The Druid and the Igniad Pt. 06

"The best dignity you can hope for is to accept your fate," Vorris said. Lu ran at her, but Vorris snapped her fingers.

At the sound, Lu felt herself pulled toward the center of the chamber. She tried to brace herself against it, but her armor carried her along, and all the crystals in the room glowed violet. The force pulled at the metal that encased her, and its strength increased the closer to the center she got.

Lu became suspended in the air at the center, hovering between the floor and ceiling. Lu struggled against the pulling force, but her arms and legs splayed out. Vorris sat down, and a throne of obsidian scales grew out of the floor to meet her. She crossed her legs, and the throne rose up until she was directly in front of Lu.

"I would take your body for my own if I could, dear." Vorris said, appraising her catch.

"Damn you!" Lu spat. "What's wrong with the body you have?"

Vorris laughed, the sound echoing in the chamber. She took a breath, flicked her tail into her hands, then said: "I have become quite fond of the way I was remade, but alas, this body comes with certain...attachments. I cannot attain mastery over the world if I do not have mastery over myself."

Lu took a breath, and prepared to say the name Labolas had told her. Before she could utter a sound, however, Vorris flicked a gesture with her hand and said: "Zichrya." Lu found her throat voiceless, and no matter how much air she pushed past her lips, they were silent. Vorris reached out and placed her hand over Lu's pelvic armor, feeling the contour of the iron, then following the seams at the waist and thighs with her fingers.

"Mastery is something you lack, my dear," Vorris chided. "In this focusing chamber, I can break any enchantment, shape any spell. Nulut...aem...mina."

Where Vorris touched the iron, it groaned and turned red hot. Vorris continued chanting under her breath, stringing together words in the ancient tongue. The heat crept over the armor, and though it could not harm Lu's skin, it glowed hotter and began to melt the metal. Lu tried to sound out a counter-spell, but the magic would not work if it could not be heard, and Lu tensed her rear as she felt the molten iron drip from her cheeks and dribble down her thighs.

Her armor languidly smeared away from her pelvis in all directions, still pulled by the magic that imprisoned her, until it dripped upward from her nipples. The embedded crystal shard at her solar plexus glowed brightly, absorbing the magic and letting the metal cool. What remained of the breastplate framed her breasts, but exposed her below the nipples. Below, the crystals at Lu's legs stopped the armor from melting past mid-thigh, but only her pelvic crystal remained to protect her core.

"Among things I have mastery over," Vorris said, "my favorite is sex magic, and the most energy I ever got from it was with you, my dear. I'm going to use your own natural magic to imprison you here until the time is right to sacrifice you to Labolas."

Lu tried to cry out, but she could not find her voice. She tried to remain calm, and silently repeated a mantra in her mind, gathering her strength. Vorris grabbed Lu's crystal protector, and it sparked at her touch, repelling her hand.

"It's fiercely loyal," Vorris mused. "Seems it needs some persuasion."

Vorris tucked her legs up, then stood on her throne, coming eye to eye with Lu. She came very close, almost close enough for Lu to bite her, and gazed into Lu's eyes with admiration and dire intentions.

Lu felt the brush of the thin fabric across her nipples, and she channeled her elemental power into her skin. The red dress caught fire and blazed into wispy motes of ash, fluttering into nothingness and leaving Vorris bare. Red glyphs were tattooed on the smooth skin around her pink nether lips, and she caressed them with her fingers, smiling to let Lu know that she was not upset in the slightest about losing her dress. Vorris plucked a crystal from her headdress, then held it between her legs, whispering a secret incantation.

Vorris began to rub the crystal back and forth along her slit, then pushed it up inside of her. Vorris gasped in sudden pleasure, and removed her finger. Lu's eyes widened as she saw the crystal emerge, growing into the shape of a man's erection. Vorris smiled with arousal as the crystal phallus pushed itself out of her sex and curved up, statuesque in its sculpted perfection.

Vorris stepped onto a shelf of obsidian that shot out from the edge of her throne, and caressed Lu's exposed skin with admiring hands. She pressed the tip of the phallus against Lu's glowing pelvic protector, which sparked violet at the touch, but the magic reverberated into the courting penetrator, and vibrations thrummed against Lu's sex.

Lu tried to resist, but Vorris sang spells of lust under her breath, and she cupped her milky breasts, lifting them to rub her excited pink nipples against Lu's purple ones. Vorris' tail stroked between Lu's legs and nudged up between her cheeks, wriggling rhythmically. Lu let out a silent cry of defiance, and tried to maintain her control, but she began to grow wet, despite herself.

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

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 the return-swing. He 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 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 dark horns crowning their foreheads. They wore strips of silver silk ribbons woven together like basketry into dresses from a 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 backwards, 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 blonde hair away 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 ribbon-ropes.

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 Vorris 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 seed-giver, then spread it with their fingers.

"Mistress Vorris 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 rubbed the fluid against her already wet 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 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 slide 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 fed him to her enveloping sheath.

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

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. The crystal clattered on the floor and came to a shuddering rest.

"All mine," Vorris said with a smokey smile.

The crystal phallus sparkled with power, and touched Lu at her smooth mound, then slid down and forward 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 wet, her channel stretched easily for the perfectly shaped instrument which protruded from Vorris' hugging nether lips.

Entering Lu clearly gave Vorris great pleasure as the phallic sculpture pushed back against her inner walls. 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 Vorris 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 without sound as Vorris started sliding in and out of her, each stroke enrapturing her further. Vorris 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 slickly while Isiri's blonde head 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 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 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 Vorris, but on impulse she chose instead to wrap her arms and legs around her rival, tackling her back against the elevated throne.

Vorris 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 Vorris. 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 like her pelvic crystal. Lu rocked her hips and turned it against Vorris, and it slid into her with renewed purpose. Vorris 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 slightly and reveling in the anticipation of the arriving moment, when suddenly, Labolas appeared behind and threw her off Gern, right before he erupted inside her.

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?