Finding Bliss: Fantasy MMMM Gay Romance (Trial of Submission Book 3) Read online

  Finding Bliss

  by Natalie Wish

  Copyright © 2021 Natalie Wish

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 978-1-913803-10-0

  www.nataliewish.com

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without expressed written permission from the author; exceptions are made for brief excerpts used in published reviews. All characters and events appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real events or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Next in the series

  Dear reader

  Newsletter

  Chapter One

  ∞∞∞

  “Are you ready to help me as promised?” Vitorous said, and his words hung in the air as Rogan stared at the blond elf in front of him, shaken to his core. He let the soul belonging to this body go; set it free as the pact with his warlock patron demanded.

  He didn’t expect Vitorous to keep the body and take it as a container for himself. Gods, what even was he now, in this form? (besides a sick bastard)

  Next to him, Xanran seemed to be more concerned with Weix being all buddy-buddy with the Master of the Trial.

  “Weix, did you know of this? Do you approve of this? This man just took over somebody else’s body!” Xanran’s teacher winced at his accusations but stood firm at The Voice’s side.

  “Approve?” Amusement danced in the human-turned-elf’s tone. “Oh, he doesn’t just approve. He helped me to get this far and made it possible. He is such a good boy, isn’t he?” His voice sounded entirely too suggestive.

  Rogan gritted his teeth. Could he actually object to this? All of his companions were as disturbed as he was, but there was a distant lack of one voice that mattered: his patron stayed silent. And Rogan knew there would be a sign if the spirit was displeased with this outcome. That meant the soul of this adventurer, who tried to do horrible things in The Trial, was indeed severed from the body. And without a soul wasn’t a body just a thing?

  Somehow, Rogan couldn’t convince himself of that and still felt horror at the sight of the animated dead body, a zombie, a lich... whatever this state of unnatural being was called.

  Wait, Rogan promised only to help set his soul free from its connection to this place, so that he didn’t have to perish when the magical dungeon was destroyed. Did Vitorous manage to achieve such separation already by himself? Maybe they could just leave?

  But the mage answered his unspoken question a second later, when he gestured to the glowing portal.

  “Where are my manners! Come in, come in! We can have this conversation with wine in hand, like civilized people.”

  “And you can’t stay outside for too long,” Weix added with a note of concern.

  “Psssh! Don’t worry your pretty little head, kitten,” the man answered brazenly and corralled them through the magical opening.

  When they stepped through the portal it was just as Rogan remembered. There was even The Voice (an automated spell?) that started to say the usual spiel, but Vitorous snapped his fingers and the voice quietened down. They followed him through the next door, but this time it wasn’t to a room Rogan remembered from The Trial. This one had windows for one, or at least nice illusions of them, with sunlight streaming gently through gauzy curtains. The furniture still looked incredibly posh and over the top, but there was a large table prepared for them with tea and delicate cakes and sweets that looked more like art forms than something you could eat.

  It was a beautiful room, but unfortunately it had one feature that did resemble the standard Trial rooms: the walls were covered from top to bottom in framed paintings.

  Oh no, tell me he didn’t.

  Rogan looked around the room, trying not to seem frantic, even as his heart pounded faster. And yes, there to the left of the largest window, was a painting of them.

  They had theorized that the paintings captured what happened during The Trial and were displayed in the ever-changing gallery if you finished it, but it was one thing to know this in theory and another to see it in practice, displayed so brazenly.

  Rogan was staring and the rest of the table was starting to pay notice.

  “Oh.” Mexi followed his gaze and blushed.

  “This looks so hot,” Xanran commented, gaze fascinated.

  Well, he would think that, seeing as it was his form writhing in ecstasy, surrounded by all of them.

  Rogan wasn’t enough of a hypocrite to protest his statement though. The piece captured the moment perfectly and he could feel his cheeks growing hotter by the second.

  “Well, well, it looks like you had fun!” Vitorous teased. “The room picks the paintings by itself, but it seems it choose something you like, hmm? Maybe I could give that painting to you?”

  “No,” Saainren said firmly and Rogan gave silent thanks to all the gods for his composed prince. “...it’s too large.”

  The Master of The Trial laughed, and Rogan cursed his prince for once.

  “I’m sure something smaller can be arranged! We can talk about this later. Now, there’s a reason you are here.” His tone changed to a more serious one. “I have contemplated my options and decided I do want to live if it can be achieved. I’m still not quite sure about that being possible, but I made a plan that at least gives me a chance. Getting a body definitely raised the probability of success.” Rogan didn’t miss the quick smile the man sent Weix’s way. “But I still need some things. Weix did a good job over the past few months and collected as much information as he could, but you will still need to investigate further and possibly... yeah, yeah, very likely, don’t look at me like that, kitten... put yourself into danger.”

  “Getting into dangerous situations is kinda what we do for a living,” Mexi commented dryly.

