The Feldavian Rift Pt. 01

Welcome readers, this story contains some sexual content, but mostly acts as an introductory piece. Content warnings for non-consent/reluctance, and nonhuman (fiends/demons). Enjoy!

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"That close to the rift? Were they insane!?" Beladnes burst out. The elderly priest at the centre of the small stone room frowned at the interruption. "Yes, apprentice Beladnes, that close to the rift. All progress comes with risk, how else do you think the inner towers were built?"

Beladnes straightened his shirt-collar and focused on the supplies he was packing. A dash of wormroot, an extra vial of holy water, a dozen silver bolts, and of course the standard pack of herbs and spices any field abjurer carried with them. The priest resumed his briefing. "The last message from the camp was sent 2 days ago, which means they're one day late. Our task is simple, check in with the expedition company, and, most likely, reinforce the importance of regular reports with the captain there. We'll be back to our Tower in 3 days."

Another younger apprentice spoke up from the corner of the room, where they were packing the poisons and potions of their own trade. "Sir Fallor, if messengers aren't getting through, does that mean the rift might be active again?"

The elderly priest flinched at the young woman's question. "Unlikely", he grunted. "You shouldn't worry Syria, it's been a century since anything came through."

Beladnes noticed Syria's grip on her bag tighten for a moment, before she continue "But Sir, I heard stories of creatures slipping past the Tow-"

"Nonsense!" scoffed Fallor, "mere rumours, if there was ever such a sighting, the little beast would be captured and brought back to a Tower as proof... No, we mustn't concern ourselves with the rumours of drunken peasants, continue your preparations Syria, our escorts will be with us momentarily.".

As if on Cue, two armoured figures appeared through the single stone doorway. The first, a dark haired man twirling a grass-stalk between his teeth, carried a heavy squareshield and several javelins. The second, a woman wearing much bulkier plate, carrying a round shield and a long handled hammer. Each one's armour bore the insignia of their sponsoring city-state, the man was from Hellite, the woman from Angmor. Beladnes smiled to himself, two cities known to have good relations. With any luck they could avoid the petty rivalries that had marred his earlier training patrols.

The priest smiled warmly as he welcomed them, "Ah, wonderful! Trooper Wilson, always good to have your throwing arm for wild game, and Sister Adara, no bandits will trouble us if they see you with us." Trooper Wilson laughed "I've told you a hundred times old man, call me Finn, they don't pay me well enough for a family name."

"Don't listen to him boss, Hellite pays its soldiers far too well" joked Sister Adara. They each took turns introducing themselves to the two apprentices in the room. Beladnes found Finn's gregarious manner quite charming, and he lived up to the reputation held by the Helletians. But with Sister Adara, the conversation was all business. Beladnes explained his speciality, in protection magicks, and walked through what he could do in a pinch, and of course he couldn't help boasting about some of the more elaborate rituals he had trained to perform, including his few (successful, as Beladnes added) efforts to bolster the Tower's energies alongside it's other more experienced abjurers. In return, Sister Adara poked and prodded at the flimsy leather armour Beladnes had been provided with. "Tell me, boy, do they make you provide your own armour where you're from?" Beladnes winced, "Uh... no. I was provided with scale mail from the city armoury but... it was too... uncomfortable."

Sister Adara shrugged, seeming satisfied with the vague answer. Beladnes watched passively as the tall figure of the Sister effortlessly strode across the room, despite wearing what must have been 200lbs of steel, and introduced herself to Syria, who was more than excited to show off her collection of daggers and hunting traps strapped to her thick leather cuirass.

Ten minutes passed in preparation and near silence as Sir Fallor finished his own preparations, chanting in a low hum before standing. "It's time to leave, the sun rises."

***

The trail was rough, and grew rougher after the third hour's travelling. Very few people travelled inwards from the Inner Towers. The odd scout. The odd messenger, and apparently a few weeks ago, a small convoy of wagons and men, on an expedition to study the rift more closely. The sun struggled to break through the thick canopy, covering the forest floor in a dull orange and green glow.

They followed the faded ruts of wagons as they wound their way among the dense tree trunks. Syria pacing a dozen yards ahead, studying the trail. Trooper Wilson followed closely, sipping from a hip flask, but otherwise seeming fully alert. Sir Fallor rode in the centre, on one of the few horses sturdy enough to be ridden this far into the woods. Beladnes walked alongside him, nervously practicing his spell gestures as he watched the shadowy undergrowth around them. Sister Adara followed behind the party, looking perfectly calm as if she were out for a morning stroll in the city park.

