The world was a very strange place.

That was either Fan’s most insightful thought, ever, or her most useless one.

Yet, the truth of it was always going to remain doubtless. It had been years since any observer had been sent to this tiny little backwater planet in a backwater galaxy that nobody else wanted to go near, but that had been the whole point of running away.

She hadn’t exactly told the inhabitants that she was a runaway.

She very much doubted that they could understand that her life’s work was complete and utter drudgery, horrible though it was, and they wouldn’t understand that she could afford an interstellar space craft capable of distances that they couldn’t imagine, even as a nobody.

They would assume she was somehow important, or better than them. They wouldn’t be able to accept that she was able to access such technology on the equivalent of an intern’s pay. Let alone that it had actually cost her less than a week’s worth of work.

She’d crashed her ship good and hard when she arrived, and thankfully, convincing the witch who then greeted her to blow it up the rest of the way hadn’t been too difficult.

Apparently the woman already had to deal with interdimensional incursions, so having an alien around hadn’t seemed that odd to her.

Fan, for her part, was absolutely amazed to discover that magic and demons were real and not just weird myths of an extremely dumb and pre-scientific people.

This strange world, however, was… Everything that Fan had ever wanted.

She was sitting in the hallway, staring through a door by pretending it wasn’t there, and watching the hottest guy she had ever met, make love to the cutest girl she had ever met. The two of them would probably be embarrassed to realise they had an audience, but that was very much a thing of this world.

One that Fan still failed to grasp.

“Holy shit! Fuck your little sister! Fuck me, Ryker!” The woman yelled excitedly, leaning on hands and knees as the bed beneath her creaked in time with the assault.

If you loved someone, why would you hide it? This world had mountains. Shout it from the top of the mountains.

There was also apparently some sort of extra taboo between these two. Something about the mundanes of this world not really having a strong appreciation for the sexualisation of family members.

The witches had it right, it wasn’t something to worry about, not if you ensured that the family tree didn’t converge. A lover or three every generation wasn’t going to collapse the genetic diversity, even in so primitive a people.

Fan’s own race had their own ways to ensure genetics didn’t collapse. Less primitive than a breeding regime locked to marital regulations.

Lily looked back over one shoulder, tossing her white hair with its strawberry red ends, as she grinned at the man ploughing in and out of her. His chest running with sweat as he gave it his all.

This world had a whole bunch of stupid rules.

Primitive expectations that everyone had for Fan to take on board, but she still couldn’t see the point of it. So what if she made a few people uncomfortable? She wasn’t going to change herself for anyone else. That simply wasn’t something she could see the point of doing.

Lily moaned loudly for her brother to finish, to flood her, all over again.

He grunted loudly, driving himself forcefully into her and pinning her hips down to the bed as the orgasm ripped through him like a freight train. He saw stars, and fell lopsidedly off one of his arms and onto her.

The exhaustion from earlier returned with a vengeance and for a moment Fan wondered if Ryker was going to pass out. Humans were delicate little things, especially during sex.

Lily gave a nervous little giggle, “Whew. The blowback is a bitch, isn’t it? Zeus and Hades. I’m definitely fucked, now. Your well-fucked little princess.”

Fan stood up and skipped off into the kitchen, the interesting bit finished.

She twirled her black hair around her hand for a moment, letting it change and become like Lily’s white and red streaks. It was cuter this way, but Lily already seemed to hate that Fan had decided to look like her more mundane self. Waring the magic self was probably going to turn into a serious fight.

She turned the hair darker again, and then opened the fridge. She grabbed the tray of cookies that Lily had made, and then pulled back. As she did, her floppy antenna nearly caught on the edge of the door. She winced, rubbing it, before heading to the loungeroom.

She sat down and flicked on the TV, channel surfing until she got bored with that. The antenna flicked upright for a moment, and a drama from across the ocean was reorganised to fit into the strangely primitive display device.

Fan put her feet up on the couch, lying down sideways, and started cramming biscuits into her mouth. She grinned like an idiot as she saw a girl and her boyfriend on the TV complaining that she was sure that he had cheated on her, with her own sister.

He merter escort complained right back that he thought he had a pass because she’d slept with his brother.

TV on Fan’s planet was mostly interactive, voting and so on. Or their equivalent broadcast system that might be thought of as television.

Getting tired was a trait humans had inherited from their ape ancestors, and wasn’t something she shared with homosapiens. A little bit of sun, and she was always spritely.

Being a race of changelings, that meant that instead of a TV room, they tended to have more playful spaces. Their version of masquerade parties were infinitely more fun than just masking up. But, Fan had to admit that just watching was a nice past time, too.

In point of fact, she preferred it. Like most of the fun things on this planet, it was better than her home. Why did even your hobbies have to teach you something useful? Not every damn thing had to come with a lesson attached!

The alien idly shoved her hand up and under the dress, and then down into the underwear. She made a contented smile, and started running a thumb around the fun little blit of a thing near the top. She reaally liked the human cunny. So many more nerves than her usual sex organs.

Fan gave a small groan, and wondered how most humans were able to stay quiet whilst fucking each other’s brains out. It didn’t make any sense to her. Why would you even want to try?

“Fanastasia!” Lily yelled angrily from the kitchen.

The antenna poking up through her hair bobbed with her excitement, as she watched the two cheaters on the TV flip from screaming anger to making out. Just as they were getting to the good bit, the screen had to pan to something else.

Though, it wouldn’t much have mattered, as the witch stormed into the room right then. Snatching the remote magically and turning the TV off. “Fan! Those weren’t for you, and you know it!”

She looked down at the cookies, looked back up, and then started cramming them into her mouth as fast as she could, with her free hand.

Instantly, Fan found herself in a completely new place. She fell from the height of the couch into the blistering snow, with only the biscuits in her mouth to accompany her.

She dragged her cummy finger free, reluctantly, and took in the strangeness of the environment that Lily had banished her to, this time.

The wind was howling, and the snow was falling, and there was a good deal of ice, as well.

Her antenna twitched a couple times, and Fan realised that she was about a half hour’s walk from a nearby human settlement. She couldn’t be entirely sure what they were doing there, or exactly where she was, but she could feel a few satellite dishes. Noisy radio waves.

She skipped off towards it in the snow, bouncing her feet up and down happily in the brilliant white material that made the entire horizon light up. Some of it was fluffy, but most of it was crusty.

All of it was cold, giving her spine some happy shivers.

Fan was quite sure that a human would have been downright fucked, in the same circumstances. But Lily knew she wasn’t human, and it was kind of hard for the environment to deal a deathly blow to a changeling. Her internals just rearranged themselves and tweaked a few things so that she didn’t need heat anymore.

She did learn about the process at school, but that didn’t mean she had retained it. She hated her society’s focus on mind-numbing education. Who cares if she understood how being a changeling worked? She was more than happy to pretend it was mystically secret like Lily’s magic.

The human settlement was made up of a half-dozen corrugated buildings, all of them painted lovely bright colours. It made Fan smile through the snow as she approached. She loved how playful they were with their lives, even in a wasteland like this one.

She skipped up to the biggest building, a big red shed, and knocked on the door lightly before ducking inside.

She groaned as the heat hit her, and she had to go through another internal adaptation. She rubbed her cheeks as they began to glow, and looked around curiously as she adjusted to the space.

A man in a white coat with grey fur looked over at her in surprise, “We didn’t have any flights scheduled today. Did you just get in?”

She shrugged, “Hi. I’m Fanastasia. Most people call me Fan, or ‘that annoying bitch’. I don’t mind which you pick… Um… You wouldn’t happen to have any cheese and crackers, would you? No dairy on my planet.”

She poked around at the equipment lazily, trying not to snicker at how primitive it all was. Microscopes and computers that would be wrecked by the cold. Things designed to look at sample plates, mostly. Nothing good like a TV.

“Fan… Was it?” He asked cautiously, “Eh… What’s your speciality?”

“Sex.” She shrugged, and her antenna bobbed briefly, flicking upright as she detected the presence of a female. “Lot of that around here, isn’t there? Lots bağcılar escort of chill, even if the internet here sucks.”

The man walked up to her slowly, “Can I see some ID?”

She rolled her eyes, ignoring him. It was really annoying how most people could reason away magic and weird things like that, but they always seemed to notice that she didn’t belong.

About a third of the humans in this place were screwing each other, from what she could pick up. Most of them trying to keep it a secret, from the feel of things. She found that utterly hilarious.

As if you could keep secrets in a place like this.

She turned, looking up at the door as it swung open and a freezing woman staggered in, rubbing her arms and chattering her teeth. The door snapped shut behind her, untouched.

Fan waved lazily, “Hey, Ginger. Lily got mad at me. Sorry.”

“W-w-what d-d-did you do th-this time?” The witch shivered, rubbing her arms as she shuffled over to stand under a heater.

Fan shrugged, “Kinda ate the cookies that I think she made for Ryker? Either that… Or she was mad that I watched them fuck, again. Maybe both? Dunno.”

“And who are you?” The man asked in frustration.

“J-just a w-witch.” Ginger replied, flicking a spark of magic in his direction. He nodded slowly as it hit him, as if everything made sense, and went back to his boring job.

Fan made a pouting face, “I kinda wanted to fuck him.”

“It’s… F-freezing.” The witch glared, “C-can’t we j-just go home?”

“Your place, or Ryker’s?”

“M-mine.”

Fan turned up her nose, “Oh, come on! I mean… I like pussy as much as the next girl, but I’m kinda of sick of being your pity fuck! I want… I want a cock! From someone who doesn’t just think I’m some weird freak.”

“I-i’ve got s-some Camembert.” Ginger tried to negotiate with her.

Fan shook her head back and forth, “Nah ah! You can’t bribe me. You can just go home and leave me to screw around, here. Lily banished me here, so I can do what I want, here!”

“W-why is it a-always sex, w-with you!?” Ginger exclaimed, glaring from beneath her red locks.

The alien grinned sheepishly, “‘Cos human cunts are amazing. I don’t think you’ve got a clue how lucky you are! The one I was born with? You have to really pound it before I even start to feel anything. Sort of why our breeding rituals involve eight or nine guys taking their turns.”

Ginger wrapped a blanket around herself, still shivering, “Breeding rituals?”

“My planet.” Fan rolled her eyes, “Remember? Everything has to be either regulated or educational. You don’t have sex whenever you want. You have it when the government tells you that it’s your turn to get pregnant.”

“That be… Terrifying. An’ gross.” The witch shivered.

Fan shrugged. To her, it was ordinary. That humans could run around and stuff their hand down their own pants whenever they wanted was weirder.

“Sex without pregnancy is one of your best inventions.” Fan said lightly, and skipped over to the witch and kissed her cheek. “And I’m not ungrateful that you always save me from Lily. But sending me here really isn’t much of a punishment, this time. You’re suffering a lot more than I am.”

“If I add some Roquefort, will you come home with me?”

The alien twirled a strand of black hair, “Getting closer. You’re actually interested in sleeping with me, this time, aren’t you? I hate it when you think you have some kind of obligation.”

“I…” Ginger whispered hesitantly, and then looked down. Her cold cheeks trying and failing to turn a gentle red. “Bought a strap-on.”

“Ooh! I haven’t tried couple’s sex toys before!” Fan said quickly and embraced her in a hug. “Let’s go!”

Ginger looked at her in exasperation, “Is that all I get ta be to you? A supply of cheese and sex?”

“No.” Fan screwed up her face in frustration, “I wouldn’t ask if you were actually interested, if I wasn’t. I do actually like you, Ginger. I’d ask to live with you, if being close to Ryker wasn’t the most tempting thing in the ‘verse.”

“Would ya be interest’n if I didn’t have the cheese?”

Fan sighed heavily and then poked the woman roughly in the boob. “These make milk, don’t they? But you don’t call yourself a cow. So don’t imply that I only think of you as one!”

“Ow!” Ginger pulled back, rubbing her chest, “Don’t be doin’ dat! The cold make ’em all… Sensitive. That hurt.”

“So did what you said.” Fan replied grumpily.

The witch sighed heavily, “Sorry. I just… It don’t really feel that emotional ‘twixt us. I feel like I just bein’ your booty call whenever you get sick of pervin’ on Ryker… You really had guys run a train on you?”

“Humans.” Fan said sourly, and hugged the woman, “Sex isn’t an emotional thing, for me. It’s fun. Super fun. But sharing a meal is way more romantic. Cheese and crackers is our thing. I always have time to have some crackers with you, Gingey.”

Ginger held out a hand and a broom güngören escort slapped into it. She lay it out horizontally in the air before jumping on onto it – with her blanket. The witch held out a hand to the alien.

Fan seriously considered staying behind. Playing with the scientists seemed a lot more fun than trying to tip-toe around some cultural differences, but it appeared that her chosen mate was feeling somewhat neglected.

Attempting to convince the grumpy man in the room to sleep with her would be easier, thanks to Ginger making him not care where they had come from. It’d be a good sight easier than making the witch forgive her for now showing enough emotional inclination towards them.

Just for a bonus, he had a penis, and what the witch was offering something a good sight more synthetic. In a world that was quite poor at generating organic materials.

She sighed and took the witch’s hand, jumping up and balancing for a moment on the small wooden object. It wasn’t as comfortable or as fast as the ship she’d intentionally crashed and ruined.

Even took a whole second to arrive in Ginger’s back garden.

The witch took her blanket, and shuffled up to the backdoor. Pulling it open with a wooden creak, as Fan look appreciatively at the woman’s behind, and considered how in the ‘verse to explain her emotional connection to the witch.

Humans bonded over physical things. Being close to each other. Playing with each other’s bodies. Repeatedly teasing, before finally allowing the obvious to happen.

Fan found that confusing. Fun to watch on TV dramas, but confusing.

The most romantic thing on her planet, generally happened after sex. You got the obvious out of the way, if the law allowed for it, and then the date would involve feeding exotic things to each other.

She was fairly certain that feeding was also a human pastime, but got the impression it was supposed to come before the sex. Even though sex could make a full stomach wibble and wobble far too much.

Ginger was good at giving Fan items from this world’s exotic delicacies, when she was looking for attention. Deep red wine from the Italian Alps, her favourite cheeses, and homemade crackers that left salt behind on her lips.

Fan followed the witch indoors, and hesitated momentarily in confusion as Ginger didn’t head straight for the bedroom, but towards the kitchen.

Cheese-filled payment, first? Such a human thing.

Fan skipped after her, and hugged the woman from behind, “Did Lily tell you, that she’d banished me to the snow? Or were you watching?”

“I put that there alert spell on ya, in case ya gets displaced. I did be telling you.” Ginger replied.

The alien’s antenna bobbed, and she nuzzled her nose into Ginger’s neck, “So… Your affection for me… Is more than just reactive?”

Ginger facepalmed, “Damn, gal. Ya do be the most confusing thing that born! I thought I were the one with all the emotions, and you were just da reactive.”

Fan grinned and kissed her earlobe, “I react. I like you, too. I do. Not just for the food, either. But reacting with you is so much fun.”

“Not as fun as a cocksuckin’ wanker in a snow suit with an effort to puttin’ ya away for not bein’ no scientist.”

She frowned, “Well… He did have… The bits.”

“And I be a witch!” Ginger said with frustration, “Fine. Ya wanna big cock, then I can turn meself into a feckin’ horse for ya!”

“No thanks. I like horses. But not for breeding with.” Fan deadpanned.

Ginger hesitated, glowering, before bursting into laughter and shaking her head. She gave a quick flick of the inside of her finger to the bottom of Fan’s chin. “I don’t half love ya.”

“You’ve said that before. But I’m getting the idea I’m wrong. Doesn’t that mean we’re just fuck buddies?”

The witch winced, “Yeah… Nah. It means that I do love you, a lot.”

“Stupid language.” Fan muttered and took a deep breath, “I’m sorry. I do comprehend that humans tend more towards exclusive relationships on this planet. I’m not sure that I… Can. Especially not if Ryker comes around.”

“If ya actually manage to sleep with him, Lily be buryin’ ya in the nearest black hole.”

Fan shrugged, “It’d be so worth it! ‘Sides, black holes are cool. The verge and weft of the ‘verse on display like that, the way it generates space from nothing.”

“Now I be the one not understandin’.”

Fan’s antenna bobbed, “Hm… Dunno. How do I put it… Inside a black hole, inside every black hole, is a universe.”

“Okay… Some people reasoned that.” Ginger said hesitantly.

“Specifically, this universe.”

The witch did a double take, “Come again?”

“Space is tricked into existing, by being inside itself, whilst being offset.” Fan shrugged, “It’s an energy distribution thing. The quantum effect required to stretch out space is preserved by entangling it with itself at a different superposition.”

“Yup. Lost me. Magic is easier.”

Fan grinned, “Not like I get it, either! I just had that shit banged into my head. Oh. Now I’m sad. Can I have a cracker, pleeeease?”

Ginger finished arranging the cheese and crackers onto a wooden board, and as she picked it up to move it, Fan snatched a couple crackers, shoved them in her mouth, and ran to the back door. Ginger usually liked to eat in the garden, near her flowers.

“You’ve got a girlfriend?”

“No, not really…. But I have several friends who are girls who I need to talk to about us. But I AM interested!

“I mean Betsy…. You’re gorgeous. You’re beautiful! Inside and out. You’re a freaking genius! You’re active and take great care of yourself!” My eyes roved from the top of her black hair to the tip of her cute, painted toes poking into my side still. Red warmth filled my cheeks.

“I’ve also had one of the most wonderful nights of my life! I mean we talked about so much and it was so effortless. Time slipped by and I almost forgot every last one of my worries.

“Speaking of worries, that’s part of what I’m talking about. A couple of my friends might need some help. They’re having problems with a… a neighbor.”

I looked down at her feet to avoid looking in her eyes as I kinda lied to her. I reached out to gently grasp one of her feet with my hand.

She left it there, against my thigh.

I gently rubbed the ball of her foot with my thumb.

She moaned softly and then asked, “Can’t they call the Cops or something?”

“No, I’m afraid they don’t have enough evidence of an actual crime. They told the girls to get more evidence.”

That was about as close to the truth as I could be, I thought. But now I needed to get to bed. I knew I’d have to work hard not to toss and turn and let my mind run wild worrying about Itzy and Lacie, Foxie, Pixie and Tee.

“So, anyway, I really do need to get to bed. I’ll call tomorrow, what’s a good time?”

“I’d like that.” She said, leaving me for a few seconds to figure out whether it was bed or plans for tomorrow. “How about any time after Nine, before Noon? I’ll be settled into the office by then, but I have a class at One and will need to grab lunch.”

I knew she was fishing. But I knew I’d be way to antsy and would be very poor company.

“Awesome.” I smiled, a genuine one.

Betsy retracted her feet, placing them on the floor of the passenger side. She picked her shoes and purse, turned daintily and opened the car door. As she opened it, she turned to exit. Just as she stood straight, she turned back around and bent forward to look me in the face.

Her tank dark top fell away from her front slightly, revealing the edge of two very willowy looking lace bra cups. They looked to be a very pale pink against her beautiful golden skin. Her wide, but shallow, cleavage disappeared in darkness towards her flat abs, hidden in shadows.

My eyes made it to hers, there was a smile in them. She appreciated the redness in my cheeks at having been caught red handed with a real shit-eating grin.

“Please don’t take too long. I am not sure what it is about you….” Her tongue poked out of the corner of her lips in a cute little thoughtful smirk, “But, without trying, you have me ready… to… go.”

She winked, smiled, and stood up.

Then, she wiggled her ass and closed the door on my slack-jawed face.

I watched her every step of the way up her front walk, up her front porch, and until the door was closed. Then, I sat there for a few more minutes just staring at the door.

That night was rough. I tossed and turned with images of all six women in my life flashing in and out. I never fully felt settled and woke feeling done in before I’d even gotten halfway through a cup of coffee.

Work was miserable and dragged on and on. I feel asleep during an afternoon meeting of my full department. Luckily, Julie, Howard’s Admin, took pity and let me sleep until I need to pay attention near the end of the meeting. I slipped out of the office right after the meeting, claiming oncoming illness. (Little could I claim that the six women in my life were keeping me awake all night! LOL)

I rushed through the house, into hiking clothes, threw some coffee in a thermos and water in my jug. Out the door, down the street and up the hiking path I went. The tiredness of the day began to lessen as I breathed the fresh air and green leaves emerging, the moist ground and rotting leaves of last Fall.

I put a few hundred of yards of a slow jog, catching a second wind. I then began stretching my legs as I climbed a few hills and made the quick turn towards my little meadow. I slipped along the slight game trail and slowed to a walk. Sweat had broken out on my skin, and I was breathing heavily. I calmed myself before approaching the meadow. I knew I was earlier than expected, but I couldn’t wait to see my women.

I entered the glade slowly, looking around. I felt something off. But I didn’t see anything unusual. Nothing smelled different or sounded different. But the air was different.

I walked quietly, slowly, around the edge of the glen. I reached the stream and caught movement by the trees Itzy always entered through. I looked that way and saw Lacie behind a tree.

She looked tense. She was biting one thumbnail. One foot quietly jigged. Her arms were crossed tightly across her chest. She wore an olive brown hoodie with her black hair peeking out. That was all I could take in before she turned escort beşiktaş to look out from behind the tree and saw me. Her eyes locked on me and she raised her eyebrows questioningly.

I stepped into the clearing and headed her way in a straight line. By the second step I was running to her as she ran directly at me. She leapt into my arms like a spider monkey.

“Daddy. Oh, Goddesses Daddy. Itzy’s hurt!”

I ran for the gateway!

“Tell me, Lacie, baby? What happened?” I asked quietly and as calmly as I possibly could.

