A Ritual to Corrupt Purity

"Alright. Finish her."

While the sharkman continued to ravish his willing and increasingly inhuman partner on the stone altar, the other members of the ritual set up a low chanting. The imps's squeaking, the guttural and half-formed growls of the beast creatures, and the smooth alto voices of the pale women -- the satyr's partner rather muffled -- blended into a grinding tone that rattled the ears and mind.

"You are hers. She is yours. You are hers. She is yours."

The pressure in the room mounted as the chant's intensity increased, and the akheil's slamming hips sped up in response, shaking his partner's body. Her mouth was open in a perfect O, eyes closed, head thrown back.

"Ah! Ah! Anh!" Beyond all words, the last flush of humanity leaving her cheeks, the new pale woman clenched and gave herself to orgasm. She cried out in huffing gasps over and over as the release she had been seeking crashed through her, clinging to the altar with a rictus grip. It was clear there was nothing in the world to her but her own sensation.

Behind her, the akheil stiffened and spasmed in his own orgasm, coming deep inside the transformed woman for a long while without ever ceasing his monstrously fast thrusts. A trail of half-seen distortion seemed to leap between the pair, heart to heart, joining them in some aura-visible bond even as they joined each other in release.

Talana recoiled in horror from it -- it felt nothing like the Light her aura usually touched on. If the Light was a clarion, calming and energising at once, this was a cracked lead bell that spurred a nervous and chaotic frenzy. If the Light was the scent of clean laundry on a sunlit day, smelling of purity and nature, this was the reek of auroch semen, of single-minded animalism.

It felt like a spike in her mind and heart, but it caused another, more treacherous pang further down her body. She tensed, swallowed reflexively, once again tasting that swiftheal bitterness coating her tongue.

What had that been?

The akhiel slowed to a panting halt as the aftershocks of his spend subsided. The pale woman arched herself up and back to drape an arm over his neck, hips lazily grinding against his still. She nuzzled her head into the line of his monstrous jaw, her eyes reopening lazily, black lips curling in a pleased smile.

"I am yours," she whispered to her changed lover, and Talana swallowed again at the sound of it, overlaid with strange echoes.

"I am yours," the akheil hissed in his own grinding voice, running his claws delicately over her bare skin even as he slipped from within her.

"It is done!" the cultist announced to the room with satisfaction, although the ritual participants never stopped their own acts and the heavy oppression of the ritual's power never lessened. "Go, my new soldiers. There will be work for you later -- for now, feel free to indulge."

The fallen pair straightened at once. The pale woman gave a coy look that was wrenchingly out of place on her transformed face, took the sharkman gently by the hand, and led him from the room with a bounce in her step. She could have been a girl out on a chaperoned date, excitedly accompanying her paramour -- but for the inhumanity of her, the hulking mass of her 'boyfriend', and the mixed fluids of their recent mating dripping unheeded from them both onto the stone floor as they went.

3 -- Raise the Arcane Energies

Talana blushed again at the sight of it, at once repelled and strangely fixated by the corrupted affection on display. She silently offered a prayer for fortitude, remembered enough of her training to pray also for mercy and forgiveness to two souls now given to a darker path. She felt she should denounce this travesty, no matter if there was nobody present who would likely be swayed, but couldn't trust her voice to do so.

Rela, it seemed, had no such issue. "You have done a terrible thing here today, councillor, and even now the price of your sins is being counted.

"To misuse the aura like this in pursuit of your own power is a terrible crime on its own, but to enforce your will on innocents in this way, to conspire with the Enemy to bring down the Light's people, and to pervert the gifts of the natural world and the ceremonies of our society... I struggle to think of a more vile act.

"Justice cannot come for you swiftly enough."

Councillor, Rela had said, and Talana's memories flashed to the two men and two women who had briefed Rela at the town hall. Talana had met them only briefly, trusting Rela to convey the detail of the assignment to her later, and had gone instead to ensure their horses were well stabled and their gear stowed -- but she did recall the younger councillor's piercing eyes and shock of blond hair.

If this cult leader was the same man, then the danger to the town went deeper than either of the paladins had feared. An effort by an empowered agent of the Enemy to bring down one of the hubs of the kingdom.

