The Princess and the Pod

He reluctantly shook his head.

"She's a royal," he said. "A commoner who takes pleasure with a royal against her will is put to death and disgraced. It's been the law of the world for a thousand years. Only another royal can provide pleasure to her, and we have none here other than the ones encased in the Secondskin."

"But she would want it," Insala pleaded, her eyes glistening with tears. "She would want it so badly. Let me just lick her. I've serviced women before many times. We wouldn't tell her that it was me."

"Well, there is a way," Giana interjected suddenly, her eyes deep in thought. The group looked at her questioningly. "A commoner cannot force himself or herself upon a royal, but a royal can willingly accept sexual union with a commoner."

Rokal shook his head. "You know the implications of that. It'll never happen."

Giana shrugged. "I understand. The royal must renounce his or her royal title to the commoner. The royal becomes the commoner and the commoner becomes the royal. But does it matter in Honnie's case? She's a prisoner. She'll never go home again. Her country likely won't survive the war anyway."

Rokal knew his history and he knew Honnie's pride. "Even as a prisoner, Honnie wouldn't give up that title. It's the only possession she has, even if it's useless to her now. And voluntarily giving up a crown has only happened twice in the past thousand years."

"But it has happened."

Insala had a pleading tone. "You don't know what she's going through."

"It would be unjust," Rokal argued. "Honnie is in distress. Even if she consents, it would be under duress. That would be the same thing as being forced."

For a long moment, everyone was silent.

"Unless..." Rokal adjusted his penis inside his armored breeches, his mind racing. "Giana, dispatch a rider as quickly as possible to the capital with a request. We need a Scribe on hand."

****

Two days later, they reached a milestone. Honnie's legs were slowly emerging from the living stone, and finally, with a flourish, one of the soldiers managed to pull away a large chunk of the thick gel that was wedged between her thighs. Suddenly emerging from the stonelike substance in front of them, Honnie's small tight vulva twitched, wet with desire. Her upper body was still imbedded, but her legs, hanging down vertically now as the orb continued to grow, were suddenly free to move, and she began kicking them, flailing as if to gain a foothold. Her feet could not touch the ground given the orb's growth.

"That's got to feel good," Giana said, watching the slim legs kick. The captain had been helping with the quarrying, freeing up Honnie's thighs and lower gluteus muscles.

Honnie's thighs pressed together, rubbing against one another.

"What's she doing?" Rokal asked.

"She's trying to rub herself. We have to help!" Insala quickly jumped to the fore, pushing herself between Honnie's legs. Her fingers on one hand spread Honnie's ass cheeks and the other hand moved in toward her vulva.

"No!" Giana grabbed the woman and pulled her back. "She's royalty. You can't touch her! The two struggled briefly, but Giana was built for war and Insala was built for sex. The concubine struggled in the guard's arms as she was pulled away.

"Help her!" she called, her eyes locked in the small humping hips.

Rokal stood, his fists clenched at his sides as he watched the scene. "Only royalty," he whispered to himself. "Or she shall lose her crown." He knew that it was the only thing she truly owned, the only link to her past glories.

He stepped forward, crouching down to peer at the captive princess's pussy. It was glistening, and her clit was swollen and red, standing out from its hood. She had a nice strip of dark hair on her mound that faded to hairless lips, and he could practically feel her heat. He sensed his cock rising, and he desperately wanted to touch her, to ease both her suffering and his desire. Only his soldier's discipline gave him the strength to hold off. "If a commoner forces himself upon her, the penalty is death," he murmured. "But if a commoner pleasures her with her approval, then that person will take her royal title."

Rokal stood. "On order of death," he ordered ruefully, "no one is to bring her pleasure until the Scribe arrives. And we will stop the extraction process until then as well."

The work party audibly gasped.

"Oh, sir, no! That's cruel!" Insala flirted with the risk of arguing with a general of the army, but Rokal understood and tolerated the disrespect.

"I'm acting in the best interests of the kingdom."

Giana looked as if she was questioning him, but he gave her a glare that stopped short any criticism. "She is not to be pleasured and all work is to be stopped. Do you understand?"

"Yes, General."

Rokal turned on his heel and strode back to his tent, his jaw clenched and his heart heavy.