“We got there. Everything was fine!” She cried quietly in my ear. I knew she’d held it together until I’d gotten there.

“We checked into the Inn. We went to the Pub next door to get our included dinner and maybe have a drink or two.

“We were missing you, Daddy.”

“It’s okay, tell Daddy what happened, babydoll.”

As we passed from my world into theirs, Lacie explained that they had not even chased any leads down yet. They had eaten dinner and were halfway through their first glasses of wine. Some locals had come in and accused them of being spies for the enemy.

Into the meadow in their world where Pixie waited for us, a circle of grass worn in an exact circle where she had been pacing. I switched Lacie to one side and wrapped an arm around Pixie as she ran to us.

“Itzy…” and she sobbed into my side as I pulled her tight against me.

Lacie continued her story as we hurried to the train. Pixie had my hand, pulling, and Lacie was still wrapped around me like a spider monkey. It barely registered how feather light she was, considering how tightly she gripped my hand.

Before they could even defend themselves, someone else overheard the accusation and things escalated quickly. In the fray, Itzy got knocked down by the crowd and a donkey had stomped on her shoulder, breaking her upper arm.

When she screamed the crowd suddenly flinched and the steam ran out of them. None of them had intended to hurt anyone. Itzy had been whisked away to the local physician who had splinted it and given her a very good healing potion. They had caught the first coach back to the capital and she was safe in her chambers.

But they also wanted her to heal faster. The best method was me and my seed.

We slipped into seats on the train. Lacie was curled in my lap but pulled Pixie up with her. I’m not sure how they both fit, but they made it happen, and it seemed like it had always been that way.

Soon, both were asleep. I was relieved that it wasn’t as bad as I had first imagined.

That is, until I finally reached her bedside, and they fully admitted the full extent of her injuries.

Yes, her arm had been broken, in three places. She had suffered additional injuries as well… She had a broken collar bone and a couple of cracked ribs.

They explained, however, that while the healing potion had been excellent. It had almost completely dulled the pain. It had begun the healing process, boosted it really. It had reduced some of the inflammation as well.

However, it had been missing her ‘True Love’s Seed”. Most elves having found love by the age of 14 or been in an arranged marriage long before then.

“Arranged? Hold on, let’s put a pin in that and circle back later, shall we?” I had been assured all my women were old enough?!?!

I didn’t even question it at this point… I mean had they requested I go on a journey to a dark mountain and slay a dragon, not only would I NOT have been surprised, I would have jumped at the chance to do anything to save any of them! Trying to give her a little more of my spunk was little worry!

Whatever it took.

—

I woke with a start, my head across Itzy’s stomach, my eyes turn towards her still slumbering face.

Voices around me brought me awake quickly. I remembered where I was as the doctors and several nurses gently woke me. The other four girls slept around Itzy and I in her bed. They all were either already awake or waking with me. Somehow, we were all naked, but covered with silk like throws over each of us.

After something that highly resembled coffee, and a few moments to fully come awake, it was explained that although the Princess would recover without it, the older male doctor explained, my semen would speed the process, make it pain free and heal all scars.

There were, the younger male doctor interrupted, a few caveats.

They explained to me that after one good external dose, she would come awake enough to nourish directly from the source. The timing was important because, if we did not catch her that one time, we would only be limited to external applications. This would heal her skin well, avoiding the scars. Enough would seep in that eventually she would heal faster than without. Still, it might be three or four times longer.

They knew I was human. They understood I may not want or be able to make that choice.

I think they may have expected me to react that way.

Not my girls. They just turned to escort nişantaşı me with serene looks on their faces. They knew there’d be no question from me. They were right.

“How do we do this?”

The gray-haired woman, who’d been standing in the shadows near the door, stepped forward. She was wearing a white robe with gold trim. She stepped to the edge of the bed and began to introduce herself as the Royal Family’s Spiritual Guide. She said it with finger quotes and a slight smirk. She said she, and her mothers before her had served the Royal Family for more than ten generations. She had been Itzy’s mother’s spiritual guide (again finger quotes) since before her ascension to the throne or her marriage to Itzy’s father.

She explained that my other ‘women’ (She explained that they hadn’t found an English equivalent to the Elven word yet) would help extract the first application. But only I was to rub it in. I was to rub clockwise, moving between her wounds. She reminded me three times that I must always move in small, clockwise circles!

When I asked how she thought I would produce enough, she laughed, “Don’t worry one bit about that, beautiful!”

“When do we get started?” I asked. My heart ached for Itzy and her suffering and the misery of fear and worry the rest of the girls were struggling through rather bravely. They had all been brave until alone with me. Then, each had pulled themselves together and were being brave for Itzy.

“As soon as we can provide a few things. The first was your permission. Second, we need you hydrated, fueled, and fired up. Third, we’ll need some privacy… Doctor’s?”, the doctor’s began filing out in what appeared to be age order.

“Nurses, you’ll get your chances. Please follow the doctors.”

Without a word, the nurses then filed out in similar order. I noticed gender didn’t seem to matter. I did notice the female imbalance, though. But they treated each other with clear deference to age. It was actually nice to see. I had been brought up to respect my elders and those with more experience. The room soon was empty except my five Elven lovers and the older woman.

Moments later, the older woman headed to the bathroom. I looked questioningly at the four eleven women at the foot of the bed. They all smiled back.

I had a lot of questions….

Their calm smiles weren’t giving me the slightest answer as I looked back and forth between them. Before I got a chance to even formulate the first clear question, the Elder returned, drying her hands.

“Maiden Lovers, let’s arrange ourselves around the Princess.” At that, she began to undo her belt and unwind her Elven robe/dress thing.

I gawked, mouth agape, as the women all let the shimmering blankets slip off and begin crawling towards, Itzy.

Then, the Elder let her robe slip. She was left in a transparent filmy looking slip. It had thin shoulder straps and reached just a few inches past her crotch. Not that it hid anything. For what I assumed to be an older woman, she looked incredible!

Her skin was a dark, golden color. Her body showed some age, a little sag to her breasts, the nipples pointing slightly down. A few wrinkles, and a very gentle sag to her belly. She was a very handsome woman despite these signs of a life well lived.

I tried not to stare. But I noticed some things… Actually, I noticed a LOT of things!

Her nipples were slightly darker than her breasts. There were no tan lines. Her hips were thicker than the other women in the room. Her thighs as well. They weren’t flabby. She wasn’t fat. She just looked a little sightly sturdier, like she’d sent more time hiking out in the sun.

“Please, my Princeling. Look. You would hurt an old woman’s ego if you looked away in sympathy.”

My eyes met hers and she smiled. Her eyes traced down my face, then my chest as she stepped closer.

“Someday, you will be my King. As much as I love the Princess with all my heart, I know I will love you. I feel it in your bonds with all of the Princesses.

“I am Lady Oliviana. I am sister to one of the younger Queens and, as I stated earlier, I’ve helped guide Itzy’s mother through some of her spiritual Journey.

“I’m here today as a healer. I’ll use some of my magic to assist us in getting our girl right as rain!”

I felt relieved. It wasn’t exactly what she said. It seemed like the closer she got, the better I felt.

Foxie appeared behind me, wrapping one arm around my chest, “Come, Master. Please?”

I nodded, and turned, lifting myself up, forgetting my nakedness for a split second. That is until the breeze hit my backside. It was all I could do to keep from looking back to see if Lady Oliviana was looking…. But, embarrassment, or maybe fear kept me from knowing.

I soon forgot Lady Oliviana as I viewed the bevy of Elven beauty that lay before me. Foxie held my hand, gently leading me to Itzy’s side, the damaged one. Her bandages had been removed, and I could see her wounds now.

They really didn’t escort etiler look good. Her whole shoulder, chest and upper arm were ugly bruises, and I could see the donkey had come down on her in four places, not just the one the girls had led me to believe. I winced and felt horror begin to overwhelm me before I felt cool hands on either side of me. I heard whispers in my ears, but I couldn’t understand them at first… because my women were singing to me in Elven.

It was beautiful. I was spellbound at the harmonies they were producing. Then, I felt new hands on my back. They were dry, gentle, soft. I suddenly understood the words the women were singing around me. They were singing in the round, Lacie starting, foxie, pixie and Tee (who’s vice was beautifully deep and clear for what I was used to as a woman’s). They sang of health and regenerative power and love. Then, they slowly closed in around me, except for Lacie, who pulled away from my left side, where Lady Oliviana slid in beside me. She began singing along with the others, slipping in effortlessly in a high, clear voice that added just the right note to finish out the song. They all sang two more rounds and then fell silent.

“Now, My Prince,” Lady Oliviana said as she slid under my left arm, “Let us get to the next step. My Ladies, please.”

Her left hand rested on my chest. Her fingers began to trace sigils on my muscle. Her eyes slipped to mine with a question, “My Prince will I impede your excitement?”

“Lady Oliviana, you are a very handsome woman. Your presence would never ‘impede’.” I smiled at her and was instantly rewarded with a beautiful smile, that not included relief, but mischievousness and lust all in the same motion, somehow.

Her fingers quickly snaked over to my nipples then. She rubbed her finger back and forth across it. It felt like silk sliding across the end of my nipple. My nipple pebbled uncontrollably, and she pinched it.

My cock jumped.

Quickly, her mouth closed around my nipple. Her lips closed around it, her teeth began nipping gently, nibbling on it then laving it with her tongue.

“Oh fuck.” I let loose.

I heard giggles and opened my eyes to see four women touching themselves, or the woman next to her. They were crowded in as tight as they could to each other and Itzy.

I felt Foxie’s hands run up the inside of my thigh and my cock jumped again. Her hand settled right at the apex of my thigh, the back of her hand resting against my cock, her fingers resting against my scrotum.

My cock was now impossible hard and precum began to flow slowly. The head of my cock itched, and the blood pumped through it so forcefully, it began bobbing with my heartbeat.

“Touch it, My Lord.” Lady Oliviana purred in my ear.

I slid my hand over my thigh, across Foxie’s hand. My fingers gently squeezed as they encompassed her fingers, and I smiled into her face. She smiled back at me.

My fingers grasped my cock, and I slowly slid it down to the end, a dollop of precum gathered there. I heard gasps and as I looked around, every woman’s pupils were fully dilated, and their noses were flaring. Flushes reddened their chests and their breathing was heavy.

But my attention was on my own release. That was part of the song. I was surrounded by female hormones. Female hormones, most of which, I was very familiar with!

I began running through memories of each of them. Our times in bed just last weekend. As I looked at each one, a memory returned. Each memory was specific of each woman. I held their eyes and stares until the moment was finished in my brain.

The first was Tee. It was a memory of being woken up in the middle of the night by a whisper in my ear…

“My King, do you have anything for your dark elf? May I taste you as you will taste me? Together? What is it a 49?”

I smiled in the dark, too tired to tease, “A 69, my dark lover.” I had returned.

We had been on our sides, and the next thing I knew, Tee had spun around, and her warm mouth had closed around my cock bringing it to hardness quickly. I found her legs and dove into her pussy with the same joy and excitement.

I licked from her clit towards her lips and then sucked her lips into my mouth, licking and laving her lips with my tongue, pushing them back and forth and dipping between them. She was already wet and dripping. My cock was hard now, and I felt her fingers tighten around my scrotum, tugging gently on my balls. Keeping them from bunching up next to my body. The skin tightens on my dick and my balls.

Just then, fingers came from behind me, tugging on my scrotum, fingers tightened around it and began gently separating my balls from my body. I became aware of my hand which now stroked my cock just as Tee had been bobbing her head. Tee Blushed as I looked at her again, like she was experiencing it too.

The tingle began in my balls. My back began tensing, my prostrate tightened, my balls fought to pull into the warm confines, and I began shooting cum out. I looked down and saw the large load I’d left all over Itzy’s quietly sleeping body.

“Quick, My King, clockwise circles.” Lady Oliviana pulled my arm forward by the wrist and I reached down to feel my warm cum on her skin. I pushed it around and around in small clockwise circles, Lady Oliviana guiding my arm to different areas, always letting me turn the circles.

Chapter 9 – A meeting of minds

Emma. 1

Jess was screaming. It was amazing how she could make it sound so real when Emma knew that it was anything but. As one of the best, most requested whores on the colony, Jess had a constant stream of men passing through their shared little apartment, and each of them paid an eye-watering amount of credits to get inside her. But god-damn, did that girl know how to put on a show. The headboard of her bed was knocking against the wall, and the fainter but growing grunts of her John were almost being drowned out as she screamed out the words that invariably hurried the whole process along.

“Oh fuck!” Jess’s muffled voice sounded through the thin walls. “Fuck that big dick into my slutty teenaged cunt, use it; you paid for it, it’s fucking yours! Do it, fucking dump that load into me, make me feel it, make me feel you cum, do it, baby, fucking ruin me!”

Jess watched too much porn.

Fortunately, it would seem that the men who paid for her company did too. Emma found it cringe-worthy. It was tacky, it was cheesy, and she couldn’t imagine for the life of her how anybody could get off on something so obviously scripted… both the porn and Jess’s panted tirade. She literally used those words, verbatim, on everyone. Of course, there was something to be said, Jess claimed, for the throes of passion. Seeing such a pretty face using such dirty words, the guy knowing where that mouth had been and what it was capable of. It was the loss of one’s self into the fantasy, and although none of these guys ever made her climax, she enjoyed the fantasy almost as much as they did. Men didn’t pay her for sex, she had said in one of her more thoughtful moments; they paid her for the fantasy, and then they paid her to leave. Or, more accurately – since Jess lived here – they paid for the ability to be able to leave, guilt-free.

That made less than no sense to Emma. It seemed to run contrary to everything she thought she knew about sex, love, or relationships.

But then, even Emma had to admit that she knew as close to nothing about those subjects as it was possible for her to know. Emma wasn’t quite a virgin, but she may as well have been. She was nineteen, and one fumble with a former boyfriend a few years previously did not a woman make. It had been quick, it had been unsatisfying, it had been confusing, and it had been more than a little tainted by the fact that the boy in question – a boy she had convinced herself loved her – had scurried out of the room immediately afterwards, only to dump her the next day, then hook up with someone more… worldly… about a week later. That had been her last foray into the world of sexual adventure.

Jess had no such qualms. Her body count had been in the double figures long before she realized that men would pay good money – a lot of good money – to get access to her body. Jess had it all: she had the sultry good looks, the killer body, the overly healthy attitude toward sex, and the dirtiest mind of any woman Emma had ever met. More than that, Jess argued, her father had always told her that the key to a happy life was to find something she loved to do and then find a way to get paid for it. Emma doubted this was what the man had in mind, but Jess loved to fuck, and she sure as hell had found a way to make it pay.

Emma’s own father had given rather different advice.

“There are two types of boys,” her father had said, sitting her down one day to have his version of ‘the talk’ with her. At the time, she had wanted the ground to swallow her whole; she had been mortifyingly embarrassed, but the more time had gone on since that day, the more sense everything he had said now made. “There are real men, and there are dogs, players, fuck boys, or whatever you want to call them. Now, no real man is born that way; a real man is made. He is made through sacrifice, hard work, through investing time in himself and in the people around him. It is his mission, his purpose in life, to improve himself, and a real man will take you with him on that journey. He will look after you; he won’t treat you like property, but you will be the most valuable thing in his life, and that is the way he will treat you. But a real man wants a good woman, and all women, at some point in their lives, want a real man.

“Fuck boys are the opposite. Either unwilling or unable to put the time or effort into improving themselves. They see dating as a game, and the only thing they are looking for is found in just one place…. Between your legs. They can be manipulative, abusive, inconsiderate, objectifying, and immature. It doesn’t matter how good of a person they are; if they have never put the time in to build their own lives up, they cannot possibly know how to be a positive part of yours. They don’t care if you are a good woman; they want to win the dating or the hook-up game and the prize for that victory is what şişli escort is between your legs. Access to that, be it for one night or for years at a time, is the sum of their ambition. They will take a good woman, drag her down to their level, and then beat them into submission with experience.

“This is the main difference between men and women. To have any sort of value at all, a man has to earn it. Success, ambition, drive, maturity, life experience, the ability to provide. Women are born with value. A woman’s sexuality is the highest of all prizes for a man, for any kind of man, and women come tailor-made to be everything a man could ever want. They come of age already in possession of their youth, their beauty, their femininity, their fertility, and their purity. I know it sounds awful, but no matter how evolved we think we are as human beings, we are still primal, instinctually driven creatures. Those are the women that men are biologically hardwired to desire because they are the ones most likely to continue his genetic line. But each time they give their sexuality to a man, it loses value.”

“So, what?” the younger Emma had argued defiantly, railing against the misogynism she felt she was hearing. “I have to save myself for the right man? No sex before marriage? Should I prepare myself for a life in the kitchen, too?”

Her father shook his head. “No, those concepts are, thankfully, long gone. What I am saying is that you should be selective in who you give yourself to. You should wake up each morning, look in the mirror, and see yourself for what you are. Not some trophy housewife or some piece of arm candy, but a vibrant, intelligent, beautiful woman that any man in the entire galaxy would be lucky to get. So if any man is to get you, then he had better damned well be worth it. Because by giving yourself to any guy who shows you attention, all you are doing is cheapening the value that every man should aspire to be worthy of. The more you do it, the cheaper it gets, until the men out there who you deserve, the ones you will eventually want to be with, won’t want something that everyone else has already been given for free.

“There are a million things that make a girl into a good woman, things she can do, just like men, to build herself up. Get your education, be the woman who challenges her man to be better, be able to match him, hell, beat him on an intellectual level. Find your passions and chase them with everything you have. Develop your sense of self, learn that there is a difference between being smart and being wise, that there is a difference between being hot and being beautiful, and that when it comes to a relationship, every single human being alive, men or women, are only the sum of what they can bring to the table. Beauty will never fade with age, hotness does, but beautiful women are born every day, you need to have more than that, and a man needs to be looking for more than that to deserve you.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be telling me to find love or something?” She had asked.

“Love is the most important and powerful thing on earth, Ems,” he sighed, using the pet name he had given her as an infant. “But love comes later. This is just to start the relationship; this is to get the door open. Love is through the door, but it can and will remain sealed closed if both you and your future partner aren’t careful now. And you deserve love.

“Every good, real man out there has been on a journey to build himself up for his entire life; he has built himself up to be a King of his own world. But contrary to what the magazines and the movies tell you, a King doesn’t want a Princess; he wants a Queen. But even if you are a Queen in every single other way imaginable, no King is going to settle for a woman who gave away the most intrinsically valuable part of herself to anybody who caught her eye at the time.”

“Jesus, Dad,” she had groaned. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I am a man,” he answered simply. “And I know how men think. More than that, I am the only man who is going to tell you the truth about this because I am the only man who is not going to try to manipulate or charm you into bed. One day, you will want to settle down, you’ll want to find someone, and you will want to be happy; I’m giving you the one piece of advice that nobody else can.”

“I’m not sure Mom would agree with that.”

“Who do you think asked me to talk to you about it?” he’d shrugged. “When I met your mother, I was 32, and she was 26; she had been with three people before me.”

“Oh, so she wasn’t a good woman ’cause she’d given it away?” Emma snorted.

“Three men in eight years, assuming she started at 18, is not giving it away. That is being in a few relationships that she dedicated herself to, and they didn’t work out. That is being selective. Your mom was 26 when we met, your aunt Kim was 22, and she had already fucked beşiktaş escort around with about 30 different guys. Tell me, what is the one thing that she always complains about now?”

Emma failed to stifle another groan as she thought about the long, wine-filled nights that she had been forced to listen to as her Aunt bitched to her mother. “That she can’t find a good man and that the only men interested in her are only after one thing.”

“She chased the cheap thrill. She lied, she cheated, she threw away the good men who were all around her because she wanted the next shiny object. Then, when her looks had dried up, and a new generation of easy women came along to replace her, she was left dealing with the consequences of her actions.”

“But mom tells her that she’ll find someone. So she’s lying? To her own sister?”

“Yup. Because your Mom doesn’t want to hurt her feelings by telling her the truth. She made stupid decisions, poor choices, and chased attention instead of affection. And now, real men won’t take her seriously because she can never be his Queen. Sure, they’ll fuck her; no single man is going to turn down free sex, but when it comes down to what she brings to the table, that is all she has, and it’s all used up.”

She had to admit, thinking about the miserable, lonely, bitter woman and then hearing her alcohol-fuelled recollections of her wilder, younger days, this was marking a morbid kind of sense. “So, what are you saying I should do?”

“Date, be normal, find happiness, just be selective. If you think a guy is only with you for sex, he probably is. If he ever says something like, “If you loved me, you will… whatever,” dump him. Immediately!”

“But what if I really like him?”

“That’s even more reason to get rid of him. If a man loves you how you will want him to love you, he will never ask you to do anything you aren’t comfortable with. He will put you first. That goes for sex, that goes for being around heights, or closed spaces, or big crowds, or eating shellfish, or wearing the color yellow. It doesn’t matter. If a guy is using the fact that you love him to make you do something you don’t want to do, then he is manipulating you, and he needs to go.”

“But if he’s not doing all that, if he’s treating me well, and I want to… you know?”

“Go for it, enjoy it, but take it seriously. Sex is wonderful; it is beautiful, and it’s special. So treat it that way, have fun, learn what you like and don’t like, decide where your boundaries are, and then stick to them. But only when you are ready for it and only when you want it. The right guy will wait because he will see you as the goal, not the sex. Then, when you’re all grown up and want to settle down, you will have the men lining up to be with you, then you will be able to pick who you want to be with, and trust me, that is not a position many women find themselves in.”

“What do you mean?”

