Talla's Fallen Temple Ch. 01

"No one tells me anything," Zo'kar complained. "I think I'm there until I learn how to ride those beasts. The thing is-"

"You there!" a woman called out.

They slowly turned to look at her and silently regarded the heavily leathered woman for a moment.

"Mistress," Zhair'lo acknowledged with an all-too-ironic bow.

"You have an appointment?"

The two boys held their scrolls up to her.

"Good," she said. "Come with me."

They passed through the giant gateway to the Temple on the tail of the abrupt woman and soon found themselves bracketed by two more armoured guards as they marched directly into the centre of the triangular fortress.

Zhair'lo tried to get his bearings, hoping to learn as much as he could of the Temple's layout.

Endowment, where he had done all of his upgrades to date, was off to his right. Form, where he had been forced to punish Talla, was off to his left. From Talla's memories, he knew that this central area was the domain of the Goddess.

What went on here he couldn't say. He had only gone short distances into this section of the Temple. Twice he had been here to do Initiations. There was a cylindrical building around here somewhere for that purpose. Twice more he had been dumped here to sleep off one thing or another.

Now what will you do with me?

The guards were the stoic sort that didn't invite questions. If there was one thing in which he could be confident, it was that the Temple would let him know what he needed to know and only that much.

They found themselves marching in dim moonlight down a narrow, cobblestone alley which ended at a door. The guard thumped at the door with her fist.

The door was pulled open from the inside, brightening the alley with the crackling warmth of firelight.

"Your pair for the night," the guard said, handing the scrolls over to a woman in yellow who wore a small top and a single sash over her shoulder.

Zhair'lo found it telling that the guard hadn't even opened the scrolls to read them.

"Come in," the woman said, her voice distinctly soft as she ignored the manner of the women in leather.

The guards turned and marched away, leaving Zhair'lo to give a once over to the woman in yellow. Her breasts were too small for her to be from Endowment. Her muscles weren't strong enough to be from Form. Sweetness then. Her upgrades were in places he couldn't see, underneath the strips of her yellow skirt.

Zhair'lo and Zo'kar entered, one after the other. They found themselves in a what appeared to be some kind of a physician's office with two doors on the back wall. The room had plain white walls as most hospitals did and the place certainly had the smell of having been recently cleaned. There were only two beds off to the right side and, oddly enough, a warm, crackling fire off to the left.

"Remove your shirts," the woman ordered as she directed them to the beds. "And have a seat. The doctor will be here in a moment."

The two boys shared a glance, exchanged shrugs, and scooted up on top of the beds. They laid their work shirts aside and waited.

"Which one of you is Zhair'lo?"

"Me."

She turned to face him.

"Are you feeling well today?"

"Yes."

"Any trouble breathing?"

"No."

"Indigestion of any kind?"

"No."

"Last time you had sex?"

"Two nights ago."

"Do you remember her name?"

"Lana."

"Would you count backwards from 90 by sevens."

Arithmetic. Really? If they wanted someone who could do numbers, why not go find a woman?

"90," he said. "83, uh, 76 ..."

He went on, counting down to 34 before she stopped him.

"Good enough," she said and turned to the other bed. "You are Zo'kar."

"Yes, Mistress."

She ran through the exact same set of questions with Zo'kar and, upon receiving the same responses, asked him to count backwards from 110 by nines.

Satisfied that they were feeling well and could subtract, she had them lie down on their beds.

She knocked on the door nearest their beds and pushed the door open a crack.

"Mistress Tia?" she called.

Zhair'lo heard footsteps as another woman entered the room. This one was dressed like a doctor. She wore the white smock, unfastened at the front to reveal her blue blouse and skirt.

Zhair'lo recognized her immediately. This was the same woman who had examined him following Talla's first upgrade. She'd interrupted Renia and Ella's eager ministrations in order to survey his body.

"Feeling well?" she asked as she laid her ear against Zhair'lo's chest.

"Yes, Mistress."

"Take a deep breath, please," she said.

He inhaled and exhaled.

"From the diaphragm," she admonished, patting his stomach.

Extending his abdomen, he took another breath as she listened dispassionately and focused her eyes on the wall behind him.

"Have you masturbated today?"

Zhair'lo almost choked.

