The Druid and the Igniad Ch. 10

The Druid and the Igniad

Chapter 10

In some other part of the castle, Gern attacked Labolas viciously, but could not land a blow. He kept up his mental ward, wary of being placed under a spell, and tried to keep the demon on the defensive.

"You have brought war upon us!" Gern accused. "You have violated a sacred crystal grove!"

"I did not come here by choice." Labolas growled, deflecting another blow.

"I know in my bones that's a lie."

"Everything you know is a lie!" Labolas growled deeply. "You are a speck in the Weave!" He pulled an imposing sword of bronze out of the air, and with a beat of his wings, hewed at Gern with a mighty sweep.

Gern tried to block with his staff, but the heavy blade tore through the wood like a landslide snapping a tree that had stood stalwart for centuries. Gern narrowly tilted his head out of the blade's reach, and fear gripped him as he saw Labolas snapping the sword back around for second swing. He instinctually knew he didn't have time to dodge it, but he tried anyway. Suddenly, a power manifested around him, and the heavy blade narrowly missed Gern as the very air moved him by inches. Labolas swung again, but the airy power moved Gern aside with perfect anticipation.

Labolas growled out spells and tried to cut Gern down, but upon each attempt Gern was protected, physically and magically, and Labolas could discern in the air the beating of wings that were not his own. Gern felt the tingle of magic goose-bump his skin, and knew it had to be the spell Lu had placed on him the day before.

"Ragh!" Labolas barked, and threw his sword down, which fell into an abyss beyond the floor. "So, the igniad saw fit to protect her pet, and Garanus himself came to ward you from me. Only sex magic could have summoned so powerful a being. But even with such protection, you are not invulnerable."

Labolas beat his wings and glided into the darkness. As he vanished, flames leapt up on wall sconces that, a moment ago, had been cold and dark. Two sultry figures became visible in the room. They were bronze-skinned women of fine features, one with soft blonde hair and the other with a head of luscious red, both with petite dark horns crowning their foreheads. They wore strips of silver silk ribbons woven together like basketry into dresses from a hoodless cowl of chain draped over their shoulders. The snug ribbons conformed against their young, bronze-bright skin.

They walked around Gern, eyeing him hungrily. Gern assumed a defensive stance, and noticed he was in a very large bedroom. The domed chamber was scaled in obsidian, and red fabrics adorned the walls and the bed canopy. The sultry women converged on him, reaching to grasp his arms, but Gern grappled the blonde in a collar and elbow tie-up, then threw her into her companion.

Gern didn't want to waste time fighting minions. He ran towards the heavy door, hoping he could find Lu or their daughter. He had almost reached the door handle when he was caught in a waist-lock from behind as the red-haired woman leapt onto him. He was pulled down, and the creamy ribbons unwove themselves from her. They magically reared like striking snakes, then wrapped around his arms.

He rolled over and pinned her under him. The ribbons restrained him, but he mustered his strength. He yanked one hand back and was about to send his fist indiscriminately towards her face, when it was seized by ribbons from the other woman's dress.

He was pulled off the red-head, who got up and assumed control over his other arm. The two women held the ribbon-ropes and kept Gern between them like a tethered beast.

"Look, Isiri," the red-haired one said, "We've caught a wild thing!"

"He's all blue-swirly and face-pretty, Lilinthine," Isiri said, shaking her golden hair from her eyes.

"He looks like fun. Besides, he cannot know ultimate suffering until he knows ultimate pleasure."

"You can give me neither," Gern said, "you poor wretches!"

"We're not wretches, we're wenches!" Isiri exclaimed.

"I can think of a better use for your mouth, druid," Lilinthine said smugly.

"My bite is worse than my bark," Gern said, and chanted for the favor of He who sits in the First Fork of the Oak. His skin hardened with the strength of living wood, and he yanked the women towards him. He knocked Lilinthine over with a haymaker, but Isiri tackled him from behind again. Before her dress of ribbons could unweave itself further, he grabbed her leg, pulled her off his back, then swung her into Lilinthine.

To his surprise, Lilinthine's dress of ribbons had completely unwoven, and caught Isiri like an anemone grabbing its food. Isiri and Lilinthine's ribbons interlaced, and Isiri's smaller frame was spooned by the taller woman. They came at him like a four-armed, four-legged acrobat, and though he tried to wrestle his way to some advantage, he soon found himself pinned to the floor on his back, his wrists and ankles bound in the self-weaving ribbons.

