Sealed Pleasures – Part 1
“Lovely place,” Releana said with a displeased sounding sniff. “The mold and vines really give it that extra something special, you know? I am so honored that you invited me along, Lila.”
Lila’s boots scuffed against the dirty stone flooring of the ancient temple as she came to a stop. She put a hand on her hip and turned to regard Releana, with a shake of her head. “Could you lay the sarcasm on any thicker? I mean, seriously…”
“I suppose I could, yeah, but I’m okay with just how thick it is right now,” Releana replied, smirking. “I wanted to get off of Sentinel for a while as much as you did, but couldn’t you have brought us to a more exciting place? I mean, something with a pool, maybe? Hot girls and boys walking around half-naked? Or somewhere with skydiving? You know, something entertaining. And not covered in muck and crumbling down?”
Lila turned and spread her arms, motioning to the thickly overgrown walls. “What’s not to love? And there is a pool! You saw it out front, right?’
Releana returned a skeptical frown. “You mean that pool of sludge that was bubbling and smelled like rotten eggs? Gross!”
Snickering, Lila turned and started down the ancient hall once again. “It’s great for the skin! Totally!” Sharing a laugh with the much more muscular human woman behind her, Lila gave her a thumbs up. “Trust me, Rel, we’ll get a good chunk of what we owe Alyssa out of here, and then just one or two more delves and we’ll be ready to move on, even with Kanna taking some of the payment, and you won’t have to beat any asses again!”
“I don’t know, I’m kinda starting to enjoy the whips and the bootlicking,” Releana replied, following Lila through a doorway. “Especially when it’s you doing the licking and getting the loving end of the whip. You make such pretty sounds when you’re at the end of my leash.”
Lila’s head shot around. Releana had sounded way too serious making that statement. Before she could start to respond, she felt the stone under her foot give, shifting about an inch downward, and heard a faint click reverberate through the stone. “Oh shit!” Before she could do anything else, she and Releana were suddenly falling into darkness.
Moments after they were out of sight, the floor that had fallen away rose and locked back into place as if nobody had ever been there.
* * *
“Um, shouldn’t we hurry and catch up to Lila and Releana? They’re expecting us to help carry the treasure they find in there,” Kori said, looking up between strands of his purple hair at the giant orc woman sitting before him, peering over the toes of her left foot from his position on the ground in front of her.
The tablet she had been reading looked small in her hands as she thumbed the screen, then tossed her hand dismissively and grunted. She sat atop one of the cargo crates from the ship’s hold, legs crossed, one big foot in front of Kori’s face, flecks of dirt on the sole; Kanna didn’t wear shoes, not that Kori had ever seen anyway. The warm morning was already getting humid at the campsite they had set up by the ship, and sweat was forming on his brow as he waited for her to respond. “No can do,” she said, at last, her voice a deep rumble. “The deal was very specific when I agreed to come with you kids. Kanna the Crusher does nothing without her morning foot massage, and since Lila and Releana decided to sneak away early without giving me what I’m owed, it falls to you. Besides, those two aren’t going to find anything this soon, except trouble.”
“Trouble?! But if that’s the case then shouldn’t we-?”
Kanna’s deep, rumbling laugh echoed through the clearing, her whole body shaking. She looked down at Kori hungrily, brushing a strand of her white hair from her tattoo-covered face as she wiggled her similarly tattooed toes. “Lila is an expert tomb explorer, so she has said many times. According to her notes here, this whole area used to be a desert, the civilization has been gone for many centuries, and was mostly primitive! She’ll be fine for another hour. But your delicious little rump won’t be if I have to wait any longer for my massage. Fingers and tongue, Kori, fingers and tongue!” Kanna wiggled her toes again and pointed at her foot insistently.
Kori sighed, then snagged a hair tie from his pocket and gathered up his hair, quickly pulling it into a ponytail and tying it off. He took in a breath, noting the strong odor of Kanna’s feet as he leaned forward, feeling his eyes start to water. “At least I don’t have as sharp a nose as Lila does…” he muttered, hoping he didn’t break a nail on Kanna’s tough feet.