****

Scribes were mysterious people. They were tall and wraithlike in appearance, golden-skinned and gaunt in their slimness. Their features were not of any known race, as they were a landless civilization that dwelt within other civilizations, knowing no borders. They existed in small numbers across the known world, and were unquestioned in their objectivity and ethics. If a scribe wrote something, it was known to be the absolute truth, so they were the official worldwide recorders of treaties, royal orders, and world history.

This particular scribe was a female. She wore a long burnished black robe with a hood, and her electric blue hair spilled down onto her collarbones. It had taken two days to get the rider to the capital and then bring her back on a fleet horse, but Rokal's use of a secret emergency code had given the request top priority.

She flowed into Rokal's command tent, graceful and quiet, as he was dressing for the day. "You requested a scribe," she said softly. "I am Sonnsoe."

"You're here!" Rokal greeted her with a bow. He was involved in enough high-level dealings that he knew the peculiar ways of the Scribes, and he was adept at interactions with them. "Let me tell you the situation."

He quickly explained the problem, then took Sonnsoe out to the orb. The Scribe seemed unperturbed by the pair of legs that jutted from the giant green orb, the slim ankles now tied and spread wide to poles on either side to ease the weight on Honnie's lower back. Honnie's wet pussy was clearly visible, her hips humping nonstop, pushing against air to no avail, her small and pert butt muscles flexing rhythmically. Insala stood by, her face glowering at the world.

"Insala, teach our Scribe to communicate with Princess Honnie. Sonnsoe, please inform the princess that there are no royals present to help quench her fires, and we are still many days from freeing her. The only way to help her is if she voluntarily assents to yield her royal crown for sexual pleasure. If she does, then we can lessen her discomfort during the next several days of removing her from this hellish creature. It is completely optional and is her choice alone."

"I will do so."

Rokal took a deep breath, understanding the impact of his next words. "And inform her that if she consents, she will yield her crown to General Rokal. As the senior officer of this camp, it is I who should take the throne of the Lainian Kingdom."

As if sound suddenly ceased to exist, the shocked silence reverberated through the group. Rokal looked, left, then right, at the men and women under his command. "I have no choice in the matter," he explained tersely. "I'm the senior official here. Now Insala, do your job and train the scribe."

Insala nodded, relief in her voice. "Okay, but someone will have to hold her foot still. She's wiggling too much for me to hold it and write."

Giana and Breen stepped forward and held Honnie's leg so that Insala could begin tracing letters, showing the Scribe how it was done. Rokal stared at the scene for a moment, avoided the gaze of his troops, and then retreated outside the circle.

Several hours later, the Scribe entered Rokal's tent as he finished dinner. The mysterious woman nodded and provided Rokal with the answer he sought. "Princess Honnie of the Lainian Kingdom has agreed to yield her crown in exchange for sexual pleasures," the woman reported. "She consents to be pleasured by General Rokal."

It was a short walk to the orb, though the scribe would later document it as a trot. In moments, Rokal stood at the orb, staring at the shapely ass and finger-tight pussy that honor had denied him for so long. Grinning in anticipation, he shed his leathers, nuzzling his erect cock against the trapped hips in the stone. He allowed himself a moment to stroke it, to feel the softness of the lips, the slickness of the juices, before he turned to address his troops, his cock at full mast. "As a soldier of the kingdom," he announced, reciting his sacred military oath, "I pledge to serve the people in any manner that serves their needs. I will take any and all measures to help the kingdom and provide assistance to its subjects. This is my sacred oath as a soldier and I shall now fulfill my duty." Winking at Giana with an apologetic shrug, he unceremoniously pushed his penis balls deep into Honnie's hot and needy pussy.

The legends were true. Lainians had extraordinarily tight pussies. The disembodied vulva clamped onto him with the strength of intense desperation, and when he pressed his thumb into her ass it too clamped on him, pulsing and trying to pull him in. It was all over in minutes. He pumped energetically into her, not stopping or slowing after his emanations began, thrusting until every drop had been released from him. He rested a moment and pulled out, though the pussy clung to him in continued need as he withdrew.

"Ladies and gentlemen, meet the new crown prince of the Lainian Empire." He caressed the trapped ass that had started moving again, the need once again rising. "She's a commoner now, so let's set up a rotation to keep satisfying this horny little girlservant. Captain Giana, as captain of the guard, I assign you to take the next shift."

