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The Wizard was trying to decide whether the Bat was conventionally attractive.
Bat wasn’t human. He wasn’t even a flavor of Aero Dwarf or Nimbari, whose ranks contained people more worthy of the word. Could it even approach use in regards to someone like Bat? He was monstrous: eight feet tall, edging on nine, with unnatural, purplish skin and all the features of a bat somehow carved into a being that walked on two legs. He had fangs, for goodness’ sake, and his eyes were a blank blue-white… though often filled with a startling amount of thoughtfulness, even if he lacked pupils.
But the word had merit, the wizard mused. He checked the boxes: tall, intelligent, rumbly-voiced. He carried himself with an alert smoothness that hinted at the strength hidden within his powerful limbs - and of course, the upper two were ever on display. (What a fantastic pity that his wings prevented him from wearing shirts with full-length sleeves.) Most of all, Bat was brooding in the true sense: a contemplativeness borne out of an excess of care. It had taken the Wizard a while to see that.
Mellori joked that Bat was all bark and no bite. But she had only said that because she hadn’t been on the receiving end of his claws. When he was cornered, Bat didn’t pull his punches, though he was quite contrite when they met again in Sepidious and he beheld their bandages. He’d even cracked a few jokes. It had been unusual to see his beastly lips tilted in a smile.
In fact, the Wizard thought, staring him down, the only really unconventional thing about Bat was that he was so unlike the rest of his family.
A shadow can never escape the darkness what bore it, the Admiral had said, and that was certainly true of Bat’s brothers. The Rat was purely evil: insidious where Bat was only reticent, hostile where he was just defensive. The Scorpion was simply coarse and fiery and vindictive. And their father… Bat certainly kept his cards close to his chest, but even his cool demeanor had broken when the Paradox Chain anchoring Mandalla had been severed. He’d even offered to restore Mandalla once his Shadow Essence was replenished – once the Wizard finished throwing their Shadow spells at him, like they were doing now. Compared to his family, Bat was practically bleeding-heart.
All this was to say, the Wizard couldn’t decide how they felt about Bat. Friend? Foe? Conventional… at all?
They had to decide. It was making it very difficult for them to do what they were about to do.
“Aaaaaghhhhh.”
Bat’s groan cut through the cavern air. Particles of smoky Shadow energy – remnants of their last spell – clung to his tensed-up form and swirled into his flesh like water through a sieve, and his lips were drawn back to expose his clenched teeth. The Wizard tried not to focus on how lurid that gasp had been, clutching at their spell deck like it was their last anchor against temptation.
Bat was very vulnerable right now, without his magic. Giving into that would not do.
“Good,” he panted, a pained smile pulling at his mouth. “I can feel my Essence building. Mandalla will be fixed up in no time. Hit me again, Wizard.”
He stood back up, unharmed but for his ragged breathing, and they saw he was flushed with exertion, coloring his snout and jaw indigo.
They weren’t used to seeing him so disheveled. Hit him again… did he have to say it like that, with such a plea in his voice? The Wizard drew their next card, a slight shake in their grip.
Their Shadow Shrike lashed at him with sharp and tenebrous claws, and the force of the blow bent him over like a broken twig. He clutched at his stomach, gasping for breath, his forearms criss-crossing so tightly over his abdomen that they could see where his belt buckle dug into the flesh. They had never imagined that they would use their Shadow magic for a purpose such as this, but Bat was hellbent on rebuilding Mandalla. They could see it in the sharpness of his gaze. And if he was certain Shadow spells would replenish his Essence, then they trusted him. Though they still couldn’t help but shiver (out of sympathetic pains, to be sure,) as they watched him struggle and writhe.
“Harder, Wizard,” he gasped as the energy seeped into his skin. “Don’t hold back. I can take it, I promise.”
Hngh. The Wizard felt like their lungs were caving in. They were grateful that the humid air and vines outside deadened the sound. They couldn’t imagine what assumptions Pork or Mellori would make if they had heard that.
The Bat huffed to get their attention, and when they looked back his ears had flicked downward with impatience.
“Come on,” he urged. “The faster you recharge my Essence, the better. Mandalla can’t fix itself, you know— nnnnnghhhh!”
The Wizard looked away, for propriety’s sake and for their own, as their Shadow Shrike struck the Bat across his cheek. They heard a hard thwack, and a moan tumbled from his mouth like water through a dam. For just a moment, his arms slackened, the Wizard saw the unmistakable outline of a tent in his trousers.
They stopped dead in the middle of their cast.
