ΔV Pt. 08

He wasn't sure who was the bellows and who was the coke furnace. He only knew that Fireheart was the one to move first - she planted her hands on his narrow shoulders, pushing him back against the door, using his body to close it tight. Her face pressed against his facial tentacles and he reacted instinctively - seeking to twine them. But the elf had no facial tentacles of her own. Instead, they slithered along her cheek, pushed up a strand of her flame-red hair, slithered along one of her ears, wrapping around the tip and squeezing. One wrapped around her throat, another pressed to her chin, tilting her face up and backwards, so that the mouth hidden beneath his tentacles could press to her lips. His tongue thrust forward and met her tongue, and oh, she was eager. She was quite eager. Her eyes rolled back into her head, her body trembling as he felt her pleasure, spiking from every contact point of his tentacles - though the hottest, most throbbing pleasure came from the tip of her ear.

Fireheart's strong, strong hands gripped the front of his elegant robes and began to tug and push. Buttons popped off with sharp ping noises, bouncing and skittering along the floor, ending up who knows where. Soon, his robes were puddling on the ground around his long, delicate ankles, leaving him as naked as he had ever been while around someone not of his own kind. Since Fireheart's eyes were currently closed and her face and head were wrapped in the gentle, slightly moist embrace of his tentacles, she explored him with her hands - and Librarian had never known that he could feel something like this.

Her fingers were dry and so blazing hot against his slightly chilled skin. She found the narrow, angular sweep of his ribs, the bones jutting against his thin, purple skin. She felt the iron hard cording of his belly muscles, the broad sweep of his pronounced hip bones. Then she cupped and cradled his manhood - long and thin and ridged in a way that he knew was alien to elven or human bodies. But Fireheart didn't draw back. Instead, her fingers counted each ridge, rubbing thumb over line after line after line, until her thoughts had a clear enough picture of him.

And, radiating from her like the heat from a coal, was a single thought. It was not a word or even a sentence. It was a visualization. A mental image, comparing her own sex and his - and remembering where her own pleasure had been stoked by the former Lord Winsom. Where his finger had found a place inside of her that she hadn't even known existed and played her like a harp.

The finger and the ridge, in her mind at least...matched.

She drew back and Librarian felt his tentacles loosening their grip on everywhere but around her throat. It was one of his longest, and one of his strongest, and he squeezed her as she thought, desperately: [I need you. Now.]

Librarian focused. His telekinetic grip took hold of her - and her hose began to tear, invisible lines of force ripping down from her hips and up from her ankles. The sleek material split apart and left her bare, pale skin exposed in the magelight of the bedroom, while her tunic popped off her chest, freeing the timeless perfection of her elven breasts: Small and tipped with eager, perky nipples. Remembering what he had felt from the humans, Librarian leaned forward. His telekinetic grip lifted Fireheart at the same time, causing her to gasp in shock and wonder as her breasts were brought to his face. His tentacle tightened around her throat, while his others slithered across her chest, leaving thin tracks of eager moisture on her paleness.

He stroked her. He caressed her. He played his facial tentacles across every inch of both of her breasts, using the tips, using the lengths, using their strength to apply just enough pressure to wring tiny gasps and mewls from Fireheart - her normal guard stripped away by the intensity of her want. His mouth, though, was closed around one of her aching, needing nipples. He could feel exactly how much she wanted, and he could ridge along a mirror fine edge of pleasure and of pain, pushing what Fireheart thought she wanted to a height that stunned even him.

Her pleasure flowed into him, and his pleasure into her, and the two shone off one another, growing hotter and hotter as Fireheart writhed and bucked in his telekinetic grip. Her hands gripped his bald head, hooking her fingers on the ridges and frills of his crest. Her eyes closed and the lifted one of her hands up to her mouth, biting down on two knuckles, muffling herself. Librarian, for a moment, thought of siphoning some of his attention to throw up a wall of thoughts...but then he remembered.

He was the only one who could hear her thoughts.

[Are you ready?]