Beladnes whispered to his mentor, "What were they studying?"

"Speak up Beladnes! There's no beast here we can't handle between the five of us!"

"I said, what were they studying, to go so close to the rift?"

"Oh, all the usual stuff I'm sure," Fallor scoffed, "The fools in the cities didn't live to see the first war, and so they think the fiends' powers and... proclivities can be harnessed for their own advantage. When a man has a certain amount of power I suppose they always want to acquire more... It seems that's one thing the fiends have in common with us."

"Surely they must have realised the danger though, in poking around with that thing. I mean, one company of men is frankly nothing against a lesser fiend, nevermind anything that might have a name."

"The cities have mostly forgotten the meanings of fiend-names. They send their best and brightest to preserve the Towers because it buys them status, not because they understand what lies on the other side of it."

"So, the expedition they sent, are they... prepared?"

"I am assured that they all wear the finest protective charms that the cities could provide, and that they took care to avoid too much similarity in sexual orientations... though they declined my suggestion to dissolve the soldiers' reproductive systems."

Trooper Wilson scoffed back "As any right-minded humanoid would, honestly I know we should be cautious but mutilating yourselves with magic, just in the hope it might protect you from being enchanted and carried away through the rift? If you ask me that's superstition run amok!"

The elderly priest chuckled "Well, you may be right my friend, but if you've spent as long as I have poring over the first war's writings, you might care for a little superstition as well."

"Not in this lifetime." Wilson retorted.

Everyone stopped in their tracks, seeing Syria frozen still at the front, palm raised flat. Beladnes whispered a simple blade ward spell under his breath, and tapped his mentor's waist to activate it. Syria was kneeling, one hand on her belt, the other on the ground.

Beladnes followed her eyeline to see what she was looking at. A broken thicket to one side of the path suggested something large had moved through here. Syria jogged back to the group and whispered, "Horse tracks, it was running back towards the Tower when it broke off the trail there. If it had a rider they would have been knocked off travelling through that thicket."

Fallor nodded, "Very well, the horse will find its way home, we should press on, perhaps the messenger was dismounted and injured on the trail."

Everyone nodded, before resuming their positions and continuing down the trail. For a moment, Beladnes thought he saw the distinctive pink glow of the rift up ahead, but it faded too quickly to tell if it was real or just his imagination.

***

An hour later, the Rift's corruptive influence started to show itself. At first, it was just the odd plant, deformed by some odd chance into an obscene approximation of a human body. It was subtle at first, but as they moved ahead, the shapes became clearer, full hips, long legs, an impossibly clear definition for any natural growth.

Beladnes was determined to ignore the strange display, hoping instead to prove his stoicism for future tasks. He noticed that Trooper Wilson had no such compunctions, and was jokingly pointing out the more accurate representations with his javelin, testing their composition with the butt, and then the blade.

Beladnes grimaced as one particularly swollen plant, burst open as Wilson's javelin cut it's skin, spilling a full quart of a deep amber fluid into the soil, releasing a pungent, but not unpleasant earthy smell. Syria had a scroll out, scrawling notes or sketches on it each time they encountered a new species being transformed by the Rift. She excitedly muttered to herself before finally conceding "no wonder they wanted to do research out here, have you seen these things?"

"Indeed," replied Fallor from his saddle, "but please Syria do keep one eye on the trail so that we don't miss our injured rider."

Suitably admonished, Syria folded the scroll into a pocket and tried to focus on reading the trail ahead.

***

Another hour passed, as the trees and foliage grew thicker around them, and the daylight struggled harder to push its way through the lush green canopy overhead. Loose vines cast long shadows in the dust around them, as Beladnes panted from the effort of keeping up their rather fast pace. He looked around at his companions. The elderly priest, being on horseback, seemed unfazed by their unusual surroundings, he kept an even watch in all directions from his vantage point. Trooper Wilson had seemingly become bored of poking the flora, (which by now was a rich tapestry of false sexual organs and curved humanoid forms), and had instead taken to winding a white-flowered vine around each of his javelins in turn. Syria had pulled out her parchment again, but seemed perfectly capable of maintaining the pace anyway. At the rear, Sister Adara seemed a little red in the face, but hadn't fallen behind at all so she must have been coping.

