Starbright

"Hello," said the person in armor. "My name is Naala. I am a Knight-Errant of the Order of the Chrysanthemum. This," they gestured towards the taller, buxomer person, who gave a friendly little wave, "is my friend and companion, Tula. I have been sent here because a call for assistance was received at the Order's waystation in Kolan Aun. I was told that an inhabitant of your village, Kuraduyn, was kidnapped from their bed in the middle of the day, and that there seems to be a strange spell of misdirection surrounding a grove nearby?" Their voice was striking - confident and commanding, if rather monotone, and they spoke Shalian with a strange accent. Mostly they sounded like they were from Belan Telu, but there was a strange lilt to their vowels, and they pronounced their Cs and CHs like someone from the south-east.

"Ah," said Sala, who was right behind Lorn. "See, this is a Knight of the Chrysanthemum. Look at their armor."

That made Naala frown. "Yes?" they said. "That's what I said. This is Bora Lys, isn't it?"

"You have the correct town," said Lorn. "I trust that you have a pendant, since you are a Knight?"

"Of course." Naala tugged at something underneath their gorget and pulled up a necklace. The pendant attached to it was made of the same silvery metal as their armor, and it too depicted a many-petaled flower. The carving was sublime - the pendant was no wider than an inch, but the petals of the flower were so detailed and intricate that they looked like they would be soft to the touch.

Nonin, who had ambled up to the door last, leaned in and looked at it closely. "Goodness! What exquisite metalwork. I see how it would be very difficult indeed to create a forgery of this."

"That's the idea," said Naala. "May we ask a few questions about the kidnapped person?"

"I have one for you, first," said Sala. "Are Mages of the Order of the Chrysanthemum issued pendants like that one?"

"All ordained members of the Order of the Chrysanthemum have one of them," said Naala. "Both Stewards and Knights carry them at all times."

"Yes," said Sala, "but what about Mages?"

"Everyone who is a part of the Order of the Chrysanthemum is either a Knight or a Steward, regardless of how skilled they are with sorcery or god-magic. 'Mage' isn't a rank that we use." They furrowed their brow. "Why do you ask?"

Sala, Lorn, and Nonin all looked at each other with pursed lips. "Your timing is fortuitous," said Nonin. "I think, perhaps, that we should speak about this. Please, come in."

--

Pelan knew that she was getting close when she spotted a patch of glowing mushrooms on the side of the path through the woods. They weren't Starbrights - they were the wrong shape and the wrong color - but the fact that they were glowing meant that they were feeding off of the Starbright's mycelium, which usually extended out no further than a few hundred feet from the patch itself. She strained her ears, listening for anything that sounded out of place, and heard nothing but...

Actually, no. She did hear something. Footsteps. Shuffling. The clink of metal against stone? Odd. There was a ridge up ahead - a little hill that she would have to walk over in order to get to the Starbrights. She was certain that she would find the dreamrider once she did. She took a deep breath, focusing her mind. Sorcery did nothing to combat the suggestive magics that dreamriders usually employed, but the mental exercises that helped sorcerers clear their heads before working their spells were incredibly effective (they had to be, when a loss in focus could mean that you accidentally burn yourself alive from the inside), and they had always helped Pelan keep her priorities straight when dealing with them. She closed her eyes briefly to make sure that Krolosh's protection was still upon her and, seeing that it was, she mounted the hill.

Dreamriders, she had found, were fond of making little beds for themselves when they were camped out in the wild like this. Oftentimes they found a patch of soft, sweet-smelling grass to bring their victims to, or they wove little tents for themselves out of vines and leaves, so that was what she expected to see on the other side of the ridge, perhaps with the dreamrider themselves lounging about, draining one of their victims. She crouched low, so that she wouldn't be seen, crested the ridge, and looked down into the grove.

