Neverwinter Heat Ch. 04

The child seemed far more animated than either Luriia or Hammer had ever seen him. They held him up and his arms seemed to flail, but not in their usual, playful way. Rather, he waved them in what seemed to be precise, cutting motions. Hammer, no novice to swordplay, thought he noticed patterns in the movements. Luriia took him, though, her black hands gently taking the babe against her breast, where he began to feed.

They were both nude, and Hammer slipped around behind his wife, his manhood pressed against the small of the shorter woman's back as his hands held her shoulders, watching the child feed from her bountiful breast.

He held the other breast, and Luriia giggled, the obsidian orb resting gently in Hammer's thick, calloused hand.

"I love you," she said to him, spontaneously. He grinned, pressed his face into the drow's neck and kissed, nibbling softly, before breathing "I love you" into her ear.

A knock on the door robbed them of the intimacy, and Hammer mustered the will to draw pants up to his waist and march from the babe's bedroom, down the hall, to the front door of the single-story house. What faced the big man had him feeling a bit weak in the knees.

Resplendent, with a gown so deep of violet that it was almost black, was a woman he'd seen only once before, and his memory of her was very vague. Her black skin was the only thing that revealed her gown to be actually violet, though the fabric seemed to drink in the light around her. Her white hair was pulled back and secured with an elaborate, ornate circlet--or rather, a crown of some sort, judging by the black opals encircling it and mithril filigree--and her glowing violet eyes belied an inner power that simply should not be contained in a drow body, even one so elegant and graceful as this one.

"Master Torviir," the drow said, dipping into a slight bow--a surprising thing from any drow female. Her voice had a hiss to it. She stepped forward and put a long-fingered hand on his chest, her long fingernails seeming sharp as talons. "Please, allow me to meet with your wife, Matron Luriia Torviir."

"We have not..."

"I know, it's not official yet. But I have ears everywhere, and I am usually in the right place at the right time. Knowledge is power, you know. But then, power is power, too, so...where is Matron Luriia Torviir?"

"Here," the other drow said from behind Hammer. Calafein was suckling at her breast still, and a bit of milk had dribbled beneath the swollen breast, forgotten and lost to the babe. "Matron Baensek. Why are you here?"

"Do you really think I am the true Matron Baensek?" the other woman, taller than Luriia, asked, smirking.

"You could be a simulacrum, or simply a well-disguised agent, but any explanation does not answer the question," Luriia said, her eyes swirling with agitation. Crimson and gold mixed together, almost as if they were threatening to lash out at the drow.

"Very well," the drow matron said, extending her head into the house. "May I enter? I wish not to reveal myself to all of Neverwinter."

Hammer and Luriia stepped out of the way. Matron Baensek entered.

"Perhaps my agents, Lirafey and Shandra have discussed their arrangement with you?" Matron Baensek asked.

Luriia nodded. "Ferrying surface goods to Menzoberranzan, at your behest, though for what reason I cannot fathom. Bregan D'aerth already has trade between the two locations. What use have you for your own agent?"

"I seek very specific items," the woman said. "And, I suppose you could say I am not wholly aligned with the Ruling Council, Bregan D'aerth, or any other drow organization for that matter."

"Most Matron Mothers serve themselves foremost," Luriia said. "You give half answers. Give me a whole answer or you will find yourself on our doorstep."

There was a snarl, or a growl, or some other guttural sound, that neither man or drow could explain. Violet eyes changed hue to something closer to platinum, and ivory teeth elongated to fangs. The violet gown expanded, billowing out behind the drow, baring her naked body in all its beauty as the cloth formed into flesh-and-scale wings that threatened to wreck their foyer. Talons grew from fingers and toes, scales growing out of her skin to cup her breasts, hips, and loins. "I am Umrathystra, sister of Allumethystra, better known to you two as Alluva Lovedrake." Her voice resonated in the walls, and magical force emanated from her, as if in effort to bend their knees to her will. But Hammer and Luriia were possessed of great will, and gifted by their deities with shards of divinity. They would not be so easily subdued. Both Luriia and Hammer folded their arms, almost simultaneously, and stared at the woman, her true self partially revealed.

"I know of your powers," Umrathystra said, pointing at the drow and man alike. Hammer cocked his head to the side.

"Of what do you speak?" he asked.

