The Saga of Tallia the Unwilling Ch. 04

Disclaimer: Everyone is over eighteen. If you are not deeply into fantasy pulp fiction, gender fluidity and pansexuality, you are in the wrong place. This chapter features a depiction of non-consensual sexuality and, though it is stopped before it actually culminates, I realize this can be an issue for some. The author (despite the occasional jest in earlier chapters) takes rape very seriously. There will, from time to time, be discussions of nonconsensual sex in this tale as the story requires. But the sex that is described in loving, lurid detail throughout the Saga of Tallia the Unwilling will always be consensual. I fully realize what I'm writing here -- a tale of sexual fantasy adventure that hopefully thrills you, excites you and maybe even (from time to time) engages your brain. But I promise you this -- I am not EVER going to try to thrill or excite you with rape. For me that is a line too far.

BEHOLD! I, Thutmose-Neferkare, royal scribe, chief librarian and high priest of the divine Ra do bid you welcome to the fourth scroll in the on-going epic known as "The Saga of Tallia the Unwilling". It falls unto me to deliver most grave and tragic news regarding this scroll -- there is no explicit sex herein. Fear not, though my good readers. This be no so-called "filler story" here only to waste our time. There is still lots of violence and personal discovery ahead. Some of the violence and personal discovery even happens in the buff.

But just because there is no sex in this scroll, that does not mean this chapter is without its value. Know that we here at the Temple of Ra do not read these scrolls just for the hot gender fluid sex. I say thee nay! Verily, do we also enjoy rich character development and dramatic plot turns. Yes, we read these scrolls for the articles just as much the naughty bits. Suck it, ye varlets, if ye think this be not the truth!

Anyways, this tale also introduces us to our first non-human civilization, granted one that is largely ruined and lost. Deciding exactly how to translate the name of these inhuman beings into our native and most civilized tongue has been something of a controversy amongst my sub-priests. The most literally translation would be 'tien', literally the celestials of eastern mythologies, which include equally both gods and spirits. Some might also favor the world 'elf' from the folklore of the savage north. Lo, both of those doth carry loads of baggage even amongst our most learned readers.

So, we have instead gone with the term "the sidhe," a word born in the far isles beyond the borders of most modern knowledge. These tall, fair folk who dwell in underground strongholds seem closer to the intent of the author even if they belong to a mythology which, frankly, makes no damn sense. Why cannot the peoples of the north keep their tales focused on more sensible beings -- like people with animal heads, world-consuming god-snakes and crocodile-hippo-lions?

Also, we are told the word 'sidhe' is pronounced 'she' for absolutely no good reason. Lo, we can only blame the legendary strong drink of the northern tribes that is said to drive them mad for these most eccentric linguistic turns. But regardless, do not let the impenetrability of certain names or the lack of matters most lurid detract from your enjoyment of this scroll. For if you seek deep within, you will find much that is worthy. Oh, and this set us up for loads of sex in scroll five. So, keep steady thy course good and faithful reader! Your patience shall be rewarded and you shall have thy release but soon.

Yay, let it be written! Yay, let it be done!

Chapter Four: In Through the Backdoor

Sang awoke as per her custom with the first light of morning. She looked out of the cave mouth and was surprised that the rain had at last stopped. 'The rain spirits of this land are malicious indeed,' she mused, 'relenting only when we found shelter.' She drank a little water from her skin, cleaned herself and then left the cave -- quiet as a morning shadow.

She loved the early morning just as dawn was breaking. It was a peaceful time, quiet and serene. She had known so little of that in her life. She had been born an orphan in rough Denggang after all. Her father was probably a river pirate. Her mother was definitely a tavern girl who died early, likely from plague. Her memories of that time were few and she little valued them. Her future was going to be different. Lee Sang called the silent would soon be rich with wizard's gold and would be remembered for a thousand years.

She prowled outside the cave's entrance, familiarizing herself with the terrain. The thick and ubiquitous patches of bamboo served her well. There was ample cover all over this area. The mud was more annoying and she had to choose her steps carefully to avoid making tell-tale squishing sounds. But she'd traversed worse.

