Drow's Dilemma Ep. 141: Valkyries

Ashyr sighed as well. "Selene and I were talking about that while we walked over to you. I guess I'm feeling nostalgic. Maybe it was the sparring with the valkyries. You were as much a match for me as I was a match for them. They are the only nylameia I've met who don't instantly want to bang you, by the way."

As she spoke, Ashyr dismissed her armor and nestled herself in behind Caleldir, and embraced him from behind.

"Valkyries like warriors," Caleldir replied, leaning into Ashyr's embrace. "They like the strongest men around. Unlike Nymphs, who like the prettiest men, Succubi, who like great saints and sinners, and Rusalka, who like faerie men durable enough to play with and weak enough to dominate."

"Then if you're going to have a valkyrie queen as a wife, we'd better figure out a way for you to impress them with your combat skills," Ashyr mused.

"Eh, he might not have any problem wooing whoever the queen turns out to be," Selene said in a tone of mischief while she began riding Caleldir more than just idly.

"I am sure that Haeshi could figure out some master plan to make me look like an awesome warrior," Caleldir said dryly. "But she was talking about how something in my looks, personality, body language, and so forth makes drow women really, really want to dominate me. Something about an 'aura of irresistibly dominant submission' or something. She said that we should use women's desire to dominate me to tease them into obeying me in everything outside of sexual matters." Caleldir's expression was very conflicted: it was clear he was trying to process this. "So... uh... do I inspire women to want to dominate me? Or do I just keep running into weirdos?"

"That would be quite the coincidence if all the women you've encountered are... uh, 'weirdos.' No, I think Haeshi was on to something. I would not doubt that that's part of your godly aura. We would do well to utilize that," Selene told him.

"I do not think I have some sort of aura that makes women want to make me a toy," Caleldir sniffed. "After all, why would doms go after a man like me who is not a submissive?"

Selene blinked and shook her head slightly. "Not... a submissive?"

"Which Caleldir have we been interacting with, then?" Ashyr asked teasingly.

It was Caleldir's turn to blink. "You... you two think I'm sexually submissive?" he asked half-incredulously. "But I always fight everyone who goes after me! Including you two, initially. I'm never looking to submit to women. I just do my own thing. I used to tell my stories, and now I am mostly interested in my work and my children. And I protest every one of these very silly sex things all of you keep doing."

As he spoke, he absently caressed Selene. "I stop fighting only when I realize that it is pointless," he finished. "Sometimes I even fight when it is pointless. I'm not a sub..."

"You think being a sub means that you just... let everyone who wants to have sex with you to jump you?" Selene asked. "What about all those times you let me tie you up and pretend to ravish you?"

"You're almost always in the submissive position, Caleldir. Abyss, and even when all those hot females want your dick you don't fight them all that hard," Ashyr laughed.

"I let you ravish me because I know you like it," Caleldir said archly. "And I enjoy it because you enjoy it. And I am always in the submissive position because you all gang up on me all the time." He slumped a bit, looking morose. "But... uh... if I do really like it, then that makes me a manwhore, right?" He hugged Selene. "It's just... I don't know about all this. I love every woman around me individually and cannot bring myself to abandon any of them, but I can't love them all at once. Even the core group of wives is too many, but I can't think of any I would want to send away!

"Adding to that, I initially thought Haeshi was just projecting her own kinks onto me, but... but... uh... if it is true... do women want to use me because of magic, or because of something about my looks and personality? What... what attracted you two to me?"

Ashyr shrugged, which to Caleldir felt as if she was rubbing her breasts against him. "I never really gave it much thought. At first, you were the most attractive person in the caravan, but you were awkward and confusing. Then I had to rescue you from Faust and Celeste was murdered... From there, our shared experiences and secrets brought us together. Yeah, you were unbelievably hot, but it didn't feel unnatural."

"I just wanted you because you were Ashyr's," Selene said bluntly. She caressed his supernaturally beautiful face. "Then I saw how gorgeous you were and decided that I'd take you as a mate whatever Ashyr decided."