  “So it is,” the man agreed. “But it was actually only Rogan that made me any kind of a promise, so I wanted it noted that the rest of you aren’t obliged to do this.”

  “Pfft! And what, we would leave him to do this alone? The man can’t be trusted to not hurt himself while unsupervised,” Xanran teased.

  Rogan would let that one pass, as the heart of the message was more important than the wording. Xanran was saying they wouldn’t leave him to do this alone. This was what he expected, but it was still heartwarming.

  “We are all in this. We will help you as a team.” Saainren declared as their leader.

  Vitorous clapped his hands.

  “Good! Then I have a quest for you dears. I need you to get my body. Or well, what’s left of it after hundreds of years.”

  Rogan looked at the man with a horrified expression. Next to the mage Weix grimaced.

  “That’s not the worst of it.”

  “And I need you to get it from The Crimson Wasteland.”

  ∞∞∞

  Of course, it couldn’t be something simple, like, you know, buying a magical artefact or some good old-fashioned explosives. Xanran looked grimly at the zone of red in the distance. No, they had to go to a site of a magical apocalypse. But they at le
ast had some time to prepare, right?

  Wrong.

  Xanran scowled at a serenely smiling Vitorous and Weix, who was guiltily avoiding their eyes.

  “Remember to hurry! The Imperials are already setting camps over there.” The infuriating mage pointed towards the far away spot on the other side of the mountain. Xanran could just barely see an imperial flag waving in the wind, set atop a watchtower.

  It was just their luck, that another excursion into the no-go zone of the Red Wasteland was going to take place in just a few days. It would be near impossible to sneak into the dangerous territory once it started to crawl with Imperials. They had to move now or forget about this point of ordeal for quite some time.

  Saainren walked closer to Mexi and laid a hand on his shoulder.

  “Are you feeling up to scouting ahead?” the prince asked the young elf. “I’m afraid that neither Rogan nor I are good at sneaking. I can cast a spell that will let us communicate.”

  “Sure,” Mexi shrugged. “I can escape the notice of the guards. It’s the monsters waiting in the red that have me worried.” He shuddered and Rogan patted him on the back.

  “Leave those to me, squirt.”

  Mexi made a face at Rogan in reaction to the nickname while Saainren busied himself with casting the communication spell. Then the prince looked at Xanran.

  “Yeah, I will help as I can,” the dragon answered, without giving any particulars. The prince already witnessed multiple times how the druidic magic sometimes didn’t have a specific effect and just made the terrain, for the lack of a better word, friendlier. Having the forest work with them instead of against them was a great tool to have in one’s arsenal.

  They went towards the gigantic barrier of red, spreading over the once idyllic land of Arcadia. Two hundred years ago it was a small country known for its fertile lands and agricultural trade. It was a peaceful republic, an important breadbasket for the surrounding kingdoms and the empire. Their crops grew so well it felt like magic.

  Maybe it was, considering what followed.

  They sneaked through the forest, using Mexi’s cunning and sharp eyes to keep them from meeting any patrols and Xanran’s and Saainren’s magic to take a shortcut here and there. They flew over a river, used the vines called forth by the dragon to climb a cliff, and shared a handful of berries that Mexi picked up during scouting. And then they were in front of the imposing red barrier.

  It flickered slightly, unstable in its nature, but strong enough to resist any attempts to dispel it.

  “Another place destroyed by magic,” Mexi whispered quietly.

  “It’s a volatile science, magic.” Saainren gazed thoughtfully at the magical barrier. “I wonder what really caused this... corruption.”

  One day Arcadia was just gone. The explosion of magical energy killed all of the humanoids in the radius of the barrier, twisting all of the other living creatures. From hulking trees to the tiniest of flies, all life was trapped in an eternal nightmare. It became a cautionary tale not only for magic users, but those who dealt with them as well. ’This is what happens when mages run unchecked,’ they would say when imposing new magical laws. ’This is what happens when your life is too good,” the impoverished villagers would say. ’This is what happens,’ some would shrug, but a tragedy of such magnitude was a rare and terrifying thing that lived in the memory of the masses.

  “We should go in,” Rogan insisted, looking worriedly around.

  “Right.” Xanran straightened up and was the first one to enter the ominous red magic.

  He shuddered when he took two steps forward. From inside the barrier everything had a red haze to it; even the sky was tinted red. The plants and trees lost their usual coloration and gained foreboding hues. There was some pink and violet but mostly it was just red. Red. Red, everywhere was red. And Xanran felt sick in his stomach because the colors weren’t the only thing that was wrong. Nature itself felt wrong here. The corruption that spread here screamed at him in thousands of twisted voices, each clamoring to be heard, but getting lost in the howls of the others.

  “Well, that answers the question how even the druids failed to fix this place,” he breathed out with a shaky voice.

  Rogan was immediately at his side, saying:

  “Is it affecting you? Maybe you shouldn’t be he-”

  “Don’t even dare to finish this sentence,” Xanran gazed sharply at the fighter.