Gern struggled to no avail, then recited a mantra to keep himself calm and keep his mental wards up, lest Labolas put a spell on him.

"What a pretty song he sings," Lilinthine said from her waist-lock over his thighs.

"I bet he can make us sing, too," Isiri cooed, and unwrapped Gern's war-kilt.

Gern felt a bead of sweat move across his temple. He tested the strength of the ribbons again, but they held like iron chain. He looked around the bedchamber for something that he could use. No potted plants, nothing that he could make grow. The whole room was clean and sterile. He could only hope that Lu could come to his rescue, but feared that she would lose against Evalyn without his help.

"Essence of pearl?" Isiri asked Lilithine.

"Essence of pearl," Lilithine agreed. A single ribbon stretched from the few that remained against her body, and it grabbed a small container from a glass table.

"No...." Gern said, remembering that essence of pearl had magical properties of allure and arousal. Despite his struggles, the horned ladies dripped the shiny liquid onto his cock, then spread it with their fingers.

"Mistress Evalyn will be upset if we use it all," Isiri pined.

"Ah," Lilithine said, "but the druid knocked it over in the fight, remember, Isiri?" She winked.

Isiri giggled with delight, and they both reached for the container, but stopped short and locked gaze.

"I want him!" Isiri demanded.

"He shall be mine!" Lilithine asserted. "You can get the next one."

"Play you for it!"

Without further debate, they played three rounds of "wizard, warrior, dragon" in rapid succession with their hands, and Lilithine grinned at her resulting victory. She pulled a ribbon aside and rubbed the fluid against her cleft, then tossed the remainder to Isiri, who shot a glare and let the final drops fall onto her tongue.

Gern groaned as he felt his love-stem grow harder than it had ever felt before, his skin and flesh still magically strengthened from his bark-skin charm. He glanced down at his jutting erection, clinging to the hope that he could maintain control of his body by sheer will. He instantly wished he had not looked, for Lilithine slid herself over his thighs and rocked her hips up to present her sex to his gaze. Below her soft, trimmed tuft of red fur her clit glinted like a pearl held between her succulent nether lips, and her breath was heavy with sudden arousal.

She rubbed herself against him, the touch of her flesh tantalizing the underside of his stem. Gern tried to buck his hips to break the contact, but Isiri bent over and bore down on his hips with her hands as she licked the flat of her tongue up the top of his length, sandwiching it between her mouth muscle and her counterpart's sex.

Letting out a groan of agonized bliss, Gern felt Isiri's tongue nudge his shaft against Lilithine's eager entrance. Slowly, she nudged him into her enveloping valley.

*********************

Lu's crystal protector quaked with tiny shockwaves, thrumming against her fissure. She could feel her lips slicken, and the crystal cup became heavier as it loosened its desire to hold itself to her. Sexual energy transmitted into it from the crystal phallus, until at last it released its energy with a bright flash, and dropped from between Lu's legs into Evalyn's waiting hand.

"All mine," Evalyn said with a smokey gaze.

Evalyn let out a long sigh as she pulled the crystal phallus out of herself, then brought it and Lu's crystal cup together with a clink. She held the tip of the quartz cock to her lips and whispered an incantation.

To Lu's amazement, the crystals fused, her own protector becoming the base of the hefty, curved rod that had seduced it. Anger shot through Lu as Evalyn placed it against her milky mound. To rob her of her own bonded crystal! It adhered to her when her hand came away, and Evalyn looked at Lu with a fresh hunger.

Evalyn stepped close. The crystal phallus sparkled with power, and touched Lu at her smooth mound, then slid down and over her cleft, gracing her lustrous petals with its warm, unyielding hardness.

Lu's breath came sharp and heavy, and her body's excitement gushed from the assault of magic at her sacral chakra. She was so slick, her channel stretched easily for the perfectly shaped instrument which protruded from Evalyn.

Entering Lu clearly gave Evalyn great pleasure as the phallic sculpture pushed back and thrummed against her mound. She began chanting ritual incantations as she guided her shining semblance of an erection into Lu's smoldering core.

Lu's vision blurred and her mind became murky as a tantric sexual power washed up into her, seeping its magic into her flesh. She could not cast a spell, nor escape her bonds, nor even invoke the name she had been given. She was hostage to sensation.

