The Druid and the Igniad Ch. 05

A red moon rose over the crystal forest, the purple branches illuminated from below by the many campfires of Evalyn's occupying forces. The smoke from their fires rose into the night sky, creating a thin shroud of smog around the mountain. Fortifications were present around the base of the volcano, where army tents were most populous...and the crystal trees the most harvested. There were walls made from stone ripped from the guts of the mountain, and behind them were tunnels glowing with lamplight. Wheelbarrows of rubble emerged from the mines even at night, where slaves toiled ceaselessly under the harsh gaze of warriors tattooed with symbols of death.

Within the glowing cradle of the volcano, servants stood ready to attend their queen. A small castle stood over one half of the crater, a single conical tower buttressed at the edge to overlook her new domain. New arches continued to form, slowly, from tendrils of lava that snaked together up from the orange pool below, then froze instantly into obsidian when they could reach no further. The arches and towers bulged like strands of muscle. Older bundles were set with enchanted shards of the crystal trees. It resembled a black coral growth speckled with glittering amethyst.

"The remodel is coming along quite nicely, wouldn't you say, Labolas?" Evalyn chimed. She turned to where he stood in the courtyard within the crater, at the base of the castle. Lava churned and bubbled below the smooth obsidian ledge of the rock-grown plateau.

Labolas stood statuesque without answering. He was in the form of a great bronze-furred dog, standing seven cords tall, and with his mighty folded wings, his body had the bulk of a dire bear. His mercurial eyes stared at Evalyn, constantly assessing her.

Evalyn stood beside the altar of polished obsidian, which was fixed at the center of the courtyard. Her body was draped in a red dress that split up the sides to her hips, and from her collarbones to her navel. The fine, thin fabric also possessed a hole at the back to allow for her strong, snaking demonic tail to escape the confines of the garment. Her horns were adorned with strings of tiny violet crystals.

"No opinion?" She smiled at him. "You have little care for material aesthetics, I suppose." She shrugged.

"Oddnayioqa xaouqes," Labolas growled softly.

"Beauty, of course." She turned to gaze over the lava pool, and gestured to a servant, who presented her with a glass of wine. "What is beauty to a demon? It's all in the eye of the beholder, isn't that what they say? And yet the beauty I desire most is hidden from me....I have been unable to spy on our wayward igniad with my scrying spells. I had to learn of her child's birth the old-fashioned way, through my informants. Curious, that you could not tell me the moment it happened." She gave him a side-long glance.

"l'ta iz warda," he growled.

"Of course she's warded! The druids would be fools to not put such protections in place. I am just surprised that you cannot see through such magics, oh mighty Labolas."

"Ya zokiy aem ya laenhg-"

"The magic of the world?" She interrupted. "Magic is magic, it's all a question of power. You either have it, or you don't. But I needn't lecture you about the nature of magic. You possess the knowledge of the celestials. Do you still consider yourself one? Or did that change when they cast you out of their secret realm?"

Labolas growled, and throughout the crater a reverberating series of dog barks came from everywhere, compounding into a dense, fractal sound. His body contorted as muscles strained and stretched, his form morphing into one that was half canine, half man.

"You dare mock me, witch!?" Labolas snarled as he reared up on half-human legs, his wings stretching upward.

"I am only asking you a question, dear. But you need not answer, because truth be told it makes no difference to me. I admire you for what you are: a big, handsome, powerful, celestial rebel." She licked across her upper lip with a smile.

She finished her glass of wine as Labolas completed his transformation. His fur melted into smooth bronze skin, and he relaxed his wings, just as tall and imposing as they were in his other guise.

"Messenger," she turned to one of the servants, "send a bird to my spymaster. Tell him to capture the child, as planned."

The young man dipped a bow and ran to deliver the message.

"You place great confidence in your infiltrators," Labolas commented darkly.

"I will make it easy for them. I'll cast a distraction. I have just the spell! I will stoke our enemy's carnal desires so hot, that their entire army will fuck all night. Some will no doubt help themselves to other men's wives, sowing chaos. Then, we will crush their doomed coalition! The rebel tribes will scatter like roaches."

"Such a spell requires much energy."

"Obviously. I will harness the power I need."

"I must do as you command," Labolas admitted tonelessly.