She didn't respond with words. Instead, the battering ram of want/neednownownownow hit him so hard that his telekinetic grip nearly lapsed. Instead, he supported his mental grasp with a physical one. His long fingered hands cupped her perfect ass, squeezing her elven skin tightly enough to drew a gasp past her knuckles, while he lowered her and thrust himself upwards, guiding the two of their bodies together with hand and mind alike. He nearly lost all control as she came close - then did as his cold member plunged into her. Fireheart's hands gripped his shoulders and she muffled herself by biting down on his shoulder hard enough to sting. But his telekinetic grip slipped off her body, and she fell upon him, all of her weight pushing his cock deep inside of her deeply alien pussy.

Librarian had bred before. With other females.

It was suspended in pools of warm water, with elders guiding the younger through gentle psychic pressure. The water kept any who lost their grip, telekinetically, from collapsing. As it was, all that Librarian had was his own strength, his own will. His muscles strained and his knees locked as he gripped, holding the elven woman close to himself, her body trembling as she got used to him being inside of her. Librarian knew the strain couldn't last. He took a staggering step forward. Then another. Then, his hands slipping out quickly, like sailors playing out slack on a sail, he laid Fireheart upon her back, her thighs spreading even wider. Her hair puddled around her head - and for just a moment, a pensive, uncertain look flitted across her face.

Then, desperation.

"Fuck me," she whispered. It was too needy to be an order, too hard edged to be a plea.

Librarian rocked his hips - using nothing but muscle and want. His mind was too overwhelmed by the heat radiating from her sex, from her thighs, from her toe, pressed to one of his palms as he cupped her ankle. His eyes half closed and his tentacles curled upwards as he slammed into her again, drawing back to that just the tip of his cock was left inside of her, then burying himself to his balls again. Said balls bounced off her ass, making her mewl and moan. She threw her head back, arching her back, animal eager. Her arm lashed out and she caught hold of one of the pillows, pressing it to her face, muffling herself.

Libarian knew he couldn't last. But a strange, masculine pride that seemed to transcend race and even dimension kept him from simply bursting deep within the elf. Instead, he placed one long finger upon her clit, finding it easily thanks to her hairless sex. He rubbed her with firm, circular strokes, in time with his driving hips. He closed his eyes and tried to review every mental discipline he knew - the disciplines normally used to resist a psychic attack or intrusion. By running through the patterns, singing the little songs, he was able to keep his own peak suspended, as if by a string.

It grew harder as, driven by hand and by cock, Fireheart's own peak came and crested, then came again, her moans growing louder and more shameless, her pillow tossed aside as she flung out her arms in bliss. Her back arched again and again, and her velvety slickness clenched on him - like an eager fist.

Librarian hit his own crest.

He slammed him home and a psychic wave of pleasure, a moan that shot through the entire castle, bust outwards. Elves woke from their slumber with confused signs of arousal - hard members, dripping pussies. The lovers in other chambers found their own climaxes - Lucas grunted as his member spurted over Helen's face, her eyes closing as she giggled, while Lance Corporal Avanti shuddered as he came inside of his trollish bedmate. Fireheart's own orgasm reflected back at Librarian as he felt his seed - normally reserved only for females, only for mating season - filled her elven womb.

Uselessly.

There was no purpose to the act. Just...

The act.

And that raw, wasteful decadence nearly set Librarian to cumming again. His balls ached as he spurted more and more and more into her, his tentacles fanning wide, as if he was about to actually devour Fireheart's brain. For a moment, all was pleasure and white and the trembling closeness of tightened muscle and gasping, panting lungs. When Librarian could see again, he could see his seed dripping slowly down the curve of Fireheart's ass.

Slowly, the two of them began to slip apart. Fireheart looked up at him, a look of shock on her face. Librarian's knees trembled. He tried, desperately, to think of what he could possibly say. And so, he fell back on his majordomo training. "Is...there anything else you wished of me, Squire Fireheart?" he asked, his voice all formal edges and hard diction - as if he was still in his robes, as if he wasn't dripping with her juices.

Fireheart blinked at him.

Her cheeks heated.