She reached out with her empathic power, but Evalyn was invisible to her link, for the witch was warded. There was something else, however. Distant, but familiar. It was Gern, and she extended her empath magic to him. He was also experiencing overwhelming sexual pleasure, and the sour notes of defiance confirmed that he was unwilling.

Gern felt the quickening of Lu's empathic link, and he shared his lament and despair with her. Lu accepted his feeling, and stoked love in her heart for him. He felt her love, and it soothed his distressed soul. Lu could barely think with the feeling of Gern's coupling mixed with the power of the invading crystal within her, but she tried to transmit the secret name to him through their link, hopeful that Gern might be able to receive it and invoke its magic.

Alas, Gern could only discern the feeling that Lu wanted him to say something, but not what that something was. Lu realized that sharing abstract thoughts was beyond her empathy, and began moaning as Evalyn started sliding in and out of her, each stroke enrapturing her further. Evalyn thrust harder, mounting her own sexual energy and chanting the final verses to her spell, ready to trap the imminent release of energy.

Gern's hardness was smothered in abyssal cream. Lilithine's quivering flesh massaged him wetly while Isiri's blonde hair obscured his view of her licking the base of his shaft whenever it was exposed enough for her to do so. She breathed heavily against the tight skin, deriving and bequeathing heightened pleasure from the aphrodisiac on her tongue.

Gern focused all he could on his mental ward, retreating within his own mind. He felt his inner shield shrink as it was buffeted with seductive sensation from without, and he feared some baleful magic would befall him once his defense crumbled. He knew the prayer to break enchantment, but it would also break his ward.

He could tell that Lu was in a similar situation to him through their link, and suddenly, inspiration struck him like a lightning bolt of clarity through the storm. He could break the enchantment of anything directly connected to him, and with their magic link, that included Lu. Gern realized it might mean his death, but he began to cast it without a second thought.

"With Gaia's might," Gern gasped out, "I surrender all, to love and light..."

"Zichrya," Labolas said from the shadows, but he heard the wingbeat of an invisible power, and the incantation was sent tumbling away by the wind in the heart of a swan.

"With all my worth, all chains be broken, by the power of three..."

"Silence him!" Labolas commanded, but the sex-crazed women were too lost in euphoria to heed it.

"My mind is my own," Gern called out, "and forever shall be!"

The last vestiges of Gern's inner ward shattered, and he was utterly vulnerable. Even so, the magic ribbon-ropes around his arms and legs relaxed into normal ribbons, and he grappled with Lilithine, though he was on the verge of orgasm. He feared what magic it would unleash, so he tensed his muscles to hold off his climax, but he knew the dam was about to burst, and Lilithine held herself on him with a waist-lock and squeezed his buried root inside her. In that moment, though, Lu felt the magics binding her dissolve. She could have kicked herself off Evalyn, but on impulse she chose instead to wrap her arms and legs around her rival, tackling her back against the elevated throne.

Evalyn yelped in surprise, and Lu invoked the name of Fire. She called out, pronouncing the name she did not comprehend, pleading for its help. Fire heard her call, and saw into her heart.

Lu's hair of black smoke ignited, and for the first time, she had hair of flame. Her eyes flashed with the bright intensity of burning magnesium, and all of the crystals connected to her became naked of enchantment, boiled down to their natural, primal state. She sang a raw, euphoric note that awakened the latent life in the crystal phallus that joined her and Evalyn. It remembered the song of the crystal grove from whence it came, and its natural bond with the grove's protector.

It gave its allegiance to Lu, and bonded with her. Lu rocked her hips and turned its power against Evalyn. A swell of energy compelled it to grow a mirror image of itself out the other end of the connected pelvic crystal, entering Evalyn's soaked cleft. Evalyn gasped in surprise, the sudden pleasure overwhelming her, not wanting yet wanting it. The pelvic crystal reverberated with clashing energies as its two ends slid along the inner walls of the two women with renewed purpose. Evalyn began to chant a spell, but Lu smothered her words with a muffling kiss, biting her lower lip as she pinned the sorceress' arms above her head against the throne.

In the same moment, Gern's eyes flashed with power as well, and the shockwave of magic entered him through his link with Lu, collapsing it as it came. A cosmic rapture rushed through him to his loins, and no amount of clamping muscles could stop his orgasm.

Lilithine constricted her sheath around his hard length, feeling it bulge and reveling in the anticipation of the arriving moment, when suddenly, Labolas appeared behind and threw her off Gern, right before he erupted.