* * *
Their fall into darkness ended with a stinging splash into icy water, and then Lila was tumbling end over end, caught in a strong current. She couldn’t see, couldn’t hear anything but the rushing water. Then her vision filled with a faint blue glow and she was falling again. She heard Releana scream somewhere behind her, and then she splashed down again into a larger pool, the flow much gentler. Bluish algae and tendril-like stalks grew from the bottom of the pool below her, and she clawed at the water to reach the surface. Something big and Releana-shaped landed not far from her and likewise swam upward.
Lila broke the surface and coughed up a mouthful of water, choking and gagging, heard Releana doing the same. “A-are you okay?” she called over the crash of the waterfall, looking toward her friend.
“Freaking great!” Releana said, laughing and coughing up more water. “That was the most fun I’ve had this whole trip! Why didn’t you tell me that was how we were getting down here?”
“Oh, you know, I didn’t want to spoil the surprise,” Lila said, quickly turning away to take in their surroundings. Hopefully, Rel wouldn’t figure out that she’d stumbled into a trap and that wasn’t actually the route she’d intended… The passage they had come through was perhaps three meters by three based on the size of the square opening the water poured from, another ten or twelve meters to the surface of the pond. The only light seemed to be from the plant life in the pool and the quintet of cut-stone channels that came off of it, the bioluminescent plants filling the cavernous space with a dull bluish hue. Even though the walls of the cavern were crumbling or covered in old, dead vines, Lila could make out distinctly carved shapes in the stone, some kind of hieroglyphic language. “Better get to shore and see if we can call Kori and Kanna, let them know where we went.”
“If we can even get signal down here,” Releana replied pointing a thumb toward the shore to their left. At Lila’s nod, she led the way, easily pushing through the water with her powerfully built body. “So what is this place? I wasn’t expecting something like this beneath that broken-down temple up there.”
“I’d say it has some kind of ritualistic significance,” Lila replied. “There must be a pretty big underground network here, and all this water probably leads to other chambers, or maybe the channels traverse the temple proper and wind up back at a central area. I might be able to tell you more in a minute when I can read some of those hieroglyphs.”
“What hieroglyphs?” Releana asked as she found footing on the edge of the pool by a short set of stairs leading to the stone floor, walking out of the water, waiting on Lila to catch up. Her eyes were not as sensitive in the dim light as a kerryn’s, after all. As they started out of the pool, they noticed that some of the glowing plant life had stuck to their boots, and quickly kicked the slimy stuff off.
Once out of the water, Lila pointed to the wall closest to them and walked toward it. She dug into her sodden pack and pulled out a flashlight, clicked it on, then pulled some old vines away. “Here. They’re all over the chamber from what I could see in the pool; it would probably take a few weeks to study if this were a proper archeological expedition. But since it isn’t, I’ll try for the short version.”
As Lila studied the markings along the walls, Releana dug into her own pack and pulled out the waterproof container she’d put their comms and backup radio in, popped the seal, and took up her comm. Sure enough, no signal. She switched it over to radio mode and hit the switch on the side. “Kori? Kanna? Can you guys hear me?” She paused for a few seconds, tried again. “Hey, you two aren’t doing anything naughty without us, are you?”
With only static greeting her as the device scanned through the various channels, reporting no signals on any of them, Releana turned the screen off and picked up the radio. It was older tech, sure, but it was dedicated to providing communication in less-than-ideal locations and had a stout, thick antenna coming off the top. She clicked the knob on and tried again, calling for their companions across all channels, but getting no response on any of them. “Well, they’re either not listening or we’re not getting the signal out of this place.”
“Could be either-or, really,” Lila said, tugging at more vines. “Kanna’s probably grumpy I didn’t give her that morning massage and is making Kori do it.”
Releana stepped up beside Lila, stowing their comms and radio again for the moment. “Was that mean of us to sneak out like that?”
“Nah,” Lila said quickly, waving her hand dismissively; she certainly hadn’t wanted yet another morning starting off with the taste of Kanna’s feet in her mouth. There had been too much of that on the trip to this planet already. “Anyway, I’m starting to see repeated symbols here. I think these are prayers of some form or another. This one here is some sun or sky god, and these are the people praying to it, and this is the water from the heavens being spread amongst the people of the empire, that kind of thing. The same patterns have been repeated a few times already.”