"No, Mistress."

She nodded and stood up.

"He's good. Send him through."

"Come with me," the woman in yellow said and waved him through the second door which she had already opened. "There's a shower at the end of the hall. Rinse yourself quickly and put on the white shorts from the rack. Then go through to the other side of the shower."

Zhair'lo nodded. What in the nine hells were they up to? He half expected a pair of girls in white skirts to be waiting in the showers, but no, it was just him. He tossed his shorts aside and kicked the floor lever that he knew would start the shower running. Men never had this kind of luxury. Running water existed only inside the Temple where an aqueduct from up in the mountains fed highly placed cisterns. He had a map of that network, courtesy of Talla, planted in his brain.

Was he going to be having sex with someone? It seemed possible, even likely. He cleaned himself thoroughly, just in case.

There was a white towel for drying and, as promised, a very thin pair of white shorts that, with a drawstring in the waist, would fit almost any man. Feeling a bit odd in the altogether too-clean clothing -- not to mention bare chest and back - he passed through the showers into the room beyond.

Well, that gave him pause. He was in a room with a great many doors to his left and right. In the middle of that room, sitting on a pair of benches, were six girls in various styles of white clothing. They all looked up -- with considerable enthusiasm -- when he entered.

"Here," a woman off to his side said as she thrust a wooden cup into his hand. "Drink this. You'll need the energy."

He was leery of the cup and its contents. The last time the Temple had made such an offer, it had done so in the person of Sonja, the Adjudicator in Form. After the ordeal with whatever mysterious brain poison had been in that glass, he'd woken up with a gap in his memory, the physical signs of having had sex and a barely subdued desire to vomit.

At least this liquid didn't smell like the last. And it came in a wooden cup instead of fine glassware. The woman who had passed it to him was dressed as a doctor, not a judge. That helped, too.

With a twitch of an eyebrow, he gulped it down. It tasted like plain, lukewarm water. If there was anything else in it, it wasn't that he could detect it.

"Good," this second doctor said, checking off something on the slate in her hands. She turned to the girls. "Rh'ris, you're up."

One of the six girls -- an Initiate in the shortest possible legal skirt she could wear -- stood up and held her hand out to Zhair'lo.

"C'mon," she said and, taking his hand, led him out through the single door in the back wall of the room.

Zhair'lo found himself staring at another wall just a few paces in front of him. He was in an open air alleyway, about wide enough for three or four to to walk abreast, that ran to his left and right.

"Let's go," Rh'ris said.

She started running down the alleyway to his right. He started after her.

"What are we doing?" he asked as he tried to match her pace.

"Running," she mocked. "Obviously."

She turned around and ran backwards in front of him, kicking her knees up high. He followed her and observed that the alleyway was curving to the left.

"Why are we running?"

"Not mine to ask," she replied with a smile.

He looked at her legs as they pounded at the ground. Muscular. Her calves shook with each impact. The lines of her hamstrings and quadriceps were cleanly visible with each flexing. She was probably an Initiate of Tight, which meant that she would be able to outrun him with ease. The look of her clearly visible midriff told him that an Iron upgrade would keep her from getting winded or cramped.

Seeing his gaze, she kicked her legs a little higher, so her knees came above her waist, and spread her thighs just slightly as she did so.

Clean, smooth, genitals. That's what Zhair'lo saw. He inhaled sharply.

"Oh," she said, false innocence bubbling up. "Did you see that? We'll just have to fuck later, then, won't we?"

She winked at him.

"If you can keep up with me, that is."

Rh'ris turned her back and bolted.

Gods damn it. He ran after her as the alleyway continued to curve to the left. They seemed to be making a circuit.

He kept his eyes on her, knowing the game for what it was. She wouldn't just run out of his sight. Her purpose was to test his stamina or, possibly, to wear him out. She would stay at exactly the distance that kept him trying his hardest.

So he ran, not knowing what else to do except obey what the Temple had set before him. Besides, there was sex in it for him ... probably ... and he'd grown rather attached to sex.

It was a monotonous course. There were occasional exits from the alleyway, none of which they took. There were torches in wall brackets at intervals so regular that no part of the route they were taking was particularly distinguishable from another. At what he guessed was about halfway around a full circuit, the path widened into a what might be called an atrium. They rushed past the space with its pillars holding up a small stone roof.