"I don't need your usual service tonight, Lord Labolas," she grinned wickedly, "and don't pretend like you don't enjoy it. No, for this we need something else." She turned to one of her attendants and motioned for him. "Suvak?"

"Yes, sovereign?" The bald man with the purple tattoos answered.

"Did you find a suitable virgin?"

"I believe I have, your majesty."

"Show me."

Suvak snapped his fingers at the attendant behind him, who scurried into the castle. Evalyn summoned her male acolytes to assist with preparations for a ritual, arranging the symbolic items and drawing the necessary sigils around the altar with fresh blood from bowls. Evalyn chanted incantations as two scantily-clad servant girls, specially selected from breeding stock for their beauty and youth, anointed her with scented oils.

After a few minutes, the attendant returned, and behind him, two black-robed women with painted faces tugged along a third figure hidden beneath a blue cloak and veil. The women brought their charge before Evalyn and bowed. The veiled figure tried to look around but couldn't see through the thick blue fabric. Suvak approached and pulled the veil off.

The handsome face of a young man looked around, bewildered. His short hair was dark, yet its shine showed that he was well-nourished. There was a hint of facial hair on his strong, shaved jaw, and the rest of his skin was smooth and unmarked by blemishes or scars. His figure was lean but not weak, a hale body from woodchopping and other farm work that he likely had known for most of his life. His blue eyes darted about, searching his surroundings. He stopped searching when his gaze fell upon Evalyn and her bejeweled horns, and his mouth hung agape as he realized who he was looking at.

"What is your name?" Evalyn asked.

"D-Davos," the young man replied.

"I am Queen Evalyn."

"I know who you are," Davos managed to say with more confidence.

"How do you know of me, dear?"

"I have heard of you. The whole land is buzzing with news about the witc--, um queen of the northlands."

"You were going to say 'witch', yes? It is true. I am a witch. Queen of witches, queen of the northlands, these lands, and all lands. I am your queen, Davos."

"Queen Evalyn, I am from the Glass Mountain Monastery. We know no rulers, there."

"And no lovers, either, is that correct?"

"I...don't....No--I mean yes, that is true. I have taken a sacred vow of chastity, great queen. W-why am I here? I was taken by strange men on the road to my farming village. These women, they...made me wash myself in rosewater...."

"You are lucky, Davos. You have been brought here to serve me."

"But, my lady, I have vowed to serve no--"

"Your vows are of no consequence." She sauntered up to him, and came very close. Davos moved to take a step back, but his shoulders were met by the hands of the black-robed women, halting his retreat. Evalyn gently touched his face and ran her fingers through his hair. "You see that table over there?" She flicked her eyes to the altar before returning to study his features. "I want you to lay down on it."

"I...mean no disrespect, great queen...but I don't want to lay down." His face paled with fear, and the flash of his throat betrayed his racing pulse.

"Have no fear, Davos, I will help you," Evalyn said softly, her achingly beautiful face filling his field of vision as she stood close. Her hands snaked into his cloak and felt up his chest. "We can help each other. Amayla lo," she commanded, and his blue cloak unclasped itself and fell to the ground, revealing his simple monk's tunic and breeches.

She stepped aside and Davos found himself walking to the altar. He felt strange, his mind murky.

"Th-this is wrong. What is happening? What are you going to do to me?"

"All will become clear," Evalyn said, pressing him onto the altar with a gentle push.

From that angle, Davos caught his first glimpse of her smooth-skinned, demonic tail, and fear flared again in his heart.

"What are you?"

"What do they say I am?" Evalyn asked smokily, and she pushed one strap of her red dress off one shoulder. "Cajar ferro samaya sero," she recited firmly.

"They say you are a demon."

"We all have our demons, Davos. Isn't that what the old men of your monastery told you? You need not fear your demons. I can show you how to harness their power." Evalyn cast her gaze across the courtyard at Labolas, who finished fastening a strand of hair around a perfect little obsidian figurine of Davos. Davos gasped as he felt a tingling around his neck, but his breathing was not restricted.

Evalyn pushed the remaining strap of her dress off her other shoulder, and the silk garment fluttered to the floor at her feet. Evalyn's alabaster skin was as smooth and hairless as the day she was reborn out of the ectoplasm of the otherworld, and she stroked her pink sex with her middle finger as she sat on the edge of the black altar, her heart-shaped buttock pressed against the warm stone. Evalyn began chanting strange words under her breath, and Davos writhed on the altar, unable to move his neck more than a hand's span from the surface.