For just a moment, just a sliver of a moment, he felt a longing. Something that Fireheart could not even articulate fully, even in her thoughts: A longing, a desire, a faint image of a warm body in silken sheets, of comforting arms, of pleasure in the morning. Instead, Fireheart stood, grabbing the sheet and wrapping it around her body, imperiously. "Nothing," she said. "It was nothing."

And she swept out.

Librarian sagged back onto the bed. Well, he thought. That is one way to avoid politics. But he could not lay back and sleep without continuing the thought - the final words echoing in his head, even as he tried to forget that anything had happened at all: For now.

***

When Cinder Spiderblood had been quite young, her mother had taken her aside and explained to her some things that had been mysterious and confusing for a young trowish girl. The words remained etched in her mind: People see what they want to see, Cin. Not what is. That is why those dwarves threw fruit at us, my little spark. Why they called mommy those names. You need to know, though, whatever they see cannot change what is. And she had cupped Cin's cheek and smiled warmly at her.

A mob had burned down their tavern three weeks later. Cinder's mother and her father - a quiet, happy man who she mostly remembered for giving her piggyback rides around every night, no matter how tired he was - had been trapped inside as the local dwarves ringed around, throwing torches, shouting slurs. And Cinder, who had been in the market in her tall robes, had watched and wept and learned a more important lesson.

If there were more of them than there were of you, they got to decide what was true.

Mother and father's truth had been that they had needed to flee the Schwartzwindighöhle when the Dark Lord had collapsed the caves in his quest for power. They had found a place in the dwarven villages of the Sur, working in a tavern. They loved one another in a way that infuriated dwarven men and scandalized dwarven women. They whispered about how trow women worshiped devils and monsters, and how trow men were slaves to their women. They whispered about how nothing good could come from letting trow live in their lands - let alone letting them breed.

Cinder had taken her lessons to heart. In the deep, white wilderness of the Sur, she had found the winter fae that dwelt where dwarves, brownies and knockers didn't. She had learned the arts of magic at the feet of an ice cold elf bitch that had sneered at her for being one of the 'libertine' trow. She had taken the beatings, the kicks, the humiliating positions in the endless Tellings that the Winter Court so loved. She had been the Beggar Girl who was hounded by a drunk Sir Fifaralas and escaped only by smearing herself in excrement almost two dozen times before her apprenticeship had finished and she had learned her first spells.

Then the long years of being a sellspell. The biting hunger. The wandering. The glares from mercs who knew that her kind were why their pikemen were immolated by the dozen from fireballs and crushed beneath earthen tremors, why their forward scouts were spelled to sleep and had their throats slit by forward infiltrators. Being on their side only made her marginally more tolerable - a toleration that was erased by her midnight black skin and her brilliant red eyes.

And now?

And now...

Cinder opened her eyes as she looked at the screen that the Russians had set up for her and smiled wryly. The energy she felt from the connection she had with the orc - Kaleb, an infuriating part of her brain whispered - flowed through her and she began to speak the water into existence. The impact it had on her Russian comrades was still gratifying. They began to whisper their curses, their awed exclamation of shock, and then began to pound on her back, cheering and laughing. One even pressed one of the ubiquitous drink-bulbs full of their vodka into her hand.

It was because there were so many differences between Stark and Arcadia that Cinder had spent a great deal of mental energy thinking through the strangeness that was the fact that both the kingdoms and peoples of the Sur and the people of the Russian Federation had both made vodka and both imbibed it with worrying frequency. She had learned by now that turning down vodka was generally considered rude - and so she knocked her head back and got ready to swallow. And, unlike earlier in their trip, she was able to drink this way without squeezing the bulb.

"I still don't understand," she said, coughing and rasping as her throat burned. "Why do we have weight now?"

"Acceleration, my little Yaga," the chief engineer, a blustery, almond eyed fellow with raven black hair, who went by the name Naumov, clapped his hand back to her shoulder. That water you made is being flung out the back by our little demon core." Seeing her expression, he laughed even louder. "Not the actual name - it's a nuclear reactor. A lump of thorium. It boils water, like coal in a steam engine. Sprays it out the back, fast and hot. While it burns, we feel the acceleration. We're actually playing it easy - the engine can be tooled up to full speed, which is a full five gravities. But we only use that for combat, normally. Burns through water very very fast. As it is, though, a single gravity will get us back to Stark in a week."

