Dormitory Demonic

The topic, he quickly discovers, is history. Typically, Dornathon is not the type to give a shit about history - why bother, when there's so much to keep oneself entertained in the here and now? - but this history happens to be the kind that interests him, because he experienced some of it personally. Gresta's discussing King Topaz of Cairen's war with the duergar a century or so ago. Dornathon was on the edges of these events, fooling around in the duergar highlands, trying to roll lusty duergar women into the sheets and making a series of poor decisions. When the war came, he barely got out of its way before the whole countryside was aflame.

So he listens with rapt attention as Gresta explains the nuances of the various involved parties: the initial slaughter of duergar, the alvar and lizardfolk joining the fight, the climactic battle where the human forces were smashed, and finally how the Cairenese nobility turned on Topaz and delivered him to the duergar as a blood price.

Leni and Aerlet are not nearly so attentive. Nor, unfortunately, is the rest of the class. Gresta fires off questions like bolts from a crossbow, and any student caught daydreaming suffers her wrath. She pounces on them like a snow wolf, thirsty for blood, and cuts them to ribbons. Dornathon must admit that he finds her predation highly arousing.

The hour passes in a blur. Before he knows it, Gresta announces that time is up, and the hall empties like a punctured wineskin. Gresta does not linger to chat with her roommates, but disappears through the professor's door without saying a word of farewell.

"She's intense," mutters Dornathon.

"You don't know the half of it," replies Leni.

~

Dornathon's wandering the manor on his own, his Nolmekian disguise discarded. He's got on a blouse and trousers borrowed from Leni, and he's munching happily on a crisp apple. Leni and Aerlet are occupied with late-night studies at the Academy library for an exam in the morning. So, he's bored, and randy, and fully expecting to spend the evening pulling himself off before falling asleep alone.

On the first floor, Sadelia's door is shut tight as always, with a sign explaining that she is not to be disturbed. But Gresta's door happens to be open a crack, and he can't help himself from peeking inside. Peeking leads to leaning, and leaning leads to sneaking, and, well, soon enough he's all the way in.

Her chamber is meticulously appointed. Several shelves are stocked with an array of books, organized by topic and author. A desk, fastidiously organized, occupies one wall. The bed is neatly made, covers tucked severely so that not a crease is out of place. Mounted on the wall is an equipment rack, holding a short sword, a small round buckler, and a scaled hauberk, all polished and well-maintained. No doubt some Maruban antique handed down in her family. He chuckles to himself, imagining the professorial Gresta trying to put on armor.

"What is so funny?" asks a curt voice from his rear.

He's startled, sure, but this isn't the first time he's been caught snooping around someplace he shouldn't be, so he musters his charm and turns around as suavely as he can muster, a crooked grin plastered to his face. Gresta has her arms folded in the doorway, a stern frown fixed upon him.

"Professor," he says. "Forgive me. I was so fascinated by your lecture today, I... well, I thought perhaps I'd see if you had a book on the subject."

"Oh?" she asks, raising an eyebrow. "If you were serious, I would recommend Tolten's Commentaries on King Topaz, but I suspect you are not."

"Ahhh... guilty," he admits, with a mock bow of shame. "Although I was fascinated." Seeing her nonplussed, he decides to change the subject. "This equipment on the wall - a family heirloom?"

"No," she replies. Gresta advances into the room, shutting the door behind her. "It is mine."

Suddenly he's feeling quite on the back foot. "Yours, you say? Surely you jest?"

"I do not. In Maruba, men and women serve equally in the military. It is customary for every person to serve two years beginning at age sixteen. Only in this way can we be prepared for the ever-present threat of Yornish invasion."

Gresta moves with shocking alacrity and seizes the short sword from its mount. She wields it with a dancer's grace, one-handed, the other held up and back for balance. Before he can blink, the point of the blade is at his throat.

"Imagine my position," she says quietly, with icy hardness. "A Soulkin smashes the roof of my house. He sneaks into my lecture in a ludicrous costume. He invades my private room. What would you do in my place?"

Dornathon swallows, feeling the tip of the sword dig into his neck. "Well, in my defense, the door was open..."

Gresta almost smiles at this quip. Almost.

"Strip," she orders, withdrawing the sword a few inches.

"Say again?" asks Dornathon.