“Women control access to sex. They decide who gets it, when, why, and how much. Any girl… any girl… can walk into any bar, in any town, at any time of day or night, and is almost guaranteed to be able to find someone to fuck her. It’s easy for them. Men can’t do that; that is why they will take the free sex when it’s offered but don’t respect the women who offer it. But when the dust settles, and the woman grows up, when she wants to settle down, it is the man who decides who he wants to commit to; they control access to relationships, and a woman’s past will play a big part in that. So if you are selective now, you won’t only be safer, happier, and feel more fulfilled by any relationships you do have, but when you are looking for a life partner, your past can’t be something you are judged by, but something you are desired for.”

That conversation had happened a few years ago. Her father, ever the sage and worldly wise professor of human psychology, had retired with her mom to Capricorn, the paradise planet, leaving her with enough of his sizable retirement fund to get her settled on her own two feet. For a long time, his advice had made sense, but she could never really see how it fitted into her reality. But then she had decided to give her V-card to that boy. It had been a mistake, she was pretty sure she had known it was a mistake when she was making it. The whole thing had left her feeling cheap, used, and disrespected, and her father’s words had come flooding back to her. Suddenly, they tied up perfectly with reality. She had been played, and she had fallen for it. After that, she followed his advice to the letter. She had been in a handful of short-lasting relationships, but the red flags he had told her to look out for had always reared their ugly heads, and she had cut them off before they ever got between her legs.

Then, she had met Jess. Jess was a wild child. They had first been introduced in college. Emma was aiming for medical mecidiyeköy escort school, and Jess was toying with the idea of going into childcare, two very different subjects requiring the same foundation academic credits. Jess had always been a party girl; she had been the center of attention in any social gathering she had been involved in, and Emma had been given a front-row seat to the deeper and deeper depths of her sexual adventurousness.

Literally, in some cases.

Jess had wholeheartedly agreed with the advice given by Emma’s father. She hated the way men treated her. “Fuck meat,” she called herself. “A hot piece of ass.” It had made her very cynical when it came to relationships, let alone concepts such as love. Jess’s attitude, however, was that the damage was already done, so why not milk it for as long as her looks and her vagina held out. And milking it was exactly what she had done. She made more money in a few weeks of sex work than anyone in the childcare profession could hope to earn in a year. As for her future happiness, that was a bridge Jess was content to burn when she came to it. Men would only ever see her as a whore, she had decided. Even if she packed up sticks and moved to a whole new planet, the only way she would be able to escape her life before her middle age would be to lie about it, and her reasoning is that what kind of relationship would it be if it was based on the lie she had been forced to give in order to start it.

The problem was Emma agreed with her. Jess was her best friend; she was like the sister she had never had. Born of very different lives in very different worlds, they had become the closest of friends under the most unlikely of circumstances. But Emma could admit that her appeal as a wife or even as a serious girlfriend was practically zero.

“Oh fuck yes!” her friend’s howling voice echoed through the walls. “Dump that hot cum inside me, fuck baby, I can feel it; I can feel you filling me! God, I’m going to… fuck… I’m cumming!”

She wasn’t—she wasn’t even close. And the script that she had been screaming out a few times a day for the past year that Jess had been doing this, was predictable enough for Emma to mouth the words along to. That always made her giggle.

There were a few muffled grunts, a few quieter groans, and silence descended on the apartment. About ten minutes later, a set of footsteps echoed along the corridor outside Jess’s room and then sheepishly out the front door. It would seem that this guy was done. If he was anything like the others, he had probably barely said more than a few words to Jess before dressing, paying up, and leaving. And just like that, she had made more creds than her work at the local clinic paid her in a week.

The world was crazy.

As the man was leaving the apartment, Emma listened as the shower in Jess’s ensuite turned on, and – another ten minutes later – Jess stepped into the room wearing a robe and rubbing a towel through her hair. “I swear to god,” she chuckled as she looked over at Emma. “The worst part of this job is the number of showers I have to take. My hair is fucked from all the washing it.”

Emma smiled. She was curled up on their old but exquisitely comfortable sofa, reading a book. Well, she wasn’t. She couldn’t afford an actual paper book; those things cost a small fortune these days. She was reading a novel on her holo pad. “You know you can have a shower without washing your hair, right?”

“Depends where the guy cums,” Jess winked back playfully to her. “How’s the book?” She asked as she walked into the kitchen to grab a drink from the dispenser.

“Meh,” Emma shrugged, putting the holo pad down. “It’s the middle of the series, and this is the book that’s setting up the next big event, so nothing is really happening, but it has all the stuff in it that gets important later.”

“I’ll wait for the movie,” Jess smirked as she dropped down onto the other end of the sofa. “Any chance of going out for a drink tonight? I could do with getting out of here.”

Jess was flitting. She did it quite a lot on days like today; she was bouncing very quickly from one subject to the next with barely a breath between. When Emma was first getting to know her, she had wrongly thought that it was a lack of interest in what she was saying and had taken offense on more than one occasion. But as their friendship had blossomed, she had learned differently. Jess was feeling antsy, probably because she hadn’t been able to get herself off, and she was feeling frustrated. That last guy had been her third and final client of the day; she was probably aching in ways and in places that Emma could scarcely imagine, and she was – sexually speaking – wound as tight as a drum. Going out for drinks very often led to Jess finding someone to hook up with properly, just to get off. Not for money, not to give the guy what he wanted, but to get something for herself.

Emma didn’t mind that, provided they did it back at the guy’s place. As loud as Jess was when she was pretending to enjoy her sex with clients, she was really fucking loud when she was actually hitting her climax, and Emma needed her sleep. “Yeah, why not?” She smiled, tossing the now unneeded holo pad onto the side table and glancing over at the time.

The Baron turned to face Chad and Yorick, his posture straight and commanding.

“We must act quickly,” he said, his voice strong and authoritative. “Yardix will soon realize his curse has been broken. We need to strike before he can regroup.”

Chad nodded, still trying to process what he had just witnessed.

“But how do we find him? And what exactly are we supposed to do?”

The Baron strode to a nearby chest, pulling out fresh clothing and quickly dressing.

“Yardix has commandeered the lair of the dragon Ganymode, a half a days ride from here. As for what to do…” He paused, looking pointedly at Chad’s codpiece. “That magical braye of yours is the key. Its power has been awakened now, and it’s our best weapon against the sorcerer.”

Yorick, having regained his senses, began hastily pulling on his breeches as the Baron continued.

“If we leave immediately we can be there just after sunset and might have the element of surprise.”

Chad instinctively glanced down at his codpiece, a mixture of awe and trepidation washing over him. He had always known it was special, but to hear the Baron speak of it as a weapon against a powerful sorcerer was almost too much to comprehend.

“But… I don’t even know how to use it,” Chad protested weakly.

The Baron’s eyes softened slightly. “The power will come to you when you need it most. Trust in yourself, and in the magic that has chosen you.”

Then Yorick spoke up. “Sir, is the tool you had made to fight Ganymode or Yardix?”

“Both. It will help us gain access to Ganymode’s lair, which you will see is not a trivial undertaking.” The Baron explained, “Now come, we must get moving.”

Less than an hour later, they began their journey westward. Chad rode his horse while the Baron and Yorick followed in the wagon. The rolling plains and hills that surrounded the castle slowly faded away, replaced by a vast expanse of dry plains. As the sun inched closer to the horizon, Chad noticed a distinct shape in the distance: perhaps a hill or small mountain rising from the dry, desert-like earth of the plain.

As they drew nearer, Chad realized the shape was no natural formation. It was a massive structure, its dark stone walls twisting upward in impossible angles that seemed to defy gravity. Spires and turrets jutted out at odd intervals, giving the entire edifice an unsettling, alien appearance.

“Ganymode’s lair,” the Baron muttered, his voice tinged with a mix of awe and dread. “Yardix has corrupted it with his foul magic.”

The sun had just dipped below the horizon as they approached, casting long shadows across the barren landscape. Chad’s heart raced, his palms sweaty on the reins. He could feel a faint warmth emanating from his codpiece, pulsing in time with his accelerated heartbeat.

As they got closer to the peculiar structure, Chad noted that it was difficult to tell where the entrance was, if any, given the enchanted nature of the place.

“This is where the tool comes in,” the Baron said as the wagon stopped and he dismounted. He then went to the back of the wagon and began releasing the latches securing the mysterious box.

Chad and Yorick dismounted as well, moving closer to see what the Baron was unveiling. With a final click, the large wooden box fell open, revealing a strange contraption inside. It appeared to be a long metal rod with various gears, levers, and intricate mechanisms attached to it. At one end was what looked like a large mecidiyeköy escort corkscrew, while the other end had a handle and several dials.

“This,” the Baron said, lifting the device with a grunt, “is our key to entering Ganymode’s lair.”

He approached the twisted stone walls, studying them intently before selecting a spot. He positioned the corkscrew end against the wall and began to turn the handle. The device whirred to life, the gears clicking and spinning as the corkscrew bored into the enchanted stone.

Chad and Yorick watched in amazement as the device drove into the wall when suddenly and without warning it stopped.

There was a humming sound, then the unit began to glow red as if being heated, and it slowly reversed and backed out of the hole it had created. As it fell to the ground, the Baron’s mouth fell open in amazement.

There was a blinding flash as Chad watched the corkscrew explode, but he felt nothing from the blast. The Baron and Yorick, however, were thrown backward and away from the wall, landing on each other and rendered unconscious.

The wall where the corkscrew had been drilling now opened to reveal a dark passageway. Chad turned towards it as his codpiece glowed, throwing light into the darkness of the portal.

Chad hesitated for a moment, torn between helping his fallen companions and investigating the mysterious passageway. The pulsing warmth in his groin seemed to urge him forward, and he found himself drawn inexorably towards the opening.

As he stepped into the darkness, unsheathing his sword, the glow from his codpiece intensified, illuminating the narrow stone corridor ahead. The walls were slick with moisture, and strange symbols were carved into the rock at irregular intervals. Chad’s footsteps echoed ominously as he ventured deeper into the lair.

The passage twisted and turned, leading him ever downward. Chad lost all sense of time and direction as he walked, guided only by the light of his magical garment. Just as he was beginning to wonder if he’d made a terrible mistake, the corridor opened up into a vast chamber.

The room was circular, its high domed ceiling lost in shadow. At its center was a large circular pool with mist swirling at its surface.

Chad watched as the swirling mist opened to reveal a figure gradually rising from beneath the surface of the water.

It was a woman, and as she materialized, he noticed that she wasn’t damp at all. Her jet black hair was glossy, not wet.

She was the most stunning woman he had ever laid eyes on, with deep bright blue eyes and an aquiline nose above luscious, full red lips. She wasn’t unclothed, but clad in a form-fitting suit that glowed with the same blue light that lit his codpiece and highlighted every curve of her exquisite body.

“M’lady,” Chad said, lowering his sword, “I seek the Sorcerer Yardix, could you aid me in finding him?” He was thankful that his codpiece hid the growing pressure at his groin.

“Noble knight,” she replied with a breathy, sibilant voice as Chad’s own breath drew quicker at the steamy sound of her speech, “There is no Sorcerer here.”

As Chad’s mouth fell open she walked towards him on the surface of the water, smiling and running her tongue slowly around her lips.

Chad gulped then said, “Where is he then?” and then he added quickly, “Ma’am.”

“He does not exist. Who you seek is me, the Sorceress Yardix!” she exclaimed as she nişantaşı escort caressed his cheek with her outstretched hand, making him swoon.

Chad recoiled in shock, his sword clattering to the ground. The woman – Yardix – laughed, a sound like tinkling bells that sent shivers down his spine.

“You seem surprised, strong knight,” she purred, circling him predatorily. “Did you expect some wizened old man? How… quaint.”

Chad’s mind raced. Everything he thought he knew had been turned on its head. He glanced down at his glowing codpiece, uncertain.

“But… the Baron said…” he stammered.

“The Baron knows little of true magic,” Yardix said, her eyes locked on Chad’s. “He sees only what he expects to see. But you, my dear… you have the potential for so much more.”

She circled Chad slowly, her fingers trailing across his shoulders. Chad felt dizzy, intoxicated by her presence. The warmth from his codpiece intensified, spreading through his body.

“That marvelous codpiece of yours,” Yardix murmured. “Belongs to me. Tell me, Chad, do you know what it truly is?”

Chad shook his head, struggling to form coherent thoughts. “N-no… the Baron never explained…”

“It is my power over you,” she said simply, “First, in my presence, I expect you to be wearing only it.”

Chad suddenly felt a draft and then realized his clothes were gone. He was naked, wearing only the codpiece.

Yardix held out her hand and he saw a bee and a very small snake, not much larger than an earthworm. The bee took flight and landed on his codpiece. He went to brush it away, but he could not move. Then the sorceress placed the snake next to it. The bee crawled to the edge and went under and the snake followed as Chad watched in horror.

“These are familiars of mine, they will help to keep you focussed,” she explained.

“Focussed?” Chad asked, “On what?!”

Buzzing could then be heard coming from the codpiece as Chad, held immobile, dropped his head back and moaned.

“The bee is vibrating it’s wings against the base of your ballocks,” Yardix said smiling, “While my snake has wrapped itself around the tip of your erect spindle.”

Chad could barely hear her for the incredible sensations he was feeling in his crotch. His mind reeled as waves of pleasure coursed through his body. He struggled against the invisible force holding him in place, but it was futile. The buzzing intensified, and he felt the snake tightening its coils.

“What… what do you want from me?” he gasped, fighting to maintain some semblance of control.

“Obedience, adoration, possibly love…” she answered.

Suddenly the sensations Chad was feeling stopped abruptly along with the buzzing sound.

She went on, “You already know that obedience is rewarded and disobedience is punished.”

Chad’s chiseled body stiffened, his muscles unable to move as he let out a scream.

“What does a bee sting to the balls feel like, anyway?” she asked innocently.

As she spoke the intense pain that Chad had experienced disappeared along with the invisible restraints and he fell forward, catching himself with his hands.

“I…I…I don’t understand,” Chad whined, looking up at her from the floor.

“I want you to be my knight, I want to command you and for you to obey only me.”

Chad’s mind struggled against the fog of pleasure and pain. Part of him felt he should resist, fight against this enchantress. şişli escort But another part, growing stronger by the moment, yearned to submit to her will.

“But… the Baron… my quest…” he stammered.

Yardix looked at him with gentleness.

“Your quest was based on lies and half-truths.” she explained, “The Baron is a opportunist, chasing after things he has no right to possess. He sought your codpiece for himself.”

“Do you recall the farmer’s daughters…the ‘peasant girls’ that dragged you into a barn and had their way with you?” she asked laughing.

“But…but how did you know about that?” Chad asked, perplexed.

“You don’t recall the raven-haired girl, the one who seemed to command the others?”

“YOU! You were her!” Chad exclaimed, remembering the day wistfully.

“I was interested in your codpiece, of course, but also in your, let’s say, stamina in both pleasure and pain. Who do you think gave the dragon cum to the Baron that healed your, let me add impressive, wounds?”

“You slew Panthax,” she stated simply, “the son of my dragon Ganymode. The magic of those dragons is in your codpiece.”

Chad looked dazed as she knelt beside him, her fingers trailing along his jaw. Despite everything, Chad felt his body responding to her touch.

“You have a choice to make,” she whispered, “You must serve me willingly or leave and never return. I grant you that gift.”

Then she reached out and pulled his codpiece away, his member instantly springing to attention.

Chad turned to her and their lips met in a passionate kiss. As their tongues intertwined, he felt a surge of energy coursing through his body.

His mind raced with conflicting emotions – desire, confusion, fear – but in that moment, all he knew was the intoxicating taste of her lips.

As their lips parted, Chad felt another surge of power.

The codpiece, now in Yardix’s hand, pulsed with an otherworldly light. Chad’s mind cleared, and for the first time, he felt truly awake.

With a wave of her hand, the chamber around them shimmered and transformed. The stone walls melted away, replaced by silken curtains and plush furnishings. A large bed dominated the room and Yardix, now fully nude, pulled Chad onto her as she lay back on the bed.

She whispered in his ear, “This is only the beginning. Your true training will be both shocking and satisfying. Be ready.”

Her hand slipped between them and began to work on his erection, licking her fingers as she prepared him for her. As Chad’s resistance melted away, he knew he had truly become Yardix’s knight.

“I… I choose to serve you, my lady,” Chad said, his voice hoarse with desire and newfound conviction as he plunged into her.

A smile of delight spread across Yardix’s face.

“Wise choice, my knight,” she moaned.

Their lust seemed insatiable and when they finished she stood, pulling Chad to his feet. With a wave of her hand, his codpiece reappeared, glowing even brighter than before.

She placed the codpiece back on Chad, and as it touched his skin, he felt a transformation begin.

His body tingled with newfound strength, his senses sharpened. The magic of the codpiece merged with his very being as he fell to his knees before her, taking her hand in his.

“I choose you,” he said, his voice steady and sure, “and I will serve you, my lady.” he said as he reiterated his vow.

“Rise, Sir Chad,” Yardix commanded.

“You are now my champion, my protector, and my lover.”

“This is now the symbol of your fealty to me,” Yardix explained, touching his codpiece. “Its power will grow as your devotion deepens.”

Chad nodded, feeling the warmth of the codpiece spreading through his body once more and his desire for her even more so.

Chapter 10: A Fated Reunion

Tiafell and his friends stood before the ruins of an abandoned town that was thriving not very long ago. Many of the buildings were partially collapsed and others were demolished completely, with very few still intact. It was eerily quiet.

“This is.. was Gatharham..” Cirris sighed.

“I don’t recognize it anymore” Mirya wiped tears from her eyes. Her brother put his arm around her.

“I’m not trying to sound morbid, but where are all the bodies?”

“I heard the Gashuan Military arrived and burned all the bodies they found. They came to look for survivors but found no one alive” Nadia informed them. The thought nauseated Cirris and Mirya. “But yet, I smell fresh blood in the air. Someone died here recently, a group of people!”

“Let’s hurry to Samora’s shop and see what we can find there, it may be more dangerous here than we realized” Tiafell suggested. They made their way through the ruins, taking in the sights of the devastated town. It was clearly a busy town before, but now all that was left were lifeless ruins and a deafening silence. Other than occasional animals, there were no signs of life anywhere. Various items lay scattered around the streets such as clothes, shoes, rotting food, purses, toys, and other things that people would have carried with them while out in public. There were also weapons lying around, swords, bows, arrows, staves, to name a few. Further into town, they discovered human corpses strown about the street. Mirya gasped at the sight, many of them were mangled or ripped apart.

“Who were these people? I don’t recognize any of them!” Cirris asked.

“They look like thieves; they must have moved in after the military left. An abandoned town like this one is the perfect place for them to set up a hideout in” Nadia stated.

Tiafell, though sickened by the sight and the smell, examined one of the bodies. “These men were killed this morning. I also detect traces of potent demonic energy!”

“Is it still here??” Mirya was nervous.

“No, I only sense animals around us.”

“Hopefully whatever killed them was just passing through and is long gone. Come on, let’s do what we came here to do and get the hell out of here in case it decides to come back!” Nadia said.

After further navigating the streets of the ruined town, they reached Samora’s shop. The structure was still standing but had suffered the same fate as most of the others. Every window was broken, the shop’s sign was lying on the ground, holes had been blown out of some of the walls.

“We were in the Town Square when they came for us.” Cirris said.

“If we had been home, the shop probably wouldn’t be standing at all” Mirya added.

“I just need something that has your mom’s energy on it, some of her clothes would be the best source. If I have that, I can get an idea of where she could have gone, I’m hoping her trail leads out of here” Nadia told them as they went inside. Bottles laid shattered, the counter was in shambles, and glass from the shattered windows lined the floor. They headed upstairs, finding evidence that the living quarters had been raided. Almost all their belongings were gone or destroyed, much to the distress of Cirris and Mirya.

Tiafell broke the somber silence, feeling the weight of the twins’ sorrow. “Do you think that some of Samora’s clothes would have been left behind?”

“Let’s go and see” Nadia said as she opened a door.

They went into Samora’s bedroom, which had been similarly devastated. Upon opening her closet, they discovered most of her clothes were gone, save for a few articles. Cirris and Mirya’s expressions saddened even further.

“Hey, I know this is hard, but I can work with this. We’ll find her!” Nadia confided to them, hoping to lift their spirits a bit. She then took a blouse and held it in her hands, closing her eyes to focus. “I’ve got it! I have a lock on her energy! Follow me, I’ll take you as far as the trail will go!”

“Thank you so much, Nadi” Mirya smiled a bit.

Together, they left the shop with Nadia leading the way. After walking for several minutes, they entered the Town Square, the most damaged part of the town. The sun had begun to set, limiting their light.

“Her energy is all over the place” Nadia looked around as she followed the trail.

“This is where the attack started, and where we were captured. I remember we were taken down there” Cirris pointed down a street.

“Nadi? Can you tell if the trail ends here…? Mirya nervously asked.

“Just a second..” Nadia closed her eyes and focused. After reopening them, she walked to the center of the square and looked up. “From this spot, her energy goes up into the air. But how?”

“Mom flies on a broom!” Cirris perked up.

“Then that means she left!! She’s alive!!” Mirya began sobbing.

“She must not have been able to see which way they took you, so it would make sense that she would take to the air to look for you.” Nadia continued.

“That’s possible, it was ataköy escort pretty chaotic here” Cirris answered.

“I’m so happy for you both!” Tiafell told them, relieved to finally hear something good after spending time in such a depressing place.

“Yeah. It seems like she flew all over the place and then went toward the mountain. I can’t follow it beyond that.” Nadia crossed her arms.