"Your wife's is apparent," the dragon said, laughing quietly to herself as she also folded her arms. "But you, you are ignorant of your own power. You know not the seed planted within you years ago."

"What is your business here?" Luriia asked, starting to grow agitated, but also curious. "Have you come only to titillate us with your secret knowledge?"

"Titillate, sure," Umrathystra said. "I'd bed you both if I thought either of you would be willing. But no, I am here at the behest of my sister. She is with Vath and Lidia in Cormyr, should you get curious, making of the Forest Kingdom a massive harem. Or getting herself killed in the process. She wanted to inform Hammer directly the knowledge she'd been given, but settled for me. Not before I convinced her with a skilled tongue, mind you."

"Speak!" Hammer shouted, growing furious at the delay and senseless banter.

"You are Chosen," she said to him, glowering. "By the Red Knight herself. One night, she came to you, bedded you, and invested a part of her divinity in you. You never knew it, by design. She and Sune hatched a plan early on for you and your wife."

"Impossible," Hammer said. "It was a vision, nothing more. A dream, even."

"No," Umrathystra said. "But it is not my lot to convince you. Look to your child. I return to the Underdark."

"Wait," Luriia said. "What need have you of artifacts from the surface? Why are Lirafey and Shandra serving you?"

"Now, now," Matron Umrae'loth Baensek said, for the dragon had reverted to her drow form. "You must know, by now, that a Matron Mother keeps her secrets near and dear to her heart."

Shadows filled the room and the drow was gone, leaving Hammer and Luriia with a squirming, smiling Calafein, the marks of Sune and the Red Knight clear on his tiny body. Hammer was convinced.

*****

Myrynda's slender body was wreathed in a cold sweat. She felt, more than anything, the icy cold grip coiling around her neck as her naked body shuddered intermittently. She couldn't explain why Mask would visit her for such reasons, but she was glad to give herself to the Lord of Thieves. His cock wasn't overly large, which was also strange to her. As a deity, his avatar could have any proportions he wished. And yet, his member pleasured her insides, stirring her loins with each thrust, adeptly. He was one of the finest lovers she'd ever had.

His discharge flooded her womb with cold seed, and she felt powerful cramps seize her abdomen, as though the touch of the divine seed was too powerful for her mortal body to contain. Their shadows, the ones flowing form their corporeal forms like living serpents, mingled together, wrapping around each other as he rutted her from behind. She was near unconsciousness when his grip left her throat. Myrynda sputtered for breath, falling forward as her weak knees gave out beneath her.

She realized it was only Mask's grip on her throat and cock in her cunt that had kept her standing. The drow knew better than to try and get a glimpse of the Lord of Thieves, knew that the sight of his bared divinity would have her seizing up and vomiting uncontrollably.

And yet, still, the drow-turned-shade couldn't resist turning her head, just slightly, to view him from her peripheral vision. The vomit was quick to blossom out of her throat and mouth, and she lay on the floor, paralyzed.

"I wonder," Mask said in that awful, horrifyingly calm voice, "if you'll ever learn better. Or, perhaps, you simply desire me so much you cannot resist." She knew he was smirking--or sneering--and the thought had her thighs trembling with need yet again.

He'd taken her over a dozen times in the last hour, each time ending the same way.

Her pussy ached from the use, and yet still her desire got the better of her.

"Here," he said, and a black cube dropped to the floor, its surfaces swirling with tarnished silver over the inky blackness. "You'll need this. Probably tonight."

There was a flash of blackness through which even her drow eyes could not see. She groped on the floor for the black cube, which was roughly the size of her head.

Her paralysis was gone, but her mouth tasted of vomit, and her loins ached so powerfully that she was fearful of standing. The black cube activated, though, much to her surprise. The tarnished silver swirled away, leaving a depthless inky blackness in its place.

And there, an image began to form that confused the drow.

She recognized Varla, but she didn't recognize what she was doing. The woman was bleeding from a dozen self-inflicted wounds, and her dagger, while glowing a sickly green light, was also glistening with red flecks. It was as though the red-haired woman had slashed herself intentionally.

Myrynda tried to move, her entire being aching from being fucked by a deity, but her exhausted body would barely respond, even as the scene on the cube began to make sense.

She saw her own reflection in Varla's eyes, saw familiar, if blurry, scenery around the woman as she stalked forward.