“So what do these mean?” Releana pointed at a particular group of symbols that showed a humanoid figure with a large headdress standing atop a tall building, maybe the very temple they were inside of now, a dozen figures kneeling below. Then some kind of light surrounding them, changing them into…a cocoon? Then the next symbols showed something like the cocoon being placed into some form of container and being spirited away to the heavens, toward the sun that represented one of their deities.
Lila looked at the symbols for a moment and rubbed at her chin with her finger. “Um…I think it could either be a sacrificial sort of ritual or perhaps this is representing a ruler who has reached the end of their time in the physical world and is being sent to live amongst the gods in this sacred vessel. At least that tends to be the nature of these kinds of things in a majority of humanoid species.”
“Oh, okay. So where do we go from here?” Releana asked, fishing another flashlight from her pack, shining it around the chamber. “Looks like five paths and only two of us. Do we split up?” Lila was about to reply when Releana stuck her finger in Lila’s face, right between her eyes. “That was a trick question! After what happened in that asylum, we’re never splitting up again, got it? And if you don’t get it, I’m bending you over my knee and spanking you until you do get it!”
Lila held her hands up in surrender, flashing a grin. “I surrender, oh mistress of the ponygirls! Your loyal servant shall not leave thy side!” Snickering, and getting a chuckle and a sly grin from Releana in return, Lila pointed at the central channel, then tapped her nose. “Let’s try this one first; I’ve got that feeling that we’ll find something good that way.”
* * *
“C-can we go after Lila and Rel now? I think it’s been long enough,” Kori said softly into Kanna’s sizeable breasts. The big orcress’s arms were wrapped firmly around him and held him tight to her, his face nestled between her firm mounds, breathing in her sweaty scent mixed with that of the fur loincloth and top she wore. It was almost enough to make him forget the pungent flavor of her feet that still lingered in his mouth…almost.
“Mmmm…I guess we probably should,” Kanna rumbled after another few seconds of breathing deeply, her hold on Kori finally loosening. “Lila has never made me come from a foot massage before.”
Kori blushed as Kanna released him, and he crawled off of her. He’d not expected the responses he had gotten from her once he’d started the massage, but then he’d gotten really into the moment and had given it his best when she had started moaning, and one thing led to another and when she’d had her climax, she had snatched him up and held him to her chest, almost out of some kind of reflex, and had held him there for several minutes. “I uh…I’ve been told I have a way with my mouth.”
Kanna sat up once he had gotten off of her, a wide smile showing her teeth behind her tusks. “Not just your mouth, but your fingers too. You’re going to have to do that again when we find those two. And you’re going to have to show Lila how to do it properly from now on.”
“Um…I don’t think there’s time for that really,” Kori said quickly, hurrying to pick up his backpack, noticing the flashing light on his comm. “Hey look, we missed a radio transmission! They must’ve found something!” He quickly keyed in the channel and called out to Lila and Releana, keeping a wary eye on Kanna as the orcress continued staring hungrily at him. He shivered, some deep, primal response to an orc looking at an elf in such a way. “Lila? Rel? Hello? Are you there? Hello?” He snatched up the radio, keyed to the channel he’d received the transmission on, and tried again, but got no response. “Out of range maybe?”
“Probably underground too far,” Kanna said, finally coming to her feet, stretching, her big muscles looking even bigger as she did so. It took an impressive physique to make Releana look small, but Kanna did so easily. She stood more than three feet over Kori’s head, towering at over eight feet, and was several hundred pounds of muscle heavier; he’d not managed to get the whole story, but the rumor was she had actual giant blood in her. Then again, other rumors said that the many arcane tattoos that were upon her skin were responsible for her massive size, and could be dispelled with the right magic, shrinking her to something closer to his own size. Either way, she was admitting to nothing. She snatched up her own satchel, an ancient-looking leather thing with bones for ornamentation and arcane symbols burned into it, throwing it over her shoulder. “Well, come on, loverboy, let’s go see what kind of trouble they’ve gotten themselves into.”