“I know, but this means more to me and Cirris than you will ever know. Now we must find her somehow!” Mirya smiled but Tiafell caught her attention. When she turned to look at him, he appeared to be very frightened. “Tee-Tee?”

Tiafell was trembling. His eyes were as wide as possible and his mouth was hanging open, his jaw quivering. Small whimpers escaped from his throat.

“Tiafell? What’s wrong, man?” Cirris asked.

“He senses it too..” Nadia was showing signs of anxiety herself. “It’s a demon, and it reeks of the blood of the thieves who died here! Holy shit, I have never sensed this much malice emanating from a single being before!”

“It can’t be..” Tiafell whimpered, “It was just a dream!! The night before I left Elfandall, a black demon with long white hair appeared in one of my dreams. It wasn’t real, but I still felt its presence like it was truly there, just as clearly as I feel it now! Does this mean that creature really exists??” he squatted down, holding his head in his hands.

“Hey, calm down! We’ll kick this thing’s ass just like we did Bovindor’s!” Cirris declared, but Nadia didn’t seem to be convinced.

“No, we need to hide right now, if it isn’t already too late!!” she commanded.

They quickly retreated into one of the few buildings left standing in the square, hiding behind a wall next to a window. Cirris held Mirya in his arms as she held her hands over her mouth, she was becoming scared herself. Tiafell, who was still visibly shaken, was between them and Nadia, who was the closest to the window. She peeked around the edge and quickly pulled her head back. She mouthed “I saw it” to the others.

“Hopefully it hasn’t noticed us and will leave” Cirris whispered.

Nadia looked again and didn’t see it a second time, she turned back to the others. “I don’t see it now. I think it’s-” she whispered but stopped herself.

A shadow slowly hovered by the window. Though they couldn’t see it clearly due to their position, they could tell that the creature was on the other side of the wall. It took everything in Tiafell’s power to not panic. Nadia had broken out into a cold sweat, and the mage twins were perfectly still, too frightened to move. They heard a loud screeching sound on the other side of the wall, like nails scratching across a smooth surface, followed by a deep low chuckle. The creature’s shadow then disappeared from view, seemingly floating away from them. Nadia slowly peeked out of the window again.

“Well?” Cirris whispered.

Nadia stopped looking and leaned back against the wall, whispering back to him. “I couldn’t see it, but I still feel its presence. We’re not out of-“

She was interrupted by a black fist that smashed through the window, shattering the glass and startling everyone. It was attached to a very long arm that whipped around with the flexibility of a rope, grabbed Tiafell by his left arm, and pulled him outside. As he was pulled through the air, his quiver and bow flew from his right shoulder, his arrows scattering all around. It happened so fast that before he knew what had happened, he was being held in the air by his arms and was looking into the yellow eyes of the figure he saw in his dream. He was just as he appeared before, a black ghostly demon that was only a torso with a head and long arms with broad shoulders. He had long white hair and lacked most facial features, having only eyes. Though he lacked a waist and legs, he was more than six feet tall from the top of his head to the bottom of his torso. He was hovering a foot off the ground as he held Tiafell. The elf began to panic, kicking his dangling feet.

“We meet again at last, Tiafell” the figure said. Despite lacking a mouth, his face shifted as though he was grinning.

“The.. the.. the dream! You came to me in a dream two weeks ago, didn’t you??” the frightened elf stammered.

“A dream? I did no such thing. Perhaps what you experienced was a premonition of our reunion. No, you and I met long before that, when you were a baby in fact.”

“When I was a baby? You knew me then??”

“Oh yes, little elf. I also knew your parents quite-” the figure grunted when he was struck from behind by something, causing him to drop Tiafell, who quickly moved away on his back, using his arms and feet to move himself. The figure turned to look behind him, narrowing his eyes.

“Leave him alone, you freak!!” Cirris demanded, having thrown one of his energy balls at the demon.

The figure sneered, turning his body to face them. “I have business with Tiafell, but I can make time for bahçelievler escort you three. He is the only prisoner I will be taking; the rest of you are going to die right here in this shell of a town.”

“Don’t count on it,” Nadia confidently declared. “The sun is setting, so you’re about to be in for a rude awakening!” she grinned, showing her fangs with her eyes turning red.

“What do you want with Tee-Tee??” Mirya asked.

“You’re not going to live long enough for it to be any of your business, now die!” he declared.

The figure flew forward at them. Mirya erected barriers to stop him, but he broke through them easily without losing momentum. Nadia stood in his path and jammed her spear into his chest, impaling him. Cirris and Mirya cheered, but their cheers were short lived when the figure swatted her away, sending her crashing against a wall. He pulled the spear out of his chest and broke the weapon in half, tossing the pieces aside. The hole that the spear caused closed itself, as if nothing happened. No blood ever spilled from the wound.

“Nadia!!” her friends shouted.

“You can do better than that. I enjoy toying with fools who think they stand a chance before I inevitably eliminate them. Come, stand your ground so I can pull it out from under you!”

Despite still being incredibly frightened, Tiafell was able to retrieve his bow and an arrow to try and attack the demon. He stood up and readied the projectile to hopefully take the figure down. He let his arrow fly, aiming for the back of his head, but the figure’s hand whipped back and caught it.

“Now Tiafell, I would rather not hurt you, but I will if you force me to. Do us both a favor and stay out of this.” he said, keeping its focus on the others.

“I don’t know what you want with me, but I’m not going to let you hurt my friends!!” he defiantly shouted.

Tiafell dropped his bow and drew his sword, then rushed the figure, intending to run him through from behind. However, he disappeared when the blade was within millimeters. He reappeared behind the elf and slammed his fist into his back, sending him rolling toward his friends. He was speechless and in great pain, barely able to breathe. He had never received such a heavy hit before. The monster’s strength far surpassed any human or elf. Even Nadia, the strongest in their group, was outmatched.

“Tiafell!!” Cirris and Mirya both screamed.

“I said stay out of this!! You may cause me to lose my temper and kill you!” the figure demanded.

“Mirya, boost me!” Cirris instructed his sister as he held his dagger, channeling magic to extend the blade. He began running at the figure.

“Boost!!” Mirya shouted.

Cirris flew at the figure with greatly accelerated speed, but in the blink of an eye, he found himself in the clutches of the demon, its long black fingers wrapped around his neck.

“No!!!” his twin sister screamed.

“That old trick. A worn out classic” the figure shook his head. “It doesn’t work if your opponent is fast enough to counter it.”

Cirris tried to pry the figure’s fingers away from his throat, kicking at his body. A second pair of arms sprouted from the lower half of the demon’s torso. He delivered a heavy punch to the mage’s stomach with one of his newly grown fists, then he tossed him to the ground in front of Mirya’s feet.

“Big Brother!!!” Mirya screamed, going to her brother’s side, who was curled up and clenching his stomach. She was visibly terrified, realizing they were no match for this creature.

“You and I haven’t played yet, young lady. Allow me to change that” the figure hovered toward the twins.

“Don’t!! Leave us alone!!” Mirya shouted, attempting to cover her brother as she trembled.

The creature backhanded her, knocking her away from Cirris. Mirya turned onto her back to try and stand but the creature pinned her head against the ground with one of its large hands. She was able to breathe, but the demon was crushing her head, she cried out in pain as tears streamed from her eyes.

“Does it hurt, little one? Do not fear, the pain will only last until your head pops, then it will all be over” he taunted her.

The creature gradually increased the pressure on Mirya’s head, making the mage scream louder. But then, he was run through with two blades, one held by Nadia and the other by Tiafell. The creature withdrew his hand from Mirya.

“Are you alright??” Tiafell asked.

“Take Cirris and run! We’ll handle this asshole!” the vampire added. Mirya quickly stood up and helped Cirris to his feet. The two of them moved away just as the figure grabbed Tiafell and Nadia by their throats. They let go of their weapons to try and free themselves, but the demon slammed them into each other, dazing and disorienting them both. He then used his bottom pair of hands to remove the blades from his body, dropping them onto the ground. He turned his attention to Nadia first.

“What does a low-ranking halkalı escort vampire like you expect to do to me? And you’re a dhampir to boot! Get out of my sight, you filthy weakling!” he said as he punched Nadia in the stomach before tossing her through a window. Next, he looked at Tiafell.

“What did I say about staying out of this?” he sneered. His arm stretched forward, slamming Tiafell’s back against a wall, causing the elf to grunt from the impact. He then retracted his arm and launched a small series of rapid-fire punches onto his abdomen with his other fists. “If I didn’t need you alive, I would rip your heart out of your goddamn chest! Do it again and I will break all four of your limbs!”

Tiafell had never felt this much pain before. He had taken more than his fair share of beatings during sparring matches with elves who wanted to humiliate him, but this was far more serious. Despite the figure’s insistence on taking him alive, he wasn’t sure how much longer he could survive, especially since he was beginning to see two of the demon. But at the same time, he had to save his friends at any cost, no matter how painful it would be.

“Done already? You need to toughen up, a half demon like yourself should be able to withstand much more than a few light punches. The elves have made you as soft as they themselves are, no wonder they hide behind that barrier!” he mocked, then started laughing.

“What… a half demon…?” Tiafell groaned, barely able to speak. “What do you mean by that…?”

Nadia had gotten back onto her feet and came back outside. “You’re really starting to piss me off!! I’ll show you what a dhampir can do, you’ll regret underestimating me!!”

She ran toward the demon, her anger getting the better of her. The figure held Tiafell by the scruff of his tunic and flung him at Nadia. He collided with her, causing the two of them to fall into a heap on the ground. Cirris and Mirya watched in shock.

“Cirris…” Mirya was clinging to her brother, scared for their lives.

“No, we just found evidence that Mom could be alive! It can’t end this way!!” Cirris yelled.

The demon sighed. “How pitiful, I seem to have broken all of you. None of you are able to put up a fight anymore.” All four of his arms stretched forward and grabbed everyone by their necks, lifting them off the ground.

“Tiafell, I want you to watch me choke the life out of your friends, and then you’re coming with me” he chuckled, turning the elf around to face his friends. He then squeezed the throats of the other three. All of them gasped for air and struggled to break free, but they were too injured to resist.

“Please.. let them go! I’ll go with you, but please don’t kill them…” Tiafell begged as tears rolled down his cheeks.

“You’re coming with me regardless; you have no say in the matter! These three fools had the balls to fuck with me, and now they will pay the price!” he laughed loudly as he tightened his grip on his victims’ necks, only holding Tiafell tightly enough to restrain him. The elf watched helplessly as the faces of his friends began to turn blue. He felt rage growing inside him, the sight of his friends being choked to death turned his despair into anger. He gritted his teeth, which had become sharper, and a red mist slowly gathered around him.

Suddenly, there was a quick flash of light, and all four of the figure’s arms were severed at the elbows. He roared as his would-be victims fell to the ground and pulled the limp hands away from their necks. Nadia, Cirris, and Mirya all coughed and gasped for air.

“Are you alright??” Tiafell crawled over to them, the mist that was forming around him had disappeared.

“I’m okay, but Cirris and Nadi are hurt, and so are you” Mirya said hoarsely.

“I’ll be fine, but I wonder what..” Cirris stopped, his mouth hung open as he looked up. “Mom??”

Standing between them and the figure, who was still reeling from his arms being severed, was Samora, giving them a warm smile.

“Mommy!!” Mirya screamed as loudly as she could, weakly standing up and hugging her mother tightly.

“My sweet baby girl..” Samora spoke softly as she returned her daughter’s hug, “and my strong young man. I’m sorry it took me this long to get here. I want so badly to hold you both and cry my eyes out, but there is something we must do first” she continued, letting Mirya go before turning toward the figure. He narrowed his eyes and growled as his severed arms grew back. Samora looked at him with the ferocity of a mother bear protecting her cub.

“You must be Samora, Marlon’s spawn. It’s a pleasure to meet you” he said mockingly.

“The pleasure is yours, Dred” she responded bitterly.

“Dred…” Tiafell said to himself. “I… remember that name..” Memories from long ago flooded his mind. He remembered a distant voice, it belonged a woman, a voice that was vaguely familiar to him but also one he could not put a name or face to. She sounded scared but also ready to fight.

“Get away from him Dred!! You can’t have him!!” she screamed. Snapping back to the present, Tiafell held his head, the situation and memories of the past overwhelming him.

“Mom! You know this thing??” Cirris asked.

“This is my first time meeting him, but yes. I’ll tell you everything I know later. Right now, he must be dealt with!” Samora declared.

Hawke and Elayne take some time for themselves.

Hawke was right. The elven camp wasn’t that far from the farm. It was almost a full day’s ride. By the time they got to the farm, it was just a little past dark. After removing the saddles from the horses, Hawke rode Midnight back to his house and let the horse free before they retired for the evening.

“It really feels good to be back here, Hawke. I’m glad you thought of this,” she said as she leaned back against him with a glass of wine watching the fire.

“Me too, princess. I think I’m going to insist on Caleb letting us away from camp for a few days every other week. It might take us a little more time to finally leave after we’re done with Caleb, but I find it worth it.”

“Especially after listening to the lectures. What is the point of all that anyway? I noticed a lot of what they’re teaching us you’ve already learned from your books. Which I still think was a weird thing to study, by the way. But it is easier to understand since you know most of it.” She turned her head a little to look at him. “Hawke, you mentioned that you dove into those subjects out of boredom and a passion for history,” she laughed softly, “but out of all the topics, why focus on the Blights?”

“It wasn’t just the Blights that I read about,” he explained. “I devoured anything I could find. We were always on the move, trying to stay ahead of the Templars and the Tower’s clutches. During those rare moments when we could actually catch our breath, I lost myself in whatever literature was available. It helped keep me sane. They were my escape and kept my mind engaged,” he explained, shrugging slightly. “Honestly, it made the journey feel less burdensome for me.”

“Well, it definitely makes what we’re learning easier or should I say what I’m learning since you know a lot of it.” She turned around, so she was lying on top of him, “Why don’t you go take that bath you’re dying for while I fix us something to eat. I don’t know about you, but I’m hungry.”

He grinned at her. “Yeah, I’m hungry too, but not for what you’re thinking right now.” He put a hand on the back of her head and brought her mouth to his.

When he finally let her go, she squirmed from out of his arms and got up, “That’s for dessert, my love. Besides, I’m dying for a bath, too, but food first.”

“Why don’t you join me then,” he said while he tried to grab her hand as she headed to the kitchen, but she avoided him by hurrying out of his reach.

“No, thank you, I’ll pass on the cold bath, but it might do you wonders baby,” she giggled, “at least for a while anyways. Go Hawke, by the time you’re done, the food will be ready.”

Grumbling about a bossy woman, he went and gathered his stuff and headed to the lake. Even though it was a little chilly, it felt absolutely wonderful being able to submerge himself in the water. After using the waterfall to rinse the soap off of him, he headed back to shore when he felt her in his head, letting him know dinner was ready. Wearing just his pants, he walked inside, seating himself at the table.

She came up behind him and wrapped her arms around him, “You feel better, my love?” she asked softly while her hands slid down his bare chest. “Mmm, baby, I love the feel of you under my hands,” she purred.

He grabbed her hands and pulled her around onto his lap, “is that so, angel,” he asked before his mouth claimed hers. He finally released her when her belly grumbled, “I guess you are hungry, my love,” he grinned at her, “Go eat, baby.”

After dinner, he got her bath ready while she cleaned up the kitchen. “Your bath is ready, my beautiful princess,” he said bowing to her.

She giggled and walked towards him before curtsying, “Thank you, my handsome prince.” She laughed when she heard him growling. “If I’m your princess, then you’re my prince, my love.” Stripping off her clothes, she stepped into the warm bubbly water with a sigh, “Oh sweet mercy, this is heavenly, thank you, baby.”

He felt her body and muscles relaxing as the water enveloped her, he put more heat into the water until she was moaning with pleasure, then he sat back on the couch watching her relaxing in the tub. His mind went to upgrades for the house, so she could enjoy this more often, “Better include a bigger tub than baby,” he heard her in his mind. “That way, you can join me instead of using the lake to clean up in.”

Chuckling, he added another log to the fire before refilling his glass and sitting back down. “So we have a couple of days to ourselves. What would you like to do?”

As she turned in the tub, her gaze fell upon him from across the rim, her movement causing the rippling water to dance around her. He found himself captivated by the sight of her luscious figure. ‘Damn, she has a sexy bottom.’ The sound of her soft laughter broke through his thoughts, and he lifted his gaze to meet her eyes.

“I think I want to spend the next couple of days wrapped up in my husband’s arms in bed with him buried inside me. topkapı escort That sounds absolutely wonderful.” She watched as his eyes started changing, a hungry grin on his face.

“Really!!” he growled.

“Mmhm, I think that sounds like a delicious idea,” she purred as she got out of the tub and walked slowly towards him as his eyes raked up and down her body.

She felt heat rush through her as his gaze landed first on her breasts, then lower. She trembled as his look became ravenous when they went between her legs, and she felt a different kind of wetness. She stood in front of him, running her hand down herself, first touching her breasts, then slowly lowered her hand down between her legs. He watched as her fingers slid along her, coming back out glistening. She leaned towards him, her eyes on his as she brought her wet fingers up to his lips. He opened it, and she slid her fingers inside his hot mouth, closing her eyes moaning as he started licking and sucking her fingers.

He lifted her up and laid her across his lap as his mouth came down on hers. She moaned when his hand trailed down her body to between her legs, and his fingers went inside her. She put her arms around his neck, opening her legs more while his fingers started moving along her. He felt her muscles tighten around his fingers, her hips moving with him as they slid in and out of her.

He withdrew his lips from hers and leaned in closer, whispering in her ear, “Come for me, my love.” As his fingers quickened their movement, she felt a rush of warmth rush through her. Gasping, she tightened around him, her breath becoming ragged as soft whimpers escaped her lips. With her eyes shut tight, her sounds grew louder, and her hips began to move in rhythm with his hand, matching the increased urgency. “Scream for me, baby,” he urged. In response, she cried out his name, and a primal growl escaped him as her body surrendered, releasing waves of pleasure over his fingers.

“That’s my beautiful angel,” he whispered hotly in her ear, keeping his fingers sliding along her, coaxing more from her.

His gaze burned intensely into hers as he turned her body, positioning her legs on either side of him. A low growl escaped his lips, “I think it’s time for dessert, darling.” With that, he laid on his back, eagerly pulling her bottom closer to his mouth as she straddled him, his tongue plunging deep within her, his hands gripping her waist.

As she gazed down, their eyes locked, her hips began to move against his mouth, responding to the fervor of his tongue that sought her essence, relentless in its pursuit. Releasing his hold on her hips, his fingers ventured up to tease her nipples, twisting and pulling with a playful urgency. The mounting pleasure caused her muscles to tighten around his tongue, leading to another scream as her sweet essence flooded his mouth.

“Again,” he growled in her head and her hips bucked wildly against him, releasing her juices over and over in his mouth until she collapsed over him, her body spent. He slid her down on top of him, letting her rest, “You satisfied my love,” he asked quietly before his mouth took hers.

He carried her into the bedroom and laid down beside her on the bed before removing his mouth from hers. His eyes and hands roamed slowly over her body, “do you know how unbelievably sexy and beautiful you are baby,” he asked her softly as his eyes went to hers, his hand between her legs again rubbing her. Her hips started moving with his fingers, and she whimpered when he slid them deep inside her, bringing another release from her. She rolled over, his fingers still moving inside her.

“Arik,” she panted while her hands went to the waistband of his pants.

He chuckled, “why you in such a hurry, my love,” he whispered in her ear while his fingers still slid along her, bringing her body over the edge again before she could grasp him in her hands.

“Arik, please, I need you inside me now, please, baby,” she begged, panting heavily.

“As my baby wishes,” he growled before her body released on his fingers again. He quickly removed his pants, opened her legs wide, and got between them. He put his fingers back inside her, bringing her close to the edge before he raised her rear up and rammed himself deep inside her, making her scream as she climaxed.

~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~

The following morning, after finally allowing her some rest, he quietly rose from the bed and dressed quickly. Last night, he had noticed several extra horses in the barn after putting the saddles away. A grin spread across his face upon spotting Larry and Mark outside.

“Looks like you two chose to stick around. Are you enjoying your little getaway,” he said with a chuckle.

Mark shrugged. “Well, you did invite us to stay, my Lord. We’ve been pitching in around the farm, giving Sara and Hank a much-deserved break while we handle the chores.”

Hawke, impressed by the gesture, nodded appreciatively. “Thank you for that. I’ll bağcılar escort definitely mention to Bryce that he needs to increase your pay when we return. Elayne and I are only taking a brief break for a couple of days before we’re off again. We’re uncertain about how long we’ll be away this time, but we want you both to know that you’re welcome to stay here as long as you like. Now, gentlemen, I’ll make my way back to my house. I just wanted to drop by and see how you were doing. So, take this time to relax and enjoy yourselves.”

Once he returned to clean up and put the tub away, he made his way back to the bedroom. There, he paused to watch her sleeping peacefully. She would remain in slumber for some time, and a smile spread across his face as memories of the previous night and that morning flooded his mind. Their desire for each other had burned brightly; she craved him just as intensely as he craved her, both of them caught in a wave of passion.

Feeling her stir in his head, he swiftly removed his clothes and slipped back under the covers beside her. Wrapping his arm around her, he drew her close, finding comfort in the rhythm of her breathing. For a moment, he lay there, absorbing the feeling of the moment. “I love you, baby,” he whispered before finally surrendering to sleep, allowing himself to drift into dreams alongside her.

He found himself waking to the feeling of her hands and lips wrapped around him, a low pleasurable groan escaped him. “Elayne, baby, what are you doing?”

