The Warlock & The Wizardess Ch. 11

"Ach, there ye all are!" the dwarf bellowed as he approached. The horrified glance that Shayla was casting him and her frenzied gestures for him to keep quiet didn't seem to bother Uli in the least. In fact, he guffawed loudly and said: "Relax, lass! We don't need to sneak around. This guy here just explained me the whole thing," the dwarf concluded, pointing his stubby thumb over his massive shoulders toward another figure approaching from the shadowy corridor.

Wearing nothing but a pair of scuffed boots and a knee-length tabard emblazoned with the coat of arms of the Order of the Golden Shield, a tall and very tired-looking human with not a single hair on his head and a bristly black beard appeared before the companions. His well-built body was obviously that of a fighter, yet it was clear that he was far from his peak condition, underfed and extremely weakened as he obviously was. He seemed almost as worn out as the two young squires that followed him, half-carrying and half-dragging an unconscious Aldarius between them, the weight of his passed-out and heavily armored body appearing to be almost too much to handle for the two exhausted trainees, whose tattered pants were too large on their bony frames and whose dirty shirts were all ripped and soaked in sweat.

Scratching the dark stubble on his jaw and yawning as he forced his heavy-lidded eyes to stay open, the bald paladin approached the companions and gave them a tired smile before speaking with laconic, resigned detachment in his deep voice. "So, you folks found your way to our little demon-infested underground shithole, uh? That's nice. Your dwarf buddy here tells me that you're on a quest with Al Van Holt, and that you came to reclaim the Catacombs and save us..." the scruffy-looking paladin said, a raspy chuckle bursting from his thin, chapped lips. "That's nice and thoughtful of you, but I don't think you can pull it off."

"Thanks a lot for the vote of confidence, sir knight!" Shayla promptly snapped back, glaring daggers at the apathetically smirking paladin. "You're welcome, by the way."

Turning his barely focused glance at the wizardess and quickly taking in her stunning hourglass figure with barely any interest, the paladin exhaled and slowly went on. "Right, right... You must be Al's fiance, uh? He talked about you from time to time back at the Temple, not that I ever cared much for what he had to say... No offense, but Van Holt was always a bit of a moron if you ask me. So, you're the heiress from that rich noble family that he so badly wants to marry into, so that he can finally call himself an aristocrat, uh? Yeah, I remember him saying stuff about you... Well, actually it was mostly about your dad's wealth and the influence he had at court, and all that kind of things... Weird how Van Holt never mentioned that you've got such big tits and a sweet juicy ass too. Clearly he didn't care, but like I said, I always thought he was a moron."

As Shayla tried to contain the snarl of anger caused by the exhausted paladin's confirmation of her stupid fiance's ulterior motives in getting together with her, Jadrik couldn't help but grin and nod in approval of the unknown knight's overall appraisal of Aldarius. Smiling genially, the warlock quickly concurred. "Yes, Al is a moron alright, I couldn't agree more! And who are you, exactly?"

"Oh, right," the bearded knight sighed, shaking his head as if to gather his foggy thoughts. Then, standing tall and saluting in a perfunctory attempt to look dignified despite his sorry condition, he flatly stated: "I'm sir Maxmillian Mensen, sworn vindicator of the Order of the Golden Shield, at your service. As a side note, since all of my superiors are dead, at the moment I'm the senior officer and field commander of this sorry bunch of unwilling demonfuckers here, or what still remains of us at least."

As Mensen's mirthless laugh echoed in the dim tunnel, Jadrik smiled back politely and waited patiently for him to continue talking and possibly shed some light on the infernal orgy going on in the cathedral room nearby, but the knight just shook his bald head and sighed tiredly, his clouded eyes shifting from one companion to the next, no words emerging from his mouth.

"Alright then, sir Mensen," Jadrik eventually said when it was obvious that the lull in the conversation would just continue unless the paladin was prodded into speaking again, "can you tell us something about the legion of succubi fucking and sucking your fellow knights, or..."

