Talla's Fallen Temple Ch. 28

The Queen of Form, meanwhile, felt something deep in her chest lurch. Kendrick? She would not allow her Kendrick to run straight into the wreckage of a Fallen Temple. She respected him far too much to be insulted by his strange, rebellious attitude, but the idea of him risking his life that way struck her with dizziness.

A tick of the Queen's head dismissed her Officers and attendants from the vicinity. She walked slowly around the desk until a last corner separated her from the Master Fighter as he continued to stare at the map.

"You will remain here," she told him quietly. "And see to our defences should those from Beshenna make their way to Gern."

"That could be weeks away, Mistress," Kendrick peered stonily downward. "Or never."

"Nevertheless," she intoned, folding her arms and leaning imperiously away from him. "This is -"

"It isn't likely, Mistress," he interrupted her, "that I'll be around then, at any rate."

Panic seized the Sorceress as a fist inside twisted her stomach, clutching at her insides and wringing them out like a wet towel. Gracelessly, she lurched forward, banging her hip on the corner of the desk so that pain fired up her spine. Moving so close as to be nearly improper, she held a hand up to his temple, brushing his hair back over his ear.

Grey hairs spread before her fingertips.

"How long?" she gulped.

"A week, possibly," he said, still refusing to meet her eyes. "Long enough to see this lot to Beshenna."

The Queen of Form turned to the map, horror on her face, her mouth hanging open in shock. Her very vocabulary denied her the words she wanted to say. She couldn't even cry here, with her underlings so close, her only option to turn away and keep her face from everyone else.

"How will we -?"

"I've trained your Fighters well, Mistress," Kendrick turned to view her profile.

"But how will I - I," she trailed off, then turned to gaze at him, her eyes wide with a mix of fear and sorrow. "Kendrick."

Looking into her eyes for the first time since he'd greeted her, he spoke in his softest voice, rolling his 'r's heavily as ever, "You'll have your armour to comfort you, Mistress. Now let me fight this last battle for you."

She suddenly felt like the child she'd been the day she'd first seen him. Staring into his eyes, the little girl inside the Sorceress did her best to hide the twitching in her chin. She jerked her head toward the exit, regretting now every day she'd delayed in calling him to her bed.

"Go, Master Fighter," she pulled herself up to her full height, forcing cold stone into her voice, "Take Command and lead them to Beshenna."

"Aye, Mistress."

The Queen of Form didn't watch him go. She couldn't. Instead, she turned her back on him and walked around the desk. When her Disciples had gathered around her once more, they found her eyes dry and her voice steady.

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Running flat out, her legs aching and lungs ready to burst, Talla caught up to the tail end of Zhair'lo's procession in front of the Temple's main gate. Four guards surrounded Zhair'lo while three other boys in Fighter armour tagged along behind him. They halted at the main gate and Talla passed them, casually as she could with her heavy breathing, while they faced the guards' interrogation. No one questioned, in times of emergency, that a woman entered any gate, no matter how where she called home. But bringing men into the Temple caused a disturbance, even if the men had escorts.

"Where are you going with these men?" the lead guard at the gate called out.

"This is Beshenna's Conduit, fool," the leader of the entourage responded, waving a sealed , black scroll at the gate guard.

"Go ahead, then, sister," the gate guard waved them through and they darted through the gate.

'You can't follow us,' Zhair'lo's eyes found Talla's as they passed her and his thoughts came through loud and clear at this distance, 'we're going into the Goddess's central domain.'

'Why you?'

'I don't know. They must think I can fix it somehow. I didn't know about this Conduit stuff until just now.'

'Fix Beshenna?' she shouted in his mind. 'Those people are free now! You can't let them use you for that!'

'I'll avoid it if I can. Dammit, Talla, what can I do right now?'

She chased them around the fountain, but the entourage shortly went up a long, narrow alleyway into the heart of the Temple. Talla knew that corridor from her very first tour of the Temple. It ended at a large set of doors, guarded by numerous women who likely had no patience for any story she might tell.

Stymied, she paused in the central triangle courtyard, full of impotent fury. The Temple clearly intended to use Zhair'lo as a Conduit and send him on a gods-knew-how-long journey to repair Beshenna. She'd worried enough with all the double upgrades they'd forced him through and felt helpless against the damage they intended next.