His brunette captain twisted her lip at him as she approached. "You realize that I'm not into women, right?" she said in a low voice.

He grinned at her and responded in the same low voice. "You realize that I'm a general, right? And I remember our conversation earlier about your feelings for the lovely princesses. So lick Miss Honnie, finger fuck her, whatever you wish as long as you satisfy her. And when you get bored, get a rotation started." He paused for a moment. "Women only. My cock shall be the only male seed that despoils her. I need to go back to my tent and think about my new royal status and my new celibacy requirement."

Giana offered him a sarcastic grin, but she was a good soldier and he sensed that she did not truly resent the order. The captain got onto her knees and pushed her fingers into Honnie's exposed vagina. She began thrusting and pumping, the sounds of wetness a testament to her work. "Untie her ankles," she told Insala. "I want to watch her kick."

As Prince Rokal walked away, his loyal captain buried her face between the thrashing legs.

****

There's a good side and a bad side to every problem, Rokal realized.

On the bright side, two weeks of inactivity meant that his troops and horses were well rested. The work teams continued to excavate the women from the Secondskin, and they were making steady progress. Honnie was now free up to the bottom of her rib cage, and Zeeta was now free up to her knees. The snow-white blonde's lower legs were now kicking, one above the other since she was trapped while lying on her side.

But the downsides were also evident. First and foremost, Rokal was now royalty, the newly proclaimed Prince of the Lainian Kingdom. While that seemed good in theory, the practical implications was that there were no other royals to pursue sexual union with. At the risk of losing his title, he could not bury his cock in Honnie's shimmering tightness any more, and he could certainly not take union with the camp concubines that he typically enjoyed nightly. He was left with only his own hand, and it was a particularly cruel limitation in the current camp environment.

As he walked through the camp, the sounds of sex were emanating from seemingly every tent. Honnie's plight, and the necessary pleasuring of her, was obviously an event of great interest in the camp, and the male soldiers had begun wondering openly why they were not allowed to assist the needy woman with their willing cocks. Rokal's order that she be only pleasured by the females in the camp had no logic behind it, or at least no logic that Rokal could explain publicly. So he had opened up his private treasury and funded the concubines for a week of unlimited service to the soldiers of the camp. It was costing him a fortune, but the camp's morale was soaring and no man was sharing in Honnie's pleasures.

And here he was, walking with a spear-straight cock and no place to put it.

He approached the Secondskin area to assess the process. Brawny men were steadily working the Secondskin, mining it slowly and painstakingly to avoid injuring the creature's prey. Honnie's entire lower body and abdomen were now free, washed and clean, though her upper body was still firmly imbedded, as well as her arms, which had been positioned on Sela's ass when they were encased. Between Honnie's legs, a young blonde concubine, a pretty peasant girl that Rokal knew to have a skilled tongue, was working orally on the dark pink area between Honnie's quivering thighs. His cock pulsed at the sight.

And there, to Honnie's right, the two lower legs of Zeeta now flexed and flailed, her ankles tied with ropes to support them.

Giana, the official rescue commander of the Secondskin area, saw Rokal's approach and came to brief him.

"Good progress, sir," she reported. "You see the two servant girls, and we're making steady progress."

"Excellent. And it looks like Zeeta is doing well?"

"Yes. She's a tough one. We always knew that about those ice girls. Insala has been communicating with her, and she's bearing her ordeal well."

Rokal nodded with satisfaction. He looked forward to seeing more of the blonde's body as she was unsheathed.

"Also...", Giana shrugged noncommittally.

"What is it?"

"If you look closely, you'll also see that the sole of Princess Sela's foot is now exposed to the air."

"Oh," Rokal replied hollowly. That had been the other advantage of the past two weeks. He had had no need to listen to the demands, insults, and threats of that damned princess.

Rokal glanced sidelong at Giana. "I guess our peace and quiet was destined to end at some point, eh?".

Giana made sure that no one could hear her. She pressed close to Rokal, so close that the most womanly curve of her leather armor touched his arm. "If the slut hadn't had her legs spread so wide, we'd already have her out to the ankles."

Rokal and his captain burst into inappropriate laughter.

He looked at Zeeta's lovely legs. "Any chance that we can maybe concentrate on Zeeta once we get Honnie free?" he asked.