And immediately, she sighed in relief. All eight of the villagers were alive. She was, frankly, astounded, but she had also never been happier to be wrong. They were there in the grove, using hammers and chisels to carve an intricate pattern on an enormous rectangular grey stone, which, from the ridges in the ground near it, looked like it had been dragged into the grove from elsewhere. Bizarre. Their eyes were all closed, which meant that they were in a trance, and under the dreamrider's control. Among them, there was a person with their arms behind their back, calmly observing them as they worked. The dreamrider, probably. Their eyes were open, anyway. They didn't seem to notice Pelan crouching there on the ridge, which was great, because Pelan didn't want to be noticed yet.

Okay. What else?

She had been wondering how the nearby village protected the Starbrights, given that they weren't growing in the village. What was stopping someone from stumbling into this grove in the middle of the day, when everyone was asleep, taking a few, and then wandering off?

The answer, it turned out, was that they had built a cage around them. Starbrights grew to about a hand's height, with big, round heads that glowed a gentle purple. This particular patch was roughly circular, with six mature specimens in it and perhaps a dozen more smaller, unripe ones. The cage that surrounded them was made of sturdy-looking metal bars which were anchored directly into the ground.

If the villagers who had made this were smart, each of the bars would have their base in a hefty chunk of concrete underneath the ground so that a sorcerer couldn't simply uproot them with magic. Pelan suspected that they were, in fact, smart - they had taken the effort to make the bars out of steel, which would have had to be imported from the south, rather than the copper which was so much more common here in the mountains. That was because many sorcerers could make fires hot enough to melt copper, but very, very few could melt steel.

Not that any sorcerer who knew anything about Starbrights would try. The villagers had also cleared out all of the trees immediately surrounding the Starbrights out to about a hundred feet - Pelan could see some of the telltale holes in the ground from where they had uprooted and relocated them. That meant that they knew what would likely happen if a foolish sorcerer did try to use magic to get through their clever little cage.

Okay. That was that. Cage. Villagers. Dreamrider.

This was weird. She had never heard of a dreamrider using their powers of trance to force people into manual labor. The pattern that they were carving into the stone pillar was clearly magical in nature, but she didn't have the slightest idea what it would actually do when it was completed. It was entirely possible that it was already completed, and that the villagers were simply reinforcing or improving it. Whatever it was, though, it probably wasn't good. Best to end this quickly and efficiently.

Pelan looked at the dreamrider with closed eyes, to see what magic was binding them to the world, and found it almost instantly: a cord made of thought and dreams, keeping them anchored here. Snap the cord and they would drift away, back into the Otherplace. Except...

This one was stronger than the ones that Pelan had seen before. The cord was thicker, sturdier. She could break it, she was certain, but she would need to get closer. Probably very close. Troublesome. But not impossible.

The first thing she would need to do was take care of the townsfolk. It certainly wasn't in their interest to stop her, but dreamriders were very skilled at convincing people to do things that weren't good for them. She needed to be sure that they wouldn't get in the way, but she also didn't want to hurt them.

She could have used her Speaker-magic to put them to sleep, but in order to do that she would have to find a way to get each of them to drink a bit of her blood. That would be hard to do in the best of conditions, and with the dreamrider right there it was effectively impossible. Bad option.

She could use sorcery to push them away, but the effort of using magic to move eight grown adults even a few feet, combined with the strain on her body that Krolosh's protection was already exacting, would be enough to make her pass out. Bad option. That left her with only one idea. Lucky for her, it was also the most fun one.

She retreated back down the hill and found a hiding spot behind a big, purple bush. From her bag she produced a small wooden box, which she opened. Inside, there was quite a lot of delicate wool padding which protected three eggshells, which she had very carefully poked a hole in and filled with a solution of bloatcap oil and firebloom powder before stopping up the hole with wax. She removed an egg from the case, shook it a little bit, then threw it as hard as she could down the path, away from the grove.

Bloatcap oil was a fun substance. When you applied a flame to it, it burned a lovely blue color while at the same time rapidly evaporating into a gas, which very quickly expanded into a small fireball. Firebloom powder was a sort of pollen extracted from a plant of the same name which, when treated with the proper chemicals and a bit of magic, would burst into flame when it contacted air. The amount of it that she had put in the egg was only enough to create a spark... But a spark was all it took to ignite the bloatcap oil.