“Maybe they’re not in trouble…”
Kanna put her big, meaty fists on her hips and fixed Kori with a raised eyebrow. “Tell me again about your previous adventures together and then tell me you believe they’re not in trouble.”
Kori looked back at her for a moment, then sighed. He turned to one of the equipment cases, keyed in the unlock code, and snatched out a submachine gun. He slapped a magazine in and quickly worked the bolt to load a round into the chamber, made sure the safety was on, then snatched up a few more magazines, stuffing them into his pack before slinging the gun over his shoulder. He really hoped he didn’t have to use the gun, but it was a jungle out there, after all, and Lila had a knack for getting into the worst possible situations.
* * *
“Rel, this is going to take forever if you keep stopping at every intersection,” Lila said, looking back over her shoulder. They had been following the central tunnel, lit by the glowing plant life in the three-foot-wide channel that flowed through it. There had been a veritable maze of tunnels branching off from this one, likely intersecting with the other passages, but she still felt they were on the right track.
Releana had frozen in place, looking down the adjoining passageway with wide eyes, her flashlight sweeping through the faintly lit gloom. “But…I know I heard someone moving down there.”
“You’re probably hearing echoes of our footsteps; it always stops when we do, right?”
“Yeah, but…I…” Releana looked back at Lila, obviously worried. “I…I feel like there are other people here though. Or, maybe not people, but something like people? It’s hard to explain. I…feel like maybe it’s like those ghosts in the asylum, you know?”
Lila ran a hand through her still-damp hair, her tail flicking back and forth as she leaned against the wall, listening to the faint gurgle of the passing water for a moment. Releana had started developing her psychic senses since they had returned from Aclaysia, though she had been relying on her own instincts and some little guidance from a couple of the sisters at the church of Yurisaya, mostly in meditation techniques to help her clear her mind; actual psychics were still pretty hard to come by since a lot of people didn’t trust them, especially those that could read minds. “Okay, so just describe what you’re feeling. Is it a bad kind of feeling, like those nurses? Malevolent, I guess?”
Releana bit her lower lip, looking back along the flashlight beam into the darkness beyond. “I…don’t think so? It’s elusive, what I’m sensing; there for a moment, then gone, and maybe it’s more like curiosity. And it’s been all around us, and I’m pretty sure there have been multiple minds that I’ve touched. I think they know I can sense them because as soon as I make contact they’re gone. It’s really weird, you know?”
Nodding, Lila looked back along the tunnel they were following in the direction they had come from, then in the direction they were going. “I get what you’re saying, sure, but without being psychic myself, I can’t say with certainty. These might be actual ghosts, Rel, not like those evil things in the asylum, but the spirits of the ancient people that used to live here. We’re traversing hallowed ground, so just maybe they’re still attached to the place. These kinds of ghosts won’t actually hurt us and we probably won’t ever see them.”
A high-pitched titter echoed faintly from one of the tunnels.
Releana stiffened immediately, eyes as big as saucers. “Oh crap, that sounded like a child! Creepy child ghosts!”
“Hey, hey, calm down, that’s not abnormal with ghosts,” Lila said as soothingly as she could, stepping over to Releana, taking hold of the bigger woman’s shaking forearm. “You’re a budding psychic now, so you have to remember that spirits can feed off of your energy. That means they may be more active, may even be able to manifest visibly if they take enough of it. Ghosts making sounds is totally normal, okay? And that might just be an echo from the past; some structures can act as a recorder for sounds, especially where water and crystal are involved; this kind of stone is probably full of quartz or other kinds of crystal that can store or amplify that kind of energy.”
Nodding along as Lila explained what they could be hearing, Releana closed her eyes, drew in her breath slowly, then let it out. She repeated this several times, and finally stopped shaking. When she opened her eyes again, she managed a half-smile at Lila, looking at least steady, if not entirely confident. “Whatever these things may be, we still have to find a way out of here, right?”