The pain that shot through her body was enhanced by the pain already there, as ancient, eldritch magic slammed into her, accompanied by whimsically giggling voices in her head. She clutched at her skull from the pain, writhing on the ground as her back bent backward, nearly in half. She saw Varla, then, and it was all she could do to shout in denial as the woman fell over her with the dagger.

But Varla, the newly made warlock by way of some insidious fey creature, was hardly a match for Myrynda, even in the drow's weakened state. After all, Myrynda had grown up with some of the cruelest mistresses imaginable. She managed to roll away at the last moment, shadows whipping around her as they transported her a safe distance away from the human woman.

"What is this, Varla?" Myrynda asked, scowling. Her lithe body fell into a more balanced stance, fighting through the pain in her hips.

"Lady Tyran Courte sends her regards," was all she replied, charging ahead. Her attack was preceded by another eldritch blast of energy, her dagger following quickly behind it.

But Myrynda was the quicker, a rapier sliding out of the shadows shrouding her body to deflect the dagger and pierce the woman's knee, back to front. Myrynda felt bone give way to the wicked point of her blade before retracting.

Varla fell to the floor, screaming and crying in pain. The door to her office burst in as her two shadar-kai guards responded immediately.

But Myrynda, her shadow-wreathed body standing tall and calm over the fallen, crying woman, needed no assistance. "You disappoint me, Varla. You disappoint us all. You were a treasured asset, and you threw it away...for what?"

"Power," Varla said, twisting to slash at the drow. The shadar-kai sisters stepped forward, but Myrynda held up her hand to stop them. "The Lady promised me power! Glory! Wealth! More than you ever could have given me!"

Myrynda's shadows billowed up around her. "Look upon me," she said to the crimson-haired woman. Varla only lunged at her again. "The Lord of Thieves has no use for you, therefore I have no use for you."

The words were so cold, so empty, that the silent whisper of her rapier slicing into the woman's trachea seemed a fitting punctuation to her words. Blood spurted from her mouth and neck in rivers.

"Remove her. Send for my sister," she ordered. "She'll want to speak with the body, I am sure. As will Hammer."

Lucya stepped forward, restraining the woman's hands with twine and gagging her with a shred of cloth. Her scimitars were meshed so well with her body that Myrynda almost failed to notice them, but the spiked chain that was wrapped around her waist, almost certainly slicing small grooves into her flesh, never failed to grab her attention. She hoisted Varla up and set her on one of Myr's sofas, then nodded to Ilvani.

"We go, Mistress," they said, stepping into the shadows and vanishing.

Myrynda sat back down at her desk, pondering the last hour or so and the small black cube sitting on the floor. She extended her hand, and a vine of shadow reached out to grasp the cube, pulling it onto her desk as she pondered what she might need to know.

*****

The night was getting long as Hammer and Luriia looked down the road at the beginning stages of construction on what would be Torviir's Festhall. The groundwork was complete: basement dug, footer built, stone floor for the basement filled in. Standing on their "parapet," the balcony that extended out of their expansive bedroom and faced the rest of the Bluelake District, they could only smile at the way their life had started to settle down. It was a night of quiet reflection, rather than looking ahead. In the nude, both of them relished the cool Neverwinter breeze blowing in from the west, the Sea of Swords.

Both of them saw the shadowy figures emerge from the darkness of night, seeming to simply materialize, and they both recognized Lucya and Ilvani as the two shadar-kai looked up at them. Without hiding their bodies, they waved the two up, and they blinked through the shadows again, appearing against the railing of their deck.

"Myrynda summons," Ilvani, the taller of the two, said, her eyes unabashedly examining both specimens of physical beauty. The scent of sex was thick about them.

"It is Varla," Lucya added, and the tone of her voice conveyed much.

Luriia put her black hand on Hammer's thick arm, but the man seemed to show little more than a curiosity. "What happened?" he asked.

"It is for the Demarchess to tell," Lucya said.

"We will make our way their immediately," Luriia said, and the shadar-kai nodded.

Before they could move another muscle, though, a conflagration erupted down the road. The explosion blew out windows, shuddered roof shingles, and sent reverberations throughout the ground. Buildings close by the source suffered considerable amounts of damage from the explosion.

But none of that mattered to Luriia in that horrifying moment. Massive timbers, blocks of marble, tools and other sorts of construction materials flew outward as far as she could see, some of the components in flames. Her face was a mask of grief, for her life's work, her charge from Sune, had been destroyed before it could even be built.