"You heard me. I would see what my friends are so taken in by."

Well, he doesn't need to be told a third time. Dornathon peels off the blouse and unbuckles his trousers, letting them fall around his ankles. As comfortable as he is naked, he has to admit a certain unease at Gresta's appraising look, and the way she clicks her tongue, for he can't tell if the sound means satisfaction or disappointment.

"Very well," she says ambiguously. Before he can inquire, she throws down her blade, unties her belt, and opens the front of her dress. Beneath it is naught but acres of pale, freckled skin, two tiny pink nipples atop smallish breasts, a stomach as fit and muscular as his own, between her legs a thatch of fiery hair, and below that...

"On your knees," commands Gresta.

He feels powerless to resist. It's as though she has a magical hold over him, though he's reasonably sure she hasn't been casting. Nevertheless he bows to her indomitable will. On his knees before her, he gets a waft of her heady, intoxicating scent. Her hands find fistfuls of his black hair and press his face forcefully into the delta of her thighs. Dornathon finds himself smothered in cunt.

There seems to be only one way out of his predicament, and that's with his mouth. He calls upon all of his skills at cunnilingus, mastered over long centuries of practice, and dives in. Gresta is damp with lust, overflowing with nectar, and he drinks from her sex like a parched man lost in the deserts of Nolmek. Her folds open to him, revealing the corridor to her Soul.

"Ahhh," growls Gresta. "You've some skill after all. I think... I think I'm going to do it. Don't stop. Don't stop!"

She begins quivering, her hands twisting painfully in his hair, her thighs crushing his head, but he doesn't surrender. The shudders increase until with a burst of ecstasy she peaks for him, gushing honey onto his face. He laps it up in a frenzy, lest he drown in cunt, which, he reflects, wouldn't be the worst way to go.

Finally, with a deep sigh of satisfaction, she releases him. On trembling legs she stumbles to her bed and bends over it, presenting her supple arse to him. He missed Gresta shrugging out of her dress, but the Maruban woman is fully nude now, the smooth, pale flesh of her freckled back revealed in its glory. She peers at him lustily over her shoulder. One hand snakes back to grab a cheek and spread herself open wantonly. It is then that Dornathon notices some kind of ingenious device wrought from smoky red glass, wedged into Gresta's rear passage. He's seen such things before, but this is certainly the prettiest one he's ever encountered. Sworza is known for its master glaziers, after all.

"Was that thing inside you all day?" asks Dornathon.

"Yes," she hisses. "I find it keeps me focused. As I am focused now. On that charming cock of yours. With which you will fuck me. Now."

It is my duty to obey, he thinks, rising. He's rock-hard, of course, who wouldn't be after nearly suffocating in Gresta's ripe womanhood? He can't resist giving her arse a good smack as he lines himself up. Her tender flesh ripples delightfully. Dornathon impales her in a good, solid thrust that sinks him up to the hilt. He can already feel her core opening to him, the vessel of her Soul activated and receptive.

At her impassioned urging, he fucks her savagely, fairly stabbing away in a most ungentlemanly fashion. He wouldn't have fucked Leni this way, or Aerlet, but Gresta's tastes seem more violently inclined. A brutal thrust, a smack on the ass, it's a pattern he settles into easily, and soon enough her cheeks are beet-red and throbbing. She's building towards an intense climax and so is he, their combined grunts of pleasure filling the room.

He peaks first, her a second later. He brushes the gate of her Soul, someplace deep within, and then he fills her with a burst of Soul. That's enough to send Gresta tumbling over as well. Her arms give out, and she collapses forward on the bed, face buried in the blankets which stifles her shrieks of pleasure. Her sex quivers, her body thrashes, and he pours his essence into her in blissful spurts until he's spent.

In the ragged moments that follow, as he's lying beside her prone form on the bed, he marvels at his good fortune, at how easy this has all been. I've barely had to work for it at all. First Leni, then Aerlet, now this one. I'll have what I need in no time. As he's musing, Gresta, who he thought was quite asleep, grabs his wilting cock with a firm hand.

"We are far from finished," she informs him. Rolling, she flashes a predatory grin that he understands is meant to be intimidating.

"I was hoping you'd say that," he returns, quite ready for her to do her worst. He is, after all, far from human.