Beladnes sighed, before finally admitting defeat. "Sir Fallor, can I ask that we take a few minutes to rest, I could do with stopping to eat."

"Hmm, very well, we're only an hour or so from camp, so no need to press on to exhaustion."

The others all seemed glad for the break anyway, and set down their travelling packs in a pile at the edge of the trail. Sister Adara stretched, setting her shield down, "I'll stand watch if you all wish to eat, or if Finn here needs more time to make his daisy chains." Wilson put on a show of mock outrage as he answered her jab, "Well I never! How dare you suggest that I am anything but a rugged, vicious killer!". He brandished a floral-covered Javelin at Sister Adara.

Beladnes tenatively joined in, "Hey, take it easy 'killer', we didn't come out here looking for trouble!"

A soft, lilting voice spoke from the undergrowth behind Beladnes "What are you looking for, then?".

Beladnes and the others all jumped and scrambled away from the source of the noise, metal scraping as weapons were drawn and pointed off the trail.

Sir Fallor was the first to speak: "Fae or Fiend, show yourself, we are armed!"

There was a long pause, Beladnes cast glances either side of him, to see the others around him looked just as unsure as he felt.

The voice responded, from a slightly different position, "Just like that? You want the big reveal? No... foreplay?"

Beladnes gulped down a mouthful of heavy air, Fae didn't typically enter the area within the Towers, the repulsive energies radiating from the towers caused them pain. Beladnes worked through the problem, this was either an Unseelie Fae avoiding capture by its peers or... something worse.

Sir Fallor cleared his throat, "By the authority of the Holy Order of the Towers, and the guild of abjurers of the City States, I order you to show yourself!"

The voice responded from above them, somewhere in the canopy. Syria had drawn a small crossbow and was sweeping it towards the many branches above. "Ooh they sound important, I've never heard of them, can you take me there? Pretty please?"

Trooper Wilson, Finn, barked up into the trees "We'll take you wherever you want to go once you show yourself!"

There was a rippling laugh from above, that sent a chill down Beladnes' spine. The voice resumed, almost musically, "Oh, such a pretty boy holding his stick, making a promise to a girl he might regret, and twisting flowers around it so he won't forget, the day he met, a real impette!"

With that last word, a lithe figure burst out of the canopy above them, the silhouette of wide hips, a thin waist, and a forked tail trailing behind. Beladnes gasped and took a step back, trying to track it's trajectory. The figure approached deceptively fast, as if it was far closer than it looked, before suddenly the woman landed gracefully in a crouching position besides Wilson, pausing for just a beat before standing to a full height of... barely 3 feet? Beladnes almost laughed at the juxtaposition. It was such a strange sight, this otherwise normally proportioned adult woman, standing barely the height of Wilson's waist. Beladnes had met halflings before, but they were almost 'designed' to look small. This woman, dressed only in slick purple lingerie, as Beladnes now noticed, seemed like she was built to be a statuesque 6ft tall, but had perhaps been magically shrunk?

As the shock faded, and Belnades finally took in the sight of the small bat-like wings and gently swaying tail, alarm bells began sounding in his head, the captions in his textbooks flashing in his mind: Fiend.

Wilson jumped back from the short woman beside him, brandishing his flowered weapon at the newcomer. Sir Fallor had drawn a silver mace from his saddle, as his voice boomed out a brief incantation: "Dolum Fah Ignes Invokarum!" A wave of bright white light burst from Sir Fallor's mace, and blanketed the clearing, seeming almost to cling to the outlines of the five of them. He spoke more evenly "Stay your weapons friends, it's an imp, and it cannot harm us now, Trooper Wilson, bring some rope, bind it's hands."

The imp chuckled and looked up first at Fallor, then at Wilson, "Well if I'd known you were looking to have some fun, I would have come straight out, pretty boy!" Wilson looked flustered but dutifully dashed to the packs to grab some rope.

She cocked her hip to the side, folding her arms and looked around at the group of them, all pointing their various weapons at her. Beladnes, not having any serious weapon, had left his dagger sheathed, but had almost instinctively conjured a mote of flame in his palm, holding it menacingly before the short woman as she spoke. "The old geezer is right you know, with a spell that powerful, I couldn't hope to hurt you. By the way, it's hardly fair to go waltzing around out here with someone as powerful as him here! but I am interested in your answer..."

