A Drow's Dilemma Ep. 89: Century

Author's Note:

A Drow's Dilemma began as a one-on-one roleplaying project and has been converted into a chapter-by-chapter format for weekly posting with the permission and assistance from my partner. It will contain a considerable amount of sexual themes such as femdom, lesbian, straight, 'reverse' rape, BDSM, group sex, romance, and other themes. The main goal of the story, however, is to tell an epic tale of adventures, gods and goddesses, fae, and nymphomaniacs. This episode and every episode to come will be available for free on Literotica for the foreseeable future. All characters that engage in sexual or suggestive situations are mentally and sexually mature: the human equivalent of 18 for their race.

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Episode 89: Century

It was the evening before the day of her century party. Jhul had gone yet again to have a 'talk' with her mother. The conversation seemed especially bad, judging by the look of anger on her face as she opened the front door to her apartments much more strongly than she needed to, and closed it in a similar fashion. Jhul then went directly for her cabinet of highly fermented beverages, took a large bottle of clear liquid out, and drank deeply directly from the bottle.

Caleldir still did not like the inferior alcohol not produced by his homeland, but he had drunk a little when offered some. That stuff was not the sort that one should be drinking directly. He addressed her in a soft tone, "I take it things are not going well?"

"No," Jhul snapped in reply. All the venom in her voice was directed at the bottle in her hand, and not at Caleldir. As if the bottle was her mother and she was drinking her to death. Or something.

"Mother is-" Jhul began, then huffed out a frustrated sigh. This was not something she was supposed to be speaking about with someone not of her house, let alone a slave. So she took another long drink from her bottle. It took a lot for a drow to get drunk quickly, after all. Once she was done with that particular swig of her bottle, she took it and flopped down on one of her soft couches - the thumb over the mouth of the bottle to prevent spillage.

Now, in situations like this around Ashyr or Selene, Caleldir would have been inclined to respond by talking about his own family and past as a way of bringing down the other person's defenses so that they could open up and he could help them, but that was not going to work in this case. Because he was not going to blow his disguise and tell the full truth of his background. So, instead, he just sat down on the couch near her.

"If you want to talk about it, I am willing to listen," he said in a low tone.

Jhul looked over to Cal. Then she took one quick swig of the bottle before handing it over to him. Caleldir drank a sip of the bottle before setting it down next to the two of them.

"I suppose you are," Jhul's tone was wry, and there was a smirk on her face which was somehow not a pleasant expression. Then her lips faltered, and she frowned. "It affects you, so I might as well say. Mother wants me to work longer with each cycle. But she also ordered me to send fewer people to her. She says she's busy with, well, whatever." She made a sweeping, dismissive motion with her arm. "It's all lizardshit if she neglects the school with whatever idiot scheming she's doing. If only she would let me solve the students' problems again, but NO I just make things more difficult with my giving in to their simple, reasonable requests. Says it makes Dinoryn look weak."

"I do not wish to speak ill of your mother," he said. "But this seems to be a rather poor business model. Do you not provide the other Noble Houses an important service? Are your wealth and power not dependent on keeping your near-monopoly on formal magical education? How can it not be in Dinoryn's best interests to provide as good of a service to the other noble houses as possible? Your goals are to maintain your power, privilege, and relative immunity from being the target of other ambitious houses, but if you ignore the very people that give you that immunity: the students, then does that not jeopardize it?"

"That's what I think," Jhul agreed in an exasperated tone. "Yeah, we bend over backward to accommodate the richer houses, but most of our funds come from the multitude lesser houses. We can't afford to lose all of them, and that is something we're very likely to do if we continue to treat them as we do. I would be whipped to an inch of my life if she heard me say this, but Iiv'lua is a short-sighted fool, and she should have never taken over the House when grandmother retired. And now here we are, slowly losing the support of people Mother won't admit we rely on so heavily."

A wince. "That seems an unwise thing to say," Caleldir said quietly. "I, of course, will not repeat anything you tell me, but there may be others listening in."