She was suddenly all the more glad of Rela's foresight in checking in with the paladin chapterhouse outside the town walls, for all it had seemed like a simple kidnapping at the time. As Rela had said, the Order would come for them in a day when their check-in was missed.

All they had to do was trust in the Light's protection and the defence of their auras against dark influence, and endure with stoicism until rescue came -- and the Order's training was famous for promoting endurance in the face of hardship. This ritual couldn't be maintained forever. The participants would need to rest before long, or the force of it would kill them.

The cultist was chuckling softly.

"So brave. So bold. For a woman chained naked and kneeling to my master's binding altar you certainly have a strident pride."

He stroked a gloved finger round the line of Rela's chin; she didn't give him the dignity of a response. "And your reputation precedes you, Saviour of Lerist. If even half of the tales are true, perhaps you do have the strength to hold out long enough to see me brought down. But what of your little kitten here?"

He took Talana's short, mousy-brown hair in a grip at the back of her head, suddenly forceful, and bent down to look eye to eye with her. "Little felen with the animal spirit," he growled, "already blushing to see the act of rut. Cat-elf playing at paladins as if her very body and soul aren't made for baser desires."

He paused for a moment, held her defiant gaze; then, seemingly satisfied, let go of her hair and straightened up. His voice returned to its schooled smoothness, "I'm willing to bet that she means a lot to you, Champion. I think she'll break under our tender ministrations, and I think you'll follow her."

"Never." Talana's voice was less forceful than Rela's had been, but it was firm and clear, showing nothing of the fear she felt: what if he was right?

What if all the suspicions she knew members of the Order held were right?

Unbidden, her thoughts slid back to the sight of the townswoman, rocking on the altar under the thrusting strokes of the transformed akheil as her humanity left her, overwhelmed by carnal desire. Talana had watched them, transfixed, voyeur to their fall even as she had been horrified.

She had told herself the twinge at the bottom of her belly had been pity, compassion. What if it had been a darker sentiment? The warmth of her blush had not subsided, had grown further at the picture in her mind.

"If nothing else, it gives you an admirable tenacity." The councillor put his hands together as if summing up a town hall meeting. "And since we're very aware that paladins enjoy an unnatural resilience of body, we took the liberty of giving you each a quadruple dose of my serum before you awoke. It's not a poison, your immunity to poison is legendary -- it's simply a healing potion with some additional features."

He turned on his heel, snapped his fingers once in the air as if summoning a barmaid as he stepped out to the edge of the circle. On cue, the ritual participants redoubled their efforts.

By now both wulfen and each of the satyrs had their rigid members engulfed in a hot, wet mouth. The three pale women matched with satyr partners moved in eerie synchronisation, smoothly taking the horned goat-men's entire lengths at a bob at one moment before switching at a signal unheard to planting kisses on the tip or along the sides of their twitching pricks.

Each one stroked sharp-nailed fingers through the coarse fur of their lover's thighs and buttocks with perverted tenderness. Once in a while they let the cocks spring from their mouths, only to nuzzle up to them lovingly while making smoky eye contact with the beast above them before returning to their ministrations.

The satyrs were less coordinated, but each one would from time to time run a hand through his partner's black tresses, petting her scalp gently with sharp claws, before urging her head deeper onto his meat with that same hand on the back of her head. Without exception, when not meeting the dark stare of their fellator, they were looking directly past her at one or other of the kneeling paladins with heads held proudly high.

The two wulfen were a study in contrasts against that scene. Where the satyrs were oddly gentle and their partners smoothly coordinated, the seven-foot wolfmen were savage. Where the satyrs were content to allow their pale women to take the lead, the wulfen were determined to use theirs for their own pleasure.

One of the converted townswomen shook bodily as her wulfen, holding her tightly by the shoulders in brown-furred hands, drove himself into her waiting mouth. Her tongue lolled out around his demanding shaft and her eyes were rolled back into her head, nothing but a toy for his use even as she shifted her weight on the stones to better withstand his thrusts. Obscene noises came from her mouth as she passively welcomed the pointed, canine maleness deep enough to stretch her lips around the bulb of his knot.