Cinder's eyes widened. "A week? That's-"

"That's blistering fast it is," one of the other crew said.

"Captain on the deck!"

The voice called it out and suddenly, everyone was at attention, including Chief Naumov, his chest thrust out in pride. Cinder turned and saw Captain Markova walking in, her hands clapsed behind her back. Her lips were quirked into that little smirk she normally wore, her scar twisting it into something even more wicked.

"How long is your spell going to work, Miss Spiderblood?" she asked, calmly, looking at the screen that showed the reaction mass tank that was still filling and emptying with water at the same pace. Cinder grinned a bit to herself - feeling rather proud of that twist on the spell she had found. It was similar to a spell she would use to flood out a trench, enhanced and lengthened with her tie to Kaleb. The orc. Ugh. She glared at nothing in particular, her voice holding a waspish tone despite herself.

"It...it will last until I release it. It'll mean that any other spell I cast will be lacking in magic for a time," she said. "But as your ship seems to need very little magic, that will be something we can live with."

"Good," the Captain said, nodding. "Come with me."

The two of them walked through the corridors of the ship. Design that had seemed mystifying and actions that had been inexplicable when Cinder had first come aboard was clear now. She had wondered why walls were being turned into floors by cleverly concealed gimbels attached to various bits of furniture, and why the crew had bustled about placing down gratings against what had been curved walls before. Now, those gratings served as the floor to walk upon. The ship had transformed from a straight corridor with loads of branching corridors circling around it to a pillar with a ladder in it and branching floors around it. Like a wizard's tower.

"I wish to ask you some things about your people," Captain Markova said, grabbing onto the ladder and beginning to drag herself upwards with a swiftness that impressed Cinder. She had seen siege experts who couldn't climb a ladder as fast. Though, most of them were in heavy armor at the time. She started up after her and tried to keep her eye off the Captain's behind. Considering how many strange things dwarves and knockers and brownies and orcs thought about trow, the last thing she wanted to do was spark any questions in the other woman.

Ugh, she thought. And it's not as if I don't appreciate a woman's body. But...

But what other people saw mattered more than the truth.

"What do you want to know, Captain?" Cinder asked as she dragged herself up onto the next level. Men who were bustling about their tasks paused to salute the captain, who walked past with nods and her own salute.

"How many are there, how many have magical affinity, and how willing would they be to accept asylum in the Russian Federation?"

Cinder blinked. "I..." She shook her head. "What?"

"Asylum. In the Federation," Markova said, her voice serious.

"I..." Cinder knew she should have been diplomatic. But the first thing that blurted out of her mouth was: "Why?"

Markova looked at her, her poker face on full. Then she shrugged one shoulder. "Our population has stabilized after the Great Decline. United Nations population control overwatch and a native ecored movement that has enough popular support to make Command nervous about encouraging growth. Moving several million trow into our territory and making you citizens will give us a strategic asset that we can capitalize on. It will also provide a humanitarian cover for the logistics side of our Arcadian Siberian operations."

Cinder's brow furrowed. She was having a bit of trouble imagining a kingdom that would not even blink at moving...

"Millions?" she stammered. "There can't be more than five, six hundred thousand trow in the whole of Arcadia. We don't..." She sighed, looking aside. "W-We don't bred easily, like orcs." Her voice grew bitter. "And they don't let us often enough."

Markova inclined her head. "Still, the offer stands."

Cinder shook her head. "I cannot speak for my people."

"There is no central government for the trow, is there?" Markova asked. "Not after the...how do you say..."

"The Schwartzwindighöhle," Cinder said. "It means Dark and Windy Hole." She made a face. "The knockers named it because they say any cave with wind cannot be called a cave and anything with so many pieces of trash must be a hole." Her voice dripped with bitterness. "We were driven out after the Dark Lord collapsed the cave systems - it was part of one of his war gambits. We were hated because of our skin, our religion, our way of life, because we were different and underfoot. So, we spread out in every direction."