Grinning, Lila patted Releana’s arm. “Right. I can hear a slight shift in the sound of the water flow coming from up ahead, so I think we’re about to reach another chamber. With any luck, it’s a treasure room, and we’ll have another path to take that’ll lead us out of here.”
“I’m all for a change of scenery,” Releana said, taking hold of Lila’s hand. She started forward, actually taking the lead, her big strides forcing Lila to scramble to keep up.
“Hey, slow down!” Lila said, laughing.
That got Releana laughing too, but she didn’t stop, actually sped up instead, at least for another couple of dozen meters before she slowed. Lila had spotted the brighter light moments before, but Releana’s weaker eyes must have just picked up on it when she finally stopped. “Oh, you see that? It’s brighter up there.”
“Yep,” Lila said, easing around Releana to take the lead again. She sniffed the air, getting a peculiar scent of something earthy and with a mix of something vaguely acidic. “Do you still sense the spirits? Any of them up ahead?”
Closing her eyes, Releana breathed steadily for a few moments, then nodded. “They’re still lingering around us, just not getting closer. I feel like there are a couple at least up ahead.”
“Hopefully just curious who their visitors are after all this time,” Lila said, patting Releana’s thigh. “Just the same, stay back a little bit from me, okay?”
“You know I don’t have a problem backing you up and all, but do guns even work on ghosts?” Releana asked, patting the holster strapped to her thick thigh.
“Not with the bullets we brought along, but you could try foul language.”
Releana snorted as she suppressed a laugh, but she drew out her machete from the side of her backpack instead, giving Lila a thumbs up. “Might not work either, but at least I’ll feel better.”
Flashing a wide grin at her friend, Lila stepped forward cautiously, Releana following along a few meters behind. As the gloom brightened, the acrid scent grew stronger, and so did the vegetation growing on the walls and floors. It was more of the faintly luminescent plants, growing up and out of the water to cover pretty much all the surfaces she could see. Sure enough, the water flowed into a larger chamber, almost even with the surface of the water inside, the pathway they had been traversing ending in what looked like a set of algae-covered steps that went down into a brightly lit and highly vegetated pool.
The chamber was sizeable, probably at least twenty meters square, and had four other openings, two on either wall to their right and left, each with one of the channels feeding water into the room, and a larger, more ornately decorated passageway across the expanse of water, this one twice as wide as the other openings, with two large columns and an overhanging roof framing it, and with what looked liked vaguely humanoid shapes covered in vegetation standing in front of either column. Gauzy whisps of brownish cloth hung from the overhang, and from the roof inside the opening, fluttering faintly as a light breeze tickled the ancient remnants of some kind of decorations. Looking upward, Lila saw darkness, and after a moment, very faint spots of light overhead. “Maybe there’s a link to the surface up there, but it’s so far up I can’t really tell,” she whispered. She sniffed again, nose wrinkling at the overwhelming plant scent mixing with the acrid odor.
“So where do we go from here?” Releana asked in a tense whisper.
“We have to cross the chamber to that doorway over there,” Lila said. She frowned as she looked at the steps that vanished into the water, noticed that there was a matching set of steps to her right, and beneath the other doors in the chamber. Looking into the water, it was severely overgrown beneath the surface, long tendrils and leafy stalks floating and swaying gently in the combined flow of the water from the various channels. Patches of mossy growth floated on the still surface. Though it was hard to gauge just how thick the plants were down there, Lila guessed the chamber descended at least ten meters, maybe a bit more, but there didn’t appear to be any other paths or overhangs they could use to circle the chamber. “I think all these plants have blocked the water flow; I don’t think this chamber should be flooded like this, and it looks like the only way through is to swim.”
“Ugh, really?”
“Fraid so…” Lila replied, stepping cautiously to the mossy edge, boots squishing in the moist vegetation. She crouched, frowning at the water. There was something wrong with it, something about the way it flowed that didn’t seem quite right. And what was that acidic smell about? Was it just the normal odor these plants produced?
“Hey, Lila…”
Turning her head to look back at Releana, Lila jumped when Releana suddenly screamed, a look of terror flashing across her face a half-second after the sound of a hand landing sharply against the human’s behind. Deep laughter boomed behind her, and then Releana was running, putting Lila in mind of a charging warhorse, though with a wild look of fear on her face.