Opposite them in the circle, the grey-furred wulfen pulled himself out, leaving his partner gasping for breath, and slapped his hardness across her cheek. She turned her head, tongue stuck out to lick, tried to recapture what she had been suckling on. He let her struggle for a moment, then recaptured her spit-slick face between two massive paws and drove her down throat-deep onto his rod.

The pale woman hummed with satisfaction around her lover, reached back with one hand to finger at her dripping slit, while stretching up with the other to brace her efforts against his broad chest. Her dark hair fell long about her face to both sides, concealing everything but the motion of her head as she continued her work.

The minotaur, his vast pizzle lurching, stood trembling with lust in every muscle at the sixth and final point. His partner, a full two feet shorter, held him with a cool gaze as she stroked gently up and down his lurching length.

He grunted, mindless but for wanting, meaty hands balling into fists over and over. The pale woman arched an eyebrow as she continued her stroking, controlling his steel muscles with her silk touch, waiting for him to subside again, then ducked to reward him by running her tongue fully down his prodigious length and back up to kiss at the tip. The great beast shuddered once, huffing air through his snout, and then his woman was twirling one agile leg to stand straddling him between her curvaceous thighs.

He brought his hands up, each big enough to capture entirely one of her breasts, and obediently began to grope and massage at the firm flesh as she set up a rolling sweep of her hips that left her own moistness mixing with her saliva on his cock.

She fixed Talana with her dusk-glow eyes, pursed her lips in a kiss that spread to a relaxed and lascivious smile, turned her head away and up to whisper something to her bull-man then back to stare at the young paladin again with amused anticipation. Talana moistened suddenly-dry lips and tried to ignore the mounting hint of unnatural inner fire the intimate eye-contact had made her aware of.

Talana wasn't entirely inexperienced. The Order didn't require celibacy, only freedom from long-term attachments like pregnancy and marriage, and the frustrations of the training field had led to several explorations as she had matured. But the fumblings and fondlings -- and once or twice something more, with an older trainee now two years into his own journeyman tour -- had nothing of the unrestrained, debauched, hungry abandon she witnessed around her now.

Was it the potion's effect beginning for true? Or was it really that her cat-elf blood left her vulnerable to base evils, as some had contended against her admission? Would she prove the weak point that broke not only her own soul but also the blazing light of Rela the Shield, champion of the Order?

The imagined shame of it nearly brought a tear to her eye even as a darker part of her demanded she continue to dwell on those grim thoughts, but she reached once again for the stillness of her training and pulled calm about her.

She would not lose to alchemical tricks and a floorshow of carnality, she vowed angrily to herself, and focusing on her aura beat the blush down and the twitch in her belly quiet.

She dared a glance at Rela, who remained the picture of holy resilience. Rela's long, fire-red hair -- her one concession to vanity, the one indulgence against Order policy -- remained neat even out of its usual helmet-ready braid. Her eyes moved about the room as much as the chain linking their collars allowed, taking in everything without emotion, judging and preparing.

Her pale skin was freckled on nose and cheek, on her shoulders and down her arms -- and Talana caught her gaze roaming, dropped her eyes from her mentor to the cold altar stone beneath them.

An imp's broad, ugly face stared back up at her.

4 -- Prepare the Specimens

Talana's ears tried to lay back in protest, but she allowed no motion to show her surprise as the little construct grinned widely with a mouthful of broad, blunt teeth. It was little different from the servitors summoned by the more senior alchemists in the city -- three feet high, grey skin, long dextrous fingers, huge eyes, a nervous energy.

She'd never seen one with a sex before.

This specimen had a penis the size of a grown man's rising between its spindly grey legs, already hard with anticipation and the rising heat of the ongoing ritual. While she was distracted, it had clambered up on the altar-stone to get a close eyeful of her bared breasts, which it proceeded to reach for with fingers flexing.

Talana leaned away from its grasp as much as the chains would permit, which was very little, and turned her head away in disgust. The fumbling little creation took her muted response as acquiescence, if it cared at all, and fastened smooth-skinned fingertips to the journeyman's small tits with enthusiasm if not with skill.