She heard the egg crack as it landed, and she couldn't help but grin at the satisfyingly loud foom that ensued as it exploded into bright blue light. The explosion left the nearby trees a little scorched, but, more importantly, it was visible and audible from very far away. Suddenly, the clinking of hammers and chisels stopped.

"Keep working, my lovelies!" a voice called out. "Do not stop! I will investigate."

Perfect. That was exactly what Pelan had hoped for. She settled down behind her bush and waited.

There they were. The dreamrider came over the ridge, and Pelan inhaled sharply. None of the books she had read about them ever mentioned how dreamriders smelled. It was a good smell, to be sure, like cinnamon and cloves and cardamom, but it was overwhelming. The presence of a dreamrider was overwhelming. Just being near one made your heart race and stomach flutter and your bits... Wet or hard, depending on what you had. In Pelan's case, hard. She suddenly felt like she was going to burst out of her smallclothes. She took a deep breath. Calm...

It was a good thing that dreamriders had this presence to them, though, because it was the only way you could tell one apart from a normal person, if you weren't a Speaker or sorcerer. They were consummate shapeshifters, and they tended to take on an appearance that would allow them to blend in wherever they went in the mortal world. In this particular case, the dreamrider had chosen to have muted purple skin, bright blue eyes, and lavender hair, which meant that they didn't stand out as especially different from any other Shalian, though they were astoundingly beautiful. They were lithe and slender, with small breasts and a perfectly pink pussy, which Pelan could see because they were completely naked. That was another thing about dreamriders - they only wore clothes when they had to.

They padded down the path, right in front of the bush that Pelan was hiding behind. She wouldn't get a better chance than this. She closed her eyes, reached out with her mind, and...

"There you are!"

The dreamrider looked right at her. Their lovely, wonderful scent overwhelmed her, and her cock throbbed. It ruined her concentration.

"Why don't you come out from behind that bush, silly? What are you doing back there?" Their voice was lovely and sweet and innocent. Pelan wasn't fooled, but that was only because she had experience. She stepped out from behind the bush, and found that she was taller than the dreamrider by a few inches. Still, that didn't make them any less intimidating, because she knew what they could do. But because she knew what dreamriders could do, she also knew when one was toying with her and when she was really in trouble, and she wasn't at that point yet.

"What is your name?" asked the dreamrider.

"Pelan."

"Mm." The dreamrider smiled sweetly. "I mean your real name, sweetheart."

"My real name is Pelan. If you're looking for my birth-name, I never liked it and it never suited me."

"I see." They giggled. "I am called Zara."

"That's a conspicuously Shalian name."

"Of course. I am Shalian. Why would I not have a Shalian name?" They cocked their head to the side in a way that Pelan found endearing despite herself.

"Right. And I'm actually a frog that's been transformed into a woman. What are you making those people do over there, with that stone?"

"Take off your clothes," said Zara sweetly.

The way that a dreamrider's influence worked was that they subtly changed your thoughts to make whatever they wanted you to do seem like a very good idea, and, more importantly, to make you feel like you thought of it. Pelan was suddenly terribly, uncomfortably aware of how constrictive her underclothes were, how her robes were so itchy and heavy. If she didn't know any better, she would have thought that the sudden urge she had to take them all off was from purely internal influences, but then, she did know better. Still, there was a good reason that she should actually do it - if she did, the dreamrider wouldn't realize that she wasn't as influenced by them as they thought she was.

So she did it. Her robe hit the ground with a soft sound, then her underrobe, then the band that she used to hold her big, heavy breasts in place, and, finally, her loincloth. Her cock was throbbing, and there was a tiny bit of precum glistening on the tip of it. There was no way that she could hide her arousal now, so she figured that she might as well own it. She gave her hip a jaunty little cock to the side and put her hand on it. "Well? Like what you see?"

Zara's eyes got big. "Oh, aren't you lovely! Do you like people who look like you, with such big breasts and wide hips and soft tummies?"

It was a rhetorical question, of course. A dreamrider could tell exactly what turned you on just from looking into your eyes, which this dreamrider was doing to Pelan right now. Next she was going to pick up on...

"Oh!" said Zara. "Oho, what is this? That's quite a fetish that you have, Pelan!"