"What are you doing?" Davos asked again, his voice thick with anxiety. He felt his clothes itch against his skin, and the threads seemed to unweave themselves, weakening to a threadbare consistency. "You can't do this!"

Evalyn stopped chanting and swiveled in her seat, sliding one leg over his thighs, the fabric covering his legs flaking off from her slightest touch.

"Old virgin men wanted you to be as deprived as they were, ignorant of what they forbid. I annul your vows, Davos. I will show you what you have been missing, and what you would have missed for all your days." She ran her hands down his chest, and pulled apart his tunic as if it had aged a thousand years, so that only a tattered remnant of his breeches remained on him. She smiled with relish and grasped his shoulders, leaning over, her supple breasts dragging against his skin. He made a quiet, desperate grunt of restraint, but she pressed her lips to his, and gave him a deep, sensuous kiss. He moaned in surprise as his erection swelled with astonishing quickness, tenting and then tearing through the threadbare cloth that confined him.

Evalyn pulled away from the kiss that spread a venom of lust into the young man's spirit, and she dragged herself over him, down to his hard organ, and squeezed her teardrop breasts around his shaft. The gentle pressure was at once relieving and exciting to him, and she held it there as she moistened the head of his rod with her tongue and lips. The venom that Davos felt in his mind seeped into his hard flesh, and his breathing intensified, as if he might climax from the touch of her tongue alone.

"Not yet," Evalyn cooed, and she sat on his thighs, one hand holding his erection in front of her, her tail curling up like a scorpion behind her. With her other hand she beckoned towards Labolas, and the little figurine of Davos flitted through the air to hover beside her. He looked on in confusion as she plucked a strand of her hair and tied it in a bow around the base of an exaggerated phallus on the small statue.

"What sorcery is this?" Davos asked drunkenly.

"The best kind," Evalyn replied.

She lifted her naked cheeks from his thighs, and looped her finger around his erection as though casting an invisible string. The young man jerked his hips when he felt a tingle around his cock, and twisted his lower body this way and that, as if he might wiggle free of the enchantment upon him; Evalyn swirled her hands and beckoned to his groin, and his engorged scepter felt pulled toward the gap between her thighs, to an unseen place just below the gentle bulge of her smooth mons. Davos closed his eyes.

"The beast knows no truth but hunger..." Davos recited to himself, sweat beading on his forehead. He tried to hold onto his convictions, his principles that made him who he was....

"The truth is here, dear," Evalyn said, her voice smoldering low. "Look upon it."

Davos thought, in a moment of faith, that whatever she wanted him to see, his higher self would know it to be a base, ugly temptation, that he would see it as beneath him. He thought that perhaps then he could break free with the favor of Hu the mighty, the omnipotent sun god. He opened his eyes.

He watched Evalyn lean back, her strong tail propping her up so she could tilt her hips and still have a hand free to squeeze a pebbled nipple. He looked between her legs and saw her fingers smear her glossy arousal from the hypnotic petals of her fissure to her flushed nether lips of flawless skin. His cock flexed in anticipation, and a clear drop of precum emerged from his tip, which stretched toward her beckoning slit, drawn to it by the magic that possessed it. With a seeking strain in his hard flesh, he felt a magnetic pull towards that mysterious portal of unknown delights. He tried to tell himself that it was as false and hollow as her heart, but doubt seized him when she pressed her hot vulva against the tip of his flesh. He felt her wetness, and a warmth radiated from her that seemed to seep into his bones. He felt a need greater and more desperate than any he had ever felt.

"Please..." he pleaded, unable to look away, both wanting and dreading what was before him.

"I will make you a man, Davos...and more than a man." Evalyn said as she manipulated her finger around her nipple, his erection mimicking the motion, moved by an invisible force against her wet slit. Davos looked upon her petals and trembled.

"Oh god..." Davos said, his hands gripping the edges of the altar. He tried to squirm his hips caught between her legs, but he only succeeded in helping smear the tantalized tip of his organ against her opening.

"The truth, Davos..." she paused as she pressed herself against him, her inner walls beginning to stretch around the head of his shaft, splitting her ripe cleft. "The truth is you are the beast."

