Surfacing Ch. 05

Soon enough, the wizard drew the invisible shield open only around her haunches and thighs; everything else was encased from ankles up to her neck. She couldn't kick or use her arms at all. She was lucky she could still breathe.

His sex was hard now; he knew she couldn't do anything to stop him from lifting her robe and setting it to rest on her lower back. He did so slowly, pressing the hem along the back of her legs and over her buttocks with his hands so she'd feel every bit of it. If nothing else, she did have an attractive backside, smooth skin, and a well-groomed sex. He could make out her personal scent, mixed with her anxiety and the sweat of her struggle.

He could make out her fear, could hear her pounding heart. Her breath shook in anger and disbelief. He could take her now, he knew as he stroked himself through his mage's robes, and he could enjoy it.

"Stop this immediately! I'll have you flogged and gutted on Lolth's altar!"

What made him discard her threat was his memory of what the Valsharess had said during Her first private visit, where She'd taken him, used him thoroughly in Her own way.

*Only imagine how they must thank you after you seed them... no matter if they are unaccustomed to your tastes...*

He slapped the young buttocks with his open hand and she shrieked. He slapped them again, watching her squirm and hearing her shout, and brushed his fingertips along the lips of her slit, sending a magical spark along the sensitive skin before slapping her buttocks again. He alternated between slaps, zaps, and caresses, changed hands, made the pattern unpredictable, even sometimes using small shocks of magic directly on her clit. It got to where she tensed to anticipate the next spanking or shock, or the next massage, and it would not come until she lost her focus and readiness.

He enjoyed hearing her gasp so abruptly once that she inhaled her own spit and choked; her backside flexed and jiggled amusingly as she coughed deeply, and he waited for her to stop before he continued, and continued, until the tender skin burned with heat and the Noble was more mewling than snarling whenever he touched her. He refused to use his mouth of her.

He tested her sex again, finding that she had become well moistened by the treatment in spite of her outrage. Wetting two of his fingers in her pussy, he then started prodding her netherhole. She temporarily regained some fight and screeched her indignity when she felt a crackling zap her right on the tender sphincter.

"No! You'll do it properly, wizard! I'll not be mounted like one of your Towermates!"

"Really. Let us see."

Ultimately she could not stop him from violating her with his fingers. It wasn't usually his first choice in a female, most of the time, but here he wanted it so much just because she didn't. She probably wouldn't realize he was being lenient in stretching her out first.

"Don't! You're supposed to seed my sacred cunt, you imbecile! Remember the queen's order?!"

The moment he had pressed the head of his member against her purple pucker, and for a while after he pierced her and felt how tight she was, her noises served far better to excite him now than they had before. Oh, she'd hated every thrust and it was so satisfying, but he refrained from coming then, pulling out before he reached the critical moment and giving himself time to calm down.

It had taken surprisingly little on the whole for him to get her to ask him—politely—to wash his cock clean with her tongue. He relished her expression of hate and revulsion as he kneeled in front of her. She didn't bite and he hadn't needed to say it.

"Decent. I'm ready. Beg me to seed your 'sacred cunt' now."

She'd gotten busy sucking on him again, doing an extraordinary job of cleaning every inch after he'd said that. Obviously she wanted him to spurt in her mouth, but she didn't have a hand free and probably wouldn't have had to guts anyway to try to penetrate him in return and stroke his nut gland.

It was amazing that she'd fret so when a single healing potion would cleanse any contamination to her precious sex. Perhaps she simply couldn't stand the thought alone; all the better for him to have the leverage.

Eventually he'd pulled out of her mouth as well, her spit trailing out and wetting her chin, and he finished their business together, pounding her sex as hard as he could, gripping her hips tight enough to bruise. Soon enough he peaked, squeezing his eyes shut as he felt the rush and the release inside her. When he dismissed the shield and she fell to the ground, her pussy oozing his cream, she didn't get up at first but moaned and whined a bit more on her knees, and he could take a moment to enjoy her two, twitching, violated portals.