His touch was... not entirely unpleasant, and that was worrying in itself. Talana shifted uneasily at his ministrations. The serum was still bitter salt at the back of her tongue, making her body respond to the physical sensation, and she willed it to be only that. Physical sensation was temporary; she would endure.

The little imp's face was screwed up in concentration; he was biting his lip as if determined to do a good job (and he probably was so determined, by his nature -- the little constructs knew only service) while he listened to the paladin's breathing for any hints that he was doing it right.

He brushed a tentative finger over a nipple hardened by the cave's cold air and the power of the ongoing ritual,

one of the pale women cupped her own large breasts in her hands, burying her satyr partner's cock between them, and began to move once more

and gave it a gentle tweak that made a tiny hint of a squeak slip out of Talana before she could silence it. Pleased by the response, he tried the other, but the felen was prepared the second time and made no noise or wince. He returned to brushing soft fingertips across her breasts in circles and lines, still with that curious tenderness and concentration.

She was so intent on ignoring the little beast pulling and pawing at her from the front, it came as a complete surprise when another set of grasping fingers began a gentle exploration of her belly and the outsides of her thighs. A second imp had come to stand beside the altar and add his own explorations to the mix, blinking his huge eyes slowly as he looked to see how they were faring.

the brown-furred wulfen growled in contempt at the restraint on display and bodily picked his partner up, turning her upside-down with feral strength to gag her on his meat while lapping ferociously at her willing snatch

The gentleness was somehow worse, in its own way, than she imagined a forceful rape would be. The hostility would have been a direct assault, something to concentrate on resisting and overcoming. This felt more like the earnest fumblings of a first lover, and its guileless selflessness was flattering despite the vileness of the situation.

Two of the imps were applying the same ministrations to Rela. From the look of things they were having no luck eliciting a response -- through all the caressing touches and long passes over her skin from breasts to thighs, the veteran paladin kept her expression bored and stoic. At a particularly firm grasp of both nipples, she eyed the imps below them briefly, then looked back up to her journeyman and rolled her eyes.

The look was identical to the good-humoured impatience Rela would show whenever an unavoidable delay cropped up on a mission, shared with Talana in lieu of any unseemly display toward whatever hapless gate guard or bureaucrat's job had got in the way. It was so very familiar that Talana's soul leapt, the light in the cave seeming to push back against the shadows for a moment.

Another little imp stepped up behind Rela, where Talana couldn't see. She had her suspicions about what it was planning, which were quickly confirmed as yet another pair of hands cupped her naked buttocks from behind.

The sixth and final servitor massaged her arse with the same conscientious concentration as his vat-mates, first gripping with gentle firmness and then running fingertips or blunt nails lightly over skin goosefleshed from the cave's chill and chemical-stoked sensitivity.

For several long seconds he contented himself to touch and fondle, as the other two imps did, continuing the three-sided attack on her bare skin until the purely physical pleasure of being softly touched and caressed was at a height. Then his touches moved in and down, and one hand grazed her exposed lower lips.

She couldn't contain a brief twitch at the false intimacy of the contact, brows knotting for a moment. She was annoyed at her own reaction, but that paled into insignificance next to the realisation that she was wet, as wet as she remembered ever being.

The imps at breast and belly kept up their mindless dedication, servicing every erogenous zone they could reach, as the one behind her stroked her slick labia as if fascinated by the sight and feel. Occasionally he would return to her arse, smearing her own moistness over the untanned flesh, before returning to his investigation.

the minotaur's pale woman braced herself against him and ground herself hard along his entire length and back, leaving a shine of her juices along it, then ran each index finger in turn along the slick length. She tasted herself, breathing a wicked low note of satisfaction, and raised the other finger to daub her scent under her mighty toy's nose. The minotaur snorted and bucked hard against her thighs, controlled frenzy building yet further

As Talana felt the ritual pressure build by yet another notch, the imp behind her finally removed his hands. This was of little comfort however, as she saw his opposite rise up behind Rela, saw her rock forward a little with a grunt and the imp begin to move rhythmically. The little creature had his head thrown back in whatever his kind felt for pleasure, eyes closed, hands grasping at Rela's sturdy hips for purchase.