Raising her head slightly, she shot him a playful grin. “What does it feel like I’m doing, my love?” With a mischievous look in her eye, she returned her focus to him, sliding her warm mouth and hands up and down his shaft. As he grew harder, his fingers tangled in her hair, urging her to take him in deeper.

“Elayne,” he gasped, a wave of pleasure coursing through him. She responded by tightening her grip, quickening her pace until he reached his peak, filling her completely. A grin spread across her face as he pulled her up onto him. Straddling him, she guided him deep within her, ready, wet, and eager for him.

“Oh, sweet mercy baby,” panting heavily, he felt her body tighten around him, a wave of pleasure flooded through him as he thrust deeper, holding her hips firmly in his grasp. Their climaxes became one as he released himself within her. Leaning forward, his hands and lips traced a path along her back before he gently pulled her closer. “You’re truly incredible, my love,” he murmured softly into her ear, then lowered her beside him.

Turning to face him, she gazed into his eyes, her fingertips tracing the contours of his face. A soft smile played on her lips as she leaned in. “And so are you, my love,” she breathed, their lips meeting in a tender embrace. Her leg draped over him while her hand guided his shaft back into her, igniting the fire between them once more.

~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~

As she rode alongside him, memories of the last three wonderful days together flooded her mind, filling her with warmth. A deep sense of contentment wrapped around her; she felt more relaxed than she had in a long time. When she glanced over at him, their eyes met; a warm blush crept across her cheeks. He let out a soft chuckle, then took hold of Snowball’s reins, drawing the horse closer. In one quick motion, he swooped her from the saddle and settled her on his lap.

“I’m glad my baby’s so happy and content, means I’m doing my job,” he said, pulling her close to him.

A playful smile spread across her face as she replied, “Oh, there’s no doubt about that, my love.” She settled comfortably against his chest, feeling cherished and secure.

When they finally made it to camp, she felt Hawke stiffen up, suddenly on alert, and reaching for his power. She looked around and noticed a stranger sitting by Caleb, Fen, and Othanar. “Hawke, who is that,” she asked with concern as she looked up at him.

He shook his head as he helped her off Midnight. “I don’t know, but let’s get the horses comfortable, then we’ll find out.”

After they were done, she grabbed his hand as they walked over to the group. Caleb looked up at them and smiled as they neared. “Glad to see the lovebirds made it back. Come, meet our guest, and have a seat.” He turned to the stranger, “Duncan, I’d like to introduce you to the couple we’ve been talking about, Arik and Elayne Hawke.” He turned to them, “and this is Duncan. You two will be spending some time together with him.” Hawke was still hesitant, but he took Duncan’s hand when Duncan offered it. The minute their hands touched, she felt Hawke tense up, and he stepped in front of her like a shield, protecting her.

“Who and what are you?” Hawke growled, his body on alert as a feeling of trepidation went through him. For some reason, Duncan’s presence gave Hawke a strong sense of foreboding, especially with his and Elayne’s future.

Caleb went to stand up, but Duncan looked at him, “it’s ok, Caleb.” He halkalı escort looked back to Hawke curiously, “you’ve felt it before, how and where?”

Elayne put her hand on Hawke’s back, rubbing it, trying to ease some of the tension in him. Hawke, not taking his eyes off Duncan, put his arm around her, his voice low, “you haven’t answered my question.”

Duncan sighed, waving for them to sit. When he had first seen the young man, he had been skeptical. Everything that Caleb and the others had said about him didn’t fit the young man standing in front of him. He was too young to be a master swordsman for starters. He was too young to be a master at anything, period. When the two shook hands, he saw young Hawke recognize something in him, and his eyes became cold steel as he put himself in front of Elayne, protecting her. He watched as Elayne brought her hand up to Hawke’s back, soothing him. Not taking his eyes off Duncan, the young man put his arm around her, but his piercing blue eyes never changed as they penetrated Duncan.

“Sit please, and I’ll tell you who I am, and then I have two questions for you.” He watched the couple walk over to an empty bench, Elayne sitting down, but Hawke stood behind her, still on edge. Amused, he watched as Elayne looked up at Hawke and reached for his hand, before his eyes finally left Duncan’s as he looked down at her. Something passed between the two, Hawke relaxed a little and sat down beside her with his arm around her. His eyes were still hard, though, but Duncan saw the difference in his body. He looked over at Caleb, who was watching the couple with a knowing smile on his face, nodding.

“First of all, as Caleb told you, my name is Duncan. What he didn’t tell you is that I’m the Warden Commander of the Grey Wardens here in Ferelden.” He paused when he saw something flash across Arik’s eyes, and Elayne looked worriedly up at Hawke. “You’ve heard of the Grey Wardens?” Both of them nodded, but there was something else.

“Who hasn’t? It’s well known that the Grey Wardens are the only ones that can stop a Blight.” Hawke looked over at Caleb, “so there is something going on?” he asked as he got up and started pacing.

He stopped, looking at him, Duncan could see Hawke’s mind working, thinking things through. “Before anything more gets said, I need to know what I felt in you.”

Duncan watched him as he started pacing again, “Before I answer that, I need to know a few things. What do you know of Grey Wardens?

Hawke looked at him in annoyance, “I know what everyone knows if they bother to open a book. What does this have to do with what I felt in you,” he growled in anger. Hawke looked down at Elayne, and again, something passed between the two, Hawke deflated a little, looking back at Duncan.

“We’ve recently been learning about the Blights and the Wardens. The Grey Wardens are an Order of warriors of exceptional ability dedicated to fighting darkspawn throughout Thedas. They are headquartered in the very place of their founding, Weisshaupt Fortress in the Anderfels, but maintain a presence in most other nations as well. The Grey Wardens are known for ignoring a recruit’s racial, social, national, and even criminal background if they deem the person valuable in terms of character, ability, or skill. Despite their small numbers, the Grey Wardens have been instrumental in defeating each Blight so far and thus are vital to the survival of the world as a whole.”

“I know they’re not well respected, especially here in Ferelden. Somehow, they are able to sense when an Archdemon is awake. They are the only ones that can kill them. They can also sense when darkspawn are present,” he stopped suddenly looking at Duncan. “How? The taint? Is that what I sensed in you?”

“Describe it to me?” Duncan probed.

“It’s like something that was filth, rotten, but it’s not as strong in you as what I’ve felt before. Not only did I feel the rot, but I felt a wrongness, pure evil. I don’t feel the evil in you that I felt that day, but there is a connection to you and to what I felt before.”

“This is crucial, Hawke. When and where did you encounter this?” Duncan continued, eager to gather more information.

“About a month ago, I came across it in some caves near Highever,” Hawke replied.

“Which caves in Highever?” Duncan pressed further, his desire for answers growing stronger.

Hawke looked at him closely, his irritation spiking, “they’re not a threat anymore, but you are! Why are you here?” he asked quietly.

“Why not take a break and find something to eat, Hawke? Elayne and you must be feeling quite hungry from your trip,” Caleb suggested, cutting in. “Meanwhile, Duncan and I can talk about a few things.”

She stood up, taking Hawke’s hand in hers, “Come, my love, I know I definitely need something to eat, and I can feel you do too.”

Hawke paused, his gaze lingering on Duncan. An unsettling undercurrent seemed to ripple just beneath the surface, suggesting that there was more at play than anyone was revealing. Within his mind, Elayne’s voice cut through the fog of his thoughts. “Hawke, perhaps this relates to what Caleb is teaching us, but at least we’ve found an answer to one question. The Grey Wardens are still around and are likely entangled in whatever is looming ahead.”

Authors Note: This the third part of House Shivashi. I hope you have enjoyed the story and characters. It has been a pleasure to pour so much into creating them. All sexual activity is performed by those 18+, even though there’s no sex in this part.

I welcome all constructive feedback and responses. Thank you, and enjoy

***

Day 7

I barely remembered falling asleep. So tranquil was the time spent with Ghiva and Arua, the dream of living the Folded Path was all that concerned me. As the early morning light slipped through the crack in the blinds of the Master Bedroom, I took a deep breath. I absorbed how good it felt to have my companions, warm and wonderful inside me.

Even though the events of the forthcoming day promised to be taxing and unpredictable, I knew in my heart I was now in the best place possible to attempt our thought-out plan. Everything was ready, including me. It was time to get prepared.

The bath was pleasant and long, the knock at the bedroom door letting me know that food had been brought up. As I toweled off and opened the door, I saw a tray of eggs, potatoes, and meat strips on a lap tray. Two packages wrapped in brown paper were close by. One was a small, thumb-sized package, the other as long as my forearm.

I nodded and brought the tray laden with food and the packages into the room, setting them all on the bed and sitting down. As my hair dried in some twisted towels atop my head, I ate with slow appreciation while staring at the wrapped presents.

I knew, without a doubt, they were what I had sent Skav after.

He came through, just like I knew he would. That means, the rest is already in motion.

I finished my breakfast and then slipped into the bathroom with the small package, finishing my grooming preparations. I approached the wardrobe after my hair was dry, seeing my chocolate brown, three-piece suit hanging there as though it was waiting to be put on.

I nodded and slowly drew on the pants, the fabric so soft and flowing today. My white shirt came next, slowly buttoning it up from the bottom and leaving the top one undone and open. One arm at a time I eased the blazer over my shoulders, rolling the collar down and ensuring the layers of my outfit were perfectly placed.

“Ok, Master Shivashi,” I said into the lady in the mirror, nodding as my amethyst eyes sparkled in the morning light. “Time to put on a show.”

I stepped into my comfortable shoes and exited the Master Bedroom, closing the door then stepping purposefully down the flights of stairs. I passed the faded outline where Havaan Shivashi’s portrait used to hang, the image of her detailed statue down below the manor softly imposing itself on the wall. I stopped and regarded her posture and poise, the owl-like grimness in her eyes stating everything her firm presence did not.

I am a Shivashi. My word is law. Come and claim what is yours, or be claimed in the failure. The world will move on without you.

I gave a polite nod to Havaan’s memory, taking the rest of the stairs down to the foyer. Ghiva stepped out from the kitchen to greet me as I touched it.

“Morning to you, Master Shivashi. I trust you’re prepared for the day?”

“I am, Ghiva, well and truly,” I said, turning toward her and bowing. “Thank you for your service today. You do me and this house great honor.”

“My pleasure and honor to serve, Master Shivashi,” Ghiva hummed, offering a respectful bow in return.

“I have thoroughly considered your desire to become my Pillar, Ghiva. I believe our time to join together will be soon, just not yet,” I said, giving Ghiva a gentle, knowing smile. “I hope you understand.”

“I do, indeed, Master Shivashi. Our time is coming, of that I have no doubt in my mind,” Ghiva responded, her earthy smile kind and hopeful. “Until then.”

“Until then,” I returned, turning and walking toward the front door and out into the middle of a rising morning.

I climbed into the travel carriage and the driver eased us out onto the road, turning east toward Arlia and the destiny that awaited me there.

***

The art of a good con never relies upon the factors you can’t control, rather those you can foresee and can adapt to. The true test of your ability comes in the testament left behind by your mark, the choices you made and how they are reacted.

The first thing you can count on are your own actions and responses, the backbone of what you plan to do and are willing to commit action for. The next thing, if you are wily enough, is the knowledge of your quarry and what they are capable of.

Though harder to quantify, it’s not impossible to predict. Everyone moves in patterns, no matter how well-kept their secrets. I’d seen my share of the tactics this particular challenger had to offer already, absorbing the subtleness and guile of a very impressive quandary. I would happily honor their playful game by bringing forth the best of mine.

Surprise was one thing, merter escort absolute flat-footed disadvantage was another. Moira would learn the difference. I am nothing if not a quid-pro-quo equalist, or an eye-for-an-eye avenger. I don’t find either term mutually exclusive.

As the carriage pulled to a stop outside the walls of Arlia I stepped out, my grip firmly on the door. I reached in and took my sturdy wooden crutch off the bench, putting one foot in front of the other while leaning heavily into it.

Arlia’s gate was just far enough away to get my mind straight on what had to happen, setting my limp and grimacing as tactfully as possible. A certain string of events were about to take place, each with their own purpose and timing. If I did it right, a special kind of fireworks would be going off just after noon.

Watch this performance, every one of you.

Slowly walking through Arlia was a sobering experience, since the populous hadn’t seen me since my interrogation by Moira. Every pair of eyes that saw me stopped whatever they were doing, an aghast gasp of grim understanding present each time. Conversations abruptly ended and tasks paused to witness Master Shivashi, heiress of the Shivashi bloodline, brought low and subdued.

No hand came to guide me, no questions of health or if I needed help, as groans of pain filtered out through my lips. The people simply stared, unwilling and unable to do anything. They were all aware that the ire of House Ciav had been placed upon me.

The promises I had once assured with the pomp of head-strong bravado had been turned back on me, becoming the symbolic tar-and-feathering of an outcast ne’er-do-well.

Moira had been right. The best example was living and walking, a warning to all who would challenge the might of House Ciav on display for all to see.

As I rounded the corner toward Arlia Trust and Savings, I caught sight of Teruose staring at me out of the window. His slimy grin paired grinch-like with his tight and narrow eyes, the slow draw of the curtains inside becoming a smug shun as corrupt business continued unabated.

With a slow turn of my head I saw Heron Genrish, the young man climbing a ladder outside the financial establishment, Genrish and Sons. Steady hands reached up and removed the old wooden placard above the door, replacing it with a much nicer one edged in shiny, sunrise-colored gold. The seal of Arlia was down on the bottom right of its trophy-like display, House Genrish now a recognized family with all rights and privileges due to them.

As Heron reached down into his tool bag, he caught sight of me limping by. Kind eyes suddenly turned a shade of shameful betrayal, his families’ advancement caught in my amethyst gaze. A whimper, so soft and honest, left his lips. I was yards away, struggling to make it down the road, and still the sound was heart-breaking.

An apology was written loud in Heron’s eyes. It was the way of things, just one more step the people of the Western Reaches had to take to survive. I couldn’t blame the Genrish family for what had transpired, trading my sought-after family account back to House Ciav for patronage. I didn’t fault them, or anyone else, for what they’d done.

The Path wasn’t easy this far to the West, and perhaps it never would be. However, today they would be given a choice. Greater than air and gold, it would sing with unbridled potential.

I eased through the milling on-lookers, taking a timed bad step and dropping to my knees in the middle of the road. A hard whimper left my lips as I reached down and grabbed my right knee, clenching my eyes tight as pain shivered my leg. A few of the nearby people gasped and took a step closer. Sudden apprehension gripped their features, their helpful motion retracting in fear of retribution.

Oh, my people. It’s worse than I thought, I kindly observed, a very real note of sadness bubbling up from my heart. I’m so sorry this has happened to you. I’ll make it right, I promise.

A shadow loomed close and I looked up into the face of Heron, watching him kneel down and take my arm in assistance. I knew that everyone who saw it would only mark him as an ally, thus subsequently punishing him and his family.

“Heron, no, you don’t have to,” I started, trying to brush him off. “Please, this is-“

“The right thing to do,” Heron whispered, helping me to my feet and ensuring I was properly supported by my crutch. “They can’t do anything to me they haven’t already done. Our family survived without House Ciav’s and Arlia’s favor before. If it comes to it, we can do so again.”

A silvery tear of thanks slipped from my left eye, grasping Heron’s shoulder. “You are a good man. Never think anything less, no matter how far down you get pushed. No one can take the heart of your character away.”

A soft frown creased Heron’s brow. “You are in danger here. Arlia and Gar-O-Nitao are abuzz with your house’s fall. House bağcılar escort Ciav, they’ve-“

“Alright, that’s enough,” came the gruff tone of one of Arlia’s soldier protectorate, stepping close and interrupting. “Move along, both of you.”

I locked amethyst eyes with the guardsman who had spoken up, setting him with a knowing glance that made him take a half-step back. Something kin to feral acknowledgement bridged between us. The subtle press and power, something greater and more primally aware than him, made his throat bob with a swallow.

“I said, move along,” the guard repeated, right hand slipping down to the handle of his sword on his hip. “Complete your business, then leave as soon as possible.”

“Alright, I’m going,” I gruffly retorted, turning a kind gaze to Heron before stepping outside of his comforting presence. “I won’t stay long. Just need to gather a few things.”

“Make it quick. You have until noon, then you’ll be escorted out,” the soldier ordered, his hand moving away from the hilt of his blade. “Your family isn’t welcome in the Western Reaches.”

“Not anymore,” I softly hummed.

I waved the guard off with a gesture of my hand, continuing into the northern part of Arlia. I didn’t look back at Heron, for it would only cause him more grief. The distance was necessary, for both our sakes. He couldn’t be close, not yet.

I eased around the corner and found the familiar cutaway leading down into the darkness. I grabbed the firmly entrenched railing as I painfully eased down the sturdy stairs, holding tight to my crutch with my right as I clung to the smooth bannister with my left. My eyes watched every step while I kept awareness of curious passers-by, as carefully and constantly as possible.

When I reached the bottom of the stairs, I saw that the wooden door and sturdy archway leading down into Gro-Shuma’s den had been torn apart. Vicious clawings and dents in the stone wall behind it were paired with the broken planks and chipped stone scattered beneath it, as though it had been torn apart in search of something.

Whatever it was they assuredly didn’t find. I was almost positive of that.

As I painfully kneeled down and swept away the gravel pieces, my eyes started identifying the splintered planks of wood and their broken counterparts. With slow purpose I started at the bottom and patiently rebuilt the door, slipping each piece into its proper place down in the silence of that dank crevasse of rock.

There’s something no one ever tells you about true faith, a secret I will reveal to you now. Just because you can’t see it, doesn’t mean you can’t feel it. I used to think each belief system was watched after by a benevolent deity, something with the divine power to right injustices and punish evil-doers.

Other times I thought faith was kind grace and a warm embrace, the perfect feeling of oneness and welcome. A rare thing to witness, even more difficult to attain.

My belief has changed now, for better or worse. The secret changed me, as did the spirit that had been reborn in its wake. Faith was a mindset and a choice. Like all things, it could be formed and rebuilt with the right tools.

After the purple door had been reconstructed, I reached up and gently knocked three times upon its cracked, haphazardly-connected surface. I stared at the faint red star amidst the colored paint, waiting as the long seconds ticked by, until I heard a soft click of a lock. The door opened and swung inward toward the darkened cavern beyond, unbreached by any man-guided inquisitions.

I stepped in and closed the door behind me, easing down the flight of short steps beyond onto the white sand-covered pathway. I cautiously followed the path as it wended downward around the corner to the right. A pastel-colored rug covered in beautiful scales beneath a solitary chair revealed itself, a yellow candle quietly burning on a small table posted next to it.

I sat down upon the offered chair, removing my shoes. I smiled and rubbed my toes against the texture of the rug before standing up, moving through the beaded curtain. The beads harmoniously rang with a dull tone as they came in contact with each other, my smile widening at how soothing and perfect it was.

Ritual and faith were linked and melded together, hand-in-hand like lovers and friends.

Faint sunlight beamed down into the small, dome-like cavern beyond, the smooth stage to the right supporting Master Gro-Shuma’s coiled snake bulk. His smooth yellow face was pointed skyward and his eyes were closed, gorgeous yellow cobra hood curled close behind him like the wings of a cicada.

I stepped down into the marble-swirled sands and kneeled on the yellow rug before the stage. I rolled my sleeves back to my elbows, lifting my hands in the bowl of sacrifice.

“Gro-Shuma Omahigali, Master of the Ivory Knowledge and Watcher of the Hidden Door, it is an honor to be in your presence once güngören escort more,” I gently hummed, respectfully bowing.

Gro-Shuma’s four hands slowly shifted into the diamond of respect across his chest, a kind nod following. “Master Shivashi. A pleasure and honor, as always.”

“Master, I have questions,” I whispered, breathing slowly and evenly as my next words came out lower. “And I need answers.”

“Speak of them, Master Shivashi. I will listen to all and respond in kind,” Master Gro-Shuma hummed, his sinuous form starting to sway in gentle motions.

“I came in contact with the Master of the Western Reaches. We spoke and made peace, though it will not last if action is not taken,” I said, a sudden weight building in my chest. “The Reaches will not survive much longer, Master. I know what must be done, so I ask that you make preparations to keep from being injured during this process.’

A soft shake of Gro-Shuma’s tail sent the cavern rattling with warmth. His smooth head slowly turned downward, regarding me with closed eyes.

“I understand, Master Shivashi. Thank you for your kind warning.”

“Master, the one named Hu-Vei has been located. He is being detained by Moira Ciav and has been bent to aiding her. Together they are creating thoughtless vassals and brutes, spreading the corruption consuming Gar-O-Nitao,” I said, keeping my head low and respectful. “Moira’s efforts are forcing minds onto the Paths’ trials before they are ready, mind-twisting them and creating empowered associates. It is my goal to free him and the people, ending the reign of the beast, Deceit, that hovers like a phantom over the Western Reaches.”

“Deceit,” came the warm whisper from Gro-Shuma, his voice indiscernible from being male or female. “This name is known.”

I heard it more than saw it, the tightening of Gro-Shuma’s posture as his scales rippled with an unknown, antediluvian meaning. I looked up in question from the strange tone present inside Gro-Shuma’s voice, gasping at seeing my Master drawn back and reared up as though ready to strike.

Gro-Shuma’s yellow eyes were bright like a burning nova, sun-dappled snake hood stretched wide and menacing. A horror-filled tremor raced out from my heart along my statue-tight form, eyes unblinking as I stared into the fierce blaze of unrepentant knowledge.

Is that fury I see, or fear? Hummed the cowed observation, unable to look away.

“Has it touched you?” came Gro-Shuma’s compassionate whisper. “Please, tell me.”