By all the forces of creation, and all that was good in the Spiral, why did everything have to be so hard?
They couldn’t stop their eyes from wandering this way and that along his flesh – seeing his strong arms furl upon his abdomen in an effort to hide himself, watching his chest rise and fall like a bellows beneath his chestplate. It was like he was built out of power – which they supposed he was, being a creature of Shadow – and it certainly didn’t stop them from staring. They were just contemplating the logistics of whether certain things would fit where with regard to someone of Bat’s size when the Bat snapped his jaws shut hastily and recrossed his arms.
The Wizard did the same, realizing their mouth had fallen partway open.
“Wizard?”
He blinked at them. Their golden pips illuminated the red on their face. And the purple on his.
“…Oh.”
‘Oh.’ It would almost be nonchalant if his face weren’t dark with incriminating flush. The Bat’s eyes narrowed and widened in an endearing to-and-fro. A spark of they-know and they-know-I-know flew between them, and all of a sudden, neither of them could find each other’s eyes.
Bat raised his hands in as if in surrender. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed, and the Wizard watched it with what they hoped was a normal amount of insatiable hunger, which was none.
“Look,” he said. “I’m sorry. It’s a… Shadow Creature thing. It doesn’t mean anything.”
His words hung heavy in the humid cavern air.
God, the Wizard hoped that last bit was a lie. They leaned on their staff, unable to hide the unseemly amusement that was pulling at the corners of their mouth. Their thoughts refused to come together, only swirling about their head in a mixture of hesitance and frankly improper curiosity.
The tips of his ears were flushed, flicking intermittently. “Let’s just continue... hey. What’s with that face?”
When he saw their smile, his eyes narrowed to bright blue slits. He drew himself up, crossing his arms, but instead of looming, the effect was more that of indignation. He sighed. It was a short, sharp sound.
“Go on, laugh it up. If you were on this side of the Duel Circle, you wouldn’t be so composed,” he said. “In fact I’d like to see you deal with it.”
He punctuated it with a roll of his glowing eyes, and then his ears stood straight up.
“I mean… Not like that. I wouldn’t want to see you all like this,” he explained, waving his hands. “You know what I mean.”
Bat dragged a hand down his face, hiding his flush under the veneer of exasperation. What a strange thing to say. It had the Wizard believing for one moment, that maybe, just maybe, the Bat was feeling the same way they were. They didn’t know if they should laugh at that, or start perspiring at an even greater rate.
They wet their lips without thinking, their fragmentary thoughts gathering into an idea. Tucking their wand into their belt, they stepped over the boundary that marked their position in battle, locking eyes with Bat on the other side.
He gave them a helpless sort of look.
“You’re not gonna stop now?” he said, his voice just shy of a plea. “Not when I’m – when we’re so close?”
The Wizard shook their head. It would take a hundred Belloqs to convince them to even consider stopping right now. But they had an idea, and they didn’t need to be on that side of the Duel Circle to put it into action.
The Bat looked on, confused, as they reached into their knapsack, retrieving a familiar longsword.
His breath hitched as they drew it out. The blade was made of jagged ripples that curled and jutted along its length, weaving to a deadly point, and the hilt was fashioned from the same peculiar purple metal as the blade, wound over with leather. The Wizard tested its weight. It felt sharp and solid against their flesh, heavy with the enchantments of Shadow magic.
The Bat’s eyes raked along the blade, focusing on its each and every detail, something like admiration in his gaze. There was no doubt that he could sense the concentrated power thrumming in the weapon. His own father had been there when it was created. Wizard drew forward, the blade extended, and settled the point against his chestplate.
Bat swallowed.
“This weapon – it’s made of Shadow.” he observed.
His words made the blade thrum from the point where his chest and the metal connected. His eyes were narrow, his breathing uneven. Something was there in his voice, a mixture of challenge and expectation.
“Is - is this your plan?” he asked, licking his lips. “To get up close and personal, so you can see my face better when you attack me?”
It was a question replete with double-meaning. They would have thought he had asked the question out of fear, if they weren’t able to see his cock newly straining against his breeches.
They lifted the blade higher, catching the bottom of his chin. He leaned his head back, his teeth clenched, the cool metal prickling at his Shadow Aura.
“Well, Wizard?” he said, his breath misting the sword’s gleaming surface. He kept his voice low and level, but it was thick – like he had to force the words out.
At that, the Wizard drew back the sword, and struck Bat with the flat of the blade.
Concentrated Shadow surged from the point of contact, branding his cheekbone with a blackness that sparked and hissed like acid. The Bat keeled over with the impact, landing on his knees. The howl he let out was one of furious pain.