Caleldir smiled and once more relaxed into their embrace. He closed his eyes and let out a long breath. "That is what I thought. That makes sense. Then there was Carlotta, of course, who was more into you, Ashyr, than she ever was into me. I admit, that switch you pulled to get her onto me was incredibly hot. It both annoyed me and made me love you more, Ashyr. So, Carlotta makes sense to me too. The nymphs (Althaia and her sisters) make sense as well since their goddess is my sister. And so forth. Cieraela we rescued, I had a prior relationship with Naliira and she was lonely, crazy, and desperate, 'Caleldra' was always in love with me, the rusalka wanted a durable, attractive, amusing toy for play and reproduction, the drow of the Underdark are (or were?) sadistic bitches obsessed with status, and succubi are succubi. So, that all makes sense individually. But put all together, and adding ladies like Abanonda and whatever Haeshi is babbling about and I confess that I am wondering why things have ended up here."

Opening his eyes, he smiled self-consciously. "Sorry for babbling, and for being self-centered about all this. What... what are your feelings about..." He gestured vaguely around him. "About all this?"

"This is way more than I ever bargained for," Ashyr said. "I wish things were simpler. I miss our adventures in the wilderness. But I don't want to go back to the people we were with the problems we had. Things change. We have responsibilities. Before, I was worried that the dizzying number of women would take all your time away, but now we have a good agreement."

"I like our position," Selene said smugly. "We're not roughing it in the wilderness. I have access to research and equipment I never dreamed of having. Working with Caleldir by day, sleeping with him by night. Only Aster has more time with Caleldir. And there's a baby girl with the best of breeding close to me at all times. A second chance to do things better. An adorable familiar to help me with everything I need. No worries about being backstabbed one day for some petty reason. Dealing with the number of women who think they can compete with me is a small price to pay."

"You did maneuver yourself into a pretty fantastic position, didn't you?" Ashyr observed with a mixture of envy and amusement.

Caleldir laughed affectionately, giving Selene another light squeeze. "I am very glad that you are happy, Selene," he said with a twinkle in his eyes. "You did mention only Aster having more time with me. What do you think about Aster? She is one of the newer additions to our group, after all."

"She's the kind of girl that you can't help but trust," Selene grumbled. "She worms her way into your good graces while seeming completely oblivious that she's doing it. I told Ashyr a little bit ago that she is a valuable member of the wives. I'll have to get along with her if I'm going to be spending that much time with you."

This drew another laugh from Caleldir. "So... that is your way of saying that you like her even though you were predisposed to not like her." Smiling affectionately, he continued to caress Selene and lean into Ashyr. "What about Dahlia? She seems to be a bit more under control now, but she has been the source of a lot of trouble recently."

"We have come to an understanding," Selene responded. "She does annoy me still, but she's gotten herself into far more work than she expected." She smirked. "We won't be seeing much of her. Well, not during waking hours."

"I hope that the succubi don't get too enthusiastic. We need to sleep," Ashyr muttered.

"It will be fine. Succubi are known to visit people in their sleep without them ever knowing," Selene said with confidence. "For the light sleepers, they have sleep magic."

"And succubi themselves can replace sleep with sex," Caleldir added in a slightly grumbly tone. "Their sleep magic also bypasses all resistances if used on a sleeping target. There is magic to prevent them from using their sleep spells, but it has to be proactively cast ahead of time. Succubi can choose the quality of their target's rest from 'useless' to 'supernaturally perfect', as well as enter and control their dreams and their memory of those dreams if they are having sex with the target of their sleep spells."

"Yes. As I said, Ashyr, there will be no problems," Selene said with a nod.

"Even still, you are surprisingly okay with that arrangement. You'll be sharing a bed with a succubus orgy," Ashyr observed. "Usually I'm the one who isn't as bothered by it."

Selene shrugged before repeating what she had said, "Dahlia and I came to an understanding."

Caleldir pursed his lips, his eyes narrowing a bit. "What... sort of understanding? She was trying to succubize you. She kidnaps us, forces you into a succubus orgy to transform you, and now you seem to side with the succubi a lot. You look the same now as when I knew full well you were not a succubus, and you are a lot more sexually restrained than most new succubi, but..." He trailed off, searching Selene's expression. "It just seems suspicious."

"What, you think I agreed to be a succubus that quickly after I said over and over again that I didn't want to be?" She grinned evilly at him before using her psionics to summon a set of semi-transparent horns and a spaded tail. Then she let those fade with a roll of her eyes. "I am myself, and myself wants to enjoy a threesome with my mate and dearest cousin. We are wasting our time."

Ashyr laughed. She seemed to agree, though, as she pulled Caleldir backward and swiveled around to sit on his chest, which stopped whatever reply to Selene he was about to make. While Selene began to ride him with fervor, Ashyr pressed her dark forehead against his pale brow. "I missed you."