'Gods damn you all to the nine hells!' Talla shouted in her mind. 'I won't let you have him!'

She could find no outlet for her anger. Standing next to the beautiful fountain with its naked Goddess statue, Talla desired nothing more than to climb into the small pool so she could kick and punch the statue until it fell to ruins.

"Make way!" a shout came across the courtyard.

Form women, rushing home to put on their armour, flashed past her in their colourful Service clothing.

The dammed up rage inside her suddenly found a watercourse, lending her a courage she'd never felt before, and she rushed into Form after them.

"Talla!" a deep voice shouted behind her. "Talla, dammit!"

She ignored it, caught up as she was in the rush of Form women.

------===================-------

"You will wait here," the guard commander spoke to Zhair'lo's squad mates.

The obsidian hallway with its flickering torches, had been crammed to the hilt to accommodate the bevy of the Goddess's personal guards, Zhair'lo's entourage and his three squad mates. Even then, women moved in and out past them, wearing the thinnest of clothing. The guards at the door gave them a quick pat down, checked the scrolls many of them carried for hidden weapons, and passed them through.

"What goes on beyond here is a private matter," the guard commander clarified. "Zhair'lo will return to you shortly."

To their everlasting credit, Renzi, Kit and Z'rus ignored the lethal army of women around them and all looked to Zhair'lo for confirmation. Only when he raised an eyebrow and tilted his head in acquiescence did they relax their postures.

"Loyal bunch," the guard commander observed. "Now you get out of your armour. We'll have no man with weapons in her Imminence's presence."

The guards who watched over the door to the Goddess's inner sanctum forced Zhair'lo to strip down to his shorts and t-shirt. They then went over his body carefully, making sure not even the smallest weapon could have been concealed in his remaining clothing.

They waved him into the room, with only one very large guard following along the black marble floor, watching him warily from a pace away. Zhair'lo couldn't be sure, but he didn't think this one had been part of the original entourage, but rather someone picked up locally, possibly a member of the Goddess's personal guard. The helm she wore, covering most of her face, made it impossible to make out anything about her besides her size.

The Goddess's central chamber, also her bedroom, carried the theme of the blackness to an extreme. Zhair'lo's eyes gained the impression of a dark, cloudy night, with a fire of women burning in an over-sized pit. Countless women, sparks of orange and yellow around the central flame, maintained the illusion as they spiralled in and out of the ebony four poster bed, dressed with translucent black curtains, resting its massive legs upon a raised marble dais.

"Toward the bed," a disturbingly familiar voice chilled him from underneath the helm.

Women with scrolls ran in past him and dashed out again while others waited in queue. More orange bedecked Officers stood aside, conferring in small groups before taking matters behind the black veils.

Why, he wondered, did the Goddess manage things from her bed instead of the ornate, black desk on an even higher dais across the room? Ink wells, parchment and maps were much more capably arranged there than here. From his angle at the entrance, Zhair'lo could see nothing for the Goddess had closed the curtains on the near side.

With the guard woman prodding him from behind, Zhair'lo rounded the dais on the right.

"Begone," a sweet voice from behind the curtains commanded the attendants as he came to an opening in the curtains.

Her golden skin reflected torchlight into his eyes before she even saw him. When she turned to look at him, blue sparks flung from her hair and her eyes shone at him with some inner light, locking his gaze in place.

"There you are," she said, her soft voice sweeping through his head and temporarily rendering him dizzy.

Grasping for his senses, trying to remember protocol, he fell to one knee and lowered his gaze in the proper manner of a Fighter. It was only then, with his eyes averted from hers, that his mind started working again and he remembered the pose she'd struck on her bed.

"Rise, Soldier," the Goddess's voice was gentle but firm. "We have work to do."

The golden woman reclined on her bed, supported by a number of pillows at her back so that she could face him. Her long black nightgown, translucent as the curtains, dark as her silk bedsheets, lay all about her, as she had pulled it high up to reveal a tremendous amount of her long golden legs and the patch of dark hair between them.

"Imminence," Zhair'lo squeaked out and gulped.

Not only had she exposed her body to him, she was also stroking herself, gently but deeply,with the middle finger of her right hand.

"A sacred duty has befallen you, Zhair'lo," the formality of her voice weighed heavily on him, in stark contrast to what was going on between her legs.