It wasn't long before they'd come full circle. It was about two hundred metres to return to the doorway where they'd entered the alleyway.

Was it really an alley? It was more like a track. He felt like a horse being taken out for a run.

They didn't stop. How long was this going to take?

Rh'ris wasn't sprinting. Zhair'lo could run faster than this, at least for a short while. Hell, when he'd gone to meet Talla, he'd had to run faster than this. This test was about endurance.

Fine, is that your game? I can play that, too.

She kept ahead of him until a little ways after they'd finish their second lap. At that point, she slowed down a bit, allowing him to pull up alongside her.

"We're going to stop for a minute up here," she told him.

Following her lead, he slowed down to the pace of a brisk walk and marched into the atrium.

"On the carpet," she said. "You should be able to outdo me on this one."

She went down into a push-up position, her palms and toes against the surface of the carpet. Breathing with much more labour than she was, Zhair'lo got down beside her.

"Twenty push-ups," she told him. "Like this -- keep your back straight."

The reason he could do twenty push-ups more quickly than she could was that she had no Strength upgrades. He probably wasn't supposed to know things like that. He was at ten push-ups while she was still struggling with five.

Footsteps approached. Fast. Two people running. There was flash of white cloth and pinkish brown skin. Zo'kar, presumably, was doing the same thing he was.

He rattled off his full set of twenty before Rh'ris got to ten.

Rh'ris didn't bother finishing. She just got back up and started running again.

Zhair'lo pursued.

It wasn't just the running. He'd run this hard, and at least this long, in his quest to meet Talla in the middle of a forest. The terrain had actually been harder than this rather well maintained track. It was the bit where, every lap or two, Rh'ris would make him stop and do push ups. After the first time, she made sure that he did his right behind her, so he could see up her skirt. She would alternate that with sit-ups which, given that they did those facing each other with their ankles locked together, gave him a similar view.

Zhair'lo had done a lot of running, for one reason or another. He wondered, light headed as he was, if Zo'kar was having a harder time with hit. Occasionally, he would run past Zo'kar and his girl as they exercised on the carpet, or the two of them would run by Zhair'lo and Rh'ris.

He wasn't tracking time all that well. He'd lost count of how many times they'd gone around. The best he could was figure that he'd done five sets of push-ups and four of sit-ups. The only thing that propelled him forward was the sight of Rh'ris's legs. He kept his eyes fixed there, trying to ignore the pain building up in his legs.

They came around to the start of the track. Rh'ris slowed yet again. Was it possible they were done? There was no room here for calisthenics here; no carpet or even space. This was where they'd entered the track.

Panting -- he was glad to see that she was at least breathing hard - she grabbed his hand and pulled him back through the doorway. Past the four waiting girls they went into a much smaller room.

"You want me?" she asked, her eyes gleaming.

"Oh, yeah," he breathed back to her.

"Good."

There was no bed in the room. It was empty except for a small chair, a towel draped over said chair, and a torch in a bracket on the wall. The chair was apparently there for her to lean on, which she promptly turned around and did.

The torch was there so he could see well enough to-

"Stick it in," she begged. "Come on."

Standing up? Nine hells. All that running and he'd have to do her standing up?

But there she was, her hips bent over, poised and waiting. The angle of her contortion was enough to take her skirt entirely out of the equation. At least if he could get inside her, the mesh ought to take him away. Already, his erection was taking much needed blood away from his brain. He leaned on her, grabbing her hips, and tried to retrieve his balance.

"What are you waiting for?" she pleaded. "C'mon, c'mon!"

The white shorts dropped to the floor. At least access was easy. He placed the head of his shaft against her lips, feeling the wetness. It was satisfying to know that this whole ridiculous ordeal was affecting her as much as it affected him. She lifted her hips to make the angle right.

He pushed, filling her tunnel in one smooth, well lubricated stroke.

Then he stopped.

With his shaft completely buried in her, his testicles bumping against her, he felt no mesh.

Nothing.

Not even a tingle.

"It's okay," she said, her voice drenched in desperation. "Just keep going."