Gresta requests his help in removing the plug nestled between her cheeks, and he's only too happy to oblige. It takes some effort, a good deal of twisting and massaging on his part, of flexing and relaxing on hers, until with a satisfying pop the thing comes free. That alone is enough to send the Maruban beauty into a small crest of pleasure, her body humming gently like a plucked string.

"On your back," she demands, her voice still commanding even as she struggles to master her own pleasure.

Dornathon, indulging, does as he's bidden. Gresta makes the appropriate preparations - a sweet-smelling oil from a crystalline phial prepares his rapt manhood and her passage for intrusion. She mounts him in reverse, so that he can only see the pale, freckled flesh of her back, shoulder blades sliding beneath taut skin. Slowly, slowly, Gresta works him into her agonizingly tight passage.

"Fucking gods that's good," he grunts. "Do all Marubans like it this way?"

"Shut up," she snaps, her voice straining with effort.

Even with the oil it takes several minutes of extremely pleasurable exertions. At last, however, her toned buttocks come to rest on his hips, and she lets out a terrific sigh of triumph. It's as if all the energy goes out of her, like this has taken all she has, and she relaxes back on top of him, stretching out her lithe body languorously. Dorn encircles Gresta with his arms and kisses her flushed lips awkwardly when she twists her face back around towards him.

"Fuck my ass," she hisses.

He rolls them onto their sides and takes her in long, slow strokes. In his experience, it's a rare woman who doesn't need to be convinced about doing it this way, so he savors it, trying to hold off as long as possible. Still, all the effort so far has put him dangerously close to the edge, and the way she's clamping down on him doesn't help at all.

"Not gonna last," he growls into her ear. A little mewl of pleasure is the only reply.

So he takes that as permission, and picks up the pace, building back up to their earlier brutal pace. They're both coated in a fine sheen of sweat by this point, grunting and heaving with exertions, wet slaps of flesh echoing each time their hips come together. She's meeting his thrusts, pushing back against him hard, like a clash of arms. He mauls her breasts possessively and bites her shoulder hard enough to leave teeth marks.

"Do it," she screams, the words tearing from her throat. "Do it."

A last thrust and he explodes, Gresta clenching up almost painfully as she reaches her own crisis. They're locked together in violent release, howling like beasts, Souls aflame and buzzing, all their exertions having stirred up a tremendous burst of magic which is now torn from their flesh and transmuted into something altogether different.

Some time later, when they are both well and truly drained, he rouses himself from a daze to find the stern professor quite asleep now, Soul spendings glistening between her legs. Her body's Soul-vessel has taken it and transformed it into that which he requires, rendered it capable of powerful Soul Arts. He collects it all and offers it to the Engine's collector, which hums gratefully, gears spinning faster. The faint odor of magic, like rich, exotic spice, wafts to his nose. Once more, he thinks. Once more and I'll have all that I need.

~

Sadelia is also thinking: Once more. Because she's next door, after all, and she's been listening as the Soulkin fucks Gresta's brains out. It takes some effort not to simply join them in their debauchery, to work herself into a frenzied release of her own, but self-control is called for. That's the first lesson an Angheggish child learns: always be in control. Always.

A tome lies open before her on the floor, and she pages through it until she finds the illustrations she's looking for. In rich color, the artist has sketched a cube-like object, bronze in color, with complicated clockwork innards clearly visible. Below the image is the caption:

"Withe thee Soule Engine mayest thou Travel."

She is sure now that this is the object Dornathon possesses, the one that sent him screaming through the portal in the sky and into their dormitory. And she is also certain, from consultations over the past few days, that Arch Proctor Mozza is willing to sponsor the four of them with his highest recommendations if they can deliver it to him, fully charged. And furthermore, she is certain that she has at last uncovered the specific Elder Glyphs and arcane procedures necessary to operate the Engine.

Sadelia smiles wickedly to herself. Her hand stray between her legs. Now she allows herself pleasure. On her own terms. Because she wills it. Because she is in control.

~

Dornathon dreams he's back in the gilded cage, in the citadel's tower, dressed in nothing but a demeaning garment which covers only his manhood, and that just barely. He hears the key turn in the lock, and the door slams open. Lu'Urna enters, shining white hair trailing in long yards along the floor behind her. She's dressed in a white leotard, nearly the same shade as her porcelain skin. She's got the whip in one hand, the ivory-handled one that splits into three at the end. Not the whip, fucking gods, not the whip...