"I go to Beshenna?"

"Indeed," she noted with a tinge of surprise. "They have lost the Perfection of Within and We require a Conduit to repair this loss."

The story came together for Zhair'lo all at once. Someone in the city of Beshenna, by plot or accident, had caused two more deaths than usual, and one more than their system could handle. The Temple could not sustain itself, an outcome matched exactly to what he and Talla desired for Gern. On top of that, the golden skinned woman presently masturbating in front of him planned to send him into the ruins.

'What better place could there be to observe what truly happens when Temples fall?' he thought, 'We'll show you for the exaggerating liars you are.'

"I am to take it from you, Imminence?"

"Who better?" she waved her left hand delicately. "Only three in my Temple carry the last piece of this puzzle, and the other two are currently busy in the Augmentation Chamber."

Zhair'lo had expected a trip to one of those Chambers tonight, but guessed now the timing wasn't right for such formality. The magic, present plans indicated, worked just as well here. What, he wondered, kept the Queen of Sweetness and Sorceress of Within busy this night?

"He has no weapon," the Goddess intoned, a dark scolding threatening to surface.

Taken aback for a moment, Zhair'lo realized the target of this potential discipline was the woman behind him. Swept away by the Goddess's beauty, he'd entirely forgotten the itching sensation this woman had induced in his spine. Turning his head to look over his right shoulder, he observed her to be in some discomfiture. He looked back at the Goddess, his confusion clearly evident to her.

"Nothing to concern you, Zhair'lo," she assured him, waving that left hand again, even while the right worked away. "But we do have rules here."

"Imminence," the woman acknowledged, "I could move to the far end of ..."

'Oh!' Zhair'lo saw a small lecture from Talla's memories. Of all the information she had learned in her first two weeks, the neat tables with the rules of relative nudity stood out with utmost clarity. 'Of course, this is so simple I don't need the table to figure out what the guard should strip down to. There's a practically naked Goddess here.'

"Just remove your clothing," the golden woman's eyes flared into a glowing blue, cutting off all further argument. "I may have need of you."

Even Zhair'lo couldn't see the need for the guard to stay nearby. What could the woman possibly contribute?

"Imminence," the guard's voice hinted at subdued objection.

The first thing she unclasped was her metal helm, which she slid off over her head.

'Oh, nine hells,' Zhair'lo barely held the words inside.

He recognized her instantly from nine hundred nightmares and nine thousand revenge fantasies.

'Sonja,' he cursed, for her name constituted a obscenity in his vocabulary, 'of all the gods damned ...'

The rest of her armour came off, buckle after leather buckle, slowly revealing the shirt and small orange underwear underneath. As she now stood beside him, and the Goddess watched her, Zhair'lo found it difficult to split his attention between the golden woman determinedly playing with herself on the bed and his worst enemy, this statue of a human being, slipping her panties gingerly to the floor to reveal her finely haired genitals before letting her breasts out of their containment.

Zhair'lo quirked an eyebrow. Even with everything else going on, he noticed the size of her breasts and concluded she'd had an upgrade since they'd last met. A Form woman had chosen Abundance? He shook it off, tearing his eyes away from her naked body.

'I should do an upgrade? Now? With her standing behind me?'

Sonja had avoided his gaze the entire time and, now finished, retrieved her sword and stood stiffly at attention, the pommel of the sword in her hands and its tip on the ground, braced against a groove in the marble floor. Zhair'lo couldn't decide how he felt about her now, appearing so naked and vulnerable in spite of the sword.

"Come here now, Zhair'lo," the Goddess waved him in as she sat up.

From her nightstand, she retrieved a golden chalice decorated with fine rubies and sapphires.

"Drink," she bade.

For the rest of his life, Zhair'lo knew his gut would wrench every time they offered him a drink.

"Drink," she repeated, seeing his reticence, "There is no other way."

'It tastes like water,' he noted as it spread over his tongue. 'But then, it almost always tastes like water, doesn't it?'

His mind held no doubts about the contents of the goblet. After all, the Goddess would be using him to carry a Within upgrade, which meant they needed to avoid an accidental mesh. He'd done such upgrades before, the most memorable of which had involved a momentary, probably inadvertent, penetration of a Sorceress.

