimately stopping at a hollow tree stump. In it lied a seed the size of Alex’ fist. He was already familiar with the kind. It was similar to the one that had grown into their house tree. It felt weaker, subordinate, and that made it a powerful resource all the same.
“May I take it?” Alex asked and the little fae creature on the floor nodded. Taking his eyes off the being, he grabbed the seed, pulled it out of the tree stump, and then looked back down to see the entity gone. The entire jungle felt different and smaller all of a sudden. “Seems like my streak of being rewarded for touching things continues.”
“Lucky us,” Tess drawled.
“Really feeling the lack of bags now though,” Selana commented.
Alex got what she meant. They only had their hands to transport things and between the big seed in his hand and the rod outside, Alex would have both of those occupied as he walked. “We’ll have to deal with it,” he agreed with a sigh.
It drew Alex further north.
“Should we really step away from the jungle at this hour?” Tess asked. It was still hot, the colder evening hours not far away but not yet present. Still, the leader of the party stepped towards the north, the northeast.
“I got a feeling,” he said simply.
“It’s one of these days, is it?” Charlotte asked, amused. “Where we just walk from you having a feeling to the next place and you just collect all of the awesome stu-” She did not even get to finish that thought. “Oh wow, what is that?”
It was a blue light in the distance. A monument untouched by human hands. A lighthouse without a keeper, glowing distinctly against the equally azure sky. It was a towering stone of black, polished in its roughness, and it called out to Alex.
The closer they got, the larger the thing loomed. More than the distance decreasing, it seemed as if the stone was truly growing as the party got closer. It was a dominating fixture in an otherwise dull landscape of short grass and stone plateaus. A second, even brighter light shone at its base.
Alex did not have to ask himself if he were to approach this magnificent stone. “Stay here,” he told his companions, a full fifty paces away from the natural obelisk. Natural or shaped by forces that commanded nature itself, the man of the island could not fully say. All he knew was that it was his to claim.
Standing before the stone gave him a strange feeling. All he could liken it to was… the funeral of his grandfather. He had barely known the man, father of a distant father that he had been. As the seventh son, Alex was born when his grandfather had already been very old. Yet, he remembered what a titan of life the man had been, what economic and social forces he had commanded, and the gravitas of it all, sticking even to a closed casket.
This was similar. Alex stood before something so magnificent that he could only grasp at all that he was missing out on. The fullness of the opaque experience left him teary-eyed. He placed his hand on the black stone and felt the pulsing of ancient might within it. ‘It is only a shard,’ he thought. ‘It is only a shard.’
Kneeling down, he grasped the light. It had no source and so all he could do was clench his fist around it. Images flashed inside his mind. Colossal entities reshaped the world with every step, the rhythm of their gait the drums of war. In the distance, entities of souls just as large but forms the size of humans commanded thunder and magical might against the Titans.
‘Titanomachia,’ Alex thought, knowing just enough about Greek mythology to realize what he was looking at.
The conflict was just one of many. Other blood pulsed within Alex, allowing him to step back from the single perspective and see a larger picture. Wars upon wars were fought on battlefields immense and small on a landscape of ideas and reality intersecting. Then, a grey curtain descended on everything.
Alex returned to where his body was. He stretched out like he had with the shard earlier, reaching for the even greater power slumbering under this earth. The Titans’ blood was put into motion once more, making his heart beat slow and powerful, like those ancient steps.
Every time his blood surged through his muscles, they expanded. He was growing, growing faster and further than he had when first awakening the Titans’ blood. His bones surged in size and thickness to keep up with the demand. His overall build remained as before: toned and muscular. All of him simply grew larger in proportion. Only his cock lagged behind, for fear that it would turn too large to do the deed painlessly.
Alex shouted again, his voice booming with power that preceded even the divine. He was strong, so strong and yet that strength was untapped. What seeped into his muscles was not an immediate reward, but potential that would unfold as he grew further and further in power.
Rising to his feet, the blue light now extinguished, Alex spread out his arms and then slammed both of his palms against the obelisk. The shard of Titan crafting reverberated from the impact. For one last moment, it stood tall and magnanimous above the planes. Then, a pebble fell from the tip of the monolith.
It cracked swiftly. Chunks of stone rained down all around Alex. The black crumbled away in a roar. Like a hundred boulders sliding down the mountainside, the volume filled the man’s ears. He did not move, trusted in his instincts, and breathed calmly. Stone dust avoided his lungs. Stone chunks did not touch him. Stone broke obediently in his presence to reveal what had been left behind for an inheritor of the Titans’ will.
A weapon. A sword of rock and blood, standing almost as tall as Alex himself now was. The grip was smooth stone. The pommel was a diamond-shaped piece. The cross-guard was like wrought magma, crimson light and veins glowing underneath the black surface. The blade itself was similar. It was broad, double-edged and had a flat spine. From the guard to the tip, halfway hidden in the ground, a thick line of glowing red extended like a waterfall of flaming blood. From that centrepoint, veins reached to the edges. Parts of the sword were jagged, others gently curved, all resembling the surface of a great mountain.
The hand of the Titans’ descendant gripped the handle. A regular mortal’s hand would not have been capable of the strength required to keep the weapon steady. Alex did it naturally, The blade must have been two metres long, the handle adding another forty centimetres, all together making it taller than Alex was.
‘I think I can show off this time,’ he thought, using the dust cloud as cover to try a few ways to hold the sword. In the end, he decided to leisurely place the sword on his shoulder. He knew it would not cut him, just as he knew he did not have to carry it at all. This weapon was of his blood, it would heed his call - always. ‘This probably looks the coolest.’
Alex turned around and walked the way he came. A convenient gap in the fallen rocks let him stride confidently towards the three silhouettes waiting where he had left them. Slack-jawed, they watched him emerge from the dust, a mountain of a man, wielding a weapon that could not be called a sword. It was more like a slab of forged volcano.
“I would say that detour was worth it?” he suggested.
The tomboys were too flabbergasted to put together a response.