Letting the tension from the sudden change in position flow out of him, Caleldir wrapped his arms around Ashyr and smiled up at her. "I missed you too. We have had a few very difficult months, but as long as we are together, I do not fear for the future." He angled his neck to give her a long, soft kiss, a chaste affair that contrasted strongly with Selene's passionate ride. "I love you, Ashyr," Caleldir whispered to her, giving her another squeeze. "Thank you for everything. Even the weird sex bits that I complain about."

"You're welcome," Ashyr responded smugly. "And I love you too."

"Are you both being sappy again?" Selene said in mock disgust. She leaned forward to draw Ashyr up. She then gave Caleldir a nice show.

Tentacles lightly wrapped around his hips and forced him to fuck her. Caleldir was already willing to do that, but Selene's magic allowed her to set the pace. Selene braced herself to fondle Ashyr's entire body. When she had her cousin squirming with arousal, her fingers finally dipped between the folds of Ashyr's sex. Selene began to rub small circles against her clit in increasing speed.

"Isn't it nice to be together again?" Selene asked in a husky tone.

Caleldir, delightedly watching Ashyr squirm, nodded. "It definitely is. I admit I love watching you two with each other."

Selene grinned at him, but Ashyr was too lost in pleasure to acknowledge. Under Selene's expert fingers, she crashed over the edge of orgasm and fell back forward onto Caleldir.

None of them were sure how long this went on. Far too soon, Zesinil poked her head into the door. "Terribly sorry, Mistress Ashyr, Mistress Selene, and Master Caleldir. We require your input in setting up our new home. And I believe that your time together doesn't begin until this evening?"

Selene heaved a great sigh. "Technically, the new system is not in effect yet; we needed a couple of days to get things organized. But we should start getting into the habit."

"And I did promise that I would discuss things with my attendants..." Caleldir added.

"I will take you to them!" Zesinil beamed.

Ylene's head joined Zesinil's, followed by the familiar protesting sounds of a baby starting to get annoyed by her hunger. There was a more demanding infant crying down the hall. "Sorry, Mistress Selene. I had to reveal your location. You told me to get you when the babies are hungry."

"Thank you, Ylene," Selene said to her familiar gently.

"We'll feed them on the run! We need to set up our new home together," Ashyr told them with more excitement than she expected to feel.

And so they filed out of the small room and dove into the preparations with newfound energy.

---

The highlands between Old Deusterra and the Clachleom heartlands had always been a wild, rugged stretch of soaring, craggy cliffs, mystically deep lakes, forbiddingly dark coniferous forests, grasping thorny scrub, and an uncountable number of hidden caves. The men that lived here were as severe as their surroundings and despised the 'weak', pleasure-seeking hedonism that had taken over the cities under the control of the giggling succubi and their influence over souls. They knew that the gods would punish Clachleom for giving into the wicked perversions of the Soul-Takers, and the desire for war with the lowlands was back at a fever pitch.

But their beloved princess, the great Deirdriu Scionlost, had been seduced by the Storm King, and peace had come. The war they craved had been stolen from them, and now their wives and daughters were looking with envy at the health, beauty, and power of their lowland sisters. They increasingly asked why the clan lords refused to allow the succubi into the Highlands. For if the succubi really were the degenerative force that the clan lords claimed, then why was the most powerful and successful of all the highland nobles none other than the Shadow Queen Rubella Silverwisp herself? Surely if succubi had made the Silverwisp estate the grandest, most beautiful, and most luxurious region in the highlands they could not be as bad as the clan lords were saying. But the clan lords would have none of it.

In the center of this conflict was the Empress of Fire and Blood, the Red Tyrant of the Lost Hills, the Acknowledged False Queen, the Mother of Infernos, the Last Inheritor of the Wealth of the Dead: the Red Dragon Vithantiel. A truly ancient Great Wyrm, Vithantiel had been the terrifying mistress of the highlands since the times of chaos following the destruction of Deusterra. Vithantiel had almost seized control of all Clachleom through her daughter with the king before Rubella's machinations resulted in the civil war that the Storm King had so ably resolved.