Giana smiled fiendishly. "That's the plan." Then her smile turned to seriousness. "You know that Princess Sela will likely have us all killed once she's freed. She won't want stories of this being told."

"There's a chance of that, yes."

"I'll say it again, just between you and me. No one in the camp would say a word if she just never got out, Rokal. You know that. Everyone is worried."

Rokal sighed as he stared at Honnie's slim body, quaking under what was apparently another of her countless orgasms. He looked at his captain. "We don't know that. It's not only soldiers in the camp, you know. There are civilians who might have different motives. And regardless, we are soldiers of the realm. We do not commit murder, and particularly not regicide."

"Even if it likely means our own death? And the ruin of the kingdom? The future of the realm is in your hands, Rokal, and we know what this woman will do if she takes the crown."

"I do."

"I don't like it any more than you do. But she's been in there for two weeks now. It won't take much to finish her off. Or ..." she hesitated. "If someone happened to pour some candle wax down her air hole in the middle of the night, then we could continue operations as normal and we'd just find a body at the end."

Rokal was shocked at the suggestion. "You've really been thinking about this, haven't you?"

"And you haven't?"

Rokal's eyes looked to the ground, at the boots of his loyal captain. Then up, where their eyes met. "I'd be lying if I said I didn't. But I cannot be a murderer."

The words shook Giana. She looked at the ground herself and slowly shook her head. "Nor can I. I apologize, General. My mind went to a dark place. We are soldiers of the realm, and if we behave like criminals, then what is left?"

Rokal nodded and placed a hand on her shoulder. "I have faith that the answer will present itself."

****

Sela's world changed without warning. One minute she was trapped in her perpetual hell, her entire body shuddering in unquenched desire, her screams of passion unheard, her body entombed in a selfish stone lover of unspeakable cruelty. Blind, deaf, mute, and motionless, she lived in a womb on the constant precipice of orgasm, her world unbroken by any other sensation or thought. Time had lost all meaning, but it felt as if she was trapped in eternity here.

And then suddenly, without warning, something happened. It was subtle, a pinprick against the sensory onslaught that assailed her, but ... it was different.

A breeze on the sole of her left foot, a subtle movement of air currents. Then a touch. A touch from a human being.

They were coming to get her, to release her from this living hell. Through her fog of sexual daze, her anger rose. How dare they let this happen.

****

"She's almost ready, sir."

Breen waited excitedly while Rokal laced up his boots. "Have you seen her?" Rokal asked. He grinned. "The good parts, I mean."

Breen grinned in the manner of all men when discussing a woman's good parts. "Not yet, sir. But they were only minutes away, so they sent me to fetch you."

"Well, this should be good, then."

The two men walked briskly from Rokal's tent to the Secondskin area. The first thing that Rokal noticed, of course, was Honnie. The petite princess was only a day or two from release. She was standing now, bent forward at the waist, assisted in her posture by a framework that supported her weakened body. She was free up to her neck, with only her head and her arms still imprisoned, as if she were in a pillory. Her body was remarkably clean, having been gently scrubbed of the beast's sticky gel. Two concubines were servicing her at the moment. The concubine underneath her, suckling on her dangling pert breasts and fingering her steadily between her legs, was an attractive and busty brunette who had seen Rokal's bed numerous times in the past. The other, a lithe dark-skinned beauty from the Southern Isles, was behind her, stroking her tan ass and ... Rokal had to look twice to confirm ... licking her anus? His cock twitched at the sight, but Honnie was off limits. He was royalty now and she but a mere commoner, so he could not touch her without losing his royal title.

Nonetheless, he paused for a moment to watch the progress, Honnie's overwrought and exhausted body quivered and convulsed as she orgasmed for the thousandth time. The concubines paused and spoke for a moment, then went back to work. Meanwhile, strong soldiers continued to carefully chip away at the material that encased her throat and neck and elbows.

On either side of her, framing the image, were two slim and attractive legs. Freeing Princess Honnie necessarily meant freeing up Princess Sela, and her legs were now open to the air past the knee to mid-thigh, the rest of her body still encased. The princess's ankles were tied to poles to support them, but otherwise she was receiving no attention since her genitals were not yet available. He would deal with that duty later.