“Rel!” Lila shouted, trying to calm the bigger woman, but it was too late. Before Releana could stop herself, she collided with Lila, and the two of them fell into the water with a splash. The moment they broke the surface, Lila realized what had been wrong with the water. There was a layer of very transparent slime over the surface, and worse, it was sticky.
Even worse than that, though, as the two of them flailed to reach the surface in an attempt not to sink any deeper than they already had, were the long tendril-like plants that had started writhing beneath them. More sprouted from the lusher bluish-green leafy plants toward the bottom of the pool, thicker and definitely prehensile. Dozens of them reached for the pair.
Tentacles?!
* * *
“If this is Lila’s definition of clearing a path, she’s dumber than I gave her credit for,” Kanna said, tearing through more vines and crashing through saplings.
Kori nimbly ducked below one of the saplings that whipped back at him as the orcress continued forward, frowning at her back. “I have a machete! And this wasn’t grown up like this yesterday! We had a clear path all the way to the temple!”
Kanna grunted in reply, ripping through more foliage, finally tearing through into the clearing where the temple lay. “And you said you went all the way to the top and inside the entryway?”
“Yeah, we did!” Kori said, scrambling to get around Kanna, though he came to a sudden stop beside her. He gasped as he took in the clearing, or rather, what had been a clearing. The whole area around the base of the temple was overgrown with thick vines and all kinds of leafy plants that hadn’t been there before. Even the temple itself had new growth over the square stones that composed its structure, vines thick with age, new trees that weren’t there before growing from different levels of the boxy structure. At the very top, the square-shaped entryway was completely closed off, vines having now grown up to cover it, entwining themselves in thick gnarls and seemingly forming a tree upon the roof. “B-but…it wasn’t like this!”
Kanna grunted again, but then she raised her hands, working her thick fingers in surprisingly agile motions for one so large, uttering an incantation in her orcish tongue. She swept her hands in front of her as she finished the guttural chant, nodding. “Magic was used here recently,” she said. She put her fists on her hips. “Come on and show yourself!” she bellowed, her voice filling the still, muggy air of the clearing. “You aren’t fooling me! I can see the trails of your illusions crisscrossing this area, you know! For every minute you make me wait, it’s a bone I’m breaking!”
“Do you really have to say stuff like that?” Kori asked, his voice a tense whisper. “This is probably sacred ground for someone, and we aren’t wanted here!”
“That’s usually how it goes with tomb-robbing,” Kanna said, taking several steps into the foliage. “Hey, show yourself! Don’t make me hunt you down!”
Still not exactly sure how someone as boorish as Kanna could be an arcanist, especially when she acted like this, Kori swatted at some little insects that seemed awfully intent on making his ears their new home. As he did, he heard the faintest of laughter over the orcress’s bellowing challenge. That made him freeze in place, ears twitching, eyes scanning slowly amongst the overgrowth. There, off to the left, was that…?
Kanna crashed through more foliage, actually ripped a fairly sizable tree from the ground, and tossed it aside. “That’s one bone broke!”
“Hey, could you shut up for a second? I think I heard something!” Kori hissed.
Kanna turned and bellowed a laugh. “Of course you heard something!” She then grabbed another tree and pulled, the muscles in her arms swelling. As she pulled the tree, she hauled off and kicked it with a leg thicker than the trunk, snapping it, then took the upper half of the now-broken trunk and tossed it at the temple. “Two bones! If you like nature so much, better stop pissing me off!”
Kori stopped himself short of calling out Kanna’s behavior; he wondered if she could be worse, then feared that she’d take any such inquiries as a challenge. If this was the best example of an arcanist they could afford- His ears twitched again and he swatted at the air around his ears, but then he heard the faint laughter again, then a few distinct words, some kind of chanting near the temple. That language…it had been a long time since he’d heard it, but he recognized it. It was only spoken by the fae folk! “Kanna, you muscle head, stop that!”