Then something heavy settled in his chest and Shyntre felt his mood sink; he shook his head in disappointment.

Sirana had been off the floor and facing him in a moment, even though she couldn't see his face or meet his eyes. Having every hole violated for much longer than this slit, and even then manipulating both him and that fighter during it all, Sirana had still smiled at the end, and it had been chilling. She was ready to continue the rivalry he'd forced between them and—if he was honest with himself—he hadn't been expecting it because he hadn't seen past his reason for hating her.

Shyntre had brought her unceasing focus to discover who he was upon himself.

This Noble on the Palace floor was nothing compared to that blue-eyed Drow. The weakened female had threatened much less as she left his room, and Shyntre only waited to see if the queen would send for him and punish him.

She never did.

When the high had worn off later on, he knew deep inside that he didn't want to have to go through this every time until the slit conceived. Her or the others. Not over and over, locked in this room... He would stagnate, until those base, vicious rushes of momentary power reduced him to something far less than he wanted to be.

He wouldn't be anything more next to the queen than a Draegloth next to his mother: a servant and an addict for attention and approval.

Unlike Auslan, Shyntre wasn't trained or magically gifted to stiffen at will regardless of preference—or to even not have a personal preference. The wizard had never studied any magic that would help with it because it had never been necessary.

After that first visit by the first Noble, he tried to work on potions of temporary virility, where he wouldn't have to repeat his actions and a drug would accomplish the same end. The Valsharess had soon forbidden it.

"Child," She had whispered, standing next to him.

He'd been sitting at his work table the very next cycle after his first breeding. He knew She hadn't come in by way of the door. She caressed his ear and his jaw, making him shiver.

She commanded, "No."

He'd watched helplessly, unable to stop Her when She had broken his bottles and spoiled his scrolls, ripped the specific pages from the books. She had threatened to take more from him if he kept trying to discover a short cut.

"You do not need this. You already know how. You are more than capable, the Sisterhood saw to that." Her smile had been slow, beautiful, and terrifying. "Do what is necessary, and fear no reprisal, dear child."

For the fear those words had caused, She may well have said that She'd condemned him to the Drider pit.

She said next, "You are not wearing your ring."

His pulse surged again. "Forgive me, Valshar—"

"Give it to Us."

It had been in his pocket, and perhaps that fact pleased Her a little more than if it had been away in a drawer or a box. He'd dropped the ring into Her palm, and then Her cool, smooth fingers had taken his left wrist and raised his hand up above his head but where he could still see it and Her tawny, golden eyes.

The young wizard hadn't been able to prevent tensing as She lined up the ring with his third finger. Perhaps She'd only forgiven it because he hadn't curled his fingers closed; he hadn't actually tried to refuse Her. He made the conscious effort to keep his trembling hand straight.

Shyntre felt nothing very strong, barely more than a light tingle of magic, as the Valsharess settled the silver band in place. She had closed his hand between both of Hers, firm and strong, pressing his for a moment before releasing, and the wizard thanked her in a thick voice because that was the best thing to say. It was hard to breathe.

"I-I...I'm sorry..."

"We understand you did not have the strength to do it yourself."

She'd commanded him to strip out of his robes then, to remove his emerald pendant, to remove everything so the only thing he wore was the silver band. For only the second time since he'd moved to the Palace, She had amplified and fed on his aura. His eventual orgasm on the bed had been so strong it had made his head hurt; like before, he'd managed to force it happen when he'd reached the limit of his endurance.

The queen had seemed pleased with him, and She left soon after. Shyntre was given almost a week alone, seeing none but servants, before the next Noble came to him.

He had no other options for the time being. It was becoming harder to control his temper. It was worse that the queen did not punish him when any other male would have already been executed for some of the things he'd done. He needed some fear of consequence to keep himself from pushing a little farther each time.

As many times as he had wished death on a variety of females...he'd never seen it done by his own hand, or his own spell. He didn't want to see it happen in this cage, but he suspected the queen was selecting Her Nobles based on willpower, on how difficult it would be to reduce their pride far enough in a "session" to make them do what they had never before visualized themselves doing. The easiest had been first, but the challenge was increasing.