And yet… the way it tempered off was breathy, hearty, gratified. As the Shadow sunk deep into the Bat’s skin, his hand landed between his legs. It was only when the dark magic had been completely absorbed that he came to his senses, his fingers flinching away like his own flesh were made of hot coals.
There wasn’t a mark on him. His breath stuttered to a pace just above normal.
“That certainly did things for my Essence,” was all he could muster, looking dazed.
Seeing him on the ground like this, knees on the stone… They didn’t have an Essence, but if they did, this was certainly doing things for them, too. It felt like someone was piling kindling into their chest, setting their whole body ablaze.
The Wizard stroked their hand along the sword, from the guard to the very tip, and Bat watched the movement of their hand with the claws of one arm biting into the trembling muscle of the other. Tendrils of dark smoke curled off his form as thiugh he were combusting from the inside.
“Wizard,” he said, a strain on the word. “Do that again.”
The look in his eyes was dark and plaintive, and beautifully frustrated.
The next hit thudded against his chestplate like a hammer on a nail, and he gasped as the air was pulled from his lungs, throwing his hands behind to the ground so he didn’t keel over backwards. The Shadow coiled over his stomach and breast, and he arched up into it with trembling muscles as it seeped into the gaps in his armor. His fingers fluttered over his abdomen where he had been struck, grasping at the sparks that lingered there.
“Hahh… I know you can do better than that,” he pleaded, heat pouring off of him in waves, his Shadow Essence augmenting like steam inside a kettle. “Hit me like— hahh… like when we first fought. You overpowered me so… so easily.”
The effort it took to speak made his voice low and rough. His head was falling back, the tendons in his neck standing out like thick cords, his mouth falling open to suck in jittery breaths. A blasphemous sort of gratification spread in the Wizard’s veins, thrilling like lightning in their every nerve. Had he been thinking about their first battle all this time?
If it was roughness he wanted then he would get it. They sank down to a part-crouch, one hand on the weak of the sword and the other wrapped round the pommel, and pressed their blade flat against Bat’s windpipe.
Bat went still as stone. His breath hitched as they curled their forearms in, driving the metal just slightly against his throat, coaxing him down, down to the cavern floor. They lowered themselves into a seated position upon his thighs, and as their forms touched, the Wizard’s magic stirred.
He was as hot as a furnace, his legs flexing and straightening to accommodate his new position, his claws rising up to eclipse the Wizard’s hands. They scraped gently against their flesh, shaky with restraint. They could feel his latent power in every twitch, and it set them alight with the notion that he could oust them at any time, but chose to remain here instead, breathless and burning in their grasp.
“Wizard,” he keened, his claws making divots in their flesh, “You don’t understand what you’re doing to me.”
They pressed the blade into his neck, and his words rose into a whine. His whole body strained up into them like a bowstring pulled taut.
“My Essence…” he said, his voice husky with effort. “It’s building… nngghhhh…”
Like a magnet, their Shadow and Light flickered, drawn in and repelled in an exhilarating turbulence, the points where they intermingled flickering with white-and-purple sparks. Bat stirred beneath his breeches, his slitted eyes blazing with blue-white light. Every pitch of his hips rocked them forward and back as he sought friction against their groin, nudging them closer to his cock. A dark flush had spread from the point where the blade met his skin, and he was pursing his lips tight not to make any noise, (wonderfully) being met with very mixed success.
The Wizard looked on, knowing their pupils were blown wide as they watched him whimper and keen. His hips rolled up into their grasp, rutting against their tunic – he was practically doing their job for them, driving himself crazy with his own lust.
Though they weren’t exactly in full control of their faculties, either. Their head was fuzzy with the scent of Shadow, and Bat’s peculiar, ozonous musk; they shirked their lower robe and underclothes with a deftness borne of primeval instinct.
The Bat’s eyes went wide as saucers as he beheld their bare flesh.
“Wizard – you’re…” His gaze raked across them as though they were one of his blueprints, straining to memorize its every detail. “Are you sure—?”
They parted their knees on either side of his twitching hips, relishing the sound of surprise that escaped him. In the haze of their Id they couldn’t imagine being any surer.
He nodded quickly while they undid his breeches, his eyes blazing like suns in the dusky shadows, hazy and pleading. With a shaky hand on their stomach they sank down upon his dick, and Bat howled.
Their Shadow trickled forth freely into him, pulsing like a metronome, marching forward between their bodies, and Bat’s grip fluttered on their waist as he acclimated to the onslaught of pressure and warmth. Sparks of it flitted down from their skin and seeped into his flesh, pleasure whirling between them at its each and every little point of contact as Bat’s hips rolled up into theirs.