It cracks in the air, and like an obedient dog, he assumes the position. On all fours, with his head bowed, he waits for his lady's pleasure.

"Good boy," coos the Elder.

She inspects him, hands on her hips, so petite as to seem child-like, but of course he knows she's anything but a child.

"My Dornathon," she says with a sigh. "You need to trim your chest hair." The whip's three tails cracks across his back, and he bites his lip, knowing that crying out will only make it worse. "This is to teach you," she explains.

He feels her mount him, slender legs hanging to either side.

"I think today we'll go for a ride," she says. "To the gardens, boy."

He wakes up in a cold sweat, choking back a scream.

Not real, he tells himself. I'm free. I stole her Soul Engine, and I'm free.

He pants heavily, catching his breath, shaking away the awful vision.

Free.

~

For his last day in Sworza, Dornathon decides he ought to do whatever he wants. Leni and Aerlet have their examination, and Gresta has a lecture to deliver, so he bids them good morning, fully expecting to see them that evening for the stupendous conclusion of his adventure in Sworza. The girls don't know this, of course, and he does feel a little bad for deceiving them, but needs must. His Soul Engine is nearly ready to start, and then... well, he's getting a bit over-anxious about and then.

Swaddled in the red and yellow trappings of his Nolmekian disguise, Dornathon walks the streets of Sworza alone. It's somewhat foolish, certainly, for he isn't quite sure how he'd handle an overzealous guardsman with questions about the deserts of Nolmek, but he thinks: fuck it. He rather enjoys the open-mouthed stares, the conspiratorial whispers as he passes. He longs to cast off the robes and say, look who walks among you, it is I, Dornathon of Fal'Angrael!

As if they'd recognize his name. He's no Elder, spoken of in rhyme, written about in children's fables. But if he can get his Soul Engine working again, use it to Travel anyplace in this realm or the other, and claim any treasure he pleases, then someday, someday...

He finds his way to the famous Statue Gardens of Sworza, a park set aside by leaders long dead. Statesmen of ages past tower over him in white marble, governors and councilors, even a king or two, from back when Sworza had kings. While he doesn't really give a shit about these dead humans, he must admit a certain admiration for the craft. Sworza's reputation as the haven of artisans was well-deserved. Oh, Cairen had its armies, and Saltea its boats, but for the arts, one came to Sworza.

In a secluded corner of the garden, surrounded by a curtain of tall hedges, is a statue of Indemia, patron goddess of artists. She is flatteringly carved, with quite the generous bust, a paintbrush in one hand, a quill in the other, her totems.

An elderly gentleman, bespectacled and cane-stooped, also stands admiring Indemia.

"Marvelous, isn't she?" asks the old Sworzan.

"Nah," answers Dornathon mildly. "I've heard she's a stuck-up cunt."

He leaves the stranger shocked and puzzling over this statement, and continues on his way. One day soon, he thinks to himself, it'll be a statue of me these idiots fawn over.

~

Reclining on his makeshift bed in the attic, watching the sky turn red overhead, Dornathon resolves to stay awake until the girls return home. He's making an attempt at reading one of Leni's books, something called Valley of the Gods by Inri, but the common letters are so hard for him to make sense of. He's fond enough of the crude human vernacular, but he'll never understand why they abandoned the Elder Glyphs.

He's straining to make sense of a ribald scene where the heroic Baron topples the wife of a villainous Count when his eyelids begin to grow heavy. Despite his best efforts, sleep assails him. He puts the book aside, promising himself he'll rest his eyes, just for a while, just until the girls get home.

When he opens his eyes again, stars twinkle through the hole he made in the ceiling. One or two other things occur to him: firstly, he can't move. And, additionally, he seems to be naked.

Straining his neck, Dornathon takes stock of his predicament. Leni, Aerlet, and Gresta have snuck up upon him while he slept and tied him to the attic's posts, spread-eagled, and relieved him of his clothes. He knows this to be the case because the trio in question are kneeling on the cushions beside him. Gresta has an icy smile. Aerlet has a knowing smirk. Leni has a sheepish grin. All three are dressed in billowy, diaphanous gowns, transparent enough that the silhouette of their figures beneath are plainly visible.