As the orcress turned toward him, looking like she was ready for an argument, the ground exploded around her. New plants erupted from the dirt, big mounds of vines and tree-like limbs. With the crack of wood and rustle of leaves, they took on shapes of something vaguely humanoid, at least five of them. They were just as tall as Kanna was, and their vines twitched like whips at the ends of their limbs as they moved toward her.
“You want me to fight these things? That’s fine with me! I love a good fight!” Kanna roared a challenge at the approaching plant creatures.
“Oh come on,” Kori groaned, ears sagging as the first of the plant things reached Kanna. He couldn’t hear anything now, and going head to head against animated plants was no way to deal with the fae.
As it whipped its tendrils at her, she moved like lightning, stepping aside and snatching the tendrils in her own hands. Roaring again, she hauled at the tendrils even as they wrapped about her arms and pulled the massive plant monster off its trunk-like legs, swung it over her head, and sent it crashing into one of its companions. She swung about with a quick roundhouse kick, landing her heel against the ‘head’ of another walking plant, and sent it crashing to the ground.
Grimacing, Kori took up the submachine gun, held it in his hands, and considered using it. The bullets wouldn’t have much effect on moving shrubbery, at least, he didn’t think they would. He considered the machete he’d brought along; that would probably be more effective. He turned his head, ear twitching as he finally managed to pick up another handful of faint words of the fae language. The fae, invisible, had moved from the temple, or perhaps these were different ones.
He heard the buzz of rapidly beating wings, not unlike those of large dragonflies, darting past him, then a second set, then the two crossed him again. Kori heard a very faint conversation, couldn’t decipher all of the rapidly spoken words but thought he recognized a couple of them. The words that meant ‘danger’ and ‘death’. Then the invisible creatures were gone, at least as far as he could sense.
Still considering if he was under attack or not, Kori’s attention was drawn to Kanna, who roared again, leaping atop one of the plant monsters, driving it to the ground with both feet, wood cracking and snapping as she did so. She was chanting something in orcish again, her hands working deftly as the hostile vegetation continued attacking, the ones she had slammed together back on their feet, the one under her seeming to be only slightly inconvenienced, the others charging forward with reckless abandon.
Flames played over her hands in the next moment, and Kanna leaped off the shoulders of one of the creatures as it lunged for her, throwing said flames at the ground below her like a-
The fireball exploded and the force of the fiery blast propelled Kanna higher into the air. She twisted as the magical flames consumed the plant monsters, wood cracking and splitting beneath the intense heat, leaves shriveling and burning. She landed in a crouch a good ten meters away from where she had been, standing and crossing her arms with a satisfied grin on her face as the creatures burned.
Kori noticed that Kanna had landed beside the stagnant pool at the temple’s base. Before he could react or utter a warning, a writhing mass of muddy tentacles burst from the pool, easily twice as long as Kanna was tall, the bases of them thicker than Kanna’s thighs, and whipped out at the orcress, slapping themselves around her limbs and neck. In the next moment, she was pulled into the pool with a choked cry. There was a big splash, a lot of sloshing of stagnant water out of the pool. By the time Kori made it to the edge of the pool and reached in, the water had gone still. He could feel nothing as he groped into the muddy pool, and he knew Kanna was gone.
My first Kinktober 2021 story begins! Join Lila Darius and friends on another (mis)adventure in her quest for treasures from times long ago! Will her luck improve this time as delves into an ancient tomb, or will she find herself in a bind?
Well, it’s me, so you can probably guess how this is going to go, lol.
This is Part 1 of 4. I had planned to have several other stories done by now, but life and my over-active mind stretched this whole story to something like 40k words, so…yeah, I’m a bit late getting this posted.
Expect the next part later this week; the full version of the story will be here, while only previews of upcoming parts will be available on DA.
Also look forward to a few other stories to go along with Kinktober, even if it’s after the end of the month.
Kinktober Keywords:
Desperation/Mummification
Water/Tentacles
Sink/Buried
Fairy Tale/Shrunk
Would love to hear any feedback you might have! If you don’t mind, would you consider taking this little poll I’ve created? I would love to hear what you think! You can find it here!
You can also hit me up here or over on DeviantArt, or on my Discord server!
Until next time! Urban, out!