He sighed, staring ahead and looking thoughtful. "What if one were to compile a financial report, show her where to bulk of the money is coming from? Perhaps, if she were to see that the lesser houses as a collective supply the massive majority of her income, she would be willing to take steps not to jeopardize that. And as for making Dinoryn look weak, well, nothing makes a House look as weak as does kowtowing to power. If you listen to everyone's complaints without thought for rank, that makes you seem strong enough to be impartial. If you only listen to the powerful and ignore the weak, that makes it clear who you regard as a threat, and who you do not. By giving in to the powerful houses, you clearly display to those houses which have a chance at harming you. This is not a good long-term strategy."

"Something needs to be done about her attitude. But she thinks I'M the one who needs to learn about life. She thinks I'M weak. I bet that that's why she gave you to me. So I can learn how to dominate an unruly slave." But domination and discipline were not what made Caleldir cooperative in the end. So he turned out to be a poor object lesson. Not that Jhul was going to complain about him now, not considering how much help he had been in the short two weeks of their acquaintance. "So she isn't going to listen to me. She'll just say I falsified the numbers or I just plain don't understand. She's twice my age, so she must have twice my wisdom, by her reckoning. Instead, she's just twice as stubborn, and twice as foolish because of it."

Jhul didn't seem to care who heard her damning words. Her apartments were warded from prying eyes. She was confident that even her mother wouldn't be able to listen in.

Caleldir sighed again. "I fear that the only way for your mother to see reason will be to have to be dominated, then. If she respects only strength, then you will have to be stronger than her. But that road seems to be too dangerous to truly consider."

She scoffed. "And so I drink. And waste my time being the one that everyone is annoyed with because I won't let them speak with my mother. At least, for now, people can blame Dinoryn weakness on one daughter barely a century old. But if this lasts for too much longer..." Something would have to be done. Jhul shook her head and grabbed the bottle from the table to take another long pull.

When she set it back down again, she gave Caleldir a long look. Then she shifted, her movements made only slightly clumsy by the drink that began to hit her mind. She ended sitting, straddling his lap. Her hand slipped into his robe automatically to feel his flesh beneath. "You seem a smart one, for a male and a slave. How do you think I could dominate my own mother?"

Caleldir had expected a partly drunken Jhul to end up straddling and fondling him. For now, though, he was going to mostly ignore that in fact. He put his arms around her, but otherwise continued on the conversation.

"I do not know enough about the situation to tell you that for certain," he confessed. "But although my spells are sealed so I cannot use any real magic, I can still give you the instructions on quite a few very useful rituals. I have a few thousand memorized. We can empower you in a number of ways, but I cannot really offer anything beyond nebulous power at this point. I would have to know more."

His response made her sigh. "I know rituals. But at this point, I think magical power is not quite as useful as political power. The former I have quite a bit of strength in, the latter I have none. Perhaps that will change tomorrow. With the party."

She was right, of course. And that was what Caleldir feared. He had nothing but magic to offer. He certainly did not have political power. Not yet. Not until Duskhaven was restored. But when that happened... ugh. He was not sure how this all would work out. A restored House Duskhaven, with the vastly enhanced powers of Ashyr and Selene, and of course, with himself and Althaia in their drow guises (with R.I.S.A. supporting from the shadows), would be a potent force physically and politically. And financially, if they began selling the wood from R.I.S.A.'s pocket dimension. But how would that help Jhul'une? He would no longer be her slave, at that point. The only thing he could think of would be to negotiate freedom for himself in exchange for removing Iiv'lua from power and putting Jhul'une in her place, which would cement Dinoryn very firmly as Duskhaven's ally. Not that that plan was likely.

While Caleldir thought things over, Jhul's mind appeared to stray in other directions. She concluded that there was nothing to be done at the present, and felt better for talking about her frustrations. It helped that she was rapidly falling into drunkenness

Her hand was stopped by a tie on his robe, so she deftly undid it. Then she swept both her hands across his shoulder to make his robe fall around him and bare his chest. That seemed to satisfy her for the moment.