She even found a hutch of strange striped rabbits of a like she'd never seen before nibbling on wet morning grass. She bagged two with her silent arrows before the rest scattered. She stowed the brace in her game sack. 'A far better breakfast than boiled bones,' she thought. And then she found something in the dripping foliage that immediately made her speed back to the refuge where her companions likely still slumbered.

It was still barely an hour after dawn, when Sang crept back into the cave to discover her three companions thankfully alive but splayed out in the darkened cave, naked together in a pile of flesh and bedding, still very soundly asleep. The fire had also burned down to the last few resilient embers. She prodded Liandra gently and got nothing but a low, insensate moan.

'Ridiculous foreigners,' she thought, 'I could slit every throat in this cave with less effort than it took to bag the rabbits.' Still, she did take a moment to savor the shape of Tallia's ass which was on full display, framed wonderfully in white bear fur. The tall warrior woman had beautiful hips, and though obviously powerful and strong, the pale flesh seemed equally soft and supple. She did consider the most brief and lightest of touches. Tallia was deep asleep, after all. What would it harm?

'Fool,' she scolded herself, 'you are as mad as these drunken strangers.' She resisted and instead prodded Liandra once more and into wakefulness.

Sang said only one soft word, barely above a whisper, to the groggy priestess, "Patrols."

That word proved enough. Soon Liandra was awake and moments after that, everyone else as well. They quickly grabbed their clothing, their weaponry and their gear and prepared for a fight. Sang sat the cave's entrance, her bow ready and knocked, guarding the cadre as they quickly prepared for an attack. When moments past without the cave being stormed, they quietly followed Sang out into the grasslands. It was still miraculously not raining though the heavy grey clouds moving their way promised this to be a brief respite.

Sang's warning were soon proved not a lie. The band found a wide path through the nearby grass obviously recently trampled. Some of the tracks seemed like men wearing boots. But some of the tracks were stranger -- hooves and paws marched along side and amidst the shoe prints.

"They're using beasts," said Hilarius quietly.

"They are beasts," corrected Liandra. "Arion is a maker of monsters."

"Even his own warriors?" whispered Hilarius astonished.

"Any who dwell long in the company of the wizard are eventually changed by him," whispered Liandra. "Quiet now. Let's get closer to the fortress."

Sang silently nodded. She led them closer and closer, carefully keeping track of the patrol's trampled path. With the breaking of the rain, it became clear just how close the little monkey cave was to the fortress itself. It was only half a mile from the massive rise of stone, part of the small bamboo covered hills that surrounded the mount.

By mid-morning, they sheltered beneath that spire of grey stone and could see high above them the fortress of the wizard. The structure was imposing and, even shrouded in low grey rain clouds, dominated the landscape. A sheer wall of natural rock as tall as ten men led up to a wall built of darker scavenged stone another six men tall. The wall was stout and thick, though no great work of craftsmanship. That meant it might very well be vulnerable to powerful siege engines. But that mattered not at all to this little band. They had nothing but their own hands and their wits.

There was also at the back of the castle, away from its one gate -- a single large round tower. "That's where he'll be," said Liandra confidently. "The highest, more prominent and most luxurious part of this fortress. The wizard will want no doubt that he is the master of this place."

The fire had spoken truly -- there were three ways in. There was the front gate, which seemed a fool's errand to even approach without an army. There was some brief, hushed talk of ambushing a patrol and using deception, but that was soon dismissed. The wizard was clever. There would be watch words or signals and they would be quickly revealed for the trespassers and infiltrators they were.

They could scale the defensive wall. The large cracks made the ascent possible, but Liandra was honest in her uncertainty that she could make it and they no longer had any rope to pull her up. Also, there were sentries on the wall. Evading them during the climb would not be easy even at night. And once on the wall, they had no idea of the castle's interior layout. One mistake, one inopportune noise and that wall could easily turn into a grand battle, one they were certain to lose.

That left 'below where the stone walks'. They searched around quietly, circling the base of the fortress, ever watchful for the sentries on the walls and patrols on the ground. It again started to rain which now actually proved a blessing. Visibility was reduced again to almost nothing and the rain splattering on slate muffled the sound of their movements.

