Harem World 1

  Harem World

  Part One

  by Nick Storming

  Published by: Fractured Press

  Copyright 2019 by Nick Storming

  All characters are 18 and older

  Discover other titles by Nick Storming:

  The Power: Volume Four - Coming Soon!

  Little Sister Sinner - Coming Soon!

  Chapter One

  Twilights deepening gloom hung about the ancient redwood forest and in its depths a young man wandered well-worn paths. He seemed sure of himself as he strode along, his steps confident and smooth, but his eyes were unfocused and his mind a storm of pain and sadness, escaping down random thoughts, while trying to avoid the bitter truth of what he’d just witnessed in that bedroom.

  Braden had grown up in these woods and knew them as well as any. Though his feet carried him forward into the forests shadowy depths his eyes saw nothing of his surroundings, his mind working hard to think of nothing or anything other than the one inescapable fact, that his life was over and all he had built destroyed.

  That truth was revealed three hours before; when he arrived home early from work and found his best friend’s car parked in the driveway. Entering the house, he’d followed the sounds of lovemaking to find his wife in bed with the man. The woman he loved more than anything and the man he had built a business with. Her first reaction had been anger, not shame or guilt. That fact would always stick with Braden. The look of anger and indignation on his wife's face and the look of pure shame on his friends. How could he go back home now? How could he return to work? What kind of shattered and broken world was left to him?

  Feeling the chill in the air, Braden dragged himself from his dark thoughts. The fog of sadness and pain lessening, replaced with concern when he realized how far he had wandered. Twilight was fast approaching and the deepening shadows closed in around. Getting his bearings Braden turned down a trail, heading back home, just then there was a loud staticky sounding explosion deeper into the woods ahead and on his right. Curiosity drew Braden after the sound and as he approached the popping sound of electricity grew louder and he slowed wary of being shocked.

  Walking cautiously around the base of a great redwood Braden was stunned to see a warping purple circle of swirling energy. The disk twisted and warped in ways that hurt his eyes to watch, but what drew his gaze further were the pair of slim blue legs, mangled and bloody that stuck out the bottom of it

  --------------------

  Druska was dying. Gasping out her last breaths and cursing the vagaries of physics. Her body trapped halfway through a faulting displacement portal and the gods only knew what backwater planet its scrambled logic was trying to dump her on. Trapped in no-space in broken mathematical loops, she reflected on how she’d ended up in this situation.

  Her scouting mission had been a success up until that point. This planet was rich in organic and mineral wealth, with oddities and wonders that would make even a Member of the Board salivate.

  On her flight around the planet, cloaked and on quiet mode, her scanner detected several races of sentient life, scattered and spread throughout the world. The scanners even detected many deep within the crust of the world. None of them, thankfully, appeared incapable of significant defense.

  There were many small civilizations of stone and wooden construction. What she could discern of the local’s technology from her initial pass, was rudimentary at best. Transportation was mostly by foot, occasionally four legged beasts of one variety or another.

  They managed to discover the wheel at least, Druska thought to herself. How do the primitives even bathe?

  On the third morning of her mission Druska landed near her initial entry point, her systems reassuring her that there were a bare handful of sentient life anywhere near the vicinity. Preparing herself for an excursion into unknown territory she dressed in the tight dappled black and grey leathers of her order and equipping shield, blaster and blade headed out into the forest.

  As she collected samples, she was amazed by the colorful beauty in plant life as she cut their stalks with a small blade and dropped them into sample containers. A couple house later as Druska was making her way back to the ship, samples safe in no-space she was startled by a shrieking voice.

  “There be the witch, what killed all our chickens!”

  Turning to see the speaker Druska was struck across the body. The massive boulder appearing from her blind spot as turned. Her shields sprang into being instantly but their generators, of the finest corporate design, struggled to blunt the force driving her into the ground.

  Druska reacted without thought, rolling with the energy of the blow and striking the ground hard but unbroken. Drawing her side arm, she let off a shot at her attackers even as she rolled clear. Her target was a tall, dark skinned old man with a long thick hair and ratty beard, ragged purple robes draping his boney frame.

  What titanic machine or beast threw a rock the size of a pig at me? She thought to herself, firing off more shots at the man. The green bolts of plasma ricocheted from some combat shield of his own. Cursing herself and wondering what other hidden technologies these people had Druska came up into a crouch, blaster trained on the old man as she reached for a frag grenado on her belt.

  The old man lifted his arms, robes falling down to reveal surprisingly strong arms and he began to weave his hands about in complicated gestures, bright lines of crackling flame and blue glowing energy tracing behind his fingers as he worked quickly.

  Druska wasn’t going to wait to find out what the crazy old man was doing, reaching back she hurled her grenado at the old man. Noticing the old woman crouched in his shadow, slight and emaciated, the parts of her flesh Druska could see were riddled with scars.

  The grenado struck the old man's shield and detonated, Druska was pleased to see both he and the woman thrown back and away from one another. She didn’t wait for the dust to settle, launching herself forward in the wake of the blast, drawing the short blade from the sheath across her lower back and priming her pistol.