  Still, those words helped him in a way. He was now too irritated to concentrate on the sick feeling.

  Joy.

  Seeing the worried gazes, he sighed and conceded.

  “Fine. Give me a few minutes.” He thumped down on the red glass and concentrated on his druidic magic, just like he did when training with his cute bunny, BunBun. He missed him dearly, but Xanran ending up in a place like this was proof enough that he couldn’t keep the fluffy creature at his side while adventuring.

  This time, instead of coaxing his druidic abilities to the surface, he just pulled enough to grasp a thread of his magic and then pushed it down. It was an unpleasant feeling, the magic struggling against the surrounding wrongness like a prey that scented a predator, refusing to be cowed, but after a few minutes he finally soothed it and got it under control. It would stay a sharp pinprick in his mind, just at the edge of his awareness, but as long as he didn’t call it to the surface it shouldn’t respond as viscerally to the Red Wasteland.

  “There,” he declared and rose up, dusting off his travel clothes. “Everything is under control.”

  “And you will tell us if it’s not, right?” Rogan pressed.

  Xanran was getting ready to bristle again, his nerves frayed enough without the overbearing mother-henning, but Mexi laid a gentle hand on his arm, saying quietly:

  “We need to know things like that. It’s too dangerous if we don’t have all the information.”

  Xanran deflated.

  “I will tell you if it starts to bother me again.”

  Saainren nodded approvingly and finally they resumed their exploration. They knew the general direction of their goal, thanks to a compass that Vitorous and Weix constructed just for this purpose. This time they stayed together, more afraid that one of them would be taken off guard if they separated, than that they would be detected.

  Seeing the first animal that crossed their path was a traumatic experience. It was a mutated creature, no longer quite resembling a deer. With a tangled web of rotting antlers on its head and the twisted and scarred flesh, the buck looked like something out of horror. It gazed at them, with eyes that still spoke of intelligence. Xanran was terrified to think what he would find if he connected his mind to the poor beast. Were the animals a zombified remains of the creatures that existed here when the magical accident happened? Or could those half-dead creatures still reproduce? Xanran was very happy that the red barrier acted as a trap for the tainted abominations inside. The deer let them pass peacefully, though the lack of any fear from the normally timid animal was another sign of its unnatural state.

  “Keep your guard up,” Saainren cautioned. “I heard stories of those animals attacking people. They may only do that when threatened, or closer to the epicenter of the Red Wasteland, or have some other trigger.”

  “That’s one of the answers we could have found out if Vitorous didn’t push us here. For a soul I’m trying to save I have to admit I quite dislike the guy,” Rogan muttered.

  Xanran gasped dramatically.

  “Who are you and what did you do with Rogan? Where’s my ’let’s just go and fight’ companion of old?”

  Saainren muffled a laugh in his hand.

  “He got you here. You always complain about doing the research.”

  The eyeroll spoke for Rogan clearly.

  “Because I am not good at it, unlike-”

  “Yes?” Xanran grinned from ear to ear. “C’mon, say it
. I’m sure you won’t spontaneously combust.”

  “Unlike the prince,” Rogan finished pointedly and Xanran didn’t bother to hide his disappointment at the answer. Yes, the prince was scarily good at wringing the last drops of knowledge from books, but Xanran always found out heaps of information, mostly by talking to people. It was research as well!

  “Uh, guys,” Mexi butted in, his voice slightly off. “I think we may have a problem.”

  In his hand lay the compass, its arrow spinning wildly, rendering it useless.

  Xanran swore.

  ∞∞∞

  Mexi periodically looked at the compass during their journey and there was more and more interference as they moved deeper into the Crimson Wasteland territory. But this was the first time that the arrow didn’t stabilize no matter what he did. He took a few steps in every direction to see if he wasn’t on top of their goal, but it wasn’t the case. They even backtracked to the last point where the compass still worked (albeit with some difficulties), but it didn’t want to cooperate even there.

  “What now?” Mexi asked with a downtrodden expression.

  There were miles of ground to cover before them - even if they still knew the general direction, they didn’t know how far they had to go. Was the corpse in the center of the red zone? At the opposite edge? There wasn’t a giant arrow with a ’free remains here!’ pointing at Vitorous’ resting place. All they knew was the final ritual happened underground. But in 300 years the bones may have been moved into a different place or scattered all over by the wild animals.

  “I sacrificed my life there to create the Dungeon,” Vitorous informed them casually before they left for their quest.

  They were all immediately suspicious, because a powerful ritual done by a mage and a creation of a magically corrupted area would go hand in hand, but Vitorous reassured them that his death happened over a hundred years before the Crimson Wasteland sprung to life. Still, Mexi couldn’t fathom sacrificing his life to play a ghost in a sex dungeon. It was just too bizarre. But if there was one man who would go ‘Eh, I’m old, bored and powerful. Let’s turn my death into something fun.’ Mexi had to admit it would be Vitorous.