Gern's first searing white spurt flew from him and splashed against the demon's eye, which sizzled with the imbued power of elemental fire. Labolas howled in raging pain and clutched his face.

Gern grabbed Isiri's hair and leapt to his feet. He kicked her into Labolas, taking advantage of the chaos of the moment, then bolted for the door. Being without a weapon and outnumbered, he decided not to press his luck with a fight. As he left the howling bedroom behind him, he wondered why Labolas had spared his minion. Could it be, he thought, that the demon actually cared for her?

In the focusing chamber, Lu concentrated on her communion with the crystal phallus, and yearned for it to grow. She fed it her sexual power, and it elongated within Evalyn. With each thrust it grew a little more, pushing and expanding, glowing with the magic of Fire from within her, and she felt a perfect chaos aching to fly free.

Evalyn thrashed under her, and bit Lu's upper lip in fierce revenge, drawing blood. Her demonic tail whipped up and coiled around Lu's restraining arm, then yanked it aside. Evalyn used her liberated arm to push herself off the throne, taking Lu with her towards the floor. Evalyn choked Lu's neck and won her lips back from the contentious kiss, and squirmed her way off the object that had joined them.

"Gontrazz qota esaeu!" Evalyn called as they tumbled through the air, and a pool of oily darkness appeared on the floor, swallowing them both.

Inky tentacles of impossibly smooth texture squirmed around Lu's every limb, nook, and crevice. One of the slimy presences invaded her mouth, and she could not speak. The exposed end of the double crystal phallus was squeezed and tugged, slipping it halfway out of her stretched slit, and she felt the tendrils on the hard crystal as if its sensations were her own. With tremendous willpower, she pulled the heavy crystal from her sheath and let it rest in her hand, then summoned up a pulse of scorching energy that evaporated the tentacles around her. With her mouth free, she called out the incantation to banish the shadows. She found herself in a hallway, and Evalyn stood before her, looking furious.

"This is my domain!" Evalyn declared. "I cannot be defeated!"

Lu ran towards her, hair and eyes blazing. She did not know how long the raw power of Fire would attend her, but the crystal phallus in her hand seemed to be imbued with its presence, and she felt a pang of lust for more energy, more magic.

Evalyn receded from Lu, as did the hallway. The corridor stretched on endlessly, and Evalyn wove spells to ensnare Lu's mind. Lu wrestled out of imaginings that she knew were not her own. The thought of Labolas penetrating her with his enormous, mysterious manhood was imposed upon her inner eye, corrupting her essence with his mystical seed and altering her form. She fought it by imagining pinning Evalyn down and feeding the ache for power she felt through her link with the crystal phallus. She sweat from the impulse to drive her tingling extension into the sumptuous embrace of the woman before her, and yearned to build up a mountain of sexual power that could shake the very foundations of the world.

In the next instance, she realized she was being influenced by Fire's innate desires. She broke out of the hypnotic trance and channeled a pure, clear flame out of her hands. Evalyn curtly uttered a trigger word and the beam of blinding plasma was split into a spectrum by an invisible wedge that imposed itself from a flash of her enchanted headdress. Spell and counter-spell.

Meanwhile, Gern searched desperately for Lu, lost in the castle maze. At last, he turned at an intersection and found himself running out into a courtyard above the lava tube of the crater. There was an altar covered in red silk, and strange glyphs were painted onto the glossy surface of the obsidian all around it.

Suddenly, a violent rush of light and sound erupted out of the side of the castle above him, and he rolled out of the way as a massive chunk of semi-molten rock fell from the explosion.

Evalyn tumbled from the smoke, and he felt the exaltation of victory at the sight, but it turned to ash in his heart as Evalyn gracefully landed in the courtyard. His heart leapt again when he saw Lu standing in the hole melted through the castle's side, and she dropped down firmly onto the chunk of debris beside him. The semi-molten stone smeared at her impact, cushioning her arrival.

"Lu, are you alright?" Gern asked, and he gazed in wonder at her hair of fire, then gave a quick, bewildered glance to the double crystal phallus in her grasp.

"Yes," Lu answered with the sort of calm control one uses when there is a maelstrom raging within. Then she spoke Bramji's Clarity, though Gern did not understand the arcane language. He expected something to happen, or for Lu to attack Evalyn, but instead she stood her ground and scrutinized the courtyard.