When he handed back the chalice, the Goddess reached one golden hand to his shorts and disappointment came in the form of her pursed lips.

"Served once tonight already?" her eyes sparkled at him.

"Yes, Imminence," he shrugged, events having driven him to a place where he could no longer feel embarrassment.

"Sonja, dear?" the Goddess's voice was sweet.

"Imminence?" the naked woman stepped forward.

"Prime the young man, will you? I'll do my part from here."

"His age," Sonja stammered, clearly horrified by something else.

"His age is irrelevant at this point," the Goddess spoke softly, returning to pleasuring herself. "I hardly have the time to find an appropriate attendant, who wouldn't have your skills anyway."

One raised, dark eyebrow was enough to close off the argument.

Sonja, a head taller than Zhair'lo, stared down at him. His chin level with her ample cleavage, he stared back.

"Really?" the word choked out from Zhair'lo's throat before he could think, startling even himself.

"Do you two know each other?" the Goddess asked. "It doesn't matter. Get to it."

As Sonja knelt down before him, Zhair'lo cycled through all of his revenge fantasies. Some of them involved hurting this woman. Many required her death, either at his hands or Talla's. In certain daydreams, vengeance came after the fall of the Temple while in others it came during or before.

No daydream, however, had ever imagined this. It had never occurred to Zhair'lo to wreak any kind of sexual vengeance on the Adjudicator.

"No iron circlet today?" he nodded at her forehead, keeping his tone conversational.

Rolling her eyes to the heavens, meeting his gaze only briefly, she pulled his shorts down and took him entirely into her mouth. Zhair'lo couldn't even identify the emotions swirling through his brain and found, for once, a happiness at being mentally isolated from Talla. Even with his cock in her mouth, her tongue expertly working him over, would he be able to develop an erection? He found it disturbing that his and Sonja's interests lined up, but only because this upgrade stood like a palisade wall blocking his investigation of Beshenna.

'I need to see over that wall,' Zhair'lo thought, 'and so I have to make this work.'

Still, part of his brain reminded him that the woman who knelt before him had tortured, and forced him to torture, Talla. Fury and duty raced each other around his brain, forcing his heart to pound. He looked down at Sonja again, crouching her large frame slightly in order to be at the right height for him.

'I haven't washed,' he thought. 'She must be able to taste Mindi on me.'

Nothing worked on his cock. No thought associated with Sonja could ever bring life to his lower regions.

Instead, he looked up, past Sonja to the bed where the golden creature lay sprawled out, continuing to finger herself. The Goddess raised her eyebrows, eloquently speaking volumes with the simple gesture, telling him she recognized his problem and would do her best to help.

The Goddess shrugged slightly and twisted her torso, letting her nightgown slide off one shoulder and then the other. The light material caught at the tips of her breasts, aureole half visible in their slightly darker gold. A deep breath and shudder forced the gown down her belly, revealing the generous abundance of flesh eleven upgrades had given her.

A surge of blood rushed down his body and the golden woman, recognizing it, looked a bit sadly down at Sonja's back. Her expression said she understood Sonja had failed, through no fault of her own, but rather due to a lack of certain assets.

Ensconced in her pillows and continuing to masturbate with her right hand, she used the left to trace gentle circles around the border of her aureola, gently bringing the nipple to stiffness. As Zhair'lo watched, his erection growing in leaps and bounds, pushing to the back of Sonja's mouth, the Goddess took her nipple between thumb and forefinger, gently twisting back and forth.

The Goddess exhaled, closing her eyes in the face of an excess of pleasure as she gently plucked at and released that dark golden tip.

When her eyes opened, a knowing smile came to her lips. How many Facial upgrades did it take before a woman could read a man's desires in his eyes? She knew Zhair'lo as if she held a scroll of his innermost thoughts.

Her left hand cupped her immense breast from underneath and pulled it slowly up toward her mouth. Mouth hanging open in anticipation, Zhair'lo watched breathlessly as her golden tongue slid out of her mouth and touched, tip to tip, with her nipple. He might have whimpered when she held his gaze and began slowly circling.

Only when Sonja came off his erection did he realize how deeply she'd held him in her mouth.

"He's ready, Imminence," the woman tried not to gasp, looking at the wet manhood before her.

She retrieved her sword and stood once again at Zhair'lo's back.