The distant empathy in Gro-Shuma’s feminine voice was shielded behind the posturing rattle of absolute preparation. Every fiber of his being was hinged to decimate, ready to destroy at a moment’s notice.

“It did, Master. I was beneath a malady, an affliction they called it, for two days due to its touch,” I said, keeping my voice level even as my throat clenched tight. “I came out of it only yesterday, my fevered trials passed and the mantle of Master now upon me. I was then assisted by the Air Nenis, Arua, in purging the rest of the Deceit that Moira had infected me with.”

“It has been drawn out, Master,” I thoughtfully assured, slowly nodding. “There is nothing left but the memory of what once was.”

Master Gro-Shuma’s chin quivered as he absorbed my words, a kind nod of acceptance as he slowly eased back into a rested position. The crackling energy of his menacing presence faded away like mist in the morning, as though the room had been electrified with his focused intention.

I had no doubt, for the betterment of all, that Gro-Shuma would have ended me had I answered differently. The pain in his eyes and voice, at even having to contemplate striking me down, was vividly displayed in his trembling snake hood as it drew back to fold behind him.

Gro-Shuma had been scared, wholly and truly. Terrified, out of his goddamn mind. A surreal acknowledgement overtook my thoughts, whispering that Gro-Shuma had been the one threatened, not me.

“Master, speak to me. What makes you so…apprehensive?” came the surprisingly chilled words.

“Master Shivashi, when the world was young there were three great powers that sought to undo the balance of creation,” Gro-Shuma stated, an undercurrent of heretical blasphemy rumbling deep in his masculine voice. “Deceit, Desire, and Destruction, collectively known as the Destitute Ones. These functions of the world are not evil, yet necessity brings them in contact with humanity, and thus, are they corrupted to sinister ends.”

“The black blood of Deceit flows when trust of each other is lost and forgotten, becoming lies unending. The red lips of Desire will cloud all but the purest of minds, searing emotions claiming all logic. The steel hammer of Destruction will sunder all without a sturdy foundation, razing and ruining all.”

“These are the promises left to us from Council’s past, etched into ivory and remembered for all time. Such was the way of this wisdom, a gift for those of knowing to watch horizons against threats greater than the eyes of many ignore.”

“That Deceit has ensnared one of the lost children is grave, indeed.”

Gro-Shuma set his rattle to slowly shaking. I could almost hear each individual bead inside his tail.

“Lost children?” I asked, my voice soft and thoughtful. “When did it happen?”

Chapter 62: Post Tenebras Lux

I now have an editor, so you all shouldn’t need to put up with my typos and poor/dyslexic editing skills anymore. 🙂

* * *

Ethan took a deep breath and for the third time ever, silently asked Illuminar for some help. Faced with two demon-possessed men and Lady Ekthros herself while trapped inside Talven and Salma’s parents’ house, he was distinctly aware of the old saying about there being no atheists in foxholes. At this point, he would take any help from any source he could. His left hand still hadn’t fully regrown, and even if it had, he didn’t have a prayer of beating evenone of these possessed men in a straight-up fight, let alone two supported by an archmage.

“Oh, don’t look so scared.” Lady Ekthros said cheerfully as she slipped off her horse and walked towards the doorway to the house, though she stopped about a dozen feet from the door, remaining just behind the two possessed men. “I’m pretty sure you’ll like this offer.”

“You mean the ‘offer I can’t refuse’?” He raised his eyebrow. “Maybe don’t quote The Godfather if you’re trying to put me at ease.”

“Oh, don’t be silly.” She chuckled, then spoke in a rather good impression of Miracle Max from the Princess Bride. “I’m onlymostly trying to reassure you; there’s a big difference betweenmostly reassured and reassured.” She winked.

In any other context, Ethan would’ve chuckled. Here, he was trying to decide if drawing his sword as a precaution would provoke the possessed men into attacking.

“And why would I believe a single thing you say?” He asked, not willing to trust her just because she had him dead to rights.

She chuckled, then spoke in a mock-serious tone. “I’m in government;obviously I must be a bastion of truth.”

“Yeah, well, you know what they say about how to tell if a politician is lying.” He retorted.

“His lips are moving.” She laughed. Oddly, her laugh reminded him of Taloni’s laugh in how it was so joyful and carefree. “I always preferred the ‘lie clock’ joke.”

“Lie clock joke?”

“Yeah.” She nodded. “A man gets to heaven and St. Peter invites him inside. Inside the pearly gates, he sees a bunch of clocks and asks what they are for. St. Peter tells him that they are ‘lie clocks’, and each one belongs to someone on Earth. Every time that person tells a lie, the clock’s hands move a little. So the man asks to see the lie clocks of a few famous people, and then asks about–” She stopped. “Ethan, pick a politician who you think is a constantly lying scumbag.”

“That’s not hard.” He replied, looking pointedly at her.

“That’ll work.” She chuckled. “Anyway, the man asks if he can see Lady Ekthros’s lie clock, and St. Peter replies that it’s in God’s office because He’s using it as a fan.”

Ethan tried to keep a straight face.

He really did.

But despite himself, he let out a few heavy exhales that an observer could mistake for suppressed chuckling.

“Before I make my offer, I need to apologize.” Lady Ekthros said.

He raised his eyebrow.

“I do.” She said, and she sounded totally sincere. She was either a world-class liar — which seemed pretty likely — or else she was being serious. “I’ve been unsuccessfully trying to kill you for several months now and apparently, I’m not very good at it.” She cocked her head to one side. “By the way, how did you escape that curse I had someone put on the gold cube? That should’ve been impossible.”

“An angel came down from heaven and broke it.” He replied sarcastically. That really was the truth, but he wasn’t about to tell her that.

“Oh, not you too.” Lady Ekthros shook her head. “Is everyone on this whole backwater world a religious nut?”

“That’s funny coming from the woman who’s currently being protected by twodemon-possessed men.” He pointed out.

“Demon-possessed?” She sighed and shook her head. “Apparently you are. Anyway, I thought you were just another necromancer and so took charge of the manhunt. It was a while before I realized you weren’t, and I’m sorry for the attempts to kill you before I realized that.” She paused. “Well, and the attempts to kill you after I found out.”

“What the hell kind of apology is that?” He retorted. “And what do you mean you thought I was a necromancer? Weren’t you and Lord Delmar the ones who framed me?”

“Oh, that.” She winced, looking slightly embarrassed. “That was actually Hermair, the necromancer who brought you here; he framed you. He didn’t even tell us about you until evening on the day after you arrived. He lied to the Narlotten soldiers, telling them that you were a necromancer, and obviously he left his role in the whole affair out; I only found that out later when I questioned Drousin. He was very tight-lipped — probably because of Lord Delmar’s stance on necromancers — but he did tell me that Hermair brought you here via dark magic; that’s how I found out Hermair was a necromancer.”

Ethan wondered how much her ‘lie clock’ was currently spinning, but decided to humor bakırköy escort her, if only to buy time. “So then why try to kill me if you knew I didn’t do anything wrong?”

“Well, youdid kill a lot of Narlotten soldiers and later brought two people back from the dead; the only way resurrections happen here is necromancy.” She replied. “I didn’t know you weren’t a necromancer until you used your wing to block the kill spell I sent towards that Fey girl in Narlotten.”

“And why did you try to kill Taloni?” He growled. “She was unconscious and posed no threat.”

“She was aiding and abetting a necromancer, or at least I thought she was; that’s the death penalty.” Lady Ekthros replied. “But then you blocked the kill spell. A necromancer wouldn’t sacrifice himself for someone else. Ever. It’s lucky for me Lord Delmar didn’t see that by the way. If you hadn’t done that, you never would’ve woken up, despite Lord Delmar’s insistence on holding a trial.” She paused. “You would’ve been ‘shot while trying to escape’–” She put that in air quotes. “–instead of spending some time in a cell while I decided what to do with you.”

“And forcing Kendra and I to bond? Or sounding disappointed that Lord Delmar wouldn’t order Rachel’s death? What about that?”

“Well, we did think Rachel was helping a necromancer: you. It was also annoying for… another reason.” She replied delicately. “But as for the bonding, I suppose I owe you an apology for that as well. I sometimes have transient vindictive moods ever since–” She stopped. “Well, I’m not always myself when they strike. Sorry about that.”

He raised his eyebrow; she was ‘apologizing’ — if you could call it that — as if she had done something trivial, like accidentally bump into someone at the supermarket. Unless her ‘lie clock’ was really spinning right now, she truly didn’t seem to see how terrible she had been.

“Anyway, I had to come up with a new plan once I learned that you weren’t a necromancer, since I don’t let necromancers live as a general rule.”

“What?” He outright laughed at that. “You put a will-breaker ring on Rachel and you’re being guarded by two demon-possessed men, and you’re telling me that you kill necromancers?”

“You know about the ring?” She shrugged, then asked with what seemed to be genuine curiosity. “How is Rachel doing?”

“Better now that thefucking will-breaker ring isn’t on her anymore.” He growled.

“Oh tosh.” She waved a hand dismissively. “People are always so scared of them, but unless the mage controlling the ring has given a person instructions, they’ll behave as ever they did.”

He stared at her incredulously.

“Seriously.” Lady Ekthros sighed. “Don’t you think it would be obvious that someone was wearing a will-breaker ring if they all became mindless, slack-jawed zombies?”

It took Ethan a moment to realize that she had a point.

Hmm.

If a will-breaker ring didn’t allow the person some semblance of normal behavior, it would be pretty obvious that they were wearing one. Kendra had said before that the rings were hard to detect, so maybe Lady Ekthros had a point? They were obviously still vile things, but maybe at least there was a tiny sliver of a silver lining to them. Okay, it was a microscopically small silver lining, but that was better than nothing.

“You’re admitting to using will-breaker rings and you expect me to believe that you hunt necromancers?” He finally said.

“I do.” She smiled and nodded cheerfully. “They make the world a worse place, so it’s my job to remove them from the world, by any means necessary.”

“Becoming evil to fight evil?”

She shook her head. “I used dark magic exactly one time, and the cost…” For a moment, her eyes softened and appeared to grow slightly lighter in color. He couldn’t be sure, but it looked like there was a lot of pain associated with whatever that cost had been.

“I knew better, and I had a good reason, but I didn’t know the cost.” She took a deep breath, and the inhale had a very slight shudder to it. “I never touched it again, and I never will touch it again. Ever.”

“I find that hard to believe given these two jokers.” He pointed to the two demon-possessed men. “And that’s not to mention Rachel’s will-breaker ring.”

“Dark magic is like fire; a fearful servant and a terrible master.” She replied, not looking happy about that fact. “Necromancers are the worst sort of creatures on the planet because they are utterly self-serving and they care nothing for others. However, dark magic provides access to tools and weapons that are more powerful and insidious than regular magic does. How can you win against such weapons without adopting them yourself?”

Ethan slowly shook his head. “And you trust a necromancer? After what you just said, you should know better.”

“Fortunately, I don’t have to trust one.” She smiled.

Ethan narrowed his eyes for a moment, then the answer came to him; it was the only şirinevler escort thing that made sense. “You put a will-breaker ring on a Necromancer?”

Her smile widened.

“Hermair?”

“After he lied about you, yes.” She replied. “If you don’t care about being subtle, the rings can do their work quite quickly instead of taking months or years. I gave him a choice once I’d captured him; he picked the option that didn’t lead to a painful death and voluntarily surrendered to the ring.”

“He isn’t the only necromancer that you’ve put a will-breaker ring on, is he?” Ethan asked, thinking that someone must’ve made Rachel’s will-breaker ring.

Lady Ekthros just smiled.

“So that’s it; use dark magic to create pet necromancers to do the actual dirty work, thinking that they’ll never hurt anyone because of the rings.”

“There’s a sort of poetic irony to it, isn’t there?” Her smile widened. “I’m using the very dark magic they created to bend them to the right side; to fight for a better world.”

“I don’t think building a better world will ever involve summoningdemons.” He nodded towards the two possessed men, who both looked like they wanted to tear him apart and yet hadn’t made a threatening move… yet.

“Demons; I thought you’d know better than to believe silly religious myths since you were raised on Earth.” She rolled her eyes and shook her head, then narrowed her eyes and fixed him with a piercing gaze. “Anyway, that, my dear Mr. Ejder, wasyour fault.” She replied, her tone becoming less than perfectly pleasant for the first time.

“My fault?” He scoffed. “How the hell was that my fault?”

“The portal to Earth.” She narrowed her eyes. “There isn’t a single army or force in the Ten Kingdoms that could’ve successfully assaulted the base they set up in the forest. By the time I learned of it, it was too late; they were already too entrenched to remove them with the technology here.You forced my hand.”

Ethan opened his mouth to reply, but there was so much wrong with what she was saying that he wasn’t sure where to begin.

Then her tone became cold and icy, like a mid-winter blizzard. “Because ofyou, I had to put a kind and innocent girl through hell to figure out what made her super strength and durability work after one of my agents saw her in action. Because ofyou, I had to go digging in her head to find the last few pieces of the puzzle needed to create them. And because ofyou, I had to ‘persuade’ her to keep quiet so I wouldn’t be forced to kill her.”

Lady Ekthros sounded angry.

Genuinely angry.

He completely understood that because his blood was boiling at the moment. He didn’t know exactly what Lady Ekthros had done to Sarah, but just what she’d said made Ethan want to rip the ‘lady’ limb fromfucking limb. His only consolation was that he’d seen Sarah recently and she appeared to be physically fine. Maybe not mentally, but physically.

Oddly, Lady Ekthros sounded nearly as mad as he felt. She sounded as angry as he probably sounded when talking to someone who had just threatened his wives. Her tone was controlled, but there was no mistaking the vitriol in it. She was blaming him for what she herself did? What the hell!?

“You’re insane.” Ethan finally said, not sure what else to think and trying to keep himself calm as he tried not to think about what Lady Ekthros might’ve done to Sarah.

“I’m not insane.” She replied calmly, some of the ice in her tone disappearing. “Insanity is trying the same things over and over again but expecting different results. Insanity is trying to fight evil with one hand tied behind your back. I’m not insane, I’m willing to do what’s necessary to make the world a better place.”

“By murdering people you know to be innocent?” Ethan challenged. “If you’re so serious about that, then maybe you should stop hunting me and my family.”

“Funny you should say that, because I did say that I was going to make you an offer you couldn’t refuse.”

“Oh?”

“I can’t go back and tell Lord Delmar that you aren’t a necromancer; not without revealing some things that he really shouldn’t know.” She replied. “However, I can offer this: if you leave the Ten Kingdoms, I can make sure you won’t be hunted by Narlotten.”

Ethan narrowed his eyes. “Explain.”

“You do your very best to make the world a better place Ethan.” Lady Ekthros replied. “I really am sorry about hunting you because I’ve learned that you are more committed to helping people than most men I’ve met in my life. I would like you to keep on being you; to keep flying around helping every random stranger who asks for your help. I just can’t let you keep doing that in the Ten Kingdoms because I would need to keep hunting you.” She looked at him intently. “So please, leave the Ten Kingdoms for somewhere else; the Southern Lands perhaps, or the Winter Empire, or the Seaborn Kingdoms; I don’t care. If you leave, I can stop hunting you and you can keep working avcılar escort to improve the world.”

“You’re serious?”

“As a heart attack.” She nodded. “I really am sorry for hunting you and your family Ethan. This is my way of trying to apologize and do what I can to make it right. I’ll admit that it’s not much, and certainly not compensation for all the hardship I’ve brought to you and your family, but it’s the best I can offer. Please, I ask your forgiveness and ask that you take the offer.” She hesitated, then added in a rather good imitation of Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride. “You seem a decent fellow, I’d hate to kill you.”

He decided to reply with a slightly modified version of the following line. “You seem anindecent fellow, I’d hate to die.”

She shrugged, much like Inigo Montoya had in the movie.

He frowned.

“That’s my offer, and I’m making it now because I want you to know that it’s genuine.” She continued. “I have you dead to rights; there’s no possible way that you could escape and I think you’ll agree that these two could easily kill you.”

Ethan inclined his head in concession.

“I’m sure you’d agree that without you, I could easily find and eliminate your airship’s crew, along with your wives.”

He growled.

“But I don’t want to.” Lady Ekthros added quickly, her tone sincere. “I want you to live and continue making the world a better place… you just can’t do it in the Ten Kingdoms. If you leave, you’ll have nothing to fear from us ever again. If you stay…” She raised her hands, palms up as if to say there was nothing she could do.

He narrowed his eyes again, trying to decide how genuine she was. Her ‘lie clock’ joke was still fresh in his mind, but he couldn’t deny that she could easily kill him right now, but hadn’t. There wasn’t even a need to lull him into a false sense of security because she had such a massive upper hand right now. It didn’t make sense for her to lie even though she was certainly capable of it.

Was she really making a genuine offer?

On the other hand, Narlotten still had a rather large bounty on their heads, as did Lord Farbrottan of Ivernia. He doubted that she would rescind the bounty and he knew Lord Farbrottan wouldn’t. Thus, bounty hunters would still pursue them even if Lady Ekthros wouldn’t. Though, if the ‘lady’ wasn’t hunting them, then the possessed men wouldn’t hunt them either. Bounty hunters could be dangerous — as evidenced by them ambushing his wives in Laerten — but they weren’t even in the same league as possessed men.

Hmm.

“Think it over.” Lady Ekthros said. “I know you have the ward of the wood-elven king on your airship and you’ll want to return her. Do, but then you need to leave the Ten Kingdoms. I recommend the Southern Lands since Lord Farbrottan’s concubine travels with you and she could help you settle in there, but where you go is up to you.”

He frowned, trying to see how the offer she was makingwasn’t genuine. He couldn’t, mostly because she had him dead to rights and he wasn’t dead.

“Oh, and Ethan; this is a one-time offer.” She added as she walked back to her horse. “If you set foot, wing, or sail back in the Ten Kingdoms after leaving, there will be no second chance.” She mounted her horse. “Please, for your sake and the sake of your family, take my offer; it won’t be offered again.”

He didn’t reply, honestly feeling a little too stunned to reply.

“Oh, and if you were worried about them–” She waved carelessly at the two possessed men. “–don’t be; show him your hands boys.”

They both raised their hands; they both had rings on them.

“I don’t take chances.” She said firmly to Ethan, then looked at them. “Come along boys, leave the nice dragon alone now.”

The two possessed men stared pure murder at him, but turned to leave anyway. They mounted the other two horses and the three of them left with Lady Ekthros leading the pack.

That was about when Ethan realized that his mouth was hanging open.

* * *

“So, is that a good enough reason for Rindrin to divorce me?” Sarah asked, doing her best not to sit at the very edge of her chair or look too excited.

Across the table from her in Rindrin’s house, Luminar Kossel made a thoughtful sound, leaned back in his chair, and stroked his chin with one hand while crossing the other over his chest. He looked intently at her for several seconds, then took a deep breath. “Perhaps.”

“Perhaps?” Sarah inched forward on her chair.

He nodded. “I see the precedent you wish to take advantage of, and your position has some merit. However, while technically you have a claim, the spirit of the story — what seems to be the obvious reason that divorce was granted — is clearly absent.”

Sarah swallowed, trying not to let her face fall. “But the same thing happened in the Book of Light. That prophet’s horrible wife exposed herself fully. I realize I didn’t do it on purpose, but that mage who attacked Amy and me on the road here did render me… um, exposed. It’s almost the same, isn’t it?”

“Ah, but what’s missing is the intentionality.” The luminar replied. “That prophet’s wife was trying to entice the other man into committing adultery with her, you did no such thing. What if you were bathing and a man happened to see you somehow; would that also be cause for divorce?”

“I have lied to you, Cove. The women I previously possessed are all dead now.”

Cove felt like the world was falling away from him, and he grabbed the balcony’s railing. “Wh–what?”

“I…I am sorry, my champ–Cove. When the orb is used after it drains an enemy of their magic, it allows a copy of my consciousness to enter another mind, but it overwhelms, replacing them entirely. I have to use the knife to end their existence, returning that copy of myself, memories and all, back to my lava pool.”

Cove’s mind was whirling. “So that maiden, the mermaid, and Mistralle…”

“Who?”

“I met her on my last visit to your world…oh, but you were here, so a different ‘copy’ of you took her over. My head hurts…”

“I cannot live like this, Cove.”

He looked up. Ignis was climbing over the railing! “NO!” He grabbed her arm, pulling her back before she plunged to the ground.

“Unhand me!”

“No! We have to talk about this,” Cove responded. “We’ll figure this out, without killing Julie.”

“Hey! What’s going on over there?!”

Both of them turned to see a man two balconies over, phone in hand, ready to video them or call 911.

“Sorry! We’ll be quieter!” Cove called back. “Please, Ignis, just come back inside…”

Ignis lowered her eyes and nodded, allowing herself to be pulled back into the apartment. They sat back down on the couch.

Cove took a breath. “You said Julie was sleeping…that was a lie?”

Ignis nodded. “Her mind was destroyed and replaced with mine the moment she touched the orb.”

He put his head in his hands. “Fuck.”

“Cove?”

He looked up. Julie — no, Ignis — was still shivering.

“I feel so strange. Will you please hold me?” she asked him plaintively.

He looked at Julie’s beautiful face, at the blonde’s sexy body, and opened his arms. At least she won’t be hurling herself off the balcony if I’m holding her, he told himself.

After a bit, they both fell asleep.

—

Cove opened his eyes to the sultry interior of Ignis’ chamber once more.

After a moment, her torso once again rose from the lava. “You return so quickly…excellent.” She gestured to the knife and marble at the edge of the lava bowl.

Cove made no move toward the obsidian objects. “I need you to tell me more about these people you’ve asked me to kill, Ignis.”