It would go a little farther every time, because it would be required to break them.

Like before in the cloister, he needed to control his hate, to slow it down, to keep the change from happening too fast, or he would forget any direction, any goal he'd ever thought he could take for himself. In hindsight, it had been easier in the cloister because he'd only needed to endure.

Now he had to act.

Sometimes he dreamed about his brother, also held captive by a feared Matron, almost the same as him, and he wondered about the Consort's welfare. How was Auslan handling the Red Sisters and especially D'Shea? Shyntre wasn't even sure where to start guessing; the Consort seemed so fragile at times and yet...there had always been something about him that convinced the wizard he deserved to live. Even if he could not do much to protect his body, someone had always stepped forward to do it for him.

However, that was before they had stopped using the Consorts to breed with favored Nobles.

Every time when Shyntre himself was breeding, he couldn't help but compare the Nobles to Sirana; he always found them lacking. The wizard wondered whether she was even still alive on the Surface, and if she was, then whether she still carried her child, the one conceived in a desperate moment, a desire by both parents to survive for a while longer.

He had the annoying, reoccurring thought that just because it had worked for her at the time, it didn't mean it would last. She could easily lose the baby, lose her life. Even if she survived her task, Shyntre couldn't see how she could possibly keep the pregnancy going past a certain point on the Surface. It was too dangerous, too taxing. Did she even realize that? Perhaps not. Why would she? She'd never borne a child before, and what he knew now about her that Auslan had told him, she had never expected to being barren for most of her young life. She hadn't paid much attention.

He couldn't even blame her if she had no other choice at some point but to end it. Better that she live if the unborn couldn't; no sense in them both dying. Despite the queen's tendency toward forcing a Red Sister to give birth if she conceived, if She knew about it, She might even agree in this case. Pyric absolutes were rarely ever seen in any Drow.

He could not stop thinking so about his own circumstances, or Auslan's, or Sirana's. None of them were dead yet, as far as he knew. Shyntre couldn't very well give up when neither of them had. He couldn't get so angry that he became a mindless tool so easily wielded at will by the Valsharess.

*How did Auslan tolerate it for so long without seeming to change much? ...Why is this happening this way?*

The wizard thought a bit about the longer consequences of a few of his fellow scholars humbling more of the Nobles in the privacy of the Palace bedrooms—some females receiving a taste of her own punishments visited back on her and perhaps eventually receiving pleasure from the humiliating secret. He guessed it may be the new forbidden fruit, brought out in the void of no longer having that tangible trophy in the Consorts. It would take time to product something physical, so something immaterial had to do for now...

No more special breeders; now the treat was in males who could wield some temporary, granted power, who could learn to give the Nobles something intangible that was theirs, and only theirs. So they believed. How would that change the game among the Nobles?

Shyntre wondered whether that might make some of the Nobles resilient at the threat of some of the Red Sisters' own pleasures, though not all. Then what? He saw the Sisterhood adapting to it rather than becoming less effective, which would escalate, to a certain level, more violence and terrorism than had been necessary before the Priestesses lost the Consorts to the Purge.

Why would the Valsharess want that? Or did She foresee a different result? Had She already seen something like this before?

How would it affect the lives of males in general? Some of them could be taught in secret to pleasure his Noble female a certain way. Of those males who took to the game, what would they do with it? Would they try to play power games of their own, using the potential shame of the Noble against her, if her penchant were revealed to her peers? Would she care? Would the society at large? How would the Nobility change with a path like this?

Or it might only be temporary. The Priestesses were working on regaining what they had lost, too. What they figured out might change everything again, and this—what he was being made to do— was only an entertaining diversion.

Then what would become of him? He would have to adapt again, find a new purpose. He could not become so engrossed in a new power game that he missed the eventual rebalance with the Priesthood. It would make all the difference whether he would still be favored by a powerful female...or if the Nobles remembered what he had done to them and demanded his sacrifice to Auranka and her Driders after the Priesthood became strong again.