"Just call me Max," the fatigued paladin interrupted, taking a deep breath and apparently resigning himself to having to spend some precious energies on explaining things. "There's no need to be formal, I was never a fan of ceremony myself. And sorry about knocking him out," he added, signaling his two young attendants to let go of Aldarius's body, which they did immediately, and with evident relief. After the metallic echoes of Al's crashing impact with the stony floor died away, Max resumed speaking wearily. "I know we're not supposed to smack our sworn brothers in the face, but if you guys spent some time with Aldarius Van Holt, as I assume you must have while coming here, then I'm sure you'll understand why I just had to punch him in his big fat mouth the moment he started spouting off his high and mighty crap, as usual. I never liked his pompous side, even less than his moronic side."

"We absolutely understand, Max, believe me," Jadrik said, liking the exhausted knight more and more. Indeed, the warlock was surprised that he could tolerate Max quite so easily, an astonishing discovery considering that never before in his life had Jadrik met a paladin that he didn't desire to kill or at least critically harm on sight.

"So, here's the situation... I already told the dwarf here how things go in this place but I guess I'll have to repeat it for you," Max said looking around to locate Uli and noticing Laeny grabbing the dwarf's ham-sized hand and whispering something into his ear before dragging him away down the tunnel. "Whaa... Where are they going?" Max asked, furrowing his eyebrows and getting distracted by the sight of the stocky warrior and the gorgeous huntress sneaking off down a side tunnel. "Why is the pretty elf girl all squirmy, and why is the dwarf laughing and pinching her butt like that? I don't hang out with elves or dwarves that much, I'll admit, but I thought they were kinda hostile, race-wise, I mean. Or did I miss something here? I'm kinda tired, you know..."

"Oh, don't mind them. Laeny gets these, uhm, special irrepressible needs every once in a while and Uli is kind enough to help her satisfy them..." Jadrik said with a dismissive way of his hand and arching an eyebrow knowingly. After getting a halfhearted shrug in response from the tired paladin, the warlock asked: "So, Max, why don't you just tell us why your brothers are fucking a legion of demonesses in that big hall down there?"

"Yeah," Maxmillian nodded with a weak, resigned smile, "about that..."

And so, while Aldarius slowly regained consciousness on the floor and Uli relentlessly rammed his broad boner into Laeny's sweet horny pussy in the privacy of a musty chamber of the upper tunnels, Maxmillian proceeded to tell Shayla and Jadrik his story.

Max and a couple dozen other knights of the Golden Shield had arrived at the Chapel of Red Spires weeks earlier, some time after the first rumors of troubles in the catacombs had started and thus spurred the Order into sending an initial contingent of troupes to check on the few brothers they kept stationed on site guarding that holy place. Having heard no news from that first contingent, the Order had sent more knights, including Max, to find out what was happening. As Max soon found out, the situation was dire to say the least.

Demonesses were all over the place, sucking and fucking and giving each of the paladins previously sent there much more pussy and ass than the lot of them combined together had ever had or dreamed of having in their lives. The succubi weren't exactly hostile, though: all they wanted was sex, and lots of it. They had only killed the most intransigent and bigoted among the knights, those who wouldn't accept to have sex with them. Fighting back was impossible, since the paladins' holy powers seemed to have become mysteriously nullified within the confines of the catacombs after the succubi had suddenly appeared there, materializing in the huge and rarely used cathedral hall absolutely out of the blue. Escaping also proved not to be an option, due to the empowered strength and speed that the demonesses appeared to possess within the Red Catacombs, powers that they were not too shy to use whenever they did choose to get belligerent. After a few of the more dogmatic brothers died to the succubi's fangs, the remaining paladins meekly accepted to just do as they were told and therefore started fucking the sexy hell-girls, only to discover that they were not allowed to stop. Ever.

Sounding supremely tired, Max went on to describe how he and the rest of his fellow knights had been humping the she-devils pretty much non-stop for days, filling their ever-hungry pussies, cum-coaxing assholes and deliciously naughty mouths until they were just too tired to even stay awake, let alone feed the demonesses more cum. The only female paladin of the lot still alive, Max said, had been licked and tongue-fucked and drained of her girly nectar so persistently and thoroughly by the succubi that she was incapable of speaking in anything other than whimpers and broken pleasure moans any more.