Still, their progress was slow. The base of the back of the fortress was mired in mud and tangled with undergrowth. Eventually, though, their slogging about was rewarded. They found a small break in the grey rock overgrown by briars. The thorns were long, hooked and hollow and Liandra worried aloud that this plant might sweat some natural toxin, so this route seemed at first impassable. Hilarius though proved agile and small enough to slide underneath the spinous growth and then carefully cut a narrow channel through the vicious bramble with a few swipes of his sharp knives. His method left the entrance open if you moved aside the bramble yet covered so that hopefully patrols would see no evidence of their passage.

They left the rain behind and entered quietly into the dark stone chambers beneath the wizard's fortress. This place invited no jests or friendly chatter. Nothing about this way seemed natural to the company. It seemed as if they were treading into a dark and alien domain.

They made a small and primitive camp right at the entrance. They figured with the sound of the rain and its grey veil, they might be able to quickly cook and prepare Sang's rabbits. The gander soup from the night before was long gone and it was near noon. Their long forced morning march had brought hunger back to the fore. Nothing elaborate was done. The rabbits were cleaned, cooked and grilled on stone as rapidly as could be managed. The fire was kept small for fear of being spotted. The lunch was not grand but welcome.

Liandra tried to cheer the party as they finished once more the last of their rations. "Arion has royal tastes. If we can slay him quickly and seize his lair, mark my words, we will find plenty of provisions to pillage as well as gold."

"Well then," jested Hilarius, "I should like to have this whole wizard-murder matter wrapped up by dinner."

Soon enough, it was time to face the darkness ahead. The crack quickly opened up into a wide passage of wet and living stone. They had no lantern or even proper torches, but Liandra did have a few candles of sealing wax in her medicine bag. These gave scant light but that proved enough in the absolute darkness of the subterranean realm beneath the fortress. The pathway wound downward into the earth for several hundred long steps. It was narrow, and in the dark they were constantly stooping and scraping elbows against the fractured rock. Its course was not straight but seemed instead almost a slow, steady downward spiral. It finally widened into a large gallery. Even the dancing, meager candlelight revealed the strange splendor of this place -- delicate chandeliers of fairy stone hung from the ceiling. Columns of weird reddish rock, wet and sheened with drip water, rose here and there, creating sunless labyrinths.

Tallia, Hilarius and Sang had never seen or even dreamed of such a place. "Gods on high and in hell, we have passed beyond the realms of men," whispered Tallia warily. "This wizard makes his home atop a portal into the halls of the gods of death."

But Liandra was once again quick with her reassurance. "Such caves are common in the deep places of the earth. There are grottos like this all along the coasts of my homeland and even beneath the Temple of Love. Follow me, my friends, and fear no darkness." Her companions offered no argument, following in her footsteps and the radiant nimbus that emerged from her brilliant beeswax candle. Certainly the thought of turning back alone into the deep darkness seemed mad and suicidal.

They had no idea of their route forward but as they travelled, they favored any passage that seemed to lead even vaguely up. Their ultimate destination, after all, was not the boundless deeps beneath the fortress -- it was a tower high above. But their sense as they traversed these galleries was that they were traveling atop a vast complex of subterranean chambers whose ultimate depth they could not guess. Tallia was sure, though she did not dare say it aloud, that these passages likely went all the way down to hell.

They wandered for hours in the dark. Their progress was slow for the stone was slick and their way forward uncertain. Still, they dared not stop for their supply of candles was precarious and no one wanted to be stranded here groping blind through the uttermost black. Fortunately Liandra's long tapers of sealing beeswax burned slow and the light, faint as it was, did not fail them.

They discovered at last a chamber of worked stone. The natural flowstone of the caverns melded into a style of stonework with which none of the company could claim familiarity. The stone was dark and covered in carvings, friezes and bizarre hieroglyphs of impenetrable meaning. There were figures everywhere on the rock engaged in unknowable practices but what truly worried everyone was that the figures did not seem entirely human.