She sank slowly onto him, her slick portal devouring his hard, virgin length. All Davos could do was let out a long, throaty moan as the pleasure in his sex-intoxicated flesh sang in elation, and in want of more.

"Salvanos da testamente," Evalyn said in a steamy, murmuring voice.

Davos felt a tingle in his testes, and his scrotum swelled slightly. He let out a cry, for he felt that he might suddenly climax, but something prevented him from releasing his seed.

The strings of crystals in Evalyn's horns clinked together as she sank all the way down with a rock of her hips, and she began chanting. The male acolytes at the edge of the courtyard began striking a leisurely beat on drums, and Evalyn undulated over Davos, her luscious breasts swaying gently as she took his manhood into her juicy core over and over again. Davos was wracked with waves of ecstasy, and he ached for release, but the magic upon him bound his flesh and essence. He tried to lift his hips to meet her when she sank down on him, to plunge himself in her faster.

The intoxicating magic seeped outward from the altar and filled up the whole crater, affecting everyone within it. Suvak ran towards the two painted women that had escorted Davos, shucking his robe off. The women moved as one, and Suvak was grappled. They held him together, one placing him in a sleeper hold. They looked into each other's eyes, and when Suvak fell unconscious, they dropped him to the ground and embraced one another, kissing.

The tantric coupling at the altar captivated the two servant girls watching from the edge of the courtyard, and the thin strips of silk that they wore between their legs moistened with arousal, despite themselves. The two girls moaned and clutched each other for support as their strips of cloth became soaked with their clear cream, resulting in their nether lips becoming defined against the thin fabric, and their nipples poked against their sheer tops. All of the drummer's robes were strongly tented, but they dutifully continued drumming in a tantric trance. Only Labolas seemed to look upon the scene unfazed.

The beautiful servant girls looked at one another, then back at Labolas. The one with the straw-yellow hair abandoned the red-head beside her and ran towards Labolas. The crimson-haired woman chased after and pulled on the blonde's hair, running ahead of her.

"Please, Lord Labolas, join with me as you have our queen!" The red-head pleaded.

"No, me!" The blonde protested, almost crashing into her companion. "I can't take it anymore! I don't care if she punishes me!"

"I can protect you from her wrath at your disobedience," Labolas growled softly, "but only if you pledge yourselves to me completely."

"Yes!" They both said.

"Are you certain? The power in this magic will change you."

"Please, yes!" Said the blonde.

"Choose me, my lord!" Said the red-head. "I will serve you better than Isiri!"

"Don't listen to Lilithine, my lord," Isiri pleaded, "choose me!"

"You are both worthy to serve me. You shall share my boon."

Labolas reached out with both hands and gripped the light chains that fastened the garments around their waists, and pulled. Every chainlink, both their bottoms and tops, broke at once and fell about them with quiet, metallic tinkling sounds. Their silks were gone, their clefts unmasked, and a sheen of wetness could be seen seeping down their inner thighs. Their small tufts of fur at their pubic bones showed their recent maturity. They looked at him in astonishment, realizing that his manhood was suddenly hard and erect. Its strange shape reminded the wide-eyed servant girls that he was definitely not human.

"Join with me," he said, "and I will grant you power beyond what was possible for your mortal souls," He cupped his hands over their mounds, and his large fingers delved into their wet canals. They moaned together, and Labolas lifted them on his hands, pressing them up against the wall of the castle. They were weightless on his thick fingers, and their hair was jostled momentarily by a breeze from his wings. They could almost see their reflection in the feathers, which shimmered with a bronze tinge. They could smell his pheromone-rich musk, which was like frankincense smoke and sex. His erection jutted from his wide waist, provocative, and the blonde feared it would tear her flesh if he forced his entry. Still, the heavy ache of sex magic tantalized her slit, and she gazed at the phallus that seemed to be a little differently shaped every time she looked at it.

Meanwhile, behind them, Evalyn chanted faster, the drumming quickened, and she crashed down onto the young man's hips in a way that proved the power of her altered body. Their moans came freely and mixed with the slurping sound of their joining. A heavy power rose on the hot air within the crater. Steaming tentacles of slimy black grew from the shadowy base of the altar and coiled around the young man's waist, his legs, wrists, chest, and neck, the pressure firm but not choking. He tried to struggle in their embrace, but the slippery hot canal enveloping his shaft overthrew his thinking mind, and he did not know what was real anymore.