“They manipulate the energies of this world to further their own sick fantasies…their desire fuels their murderous intent. Is that not enough?” She tilted her head to regard him. “What has happened?”

He paused, startled. “What do you mean?”

“You seem different.”

He thought quickly. “I’ve ended lives for you…that would change anyone.”

She nodded, seemingly thoughtful. “I have been unsympathetic to your situation. Just know that the services you perform on my behalf save lives, Cove. The rewards for your actions have been pleasurable, have they not? I had not expected to enjoy them as much as I have, but it has been a delightful surprise.” Her fingers caressed her hips and moved up to her rocky breasts.

Cove etiler escort knew that to confront Ignis about destroying the minds she had possessed would probably not end well. “I’ll do it without reward. I’m…not feeling good about having you take over innocent women’s bodies, even if we both enjoy it.”

“If that is what you wish, Cove. The orb will continue to function as it has, so you simply need to keep someone else from touching it once it has absorbed an enemy’s power. You can touch the knife to the orb afterward to discharge the energy from it.”

He took the knife and marble, slipping them into his belt and pocket, respectively. “Okay…where am I off to?”

—

“What…the…fuck?” Cove murmured. He had followed a trail leading from Ignis’ mountain to a large gray stone building that was decidedly not medieval. In fact, the big red tapestries draped down on each side of the large entrance were modern, comparatively speaking, given that the 1930’s were almost 100 years ago. The black swastika in the white circle on the tapestries made absolutely no sense. How could these be here, on another world?

He heard someone’s raised voice echoing out from the building and headed inside, though he couldn’t make out any specific words yet. The large interior was like a courtyard, filled with people, and, somehow, electric lights lined the walls. No, Cove realized as he looked closer, they were more of those glowing crystals, made up to look like modern fixtures. He looked around at the gathered throng, all attention focused on the speaker at the far end, standing at a dais erected on a stage.

“What the fuck?!” he muttered again. He had only seen him in black and white, and of course portrayed in color in all those World War II movies, but that was Adolf fucking Hitler!

The man was in his brown uniform, his greasy dark hair slicked to his head and that stupid tootbrush mustach on his upper lip. He was gesticulating wildly, no doubt pontificating about the evils of all people that were not his own.

“Well, it couldn’t be more obvious who the asshole is this time,” Cove told himself, and he headed along the wall to get closer. There were several other Nazis up there on the stage with Hitler, as well as a brown-haired woman who he guessed was Eva Braun, Adolf’s younger girlfriend. Cove paused, listening…it didn’t sound like Hitler was yelling in German; it was some other language that Cove couldn’t place. “So weird…”

With those Nazis up there, Cove knew that he’d probably be shot before he got within throwing distance for the marble. He wondered if those sidearms would actually work in this world of magic, but perhaps like the fake electric lights, they’d be magically effective anyway. Typically, the marble would get rid of the threat, so Cove’s top priority was getting it to touch the evil leader.

He glanced over at a young man in the crowd about his age, and hanging out of his back pocket was exactly what Cove needed.

—

Hitler looked out over his people, pausing as his eyes caught a strange taksim escort sight: a young man wearing a large red undershirt with some sort of colorful design on it. That seemed very out of place, and so he called out to his followers to grab the interloper and bring him forward.

As this was done, the Nazi leader got down from his dais and moved to the edge of the stage to get a better look at the restrained intruder.

“Hey, Adolf! Blitzkrieg, motherfucker!”

Hitler looked to the side, at another young man aiming a slingshot at him.

—

Cove was glad that he had wordlessly convinced the other young man to change shirts with him in exchange for the slingshot when the crowd then grabbed the wrong kid. The poor guy had been overjoyed to wear Cove’s colorful Flash t-shirt with its yellow-on-red lightning bolt design. Cove pulled the slingshot taut as he pointed it at Hitler. What was that German word meaning lightning storm? Oh, yeah.

“Hey, Adolf! Blitzkrieg, motherfucker!”

“Ti?” Hitler asked in confusion, and then the onyx marble bounced off his forehead. “Och!”

As Hitler fell to the floor of the stage, his body transformed into a naked, overweight olive-skinned man with dark hair.

“Skotosee ton!” the man yelled, gesturing at Cove. The crowd turned, but many just kept turning and then wandered out of the building, including some of the Nazi officers. Unfortunately, a few of the crowd did start heading toward Cove with murder in their eyes.

“Shit!” Cove ran onto the stage, the ebon blade in hand. Eva Braun was standing over the former Adolf Hitler, confused by his current form. The fake Hitler got to his feet, ready to fight Cove, but the teen had been through this a few times already. He ducked one of the man’s ham fists and then plunged the knife into his chest.

Unfortunately, as the man’s dead body dissipated into those sparks and disappeared, his remaining followers became even more incensed and charged the stage. Cove estimated there were probably about a dozen of them, too many for him to fight. He quickly grabbed the marble and pocketed it. “C’mon!” He grasped Eva’s wrist and pulled her through a door behind the stage, slamming it behind them and dropping the latch. Turning, he groaned as he realized that they were now trapped; that was the only way in!

“Help me,” Cove asked Eva as he pulled at a metal cabinet, and with her assistance they managed to use it to barricade the door. They heard their attackers bashing on it from outside. “Shit, now what?” Cove knew there were too many out there for him to use the knife on before they bashed his brains in.

He didn’t know what would happen if he died in Ignis’ world, and didn’t want to test it. Previously, after taking out the bad guy, he’d have sex with Ignis and then fade back to his own world. The next time he went to sleep, he’d reappear in Ignis’ chamber, safe and sound. Could he whack off and disappear? His penis was absolutely soft due to the danger, so that wasn’t going to work.

Then he looked over at Eva Braun. She had fatih escort a round face but was slim, with small breasts under her blouse. Not a looker, but not bad. She looked back at him, concerned. He took her hand and pulled her close, but once she realized that he was going to try to kiss her, she slapped him across the face.

“I’m sorry, but it’s you or me,” he informed her as he pulled out the marble and tapped her shoulder with it.

Then her demeanor changed and he knew that Ignis was looking back at him with a lascivious grin. “You have changed your mind, my champion?”

“Just this once,” he replied as he shoved her back against the wall.

“Ooh, I think I like you being so…energetic,” Ignis/Eva breathed as Cove unfastened his pants and raised her skirt. Now that he knew that he was going to get laid, his penis responded quickly, and he pulled the woman’s undergarments to the side before thrusting into her hard.

“Hohh…” she moaned. “Yesss…take your reward from this body…”

Cove could hear them pounding on the door. How long did he have? He pulled back and thrust in hard again.

“Huhh…huhh…” Ignis moaned in time with his thrusting.

He couldn’t believe that he was fucking Adolf Hitler’s girlfriend! As unreal as this world had seemed before, this made things even weirder. He knew that he had to cum fast, so he imagined that she was Julie, with her voluptuous body, so amazing and soft…

“Ugh…ungh…GAH!” Cove cried out as he inseminated the possessed woman.

“Yesss…” Ignis moaned as she shook in orgasm upon feeling Cove’s semen filling her.

Sure enough, after he pulled out, Cove could feel that he was already fading. The mob outside wouldn’t hurt Eva Braun, but the woman had already had her mind ‘overwritten’ by Ignis. Then he remembered that it would be even worse: Ignis would use the knife to end Eva’s life in order to return this copy of herself back to her lava chamber. He gave the woman a silent apology as he returned to his own world.

—

When he awoke, he was still on the couch with Julie — shit, no, it was Ignis. He let her sleep and thought about what had happened this last time in Ignis’ world. What had that fat guy yelled? ‘Skotosee ton’? Cove pulled out his phone and loaded a translation app. Soon, he found that ‘Skótosé ton’ was ‘kill him’ in Greek.

But what did that mean? Why was a bad guy in Ignis’ world speaking Greek and pretending to be Adolf Hitler? There was clearly some sort of connection between their worlds, as Cove realized that most everyone there that he had been able to converse with had spoken English, but in fantasy novels, everyone spoke whatever language was native to their land…it was just in movies that actors spoke English because who wants to just read subtitles the entire movie? In their world they should have spoken their own language, not English.

And that bald guy who had been the fire demon in the tunnels that second-to-last time…Cove could have sworn that the guy had asked him if he was English before he died — “Angleeskee?” he had said — but what language had that guy been speaking?

As his mind wandered, Cove flipped to the world news app. There, at the very top, was that same bald man’s face looking back at him, with the headline, “Russian President Dies In Sleep.”

“Oh fuck.”

To be continued…

Merhaba hikaye sevenler bende bir seks hikayeleri seven bir okuyucu olarak bu deneyimimi sizlere anlatmak istiyorum.
18 yaşıma henüz yeni bastım,adım Aslı,evde sex partisi verme haltını yemeden önce bakireydim artık hem önlü hem arkalı kapalı açık bir kadınım.
Çevrem liseden ve oturduğum muhitimden oldukça geniştir.
Sex partileri hakkında izlediğim filimler beni oldukça etkiliyordu,içten içe öyle bir ortamda olmayı istiyordum.
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Evim müstakil bri bahçe içerisinde olduğunda ses çıkar aman komşu duyar gibi rahatsız olucağımız etkenler bulunmuyordu,gayet rahattık.
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El değiştire değiştire 4 saat sürdü verdiğim parti.
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Hayatımın en heyecan dolu anıydı izlediğim filmlerdeki sex partilerini aratmayacak şekilde zevk aldım…

Sha-Ra slunk into Wizard Isidore’s study, behind me like a cat sneaking into a room full of sleeping dogs!

Her fear was now evident as her, up until then, fearless continence kept her swaggering and dismissive of me. That was right up until we approached the study, and she realized where I was actually taking her. Then her presence seemed to shrike and diminish by the step.

Introducing the Orc warrior woman to the wizard was going to be more difficult than I suspected!

Isidore just sat at his study table, silent, amid his mounds of interrupted arcane studies and eyed our disruption fumbling into his inner sanctum.

I finally turned back and ever so gently scooped Sha-Ra’s right hand into both of mine, careful not to squeeze or tug, lest she smash my skull with the other. I gently coaxed her in, step by step as her eyes remained wide with terror affixed on the dread Master-Wizard.

I introduced Sha-Ra Bloodclaw to Isidore the Wizard once they were standing appropriately. It was just that getting there took an inordinate amount of time!

Sha-Ra whined a little and then settled down when she realized she was not going to be instantly incinerated by the Wizard’s gaze.

Isidore gently asked, “Sha-Ra, you are a warrior, yes?”

The Orc woman nodded that she was. But her trembling jerky fearful response had me considering taking a step away in case she wet herself, as her awestruck eyes indicated she might.

Isidore informed her calmly, “I am going to ask to inspect your scars as is a tradition among your people, accepting new members.” Sha-Ra blinked at him and Isidore the Wizard pressed, “Remove your garments and kneel, so I may inspect your battle scars.”

Shocked stiff, she mechanically did as asked.

I remembered my girls doing much the same with me, on the day we first bathed in the pond.

Isidore appraised Sha-Ra mostly inspecting her scars and their positioning towards the front. A few scars were in intimate and probably painful places like a slash across the soft meat above her left hip. And another that appeared to be a spear thrust into the upper flesh of her right breast leading into her armpit, and traveled outward to nick her inner arm. There were few on her back, the most significant being a slash across her left calf that probably came from someone taking a swipe at her from the side during a close-quarters armed scrum.

It was impossible to miss her beautiful natural musculature, right down to her jealousy-inspiring washboard stomach. Nor was it possible to miss her massive head-sized, completely natural, tits that hung high and proud on her chest, seemingly unaffected by gravity.

Wizard Isidore seemed pleased.

He complimented, “She is a fine example of her species, Alexander. I watched the four girls you brought to Azura’s service. They all seemed pleasant enough on your return journey. You have a good eye for things like this. I know that the flesh-for-cash trade on your plane is mostly taboo, but you have an eye for quality people. If that is not offensive.”

He was right.

I did not know how to take that, now that he brought it up.

This world was getting to me. I just used my hiring skills and did not even consider that I was buying and not hiring.

Isidore suddenly looked to the side, off his left shoulder slightly, drawing my attention back to reality. His eyes were distant and unfocused. He stared out at a point somewhere off my right shoulder, as I faced him.

Master Wizard Isidore immediately changed tack and doubled his rate of speech. He quickly offered, “Well, Sha-Ra Bloodclaw. I am familiar with your clan. You are feared warriors. We do not have much time. Quickly now, may I have your oath of loyalty and protection, as your bondsman and new master?”

Sha-Ra agreed, submitting quickly to what she must have perceived as overwhelming power, “Yes mighty Wizard. I will serve you to my absolute best ability until my death in your protection.”

Nodding Isidore accepted, quickly, “Good enough for now. We will review duties and benefits later. Get dressed quickly.” He waggled his hand off at a corner of the room, and absently told Sha-Ra, “Now off to that corner with you, and quickly pick a weapon from the pile that you would like to kill someone with.”

Perplexed, I turned, looking into the neglected corner.

I looked over and behind her, as Sha-Ra scooped up her skimpy garb, and sure enough, there was a pile of discarded weapons and armor there I had never noticed before in that deep corner.

Sha-Ra quickly rummaged, bending over and displaying her finely muscled rear-end, before pulling a nice large double-handed war ax. For a Human, it was a double-handed ax, but given her size she could probably use it one-handed.

When I looked back at him, Isidore rushed from behind his table and snapped his fingers at me, and then pointed, while barking, “Alexander, go to that shelf and fetch the large urn labeled ‘Salt’.”

Confused, I shrugged and moved bahçeşehir escort to comply, seeing the large clearly labeled urn immediately.

While I was reaching for the large clay vessel Isidore snapped, “Sha-Ra, help me clear a ten paces by ten paces space in the middle of this room!”

Now I was concerned!

I rushed over, placed the urn securely next to the chairs on the front corner of his table desk, and shoved those chairs under the table too. Then immediately joined the furniture moving, shoving things as quickly as possible with the other two.

Isidore broke our work only by demanding, while he was shoving a short plush foot stool out of the way, “Alexander! Have you named a demon recently!”

I had to think about that one!

I mumbled, “I don’t think so.”

Then it popped into my head about the night prior, “Well, not named. I didn’t say it out loud. But last night, well I guess this morning, before we got Sha-Ra and the new Gobo-girls, I was with Vespera and realized that I am thankful and grateful to Lilitha Nyx for abducting and sending me here. Because otherwise, I would have never met my girls.”

Shaking his head in frustration, Isidore snapped, “Idiot!

“You have a lot to learn!

“Alex, some days you are attentive and intelligent. And then others you go and do something like this! You are entirely too powerful and dangerous to be left running around untrained in the world!” Before I could reply, and probably whine like a little bitch, Isidore demanded of me, “Fetch the salt urn!”

I quickly plucked it from the corner of the table where I placed it and turned around again.

Sha-Ra gazed around the room, her new two-handed ax balanced with familiar ease in one hand. She picked a corner and started pacing the ten paces demanded of us for the cleared area in the study. That was good, she was taking the initiative to support the Wizard’s orders.

Isidore Fireforge, Master Elemental Wizard, hurriedly snatched the urn from my hands and quickly began pouring a thin but complete salt circle encompassing the room’s cleared patch.

Sha-Ra now stood back war ax at the ready, her scandalous barbarian woman garb back in place, scanning the shadows of the room attentively.

Isidore spoke as he passed into the final quarter of his full, evenly drawn, salt circle, speaking to me like he would a child, “Alex, I will explain this to you slowly, as I finish. You, a powerful Pure-Blood Human, were mating with one of your girls. Enjoying shared carnal pleasures. Then while you were approaching the mutually orgasmic sharing of your life-giving mana with Vespera, you thought of the full name of a lust demon. And then to make matters worse, you offered that same lust-demon gratitude and healthy blessings. Both of these are powerful positive emotions that are antithetical to Demon-kind. Do you see the problem with that, Alex?”

I remembered those good feelings inside Vespera, and naming Lilitha Nyx, while I came, loving my little purple-haired girl.

We three must have felt the enraged shriek together. Because the Wizard, Orc warrior and I all looked in the same direction Isidore looked before the furniture movement started.

Angered, Sha-Ra got it first. Pointing the head of her ax at my face she roared, “Stupid Hummie! You just named her in thought again! Didn’t you? We all felt it this time!”

I groaned and slumped. Then eyes closed in consternation, accentuating each word, I barked, “Shit! On! Me!”

Carefully finishing the circle and closing it completely, Isidore began another slow careful pass, laying more salt gingerly atop the layer already there. He quipped, “Yes you did, Alex! All over yourself this time!” Shaking his head the Master Wizard ordered, “Neither of you enter this circle. And under no circumstances do you touch the salt line! If it breaks the elemental containment circlet will fail, and that enraged demon will rip her way free and escape with her full demonic power available to her.”

Sha-Ra was a boiling cauldron of rage, eyeing me, as Isidore approached the completion of his second circlet, reinforcing the salt circle. The powerful green-skinned Orc shook her ax at me threateningly, and demanded, “Wizard-Master! You Hummie too, but why do you tolerate stupid Hummie!”

Shaking his head, Isidore looked up, back and forth between the two of us, with a wry smile on his old face, dropping his long white beard slightly off to one side. He speculated, “I don’t know. He is a good cook, and wonderful with my Goblin-girls. They are happy and productive with him around.” He reiterated, admitting again, “And his food is really good!”

Pretty tired of having both of them hammering on me, I admitted, “There is a lot about this world I do not know!” Shaking my head I added, “I don’t even know why I could see that the winter storms kept coming in from the north and none of them entered the valley. The whole place stayed tepidly warm yenibosna escort all winter.”

Isidore froze half in and half out of his salt circle eyeing me. He told the room, slowly like he was speaking to a very young child, “That is because I am old and I do not like cold winters. So I send them around until I am sure the harvest is in. Making sure the storms drop their precipitation into the hills and mountains surrounding us so the runoff melt-water feeds the valley the whole rest of the year. Then I accept the weather change when I can no longer justify tampering with the weather.”

I just blinked a few times and mumbled, “Oh.”

Sha-Ra found that very amusing at my expense!

Isidore just shook his head with a soft sigh.

Stepping outside the circle, Isidore ran his eyes over the full expanse, covering the whole circumference again. Then he reached over and gently grasped Sha-Ra’s arm and guided her back behind him.

Isidore Fireforge, Master Elemental Wizard, and Lord of the Obsidian Tower looked back the way the enraged cry had come twice before, gauged, and then muttered, “Any moment now.”

Frustrated Sha-Ra whispered, voice hard, over the Wizard’s shoulder, “Why not make him smart like you?! Then he won’t be dumb with the Gobo-girls’ pussy on his mind all the time!”

I could do nothing but stare at the two and shake my head in shame!

They had my number.

This really was my fault!

Isidore speculated, “I suppose I could take an apprentice.” He stroked his long white beard, looked over his shoulder at the Orc warrior-woman, and told her, “As a Human Pure-Blood he will have an easy command of magic in our plane.” Shaking his head now, he added, “I don’t know why I never really considered it before. I guess I just liked the food and did not want to disturb that arrangement. But, I suppose I will now need to suffer with Alexander as my apprentice also.” He looked directly at his new protector and told her, “Truthfully it will probably take a hundred years before he can work anything and manage not to blast his own foot off in the process.”

I exhaled and calmed myself. This was getting old!

Though well deserved.

Then I realized that I could feel Nyx falling into our midst.

Not with my eyes but with something much deeper.

I pointed out with two fingers on my left hand, feeling her rage plummeting towards us. I tracked her rapidly descending form as she shrieked through whatever ethereal plane she was traveling towards me.

My fingers fell slowly but accelerated with the approaching traversal as I felt her nearing the circle scribed with salt.

My fingers fell across the line.

In the next instant, the salt circle exploded into an angry pink, with malevolent purple, as white-hot sparking shards of blasted energy snapped and ricocheted around inside like burning bullets. The thousand sudden sounds all crashed together into a roiling disjointed but sudden thunderclap.

The enraged shriek ripped into our world with the light and abruptly ended with an indescribable thump of power slamming into some invisible barrier above the salt circle. That same crackle of power dissipated immediately as she snapped into reality.

Nyx arrived like a bird slamming into a large kitchen window at full speed. The thump was her arrival as she slammed into the elemental barrier created by the salt.

That was when I realized that my fingers were pointing directly at her, and I had not even thought about it during her arrival and sudden materialization.

I spoke before my brain-to-mouth filter engaged, and I offered to the Demon, “Hi, Nyxie.”

Enraged, she shrieked, “Don’t call me that!” She threw a punch into the barrier and smashed massive shards of white-hot energy that ricocheted around inside her circle with her.

The energy shards slammed sizzling into her wings and flesh, burning and searing away holes in each, leaving blackened smoking chunks ripped free. She flexed her horrifically burned fist, cracking the seared and blackened flesh.

She shrieked in impotent anger, glancing frantically left and right over my shoulders and studying my immediate surroundings. Her vengeful attention on me never wavered. Her eyes were vicious and impossibly angry. Her dark and malevolent energy crackled around her fists and rolled off her body in pulsing pink waves.

I spoke to the demon again. This time more calmly and deliberately, “Lilitha, I’m sorry about summoning you as I did.” Shaking my head at realizing my ignorance I offered, “I did not know that thanking you for how nice my life has become since Liam’s party would cause you such irritation.”

Lilitha Nyx shouted, the tip of her nose burning black at the end as she hit the containment field while shouting, “Ignorance is never an excuse! You will die screaming by my hand on the first anniversary of your arrival in the Plane of Legends, Human!”

That made me cock my kayaşehir escort head.