"It's a perfectly mundane fetish, just a very strong one. Are we still pretending that you aren't a demon? Because most folks can't read a person's sexuality by looking into their eyes, you know." Pelan's voice was cool and collected, but that was only because she had done this before. Inside, she was practically boiling over at the thought of what Zara was going to next, which she knew, because they all reacted in exactly the same way when they discovered this part of her. She just needed a few moments of clarity. A few short seconds where she could focus...

Zara giggled again. She was unbearably attractive when she giggled. "You're no fool, I see. If you know what I am, you know that I can give you what you want."

"What I want is one of those mushrooms in the clearing over there, and for you to let those people you have in your thrall go back to their families."

"I think there's something that you want even more than that. Something more basic. More... Primal."

Here it was... Mortals like Pelan could change their bodies with magic and alchemy. It was usually a slow process, and uncertain at times, but it was the reason that Pelan had all of her lovely curves. Dreamriders, on the other hand, could change their bodies as easily as they could change their clothes. There was no transition. No fade from one form to another or flashing lights. Demon magic was more subtle than that. One moment, the person standing before Pelan was thin and lithe, and then she blinked...

And suddenly, Zara looked completely different. Or rather, they looked entirely the same - their face was identical to how it had been before - but their proportions were different. Their hips, which had just had a bit of a pleasant curve to them before, now flared out wildly. Their thighs were thick, their tummy pleasantly soft. And their breasts...

Pelan blinked. "Well... You certainly aren't wasting any time. Normally they don't jump straight to-"

"To having gigantic, soft, bouncy, jiggling breasts?" Zara giggled again, and wobbled them gently between her arms. Gigantic was a good way to describe them. Pelan had traveled all over the known world, and she had never seen anyone, mortal, fey, or demon, with bigger breasts than the ones that Zara was wearing now. And she did have to remind herself, they were just wearing them. They were a demon, using their shapeshifting ability to lure her into sex, from which they would draw power and lure her into more sex, draining her over and over again until there was nothing left.

They looked very soft, though, and when Zara breathed in and thrust out her chest with a knowing grin, Pelan had to fight very hard to keep from inhaling sharply. This just got significantly more difficult, but she wasn't worried yet. She had been in worse spots before and still managed to escape unscathed, if a little bit hazy on the details of what precisely had happened. In the worst case scenario, she would just let the dreamrider have their fun, then perform the banishment in the moment of clarity that came right after her orgasm. That had worked at least three times before, and three times was a pattern, right?

"I would like it very much if you touched them, Pelan," said Zara, fluttering her eyelashes prettily, and, more distractingly, shimmying her chest back and forth so that they wobbled heavily against each other. "Can you do that for me?"

They looked heavy. Pelan suddenly wondered how they would feel wrapped around her cock. Yes, three times was a pattern indeed. A working strategy. She reached out to touch Zara's wonderful, enormous breasts...

But they pulled away. "Oh! But you have that awful spell surrounding you! You know, Pelan, that I can't touch you as long as you have yourself wrapped up in that sort of magic."

Was that what Krolosh's protection was doing? Pelan had just wanted protection from the mind-altering fog that surrounded this place. You never knew exactly what you'd get, with god-magic. Well, the spell had done its job at this point, hadn't it? She wasn't exactly going to lose track of the dreamrider when they were right in front of her. And she really did want to touch those big, fat, soft, bouncing breasts.

She ended the spell. The fog rushed in. She blinked.

"See?" said Zara. "Isn't that better?"

"I... Yes? What... What was I doing?" Oh, right. Dreamrider. This spell that they had going was powerful stuff. She was going to have to watch herself.

"You were about to kneel for me, Pelan," said Zara sweetly.

Was she? She didn't think that was what she had been about to do. Still, better to let Zara think that their tricks were working on her, lest they try something more insidious, and harder to resist. Pelan kneeled.

"Good girl," Zara cooed, which made her shiver. Of course they knew all of the little things that turned her on. Why wouldn't they? For the first time, Pelan started to feel a tug of doubt. The idea that she may have gotten in over her head crossed her thoughts.