“That – it feels – amazing,” he panted, his brow already shining with heat and exertion. “Your magic – it’s like it’s inside me…”
His grip on their waist was firmer now, just careful enough not to bruise, pinning them on his cock with a desperate ardor. Their sword had fallen to the ground in their haste, but the Wizard remembered it now.
When they rose up on their knees, the pommel in their grasp, Bat caught on quick. He keened, his hips moving beneath them with a feverish anticipation. The Wizard was operating on impulse, their breath hitching and straining with invigorating, long-awaited satisfaction.
“Wizard – hahh – the edge, not the flat,” he said, his voice rasping between an order and a plea. They flipped the blade, and its wicked edge caught the light in a way that made Bat gasp and bite down a sigh.
They angled it over his chest, sliding the tip onto the chink in the centre of his plate to steady their aim. Their hands shook as they grasped the hilt; Bat was bucking in earnest, driving into them with such needful energy that they could hardly focus with the force and the pleasure. Both of them were already too hot, and one of them was going to cum very, very soon, and they were going to make sure it would the Bat if it was the last thing they did – they wouldn’t miss the expression he’d make for the world.
They raised the sword above their head and brought it down with a wild and violent plunge into his chest.
It was like time stopped. For a silent moment the blade stayed in the air, lodged there in a dark mass of manifest Shadow – and then his mouth opened in a silent cry that grew steadily in volume until it was like the air was on fire.
The Wizard drove the blade into the mass, putting all their weight on the hilt, sweating with effort as his Shadow coiled and flicked around the blade, like a solid fire pushing and pulling at their weapon.
“Wizard! Ngghh!”
His body roiled beneath them, tossing them like a boat on the waves, and their arms flexed and burned as they struggled to hold the sword to the Shadow. Only the sheer depraved achievement of seeing him thrashing under their hips could have focused their arms then, pleasure ripping at their mind through their magical aura and threatening to turn their limbs to jelly. Their insides felt like one hot coiling mess. When at long last they forced the blade down through the barrier, they heard the tip of the sword tink against his armor.
Bat cried for what they thought was mercy – it was drowned out by the sound of their Light and his Shadow as they surged and erupted like exploding stars.
His cum spilled white-hot into them, and their body responded in turn, pulsing around his cock – they were two pieces of firewood that had been struck together, oxygen and kindling eating each other up in their heat, and they cried out like animals, caught up in the flame of their concursion. For a moment, their Shadow and his Shadow were one and the same, and what he felt at their hands was what they felt in his.
The pleasure was excruciating. Was this what he’d been feeling when they’d struck him? They understood his hapless pleas now, consumed in the rush of magic and sensation. He had held out for so long, remained lucid and eloquent for so long, the sensations gradually wearing on him til he was here, utterly beyond recall.
It was awful. It was euphoric. And even if they Wizard wanted to resist the climbing pressure, they couldn’t – they came, too, gasping with the overload.
They couldn’t hold the blade anymore. Their hands fell from the sword and braced on his shaking abdomen, and Bat’s Shadow energy held it tight in midair, his whole body taut with an ecstatic agony, his claws digging into their sides. His aura cracked and roared like thunder about the weapon. Then, the Shadow pulsed and seeped back into him. With a deafening shing, the sword finally fell from midair and clattered on the ground.
As they fell forward onto Bat’s chest, his arm twitched, and he lay his hand upon their back. Their hips shifted with the vestiges of heat. The sound and light that had been around them and inside them were diminishing, dimming to a murmur, leaving only their ragged breathing to echo in the cavern.
He squeezed them. His hand was large enough to cover both their shoulder blades. When he spoke, his voice was raspy – even more than normal.
“Wizard… are you OK?”
The Wizard craned their aching neck to look at his face. His brow was furrowed and shining with perspiration, his pupilless eyes wide with concern.
OK? ‘OK’ couldn’t begin to describe how the Wizard was feeling. It was like someone had snapped them out and wrung them like a dishtowel. They were utterly empty of mana, weary to the marrow of their bones. They ached in places they didn’t even realize they had.
It felt incredible.
They nodded, hoping that gesture would suffice for all that they were too weary to say. Bat’s head fell back onto the stone, and he sighed with relief.
“Thank goodness,” he said. (On the inhale, his chest bore them up, and the exhale was jittery, like someone had punched him in the gut. Which they supposed they had.)