And now Vithantiel glowered in her volcanic cavern overlooking Loch Goileach, plotting her revenge on a bed of vast glittering wealth of ancient cultures long destroyed. Her three male Red Dragon mates - the greatest of her sons - and their large brood of starving, snapping male wyrmlings surrounded her, as did the bravest and most powerful of the Highland warriors, whom she trusted much more than her sons, for none knew Red Dragons better than Vithantiel.

Chief Arailt MacDhuibh, the leader of her human guards, doffed his bonnet as he approached the great dragon. "Your Tyrannical Eminence," he began, nervousness apparent from his face and carriage, and his eyes fixed firmly on the ground. The dragoness raised her massive head, curious as to what could have so worried her bravest slave. "Great Mother of Infernos. A... a woman has requested audience with you."

The dragon snorted flame. "A woman?" The voice of the dragon was so deep and rumbling as to be almost unrecognizable as female. "Has she come to be my food? I eat even my own daughters, who does this whore think she is to request audience with me?!"

The chieftain swallowed and started to say something, only to be cut off by another deep voice. "Vithantiel, your servant did not relay my message properly." Though the voice rumbled as much as Vithantiel's own, it was decidedly female. Instead of harsh and gravelly, the new voice was smoother than any silk, richer than a dragon's hoard, mesmerizingly delightful to listen to. "You see, I am not requesting audience: I am demanding it."

The dragon's great, flaming eyes, each larger than a grown man, darted to the sound. There floated the most dazzlingly beautiful woman she had ever seen. Her extremely long hair was liquid emerald flowing around her as if carried by gentle currents, her divinely flawless skin outshone silver for sheen, silk for softness, and adamantine for strength. She was very, very naked, and her eyes were closed, a too-wide, close-lipped smile on her perfect face. Vithantiel's pupils narrowed. "Arailt, why are your eyes fixed on the floor, and not on the intruder?"

"Mistress..." Arailt pleaded.

"Look at her!" Vithantiel boomed.

Shaking with fear, the man looked at the green-haired woman and stopped. His eyes went very, very wide, his lips parted, and an expression of utter reverence and awe etched itself into his face as the color and light went from his eyes. After a few seconds, he fell unconscious and collapsed.

Vithantiel belched fire at the smiling intruder, but the flames passed harmlessly around her. "What do you want, Green harlot?" Vithantiel raged. "Why should I not now rend this pitiful form you have limited yourself to?"

"My form is not pitiful," the smiling woman said with smug serenity. "And you cannot rend it. For I have grown stronger than you, young Vithantiel."

The red dragon paused, sniffing the air and carefully examining the strange nymph. "Varyndaevyrress?" she asked with something closer to fear than she had felt in a thousand years. "I had thought you had gone into your twilight years and perished long ago!"

"The pursuit of true perfection takes longer than even a dragon's long life," Varyndaevyrress replied. "So I remedied my mortality."

The red dragon quivered in fury. "You... you betray our kind!" she bellowed. "You are no longer even a dragon!"

"I am something better." The green dragon kept her smile. "Something more than a mere green dragon. When is your twilight coming, old tyrant? You are very old for your kind. How long before your old age comes upon you, and your sons turn on you and each other, killing you and fighting over your hoard?"

Vithantiel howled an order, and one of her mates, an elder dragon in his own right, lunged at the floating woman. Varyndaevyrress held up a hand, and bodily stopped the dragon's attack. Smiling, eyes still closed, she physically forced the male dragon down onto his stomach, then twisted him onto his back.

"I see you are too wise to risk attacking me yourself," Varyndaevyrress quipped.

The great Red Dragon forced herself to relax, keeping a wary eye on the polymorphed Green. "I assume you are not here simply to antagonize me, blind my men and humiliate my sons?"

"I am not," Varyndaevyrress replied. "I am here to propose a deal. As you well know, it is much more difficult for dragons to escape mortality than it is for lesser races. The magic required to sustain our lives is far greater than it is for men or elves. But I have found a way to bypass that without becoming the abomination that is a dracolich."

"Get to the point, Green," Vithantiel growled.

The nymph-shaped dragon's grin remained. "I am about to launch a war on the forces that have reclaimed Old Deusterra. Those forces have just made an alliance with Rubella Silverwisp, your oldest and most hated foe, by means of marriage between the godborn artificer Caleldir Hissael Blackdawn-Duskhaven and her youngest daughter: Ailleen-Aster. I would prefer that old Silverwisp and her forces remain in Clachleom and are unable to march to the succor of her daughter's husband and his faction."