"I am taking you to the party, you know," she informed him. "At first because Mother made me. Thought it would be good to show off my abilities at turning a wild foreigner docile. Now I'm starting to think that it actually will be nice to show you off."

"I will bring honor to you at the party, then," he said solemnly.

"Yes. You will," Jhul agreed. She was staring at his chest with very clear interest, but as she said this, her violet-red eyes glanced back up at Caleldir's blue. She was stuck in that moment by the realization that he was the best present her mother ever gave to her. Iiv'lua thought she was giving her daughter an unruly slave, but instead, she gave her a reasonable, intelligent, helpful person.

A person that she wanted to be a bit more naked and sexual with than she was being at that moment. Jhul leaned forward to nip at his neck while her hands ran across his chest.

"You can touch me," she offered. Well. Ordered.

Caleldir complied. His hands moved up from where they had been draped around her waist to the top of her robes, then worked their way in to slide their way down her body, caressing her smooth sides and briefly squeezing at her breasts. He used what little of his telekinesis had not been sealed to help remove her clothing as he did. By the time his palms reached the top of her hips, her torso was as bare as his own.

Jhul hummed her pleasure at being touched so readily by her previously reluctant pleasure slave. She shifted her body closer just so that she could press her soft breasts against his lithely muscled chest. There was still ample space for her hands to work at his robes enough to bare his manhood to her. She did this, all the while enjoying her ability to kiss and nibble at her slave's vulnerable flesh - especially his elegantly pointed ears.

This was, once more, one of those times that having just a little bit more than two hands was very useful. Certainly, his prestidigitation could not exert more than five pounds of force, but that was enough to continue to pull and prod at her clothing and his. As she shifted her body towards him, pressing her chest against his own, he continued removing their clothing. As she nibbled at his ear, he let out a sigh of pleasure and punctuated it by attempting to finish removing both of their clothing.

The noblewoman helped Caleldir along until both of them were bared to each other and their robes were in a pool of forgotten fabric on the floor. Soon after that, she pulled back her mouth from his ear and looked down at him with lidded, lustful eyes.

"Lie across the couch," she told him, then moved with him so that she didn't have to stop straddling him. "I think I'm going to let you do the work this time." The drink she'd drunk was making her nicely languid. She didn't want to ruin that with too much physical activity on her part.

Part of Caleldir found it more than a bit amusing that, in spite of Jhul's stated desire to have him do the work, she was still going to be the one on top. Because of course she was. It was a dominance thing, after all. Well, he did not mind thrusting up into a lovely drow noblewoman, so he was not going to complain.

Normally, this would be the time when Jhul sat up, where she didn't really like their faces being so close together. The proximity felt... strange. But at that moment, it felt nice to be so close to another person. It was probably the drink talking. So, without sitting up, Jhul shifted until she could feel the head of his shaft brush against her entrance. She was already quite wet and aroused.

Caleldir pushed his hips up into her. Slowly, at first, making sure that his tip moved just past her moist lips, and then more quickly, smoothly encasing himself in her body. A sigh of pleasure brushed at Caleldir's ear. The walls of her core fluttered and gripped him momentarily, as if in welcome. He kissed her neck, her jaw, her cheek as he pulled his hips back down, then pushed them back up. His hands worked their way across her back, coming to her hips to grasp tightly at her bottom to help ease her movements to better match his own. He wanted to continue to kiss to her lips, but hesitated at her cheeks, wanting her to decide to make that move if she wanted to.

She seemed to enjoy his lips on her as much as she enjoyed kissing him, so when his mouth got so close as her cheek... Jhul's mouth moved and pressed against his lips with firm confidence. Only a moment passed, and she pressed her tongue in his mouth. It was far more possessive than the more loving kisses he'd shared with Ashyr and Selene, but it was the first time Jhul ever permitted their mouths to come into contact.

Well, this was an unexpected surprise. Not an unwelcome one in that moment, except that bit of nagging guilt about cheating on House Duskhaven. He was going a bit beyond just being forced here. Still, her kiss, the way her body responded to his own, the quiver of their flesh against each other, it was the sort of thing that a nymph-blooded man like Caleldir could not resist. He responded to her kiss as best as he could while still allowing her to be as forceful and possessive as she wanted, and began to increase the movements of his hips and his hands to push and pull their sexes together and apart.