Staring at the extremely venomous snake behind the thick impenetrable enclosure wall. Her spell broke, and all that escaped my mouth was, “Hum, is it really All Hallows Eve again?”

She hissed, etching more angry pink energy from the elemental barrier with another vicious swipe that smashed away her claws into hundreds of white-hot burning shards. Nyx howled in pain shaking her badly burned fingertips and amputated nails. She hissed venomously, “Yes! On the Earth you will never see again, it is All Hallows Eve! The death of summer is again at hand! And the vail to the underworld is at its thinnest!”

I studied the captive demon, relaxing, and realized that her pink energies were the color of a festering wound, while the purple flecks were the ugly and putrescent purple of a horribly painful and deep bruise.

Those energies that sparked interestingly carried those very sickly and painful connotations.

I also noticed that the blackened gouges in her skin and holes in her wings were slowly knitting together after the shards of contained energy had ripped through her. As were her fingertips, slowly pushing out into rounded nubs. There were tendrils of her reddish-purple skin reaching across and bridging the gaps over the charred places and knitting the wounds together like sutures.

Truth be told, it looked pretty painful, but Nyx was so enraged she did not seem to notice.

I told her, “Hey Nyxie, I have another question for you.”

She growled past Human teeth quickly reshaping to vicious needles and growing sharper by the heartbeat right in front of me. Her black hair was a messy and shadowed veil before her angry eyes. Her feral-sounding growl was accompanied by her spreading her wings behind her, and her rage-trembling hands from her naked breasts and out to her sides preparing to strike and rend me limb from limb.

I ignored her furious posturing and cringed when her right wing slipped into the field and a good hand’s length burned off in that careless instant and the succubus winced in pain. Shaking my head, I ignored her pain and asked, “How’s my buddy Liam?”

That broke her brain.

Nyx jerked up straight, confused and blinked at me a few times.

Her vengeful rage slipped away, her teeth and nails shrunk back to normal, and a malevolent smile curled her lips and evil hunger showed in her eyes. She pushed her long fallen hair back from her eyes and over her horns, miming flirty human female preening.

Lilitha Nyx breathlessly panted, her enthusiasm clear, “Oh, not well! I assure you! Liam is not doing well!” She edged up to the elemental salt barrier between us like a tiger eyeing someone to eat just on the other side of the glass at the zoo. She informed me, “After that fool’s abject failure got me killed and exiled by your world’s priests, my master punished me horribly! Then a few short decades later, Liam’s soul arrived in our domain, and he was given to me to torment!” Snarling into the barrier, she threatened, venom weeping like clinging acid in her voice, “Your insolence and pouring that painful drivel onto me was the only thing in all four universes that could have drawn me away from ripping Liam’s soul to pieces infinitely, slowly and painfully for all eternity!”

I cheerfully smiled and chirped, “Good! You two deserve each other! It sounds like you two are getting along great in the pits of Hell!”

She snarled at me.

Just to see what would happen I relaxed, thinking of my love for Azura, Vespera and Elara. Even Zephyra as she cared for our children while playing the role of happy Aunt and grandmother to all. I opened my heart to those good things and let it flow, as I told Nyx to her face, “You know when I got here you sold me for a single gold coin.”

The bitch smirked at me.

Interrupting, she lashed out verbally, she ground out each syllable with disgust and rage, “Fitting! You are worth less than that! I laughed at your single coin price! I instructed my acolytes here to set all of your prices so low! I set your price so low just so that the worst kinds of monsters from this plane would purchase you all. Your mortal bodies would suffer and quickly die here! And then I could devour all your souls again immediately following your horrible painful deaths!” With violently twisted rage she oozed all her malice into naming me, “Human!”

I just smiled at her, and began again, feeling great, “Yeah, about that!”

I smiled so warmly at her that she recoiled in shocked disgust. Stepping back from the elemental salt barrier, she fumbled and fell two steps back, anticipation frantic in her eyes.

I deliberately did it again and laid it onto her, just to see what would happen, “I need to thank you in person.” I poured my good feelings into it when I told her, “I was really scared and upset at first. But you set the price so low that a clan of really cute Goblin girls could afford me.” Shaking my head and feeling every iota of love for my girls, so that I could I expressed it all, “My girls, and our babies, are the loves of my life! You gave me the single greatest gift anyone could have ever!”

Lilitha Nyx buckled, crumbled, and convulsed under my open and honest flow of positive emotions directed at her. She began to quail and shrieked piteously.

Hi there folks!

This is the first part of Volume 2 of The Eros Plague Epoch, which is listed here under my other works as a completed series. If you’ve read it, enjoy, and thanks for coming back! If you haven’t… well, you’ll definitely enjoy this a lot more if you catch up first.

Life moved along with time, and we found our way in a new world, using remnants of the old to find a way to build our futures.

The island, which Bailey happily insisted was called Bald Rock for the huge boulder that made up the southern end, was becoming crowded, and we worked hard to make it safe, but when Joseph, Luis, and I would talk around our campfire at nights, Joe would often say that he’d like to move his family to the next island over, a high-set modest acre where we could build a footbridge to cover the gap of the narrow channel in between. I didn’t adore the idea, there was safety in numbers, and a lot of work in a second homestead, but space was getting tight and the extra land would be a huge help.

The first winter was brutal, The lake iced over completely and we’d seen packs of Redeyes trying the ice, even getting to the barricades and traps we’d set up on a few occasions. We’d been lucky, though, chasing them off as smaller groups than they arrived.

My first daughter, June, was born on a cold February morning after Danni went through a long labour, June screamed her tiny lungs out, raging at the cold. Danni was a champion through it, holding June tight to her breast and I became a father, holding them both. I told Danni I was proud of her and loved her, and thanked her for making me a dad.

Two months later as spring began, it was Allie’s turn, holding my hands as she pushed. Wendy and Danni worked on her, my second baby girl coughing a rusty cry as she entered the world. Little Sofiya joined the family, blinking and yowling at the brightness of the world as Allie, sweaty and exhausted, pulled me to her, Sofiya clutched in my arms, so she could look over our baby with her discerning hazel gaze.

Only three weeks later it was Wendy’s turn, and she and Luis welcomed Kassidy, a cutie and handful from the moment she escaped her mom. Little Kassidy was a pistol and a flirt, making me remember her aunt, my first love, clutching to her mom and making eyes at every boy she laid eyes on.

On top of the infants, I found myself with a small army of near-teenagers who needed to learn to survive, and a growing group of mouths to feed. Fishing and hunting skills had to be learned, but thankfully, both Bailey and Caleb took to it. Joseph too, his experience helping me improve his skills quickly, and his skills as a teacher doing wonders to keep the kids focused and practicing. Katy, it turned out, was hellishly good at fishing, and despite Allie hating it, a pretty decent shot. Isis, youngest of the four pre-Freddie kids was slowly starting to get the hang of fishing, but a ways out from handling a rifle. I assured Joseph she was doing pretty well.

We’d hustled hard to assemble enough supplies for that first winter, forging bonds in the group, Aria made herself a member, but Alanna never seemed to. Quinn, on the other hand, became the worlds greatest baby-sitter, hanging around with the older kids as Allie, Danni, and Wendy juggled infants, and Luis, Joseph, Aria, and I tried to keep up with the chores.

That first year, as we passed the anniversary of the plague and everything that happened to us all after in a blur, babies had showered upon us, except for Aria. “She says she’ll have one when my kids accept her,” Joseph complained over the fire one night, both Luis and I zombified new fathers who nodded along with him. “It’s that weird nettle tea she brews, I’m telling you, we fuck and fuck and nothing.”

“Shit, at least you’re getting laid. Wendy is scared of Irish twins, won’t let me near her,” Luis grumbled as I nodded along. My bed wasn’t cold, but both Allie and Danni had expressed similar fears, and both were getting grouchy, snapping at me and each other. It always was better after sex, but the longer we waited to avoid their ovulation, the worse it got.

The next night, trying to help Allie and Danni with our infant daughters while Bailey and Katy dawdled going to bed, I noticed Aria drinking tea. She left the mug in the sink and I sniffed it, all flowers, but something else beneath it.

“Cripes that smells weird,” I’d wrinkled my nose at it as I tickled June’s little belly.

“What does,” Danni asked, bouncing Soifya her hip while Allie hustling the older kids to bed. I accepted Sofiya from Danni, and June immediately started playing monkey faces with her half-sister as she sniffed at the tea. I saw something dawn in her eyes, she glanced at me, putting the mug down quickly. “Gross,” she mumbled, zipping away.

That night I’d found my wives whispering excitedly in our bedroom, and then with Wendy while the kids played in the snow the next morning and they did their yoga routines, and then Aria that afternoon when they shooed me esenler escort and the other men and kids out to work on shooting and building things.

That’d been the moment Aria really got into their group, when she told them what was in the tea. They’d all drink a mug a day for a couple of weeks every month. Days later, well taken care of and happier for it, Luis and I told Joe to be thankful for the tea and to never say a goddamn word about it to the girls.

=============================

The babies were all past their first birthdays soon enough, and we had survived another winter and spring thaw. Danni set to work getting gardens planted, confident we wouldn’t have another frost despite all of our fears for our limited supply of seeds. Luis had developed a solid greenhouse system, she’d assured me, and he and I busily set it up to protect the newly planted seeds as fast as we could.

The second winter was easier; We knew what to expect, what to store, what to prepare and how to preserve it, and luckily, it wasn’t quite as cold.

Redeye’s struggled to get far on the ice, and Joe and I spent more time fishing their half-frozen corpses out of the lake than fending them off after they moved across bad ice. The whole winter, only a handful made it to the island, rapidly getting trapped in the fencing and barricades we’d set up. It was a simple protection, but when those little bells rang, we knew what we were up against.

Danni had shown us how to preserve entire harvests that summer and fall. We ended up having more than we expected, and happily said goodbye to canned food. Luis built a small smokehouse for us too, ensuring we had ample stores of birds, fish, and a couple of deer we’d bagged to tide us over when winter game got scarce. Bailey was particularly proud of the deer, showing his family eye for shooting when he bagged one on a run through trees.

One day, I noticed that Danni and Allie weren’t partaking in tea time, sipping at normal tea along with Quinn, who’d been invited into the group as she blossomed into womanhood. The little paper tags hanging from their mugs, while Aria and Wendy made a face with each sip of their nettle tea. Not wanting to tip my hand, I hustled the boys and Katy outside to work on their survival skills while Joe and Luis headed off to do some fishing.

===============================

That night, I lay in bed between my beautiful wives, something they mocked me for calling them, enjoying complaining that I’d never put a ring on their fingers, only to call each other ‘wife’, often laden with lust or excitement.

Allie had fallen asleep after a hard day with Sofiya, but Danni kissed my neck as I tried to read by the small solar reading lamp above the bed. “Frodo and Sam might never get to Mount Doom if you keep that up,” I told her in a quietly as she squeezed my cock through my pyjamas. Danni responded by rubbing her barely contained nightgown-clad bosom against my bare chest.

Smiling, her wide jaw and pointed chin twisting to an O to mock my admonishment while her dark bedroom eyes locked onto me filled with lust. “You’ve read that a hundred times, you know what happens,” she insisted, pushing her impressive rack across my arm and onto my chest. Looking to her breasts, she gently unhooked the strap of her cotton nightgown, pulling it down her arm. “Babe,” she pushed her full breasts toward me, “I am SO horny. I need you to suck my tits and fill me up with that big hog. If you don’t, I’ll burst.”

“What’s gotten into you,” I asked, already knowing goddam well, the faint scent of mango filling my nostrils as she warmed up for me.

“It’s what’s not in me yet, baby,” she rasped, full lips pursing tickling the skin of my chest as my cock thickened and rose for her.

I put the book on the shelf in the headboard and lowered my mouth to Danni’s nipple, a tiny bead of milk seeping out as I sucked. I didn’t especially adore the taste, but she loved me doing it. She’d finally stopped producing milk for June, an absolute milk monster, and loved me to suck her tits. Danni sighed contentedly as I pulled her nightgown up her hips and worked her thick brown nipples with my lips and teeth, squeezing the heavy breasts they topped, kneading the soft flesh to her great delight.

I caressed Danni’s body as I slipped my hands to her perfect, wide, hips, savouring her sensuous movements as she pressed herself into my warm hands, opening her legs slightly to reveal the small, short, arrowhead bush beneath. I tickled her belly, softly curved and exquisitely womanly as she giggled at my fingers and flexed the tight abdominal muscles below. Both Danni and Allie had gotten their figures back quickly, Wendy too, maybe another side effect of Freddie? Definitely our lives.

We all were active at the business of survival, with little time to be sedentary. Danni cooed and opened her legs for me as I rolled her onto her back and slid between her legs. She took my weight with ease bayrampaşa escort as I pressed my chest to her belly, licking up her ribs across her heavy mounds, licking her neck and finally pressing my lips to hers in a deep French kiss. My weighty cock slid eagerly along her gap, quickly finding the sticky hot entrance to her. “Give me that big daddy dick, Calvin, give me another baby.”

I lived for ovulation week. My women were perpetually horny, but ovulation week was heaven as their bodies fired up their need. I’d have each of them daily, sometimes a couple of times, but for that magical week every month, I could do no wrong and if I had wood it was wet with both of them. Mounting Danni to a grateful groan, I sank into her, my double-thick cock pushing all nine inches into her soaking sex. Her pussy grabbed me like a hand, as always, she was easy to enter, but held me fast and firm with her love muscles.

“Mmm! Yesss,” she hissed as I bottomed out in her, “deep and slow,” she wrapped her legs around me, calves crossing over my ass as I began our rhythm. Pulling me tightly to her, stroking my hair as I made slow, languid, love to her, still sucking and mauling her big tits as I pressed my hips into hers, jiggling her double-ds, Danni breathed into my ear, letting her lips caress the soft skin.

I’d already had Danni today, I’d been helping her in the greenhouse and she’d casually announced that the straps on her coveralls had popped off as she bent over a raised bed of snow peas. Drawn in by the curve of her ass with a firm slap, I’d held her at the shoulders to take her roughly as Danni pretended she was making an effort to stifle her moans.

“Take me slow, let me feel it alllll,” Danni whispered while I ground deep inside of her wetness. Danni kissed my ear, licking my neck before holding my gaze tightly for a few moments, locking me into a deep open-mouth kiss as she sighed into me. This was her move for intense intimacy, her breeding fantasy, holding my face with both hands, keeping my focus completely on her as she wrapped my entire body in hers, blazing pussy rippling around my cock as her legs held me firmly to her hips. She keened quietly as our breath flowed back and forth between each other.

Holding me so tight that we could only rock back and forth into each other, silently, simply, lost in the closeness as I slowly stirred her trembling womanhood to her climax, my balls began to boil over with the lightning tingle of my own orgasm climbing down my shaft. “Show it to me, Danni, show it to me,” I insisted as her eyes became foggy and a twitching frown set across her brow, jaw set rigid as she built to her release, gushing wet as my cockhead worked over her a-spot and cervix.

Gasping, her body tightened, Danni’s legs clamped around me and her breaths shortened, begging through gritted teeth, “put our boy in me,” hands slid to my ass, locked under her ankles as she pulled me in deep, refusing to let me pull back. Her eyes wide, glassy and unfocused as her hips shook, arching her back, mashing her glorious breasts to my chest and clamped down with a tight spasm along the length of my cock “uh… ahhhhhh,” Danni moaned and went rigid, milkeing me with her rippling walls.

“Give… ohhh…. now, give it to me,” she quaked as her hips bucked and her pussy consumed my cock wetly. Danni’s wet mouth trailed saliva after me as I broke our kiss pushing up on my elbows to slam her into the bed from my hips. “Caaaaaal-uhhh caaaaal-ahh,” she called out as her voice faded to a moan, big tits bouncing with each wave of pleasure, legs slipping to the small of my back,, “oh Cal” escaping her lips.

Holding me in her deepest point, Danni’s pussy clamped behind the ridge of my cock as her hips worked, demanding my seed as I pounded us into the mattress, filling her with a loud groan of lust and an explosion of searing cum as we slammed the headboard into the wall.

Crying out gleefully, Danni arched her back to press our bellies together as she accepted my load, forcing me up on extended arms as she lifted her hips to writhe against me, grinding her cervix into my eruption, “do it baby, put it right where I want it, knock me up,” she chattered as what felt like a steady stream flowed from me into her with yet another piece of my soul.

Out of breath and seeing stars, we stayed entwined as I collapsed onto her, Danni’s body holding me too tightly to pull out. “Love you,” Danni whispered into my ear, “you know I love you?” I kissed her hard, slow.

“I love you too, Dee,” she smiled at that, pulling me tightly to her, holding me inside of her, “I love every moment with you,” she squeezed, letting me feel every twitch of her body. As I began to slip out of her, she stayed on her back, closing her legs tightly and stroked my cock with one hand to help me harden and collect the dripping excess of our sex.

Danni glanced to her right and grinned, open mouthed and flicked her tongue against her teeth, “now Allie,” licking arnavutköy escort our mixed fluids from her hand.

I turned to see Allie had woken, smiling at me, lying flat on her belly, a hand underneath to strum her pussy, the other pulling up her nightgown to expose her beautiful backside, just a tiny bit bigger since Sofiya. Her pussy exposed, I began to smell her signature strawberry scent wafting off of her. “You woke me and made me jealous, moya lyubova,” she complained as I straddled her legs and spanked her lightly, spreading her cheeks, digging my fingers into the meaty flesh to see her slit glistening as my hardening cock slipped along it. “Mmmm… take me, barbarian.”

I loved when Allie did this, she knew it, and I felt a surge of hungry lust as she encouraged me with a high-pitched moan as I drove halfway into her slick cock sleeve with a long push, “ooohh oh you beast! Ohhh you’re so rough…” I pushed deeper, enjoying the soft moan she made into the pillow as I invaded her. Somehow, Allie had gotten tighter since Sofiya was born, and I worked her slow, revelling as her body eased open under my pressure, stretching over my helmet and wrapping me in her building arousal.

“Ahh, Allie, oh baby,” I murmured to her, “you two are succubi,” I groaned to my wives as I worked my way into Allie’s love tunnel smoothly, my shaft still coated in a thick layer of Danni’s fluids. I pulled back, then plunged forward until my hips met her bouncy bottom. Allie moaned low in her chest as I took her body, settling deep inside her channel. The moan a told that she needed a deep, breeding fuck. I picked up my pace and set her cheeks to jiggling under my attack.

This morning, I’d walked into the bedroom to change after doing chores to find Allie folding laundry wearing only her short terrycloth robe. I’d made a growl of my own at her creamy bottom and her long runner’s legs as she’d set the basket down. I sat on the loveseat in the corner, and she came to me, kneeling between my knees, smiling and oohing as she unzipped my pants. She’d bent to worship my cock obediently, eagerly, my hand at the back of her neck as she bobbed and sucked. I’d pulled her into my lap and speared her on my prick, pulling her back to my chest so I could play with her perfect C tits while she rode me.

“O, eto khorosho. Zakopay v menya svoy chlen, varvar,” she goaded me in breathless Russian as I fucked her, “ahn! Ah,” I savoured Allie’s body as I pumped and she made high-pitched yelp with each plunging hit to her g-spot. “Ahuh, uh uhhh, oh Calvin!” Allie moaned her pleasure at the deep strokes and pushed her ass up at me to give me the best angle to rail her.

Next to us, Danni, playing with her cummy quim, reached out to Allie who took her hand quickly, something they often did now, and I’d noticed lead to enjoyable things, including finding them preparing each other for me often as not.

Allie had become increasingly horny and submissive recently, putting herself in positions where I couldn’t resist taking her. She’d call me to the bedroom to steady her on the footstool in the closet only to slip and be pressed to the wall and moan while I rutted in her, or ask me to tell her which panties I liked best, waving her delicious ass at me as she changed, acting surprised when she ended up on her back. Beneath me, she was pulling herself toward Danni, and I let up, my cock sliding from her wetly as she crawled between Danni’s legs.

Allie lowered her mouth to Danni’s pussy, both women sighing with erotic contentment while I hunched over Allie, retaking her in a stroke, and nipped at her neck with a growl. She moaned into Danni, who wailed another orgasm as I worked Allie into her. “Ohhhh oh Allie, Cal, oh my god…”

Allie was gasping, drowning in my cum flowing from Danni’s pussy, a flush beginning to build across her body. I wanted her to cum hard, the Russian pussy I so loved would clamp down on me and pull along my shaft from the bottom to the top in long strokes. I wanted her to explode.

A glance at Danni was all it took, and she knew what to do as I rolled to my back, taking Allie with me exposed spread eagle to Danni, who dove in. Her tongue lathed up and down my pumping shaft, flickering and sucking at the protruding clit that capped Allie’s entry. Allie began to cry out as I kneaded her breasts and rasped, “the same night. I’m going to make you both pregnant in the same night.”

I loved this. One wife servicing the other as I fucked them. I mauled Allie’s tits and pumped as she exploded like a bomb, wailing as Danni’s talented tongue made her squirt, the shocking tightness on my cock as she climaxed and the tongue flickering on me pushed me off the cliff and I growled into her ear and I filled Allie to overflowing.

It wasn’t long until we lay in a mess of arms and legs, relishing an afterglow that would soon enough give way to another round. I looked from side to side to take in my wives. God, they were gorgeous. Danni was thirty-one now, an hourglass farm girl, her red-olive skin glowing against her black hair and strikingly beautiful native features. Big double-d’s that still had plenty of bounce and thick brown nipples sat high on her wide chest, an inviting, softly curved belly that gave way to wide, womanly hips and long shapely legs. A Canadian Venus.