The first sex he'd ever had was with Talla. They'd gotten right inside one another's heads. She'd literally glowed when they reached simultaneous orgasm. That was the promise of the mesh: that the arousal of one partner became the arousal of both; that the first to reach orgasm reached it for both.

Since then, every sexual episode except the ones with Talla had been disappointing in its lack of mental stimulation. But even then, sex had always brought with it the mesh, the thing which combined the primal sexuality of two into one.

Here, with Rh'ris, there was no such thing.

He could squeeze her hips in his hands. He could see the finely muscled cheeks. He could feel the long, moist tunnel that surrounded and clenched at his erection.

But nothing more. It was a strange experience, halfway between masturbation and sex.

Zhair'lo spared it only a thought. Whatever it was that was going on, he was cranked well past his limit of endurance. His understanding of sexuality was pretty simple. A woman showed up, called a man's name, and the two of them had sex. It was a rare thing for a man to be aroused and not have it immediately followed by penetration.

So he started pumping.

"Yeah, harder," Rh'ris egged him on. "We've only got a few minutes. Faster, faster."

Easy for her to say. She just had to bend over. Plus, she had a chair to lean on.

What was going to happen here anyway? What if he just came really quickly? Would she have an orgasm, too? Maybe she could feel him even while he couldn't feel her. That was possible, if a bit odd.

Owing to his exhaustion, he determined to come as quickly as he could and so starting pounding at her, yanking back on her hips to punctuate each thrust.

"Oh, that's it!" she cried out. "Yes!"

Rh'ris was holding on to the chair for dear life. He thought it might have been wiser of her to just use the wall. The chair didn't look up to the challenge. How embarrassing would it be if the thing got pushed over and sent the two of them forward in a heap?

"Don't slow down," she said. "Keep going. Just one more minute."

One more minute? How long had they been at this now? And where in the nine hells was his orgasm anyway? He'd meant to come inside her quickly, but he couldn't quite seem to reach -

Someone knocked at the door.

"Gotta stop," she ordered.

"What?" he asked, freezing up.

She slid herself forward, releasing his erection from her body, and turned so she could collapse on the chair.

"Here," she said, tossing him a towel as she tried to catch her breath.

The towel was soaked with cold water. The index finger of her right hand waved in the general direction of his manhood.

"Wipe ... yourself off," she said between breaths. "It'll ... make the rest ... easier for you."

"The rest ... of what?" he panted back.

Her eyes met his.

"You're not done yet," she said. She closed her eyes, anguish visible in her features, before adding, "Although I am. Madra Zen, I hate this."

She moaned, squeezing her thighs together.

The cold water had the desired effect on Zhair'lo. He felt his erection dwindling.

"Now what?"

"Out you go," she said, waving him towards the door.

Confused and light headed, he pulled his shorts back on and went for to the door. He turned to give one last look at the exhausted girl. The last thing he saw was her hand sliding up under her skirt.

Well, then ...

"Zhair'lo?"

A bright eyed girl appeared in front of him. She had shoulder length hair just going blonde and a beautifully shaped face wrapped around the most sparkling pair of blue eyes he'd ever seen.

"Yeah?"

"Come on," she said, a killer smile curving her delicate lips upward. "No time to rest."

"What? You're kidding."

She shook her head and dragged him back out onto the track. He went along, not quite willingly.

"Look," she said, her eyes no less bright for the drop in the tone of her voice, "if you want to come, you keep up with me. We can go all night otherwise."

He took a deep breath.

Well. Nine hells, then. What choice did he really have?

At the very least, she couldn't set the pace Rh'ris had taken. She was obviously a Disciple of Facial. He imagined doing her upgrade for a moment. In his nearly exhausted state, the image of himself ejaculating into that gorgeous visage was the kind of motivation he needed. He started jogging after her.

True enough, her primary Discipline had to be Facial, but she also had an upgrade in Tight. He could see that from the excellent muscular condition of her legs and her ass. The skirt she wore, basically identical to Rh'ris's, did little to hide the muscles that propelled her body forward.

He tried to block it all out, just like before; tried to ignore the pain and just let his body do what had to be done without thinking about it. It wasn't working very well. That screwed up sexual encounter was really messing with him. Was he going to have sex with -- um -

"What's your name?" he called out.

"What?" she turned around to face him, continuing to run backwards with just as much skill as Rh'ris had.