"If it wasn't for the spring that feeds the font in the cathedral hall we'd all be dead already," Max sighed, scratching his bald head and sighing, "these hell-bitches don't care about anything except getting our cum, over and over again. It took me days to talk their leader into letting a few of us go forage around in the tunnels for some food every once in a while, you know, catching rats and bugs and collecting moss and such, just the bare minimum to survive. You have no idea how tough it was to convince her, she kept telling me not to worry, that they'll keep us hard with their aphrodisiac pussy juices and saliva and all their pheromones or whatever she said. I told her that yeah, we'd die with a boner, sure, but we'd die all the same without food! Succubi, eh..."

The resigned chuckle that Max let out did make Jadrik nod in understanding, his extensive experience with hell-girls confirming that, naturally obsessed as they were with sex and biologically built to feed on cum, succubi have trouble realizing that humans need to eat to stay alive. Shayla on the other hand was staring with horrified disgust at the paladin, his casual reference to 'foraging' and eating rats having left her just too grossed out to sympathize.

"So, they do have a leader then? There is someone in charge of that orgy, right?" Jadrik inquired, his brow furrowed in thought and his intelligent eyes fixed on the exhausted Max.

"Yeah, the devil-chicks have a top bitch alright, a darker skinned succubus called Veltheesza. But the thing is, Veltheesza is not even their real leader, actually," Maxmillian added, winking conspiratorially at the warlock and the wizardess. "You see, there is another one..."

"An Archdemon, right? A much more powerful demon that isn't here but talks to her lieutenant among the succubi through that planar vortex over the altar, right?" Jadrik interrupted the paladin, his words terse and sure, a grin curling up the corners of his lips.

"Well, yeah..." Max blinked in bewilderment, thoroughly taken aback by Jadrik's correct guess. "Yes, that's right. Every couple of days or so Veltheesza has a talk with her mistress through the pulsing swirly thing over the altar. I've never seen who she talks to, but I've heard them talking in some weird demon language... It must be another she-devil, a powerful one I guess, on the other side of that, that... A planar vortex, you said? That's what that swirly thing is called?"

"And let me guess," Jadrik went on, his smirk getting broader, his tone exuding not just confidence but the triumphant joy of someone who holds the answer to a question that others can barely even formulate, "that blue shiny fog that floats everywhere in the cathedral, it wasn't there at first, was it? It came a little bit at a time, as the days passed, and it got brighter and changed colors too, right?"

"Yeah, that's exactly what happened!" Max nodded vigorously, his eyes wide as he cocked his head and looked at the warlock with renewed curiosity and more than a little respect. "At first it was just a pale whitish mist, then it got yellowish and orange and then red and purple and now it's sort of blue, yes! But how did you know all that?"

"Well, it's my field of expertise after all," Jadrik chuckled in blatantly fake modesty. "I'm a warlock."

"Uh? You're a warlock?!" Max said, surprised yet again. "Funny, I'd never have guessed. I knew Al's fiance was a sorceress of sorts, and the dwarf is obviously a warrior and the elf girl a huntress, but you... You look more like a priest of one of those cheesy doomsday cults that are so popular in the Capitol these days. But a warlock, nah... I just don't see you wrangling demons, that's all. "

Along with those off-handed comments, the sidelong glance of dubious appraisal that the scruffy paladin gave him irritated Jadrik immediately, spoiling his gloating buzz. Fuming yet trying not to succumb to his own hurt vanity, the warlock gritted his teeth and spat out: "Not all warlocks go around with a silly bone staff or skull necklaces or spooky face tattoos or pointy hats! By the Hells, man, enough of these cliches already! Besides, I'm wearing black robes, can't you see?! Isn't that enough, or do you need every single stereotype about warlocks at the same time? And let's not forget the fact that I just figured out your little succubi invasion problem here, that's a nice clue about me being a demonologist of immense experience and unparalleled talent, if I say so myself!"

At that point Jadrik was screaming in a blind vainglorious rage, a few abominable hexes already on the tip of his tongue and waiting only for him to cast and thus curse the rest of the paladin's life, turning it into a nightmare of spiritual and physical sickness. Luckily for Max, the gentle yet firm touch of Shayla's hand on the warlock's shoulder and her sweetly husky voice in his ear intervened just in time.

"Jad, just leave this fool alone," the wizardess said, leaning close and nuzzling her lover's neck, whose veins were bulging and whose tendons had stiffened like steel cords through his sudden rant. "Come on, he's just a dumb paladin. What do paladins know about magic anyways..."