These creatures were unnaturally thin and lithe in proportion and their skin, pale as ice, stood in stark contrast to the dark stone. The coloration could potentially be dismissed. It may have been just an artifact of time or the character of the stone or perhaps even a bizarre stylistic choice. But there was no mistaking the figure's strange ears, pointed like daggers, and especially their eyes that were often depicted burning like torches. Sang, when she saw the glyphs, muttered, "Huoyan".

"What does she mean?" asked Hilarius unable to hide his curiosity.

"A local legend," answered Liandra. "Huoyan means something like 'fire eyes'. They are the folk whose eyes burn like embers and who dwell in the deeps beneath the hills. They are reputed to be stealers of children and hoarders of gold. I've heard similar tales in my homeland, though only from travelers from the north come to pay their respect in the Temple. They spoke of the 'sidhe' -- an ancient people who dwelt underground since before the age of men. These travelers often wanted the Lord and Lady of Love to protect them from their charms and curses."

"Wonderful," said Hilarius, "I love learning about new kinds of devils."

Tallia finally spoke up, unable to contain her worry. "Enough of this talk of devils, legends and curses. We can swap tales once our work here is done."

They came at last in their travels to a huge double door. The portal was massive, twice the height of a man and, being entirely stone, must have been unimaginably heavy. The door was completely covered in ornate murals, so beautiful and yet so strange that none could deny either the skill of its makers or the feeling of dread that came over the company. The murals prominently depicted two warriors, clad entirely in metal plates so finely worked they were almost like a second skin, but their ears were pointed and their eyes aglow. They raised forth their hands barring entrance. All about the unmoving guardians were more of the strange writing that the four had seen so much of and understood none of its meaning.

"So great a door," said Hilarius, "must guard something important. Perhaps we should try to..."

Tallia shook her head. "I don't like it. Look at all those strange runes. This door may be cursed and we'd never know it until it was too late."

"It is a curious portal," observed Liandra. "It likely marks the entrance to either a grand palace or the tomb of a great king. All about us, we have seen evidence that once this place was the home of these 'fire eyes'. I wonder why they would make so grand a home and then abandon it?"

No one had any good answer to that riddle, so instead Tallia asked another question, "We are not here to solve the riddle of these fire-eyes or sidhe or whatever they were. We are here to find this wizard. Do we have to open this door to get to him?"

"I... don't think so. It appears as if it hasn't been opened since time immemorial," answered Liandra.

"Then we go elsewhere," said the Amazon. "If the fire spoke truly, then there must be a way into the fortress of Arion somewhere in this labyrinth. Let's not get distracted now when our light is so dear and our mission so urgent."

Liandra was about to answer that when Sang grabbed her arm and raised her finger to her lips. Suddenly everyone heard what had so alarmed their silent companion. It was a distant sound, faint at first. It sounded like stone against stone -- a heavy thud from deep within the earth. They listen quietly for a few moments and then heard it again. It was most definitely closer.

There was no discussion or debate about what to do next -- the four fled from whatever the hell was making that sound. They traveled quick as they dared, constrained only by having to keep the candle burning. That they were being pursued was soon confirmed. The noise became more rapid, like whatever was making it had sensed their flight and was quickening its pace. They were being hunted but by what, they had no knowledge.

For long tense minutes the pursuit continued. They heard the falling of stone, like something large had knocked over loose debris. The noise was becoming louder which meant closer which meant it was gaining on them. Their quickened pace turned into a desperate jog. So far they had seen nothing of what was pursuing them -- they were being chased by a rumbling sound and that proved terrifying enough. And they were losing this race.

Sang stopped as she found a small niche shielded by fallen stone. The entrance was barely big enough for them to enter. She directed everyone into the tight concealed chamber. They all pressed together in this small dark shelter. She held her finger once more to her lips, saying not a word and then she blew out the candle, fanning it to dissipate even a trace of remnant smoke.

Then no one moved. No one spoke. No one even dared breath. The sound of stone slamming upon stone got louder and closer. But in utter darkness, denied even the faint candlelight, they saw nothing. It was so loud now, it had to be near. Whatever demon of the earth was making this noise must be deadly close.