This was what she wanted in a pleasure slave, Jhul found herself thinking as her mouth greedily explored his. Or perhaps that was the booze speaking. Whatever it was, she was having a wonderfully erotic time. Jhul couldn't help but start to move back in time with his motions as he brought her ever closer to climax.

Caleldir found this version of Jhul'une to be wonderfully different than before. She was allowing herself to be more vulnerable than she realized, in the best sort of way.

As she neared the precipice, she began to moan into his mouth, and her lips became more distracted. So much so, that she unintentionally faltered into a kiss that sort of resembled loving. She didn't notice, for very soon after that the white-hot light of pleasure coursed through her body. Jhul trembled through her climax, her forehead pressed against his, their lips finally parted but still wet from each other's kisses.

He greeted her trembling climax with one of his own, gripping her tighter as he did. Then, as they both came down from that dizzying height of pleasure, he began softly stroking her back, holding her close and comfortingly.

For once, Jhul readily welcomed her slave's comforting embrace. What else were slaves for? She could be vulnerable with someone she owned and controlled because it was too dangerous to be vulnerable to an equal. In the Underdark, anyway. That was the conclusion she came to as she rested there on top of Caleldir, happily enjoying her afterglow.

---

The next morning, Caleldir lie awake while Jhul slept beside him. Sleeping with her was still somewhat surreal. She was so much like his previous chosen partners: a drow noblewoman. Yet she was different enough to be strange, for the mere fact that she was not them. Whenever he woke up in bed and looked over to see her rather than Ashyr, Selene, or perhaps Althaia or R.I.S.A., he felt more than a little guilt. He could tell himself that he had no choice, of course, but that was not true. He had had a choice, had he chosen to resist longer. At the very least he was reasonably confident that Ashyr and Selene would understand. But then his memories rode back from his time enthusiastically fornicating with the Duskhavens all the way to his upbringing and the morality the monks had instilled in him, and then that one, strange moment when Eternity Itself had spoken to him, and his guilt returned.

And yet, he just stifled it.

Jhul rose from her sleep a little later than she usually did at the beginning of the cycle. She walked over to the balcony that overlooked the courtyard. Her lilac hair -- recently redyed so that her roots did not show -- covered nearly her entire body. Between that and the voluminous blue robe that she held around her body, only her sleepy face showed in a sea of light colors as she looked over the proceedings in quiet contemplation. There was no work for her to go to -- not any that pertained to the school. No, she needed time to make preparations for her century party later that evening. If she wasn't absolutely perfect, she would bring disgrace to her family. That was what her mother, the vain, immaculately groomed woman that she was, seemed to think.

Below, servants in white-blue scurried about the courtyard. It was where the celebration was to be, of course. All students were invited, along with any of the noble houses that weren't in attendance. Even Duskhaven was invited, though recently there had been rumors that they didn't have the people to attend the gathering. Which would explain why their invitation was declined. Currently, there was a space being set up at the foot of the main tower under a pavilion where dull faerie lights were being hung along with braided silken fabric: the high noble area, where the riffraff of the lower (a.k.a. less rich) houses would not be permitted. Jhul'une didn't know what to think of that area. It would be nice to have someplace less crowded, but perhaps not at the expense of insulting the other houses. Not that her mother would be gainsaid.

At least there were plenty of other things to keep the other houses occupied. Rich foods and drinks were to be laid about the entire courtyard; fare that no lesser noble would be able to afford. And for those who had different appetites to sate, there were spaces filled with pillows, comfortable things, and, of course, pleasure slaves of various races and genders. Generally, they were to be enjoyed brazenly for all to see, though there were a couple of closed-off areas where the inordinately shy could retreat with a slave in tow. Her mother had suggested Caleldir be made available to the richer nobles, which Jhul refused outright, pretty much stating that she did not like to share her toys. Since her mother did not press the issue, Jhul'une figured that that had been resolved.