"Nothing," Jadrik scoffed, casting a final incinerating stare at Max, who hadn't blinked once since Jadrik had started snarling in his face, suddenly scared of the thin, sarcastic warlock who apparently didn't like being mistaken for a priest at all. "Paladins know nothing about magic. And to think that I didn't even hate you at first, sir Mensen."

With that, Jadrik turned around and faced Shayla, his anger fading at the sight of her beautiful face, his mental focus shifting as he stared into her deep blue eyes looking intently at him. Now, that was someone who did appreciate his demonological insights, he thought. One steadying breath later, the warlock was calm again, ready to tell his beloved Shayla what he had just figured out.

"Shay," Jadrik said, his voice once again firm and assured, "I think I know what's going on here and how to fix it too. Well, maybe... Probably, at least."

"Good enough. Let's hear it," the wizardess nodded eagerly, crossing her arms under her huge boobs and thus pushing her cleavage up and almost out of the deep neckline of her tunic. That strategic move to showcase of her lush cleavage even better had the desired effect of dispelling the last of Jadrik's foul mood, and the fact that he paused to give a long leering stare at her bulging boobs was a small price to pay, in Shayla's estimation, and not an unpleasant one at that.

"Okay, here's what's happening," the warlock began, his eyes reluctantly traveled up from the wizardess's epic tits to her gorgeous, subtly smirking face. "That legion of succubi has not come here to reclaim the Chapel or desecrate the Red Catacombs in the name of the Lords of Chaos or anything like that: they're here to reawaken the spirit of a Demon Lord that was killed and banished right here, in that hall, in the past. I mean, this place has exchanged hands so many times between the followers of the Lords of Chaos and the servants of the Gods of Light, it clearly is a special location somehow, a nexus of power for sure, possibly a location of inter-planar relevance even, who knows... Anyway, it's not too far fetched to assume that an Archdemon or some other Prince of Darkness controlled these catacombs at some point centuries ago, and it's equally plausible that some hero of the past may have come here and slain the big bad demon, right?"

"Sounds reasonable enough, yes..." Shayla agreed, a sense of deja vu hitting her hard as she considered how familiar the story of heroes killing monsters and demons was to her, and how much her own life as an adventurer resembled the lives of many other adventurers, if not actually every single other adventurer, past present and future. The wizardess's moment of spiraling existential vertigo went away in the blink of an eye though, Jadrik's words leading her back into the flow of events.

"So, I can't exactly explain why yet, but it's obvious that a few weeks ago some Archdemon, or Archdemoness actually, based on what Max says, decided that it was a good time to open a rift into our world, send a bunch of minions here through that planar vortex and use them to collect the lingering soul of the dead demon trapped in that big ceremonial hall. Actually, whoever or whatever did this is pretty smart, devilishly smart you might say," Jadrik chuckled at his own cheesy joke. "Think about it, Shay: of all the possible ways to reawaken a lost soul, they chose to use the sexual energy generated by a bunch of horny succubi, creating a perfect catalyst to fuel a ritual of resurrection. That's refined demonic magic there, really," the warlock trailed off, his gaze getting dreamy and drifting to the side, toward the cathedral hall.

"Wait, are you saying that..." Shayla began, her brows furrowed in thought for a second before her whole visage brightened in understanding. "Of course! The mist! That's the catalyst, right?"

"Correct, my sweet slut," Jadrik nodded in appreciation of the wizardess's intuitiveness, smiling at broadly her. "That glowing mist is the physical manifestation of all the sexual energies generated by those hell-bitches as they fuck non-stop in a magically receptive environment, which that hall definitely is. Frankly, I can't even imagine how many rituals, holy and unholy, must have taken place in that room over the centuries. Who knows, this might even be an ancestral pre-human site, for all we know, which is not a lot, given how little study has been put into unveiling the full history of the Red Catacombs... And that altar is clearly the center of the magical nexus here, which is exactly why the gateway between our world and the one where these demons are from is specifically located there. Now, I'm not entirely sure about a couple of details yet, like who's behind this, first of all, and..."

"And why this mysterious Archdemoness who sent the succubi isn't here too," Shayla interrupted, anticipating exactly what Jadrik was about to say. "But then again it's possible that she may have been banned from this plane of existence in a final way, so she can't return here in person and therefore the only choice would be to send in some lackeys to do the job, or..."