And, floating above it all, was a golden, naked figure, massive golden wings spread out from her back, tinged with sulfurous red. Lady Tyran Courte laughed, her own face a mask of pleasure and ecstasy. Luriia knew rage in a way she had never known before. Fury flooded her features, her eyes burning red and gold, her hands burning with silver and red fire. She leapt off the balcony, her body floating gracefully down the distance to the ground. Her red robe materialized from nothingness, covering most of her body but billowing out behind her. Hammer ran inside, arming himself and clothing himself, his drow-made greatsword clutched tightly as he rushed out of their manor.

The shadar-kai, their loyalties solely with Myrynda, felt a compulsion to aid their drow mistress's older sister. They blinked through the shadows, Lucya drawing her twin scimitars as shadows oozed out of Ilvani's fists.

"Tyran Courte!" Luriia shouted, her voice booming throughout the district, fueled by divine power. The aasimar saw her as the drow approached, her robe fluttering around her, baring obsidian breasts as a rosy-glowing longsword appeared in the drow's hand.

Tyran laughed.

Swooping down from her hovering perch, she slammed into the ground, the earth shuddering under her but hardly affecting the enraged drow.

"What is the meaning of this?" she demanded, her hair and robe whipping about her as though some unseen wind was stirring her. Tyran Courte, her perfect golden skin, her perfect golden hair, simply glared.

"You," she demanded, her voice perfectly pitched, "must submit to the Celestial Temple. You must submit to the will of the gods!"

Luriia scowled, Sune's favor filling her, granting her heightened perception and insight. Truths were laid bare to her, vision cleared to pierce through illusion, and Luriia Torviir knew this woman more intimately than any other living being.

First, the woman's body, glowing with golden radiance, grew dim, pale, and much less gold. Her power was no illusion, but her appearance certainly was. Then, she saw the images of Cyric vomiting from her soul, bursting into the air like meaningless phantasms, but she took them as clarity from Sune.

"You serve no gods but yourself, and Cyric," Luriia said, spitting the name. "The Deceiver, the Prince of Lies. You serve him, and you deceive all others with a beautiful countenance that is but an illusion," the drow finished, a spell following the words that stripped away all of the beautiful enchantments the aasimar had woven.

But the look on Tyran Courte's face was one of abject horror and shock. She fell back, her golden wings very much tattered and blackened. Her face was withered and drawn tight, her breasts hanging much lower now, and her hips growing thick with fat. She touched herself, looking for her reflection.

"You never knew," Luriia said, and then the truth of the matter was revealed to her.

Pale hands touched her shoulders, ethereal, not quite there, red hair falling over them as she felt a presence she hadn't felt for many years now. Sune was there, with her, in spirit if nothing else. "She is aasimar, spawn of the celestials, fallen to her own evil nature. They have cast her out, and had cast her out years ago. It was only her belief in her own beauty, her own haughty arrogance, that fueled the illusion of her appearance."

But then Tyran began cackling madly, her face a mask of manic glee. She held out her hands and a great, golden gout of flames erupted at Luriia. Hammer's voice boomed down the street as he cried out in denial, but he needn't have worried. The flames never touched the drow, who's silver-flaming hands erupted into a bulwark of protective, divine magic. The very essence of Sune flowed through Luriia as she enveloped the aasimar in the overwhelming magic.

"I am of the gods themselves!" Tyran shrieked, but Luriia stalked forward, the withering silver flame debilitating the formerly beautiful woman. Her longsword in hand, Luriia leveled it at Tyran.

"You are fallen," she said. "You renounced your lineage in pursuit of wicked desires. You have debased yourself with evil, with corruption, and your parentage has forsaken you. Leave this place and never return," she demanded.

But Lady Tyran Courte laughed through the silver flames. She held her hand past Luriia, past Hammer and the shadar-kai, and a small pea of flame erupted from her fingertip. The drow watched in horror as the pea exploded into an overwhelmingly large fireball, right at her front door.

"Calafein!" she shrieked, her sword slashing through the fallen aasimar's neck, severing her head in one easy slash as the Chosen of Sune sprinted up the road to her home, to where her son was supposed to be sleeping, where her servants and nurses tended his every need when Luriia could not.