  Druska’s keen hearing and vibration sense had been trained since birth for exactly these types of situations. In the cloud of thick dust, their ears ringing with sound, her enemies showed a second of hesitation, and in that moment, placing the stillness’s of their locations within her mind, Druska struck.

  Blaster shots rang out unerringly true, their green glow giving away her location but Druska was already on the move. Only a handful of seconds had passed since the confrontation began, but she’d gathered some information about the locals mysterious tech.

  Stepping closer toward the old man, Druska could make out the glowing lines of whatever he had been drawing. Silent as death she lunged forward out of the cloud of dust, the ancient family blade of legendary Vorpal Engineering sliding through the pretty glowing picture.

  At first many of the lines shivered in place like a cord struck, some disappeared instantly in a puff of colored light. The image they formed began to warp and the old man's face turned from concentration to surprise as her blade piercing his working then finally to horror as it drove through his shield and into his throat, passing out the back of his neck as Druska finished her elegant thrust.

  Just as she was about to smile to herself, the sizzling slice through the picture tore apart in an explosion of fire, wind and detonating thunder. Druska felt her shields over ridden as her body was thrown clear, flesh torn and limbs mangled by the churning forces around her. Tumbling through the air and screaming out a curse at herself for being a failure Druska broke the Recall Beacon hidden within her body.

  Unfortunately, the Recall Beacon had been hidden in her hip and had taken the brunt of the blast. Its displacement portal sprang into being drawing her in with its never natura
l embrace, while she still spun through the air end over end. To make the calculations that much more difficult half of the logic systems within the Recall Beacon were without function now. And so, her curse reached an even higher pitch, when the sparking, faulting portal swallowed only half of her mangled body, dumping it on the edge of the universe.

  --------------------

  Braden watched the slim damaged legs twitch and leak blood but the strange magical portal made him hesitate from moving forward to help her. Pulling out his cell phone he looked down, knowing what he would find a dead signal and no service. Looking around, he spotted an old dry branch and grabbing it up approached the woman slowly.

  He got about ten feet away thinking he must be a fool and reached out, hooking a crooked limb under both ankles. He felt the legs twitch and kick when he first got then in the branch and he lost his hold. Frustrated he poked one uninjured thigh lightly but insistently until the legs died down. When they had he reached forward again lifting the legs and beginning to pull a torso slowly emerging from the strange magical portal. He took one small step reset his footing and leverage the branch further under the legs but he hadn’t noticed the warped and twisting portal arching itself along the ground behind his feet.

  The barest sliver of Braden’s heel touched the portals writhing edge and Braden instantly felt the shock of it. His entire skeleton was on fire. His flesh peeled away one bit of information at a time, each registered in broken databases. The pain intensified until Braden couldn’t think, didn’t know how he was conscious, layers of his existence peeled away one painful piece at a time. And then the pain was gone and not just pain, but all sensation. The lack of feeling was so intense Braden felt like he should be sick, but he just felt empty.

  Is this death? He thought to himself. Or is all of this some mad hallucination?

  Braden had form he realized and once the thought occurred to him, he also realized he could feel his eyes closed. Opening them he looked down to see a crude approximation of himself. Blocky limbs and club like hands raised before a face that felt just as unformed. The grey nothingness around him began to take shape before, a tall rectangular window appeared that looked something like a DOS prompt but with strange characters that swam before his eyes as he tried to decipher them. The longer he stared the more they began to make sense and then he could read it and wanted to shit his pants:

  Welcome!

  This is the Corporeal Materialization interface

  Powered by Good Corp!

  You have encountered an error. Good Corp wishes you well in the resolution. If you wish to proceed it will be of your own free will and you will be absolving Good Corp of all liability. We thank you for your contribution to our bottom line!

  FAULT -- unrecognizable sentient life → database error

  RETURN SIGNAL -- database ID tag created → new species identified

  PROCESSING ERROR -- specimen cataloging incomplete → rematerialization blocked

  RECOMBINATION EXECUTE -- specimen in proximity → randomized combination

  FAILSAFE -- Body Creator V 0.2 beta

  INCOMPLETE DATA FOR REMATERIALIZATION

  Random Stats Generated:

  Click YES to accept

  NO to delete yourself.

  Braden began to feel the edges of panic creep into his thoughts but the situation was so unbelievable and surreal that his mind couldn’t fully process it all. Instead he focused on the prompt before him.

  Reading over the stats that had been generated for him, he felt himself in familiar territory. Laid out in a graph were basic character stats such as Strength, Agility, Health, Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma. Below those was a list titled Powers: with four lines that were greyed out that he couldn’t read.

  Braden unsure what to do reached up with one block hand and touched the YES where it hovered before his eyes and then the prompt changed.

  WE APOLOGIZE FOR THE DESTRUCTION OF YOUR FORM AND THANK YOU FOR ABSOLVING GOOD Corp OF RESPONSIBILITY!!! HAVE A GREAT DAY!!!

  Then Braden felt a terrible gut-wrenching sensation as he was torn through time and space, his body being reshaped around him.