Belnades looked around at the others, before speaking, "To which question?".

The imp fixed him with a hungry stare, her lips curling in a smirk to reveal the tip of two small fangs "Oh, were you hoping my offer to your friend was an open one?"

"N...No, no no" Belnades stammered.

Sister Adara sighed loudly, "it wants to know what we're doing out here."

"She" the imp corrected her.

"In your current form perhaps" Adara retorted.

"Oh, you know your fiends! Such a cute, clever girl!" the imp said, mockingly clasping her hands together and tilting her head against them.

Adara took a step forward, raising her hammer threateningly at the imp. "Don't try any of your funny business on me, demon, or- "

"Adara!" Fallor interrupted, "Calm yourself, we shalln't be telling it our business here, nor do we need to answer any other questions it may have."

The short woman huffed, "You're no fun."

Wilson returned with a short length of rope and stood over the imp, as she looked up at him, arms folded, "Do you even know how to use that pretty boy? Because I'd be happy to show you..." Wilson ignored her taunt, but seemed hesitant to get too close. He turned to Beladnes, "Uh, a little help, just to make sure she stays still?"

"It" corrected Adara from behind them.

Beladnes nodded and knelt down on one knee in front of the small woman. He tried to look threatening, as he held the mote of flame up right in front of her smirking face and snuffed it out in his fist. She grinned and pretended to blow on his hand, as if blowing out the flame herself. He couldn't quite suppress a smirk at the wit in that gesture, before growling out "Hands forward." She leaned forward quickly and stretched her small arms out to rest on Beladnes knee. "Like this?" she asked, small hands tugging ever so slightly at his robes. Beladnes recoiled slightly, feeling her surprisingly hot breath on his face, then grabbed her thin arms gently, before holding them out above her head. Wilson knelt down at her side and began tying a surprisingly fine knot.

The imp seemed to be enjoying this too much, her tail wildly swinging and grasping around her legs as she seemed to slump in Beladnes' grip. He had to put more effort into holding her up as she moaned out to Wilson, "Oh pretty boy, when you promised to take me, I thought I'd at least have to ask, but no, you're all over me today!" Wilson was visibly blushing, and the imp could see it. He stammered out "Sh- shut up."

Beladnes tried to reinforce the instruction by gripping her arms more tightly, to the point where it should have hurt a little. To his surprise, she whipped her head around to face him, fixing him with another far too intimate stare, as she gasped out, "Oh but you, big strong man, you're my new favourite, keep squeeeeezing, pleaaase." Beladnes instinctively let go. He hadn't wanted to provoke that reaction, and the situation was uncomfortable enough as it was.

The imp collapsed to her knees, dragging the rope from Wilson's fingers. Legs splayed, back arched, she stretched her arms out in front of her, muscles straining as she tried to stretch out the tight bindings on her wrists. When the ropes refused to budge, she slumped down onto her back, a lazy smile across her face. Beladnes felt himself blushing as he realised her bound hands were between her legs, stroking herself through the laced lingerie, and hastily diverted his view from the erotic scene.

He looked around for guidance from his companions, to see Syria and Adara just staring, mouths slightly agape, Wilson's knuckles were white with the force of gripping his weapon, apparently using the vines as a short tether to keep it attached to his wrist. But Fallor, Fallor was drawing a symbol in the air beside him, occasionally glancing down to keep an eye on the imp. Beladnes recognised the pattern from his classes in enchantment, and looked expectantly at the imp. A moment later Fallor uttered the single word spell trigger "Somnos!" and the imp collapsed, motionless on the ground.

There was a momentary pause, before the imp's body went limp, and her eyes closed. Fallor was the first to break the silence, "Well done for keeping your nerves my fellow guardians. Finish those bindings, and wrap it's legs for good measure. We need to get this creature back to a tower. If it is what it looks like, we need to alert the city states."

Sister Adara stepped forward and kicked the imp lightly with her armoured boot, "There's no denying this, I sensed it trying to use their foul magicks whilst you two were...securing it. This is a fiend from beyond the Rift, no doubt looking for careless travellers to ensare." She pulled a small loop of wire from a pouch, snapped a short length off, and tied it around the short woman's wrist. "Iron, it inhibits shapeshifting", she added, matter-of-factly.