He lifted his other hand, and it shook slightly as he beheld it, turning it this way and that. His flush extended all the way to the tips of his fingers.
“You’re… that was amazing,” he said. “My Essence is completely restored.”
His gaze flicked to their face. The Wizard watched his eyes luminesce with each disbelieving blink – the only part of him that seemed renewed, replenished.
“Wizard, I don’t know why you indulged me to the extent you did, but thank you.”
He was looking at them with thinly-veiled incredulity. The edges of the Wizard’s mouth twitched upward. He was thanking them, as though it were skin off their back, as if they wouldn’t do it a thousand times over. They couldn’t believe that they saw disbelief in his gaze. They knew they’d tried to hide their desire, but surely they hadn’t been that stoic?
The Wizard sat up and raised themselves off his thighs. He sucked in a breath; the two of them were both sensitive, like their nerves had turned to soft tinder and any little touch could set them alight.
They came to rest near his side, and his arm fell around them on instinct. They could feel through his clothes he was still running hot. He hastily pulled up and retied his trousers, wearing a mildly confused expression as they shifted. The Wizard leaned over, and the sentence he was about to say faded away as he looked into their face. His breath was soft against their lips.
Then the Wizard closed the distance.
Bat went still, and stayed there for a moment, then two, laying his hands on their back with a careful pressure. They were still shaky. He relaxed against their embrace, until he made a small noise against their mouth, and the Wizard felt something nudge against their leg.
He pulled away quickly.
“A-alright, Wizard, I get it. You liked it too. Let’s, uh, stop there.”
He was looking everywhere but their eyes... The Wizard was starting to develop a weakness for how bad Bat was at hiding his arousal. He was instead staring at their stomach. Indeed, the front of their robes was slick with precum, where he had been rutting, shamelessly, just minutes before. (The image replayed unbidden in their mind. The Wizard had to fight to quell the arousal that burgeoned again in their stomach.)
“One second,” he muttered, cringing a little. “I’ve… made a mess on you.”
Bat reached down and untied his belt from his waist. He handed the fabric to them.
“If they ask questions, don’t say anything,” he said.
The Wizard took the fabric, their face hurting from the breadth of their grin.
Bat was a deep, sheepish, contented shade of indigo, all the way from his neck to his ears.
They wouldn’t have him in any other color.
---
Mellori was the first one to see them when they returned. She was standing amid the lush and fragrant trees a stone’s throw away from the others, using a bit of grass to make a whistling noise.
Phweeeeeeet.
Bat’s ears flicked down. The Wizard understood why Pork and Beans were standing so far away now.
When Mellori saw them, she spit out the grass and threw up her hands with a thankful sigh.
“Finally!” she said. “That ‘Essence recharging’ took a long time. I was starting to think you two would never come back.”
Then her gaze flicked to the Wizard’s waist.
“Wait a minute… Wizard, why are you wearing Bat’s clothes?”
“That’s not important,” Bat interjected, waving a hand. “What is important is that my Essence is recharged. I’m ready to rebuild the Ring of Mandalla when you are.”
If Mellori had thought anything untoward, the skeptical expression was wiped off her face. She pumped her fist, and her yessss caught the attention of Pork and Beans, who ambled up to join them.
“That took a while,” said Beans. The lines on his brow doubled as he regarded the Wizard’s new clothing situation. Curse his doctor’s intuition.
The Bat crossed his arms. “The Wizard helped me restore my Essence with their Spells. Without their ingenuity, the process would have taken much longer.”
“I see.” Beans glanced at the Wizard, who kept their face neutral. The Bat pursed his lips.
Mellori looked between the three of them with a few slow nods of the head.
“Oh-kaaay,” she drawled, shifting her weight from foot-to-foot. “Well, I did some scouting around and thought I saw a fragment of the Anchor Sphere. It should serve as a vessel for Life magic, and then we can use it to rebuild the ring. Let’s keep going and find it.”
She clenched her fist, and with that, she turned on her heel and strode into the jungle. Pork and Beans accompanied her, keeping an eye out for beasts in the foliage – though the Wizard doubted that anyone would try to mess with Mellori then, with her steps sure and her head held high.
The Bat stayed behind, watching their receding backs. When they looked up at his face, they saw he’d put a claw to his chin. He tapped it quickly.
“I think Beans is onto us,” said the Bat. The Wizard snickered.
To their surprise, Bat’s lip curled, too, and he regarded the Wizard through eyes slitted in mirth.
“Funny,” he said, a smile in his voice. “I can’t seem to bring myself to care.”
Unconventional, they decided.