  --------------------

  Druska felt her legs being poked and prodded by something hard and she cried out in pain. The hard object lifted then, tearing flesh as dragged at her. Her legs collapsed once more on the foreign soil and Druska screamed out on the other world, her stomach heaving with pain induced nausea before darkness stole her into its painless embrace.

  The agony returned in searing fire as once more she felt her body being dragged through into the unknown world. Nightmarish images filled Druska’s mind of drooling fanged mouths and ripping talons waiting for her on the other end and she clawed at the soil trying in vain to halt her approach.

  The portals edge had just begun to creep past her navel and her scrambling fingers grew desperate when the flashing red of FAILSAFE brought with it some relief. One was never certain when corporate software would determine that executing a FAILSAFE helped the bottom line. Or when some other outcome, less hospitable to organic life would be more profitable.

  The portal, in broken internal logic resolved to return all organic matter to the portal’s original location, seeking to undo any errors it had generated. Unfortunately, the presence of Braden and his stick complicated things. In the end it activated a prepackaged FAILSAFE, instantly charging the three entities with a corporate bill.

  Druska was drawing into the flashing red warping, sparking portal. Screaming as every particle of her being was reforged and returned to the smoking pit she had just let.

  --------------------

  The warping crackling energy tore through Braden’s body, depositing him naked onto damp soil where he fell onto his hands and knees. All the muscles of his body were screaming in pain and his stomach rebelled against him, and he sat retching up lunch and stomach bile all over the soft forest floor. Out of tear-filled eyes he could see a naked creature curled up nearby retching out blue black bile into the forest floor.

  Gazing around he found himself in an unfamiliar forest, filled with types of trees that he'd never seen before. Off to one side of the little clearing was the smoking wreckage of a plane or ship of an odd angular design that was a broken and smoking ruin. There was also the crumpled form wrapped in ancient black robes on the far edge of the clearing. Beside him lying on the forest floor inches from his hand was a huge sword nearly five feet long, with a hilt and cross guard in the shape of an ancient tree, roots swirling around a brilliant emerald and the limbs twisting together into a cross guard.

  Then a groan brought his attention back to the woman laying nearby. Curled up and shivering, her limbs and muscles twitching like his were and her skin was covered in lacerations, torn flesh and deep bruises like she had been in an explosion and looking around at the forest floor it looked like a battle had taken place here.

  The woman, the only thing Braden was certain of, had light green skin and long thick straight blonde hair. Her body was covered in tight fitting clothes that were torn and covered in her blood. She rolled over and her eyes opened wide in surprise when she saw him there and she scrambled back away from him. Her face was almost human in its shape and form, just like the rest of her slim body. Other than the color of her skin she looked remarkably human, with high firm breasts, a tight and round behind and a face so beautiful it was hard for Braden to look away.

  The alien woman scooted herself back and away from Braden, looking frantically to left and right. She reached down to her side and Braden saw and empty holster of an unfamiliar design. The woman spoke then in a harsh sounding language that Braden couldn’t understand, her voice pitched high in fear and pain.

  “I can’t understand you.” Braden said raising his hands in what he hoped was a universal sign of peace. His head still pounding and his muscles still aching although the pain was receding.

  “Where the hell am I?” He wondered to himself looking around at the strange world


  The alien woman spoke once more, a question Braden thought. Her eyes taking him in from head to toes. Braden ignored the woman and began walking over to the corpse to inspect it. He stumbled when he took his first step however, his limbs awkward and weak like a newborn. Looking down at himself Braden was stunned to see that his body was very different than the one he had woken up that morning.

  First off, he was taller now, easily seven or eight inches taller than he had been before and the added weight he had gained over the past few years was gone, replaced with a muscled and lean body like that of an athlete or model. His movements came quicker and sharper and he had far more control over his fine motor functions. Running his hands over his face he felt that it had changed as well, not much but the jawline was definitely firmer, his nose no longer crooked from when it had been broken in a school yard fight and his hair… running his fingers over his head Braden felt tears begin to stream down his face as he felt thick long locks flowing back and hanging down to his shoulders.

  Braden had always been a little soft around the middle and shorter than average yet he’d never felt self-conscious or embarrassed by it. However, when his hair had begun to fall out in his early twenties, Braden became self-conscious for the first time in his life.

  As Braden approached the corpse the stench hit him before he could make anything out and covering his nose, he edged closer. Wrapped in purple robes was a puddle of goo, parts of organs, pale pink skin and bits of bone sprinkled throughout. He couldn’t see what had done such terrible damage to the creature. He backed away quickly eager to be away from the grisly sight and smell.

  The woman stood and was making her limping way over to the destroyed ship, searching the ground around her as she went. Braden eyed her warily and moved back around the clearing.

  “What is this place?” he asked.

  The alien woman glanced at him and said something in her foreign tongue. The sound of her voice was alien to Braden’s ears, high and musical almost hypnotic in the tonal sounds of her language. He saw a high tree root and made his way over to sit down, his muscles and body still aching and head pounding. Just as he was about to sit down, he saw a small metal object in the forest loam, hidden beneath some moss. Pulling it free he heard a hiss from the alien woman.