The queen could grant it if it suited Her, if She didn't have another purpose for him, exactly the same way She had granted to the Priestesses that vindictive "penance" of the Red Sisters. Shyntre hadn't forgotten that the Valsharess sacrificed the three youngest of the Sisterhood to calm the Priesthood...even after those same Sisters had cleaned up most of the Priestesses' own fuck-up in Wilsilra.

No matter what he did or what the Valsharess really wanted of him, his fate was linked to those he didn't believe would—or could— truly change anything. It had been going this way for thousands of years in a state of constant flux, and the queen had only the desire to regain equilibrium.

*No one can win this. It can't be balanced. I want to see it all crumble down...*

If he had the power, he would collapse this entire cavern and bury everyone in it alive.

...except for his brother. He didn't deserve it. His very name was a concept that Shyntre had never known existed before, and even when he'd heard it, it had taken him more than a century before he thought he understood what it meant. Strangely enough, that had come only as he'd come to understand the Sisterhood and learned more of the Surface.

It made him wish for things that didn't exist here, and it had ensured that he would always be raging against his place in this underworld. Raging until something killed him, or until something changed him to where even his brother wouldn't recognize him.

He wanted to be free before that happened.

******

"Lelinahdara," the prison guard murmured, bowing her head in reverence.

The Priestess acknowledged her and motioned a graceful hand toward the main gate of the dungeon below the Palace. It was made of bars so as to better let the sounds of below come through. The pathways were not cut or dressed stone; it looked as though one might be walking a slow, downward grade, formed either by water or by molten earth, into an endless, lost pathway in the Underdark.

That was not the case, of course. This place was well known and not at all forgotten, and there were more ways in and out other than the main gate—just as there were more guards than just this one that she could see—but the illusion of emptiness and likeness to some visions of the Abyss brought despair that much sooner to the inhabitants.

There were "common" cells that held twenty bodies or more, and they were their own microcosm of survival. It took care of any possibility of overcrowding as nature took its course with limited resources and the competition forced in a close space. There were also solitary cells, which would be the only place where the Valsharess would have seen fit for any pregnant Noble captured in the Purge.

As the Priestess walked calmly down the middle of a tunnel with recessed, iron doors on either side, she ignored threats, cries, and offers alike, her green eyes focused on her path. Her mind considered the commoner matron, Daelina, who had found one of the alternate ways out only a year ago.

Knowing what the commoner would have had to do to accomplish that escape, the Priestess smiled that there still was such potential to be found among the non-Noble Drow. Perhaps Wilsira had been right that they had found a branch of the family that had produced Elder Rausery, even if she herself had been an orphan. All the better that they'd taken Daelina's daughter to breed for them.

Tarra thought next of how Wilsira had told her of Sirana cleaning up that little slip for them, how she had burned the body after taking it away from the crowds listening to her screeching. Already poisoned either before or during her escape, Daelina had been captured alive by the Red Sister at first, but she was dead when Sirana caught up to the Priestess's coach a short while later.

Sirana may or may not have been experienced enough to effectively interrogate the deranged Drow, and Wilsira had not said whether the novice had discovered anything useful. D'Shea had never mentioned anything about it, so Tarra was tempted to think it had been a dead-end. Her own ally would not have remembered enough detail of the forming room to make sense of a poisoned prisoner's rambling repeated much later by a novice Red Sister.

At best, Sirana herself might have made some connection recently when Wilsira had pulled that stupid, ultimately lethal move of dragging the Sister down into the forming room below the Sanctuary... It was truly unknown to Tarra how much Sirana had seen or been told.

Wilsira had to have lost her mind. As if D'Shea would have let that go without reprisal, had the Priestess lived and it had gone any further than it had. Kerse had shattered that embittered path by acting on his own. In the end, it was for the betterment of the Drow race. As Tarra understood it now, the Illithid prisoner had started the developmental change in Kerse as its best option to escape, strengthening and encouraging his Abyssal half... which had saved the pure Drow blood from irreversible corruption from the Abyss itself.