“Oh, my,” she whispers, rocking her hips. I’m deeper inside than the first time we coupled, a realization we come to at the same time. “You’re not just taller,” she says, rising, exposing my wet shaft, inch by inch, to cool air before driving me inside again.
Callista closes her eyes, head lolling gently with each drunken thrust. Her movements are trance-like, the languid sensations contagious. We’re two fucking powerful creatures who could tear each other limb from limb, instead taking our time, pleasuring. I close my eyes too, cup her tits and feel them in a way I wouldn’t with sight. Smooth skin, the heft of them at their tips; the hard-fanned pucker of flesh that rings her straining nipples. One fills my mouth, damp and faintly salted with sweat. I suckle the other, dizzy on her incense perfume, crush her breasts together and lick until she arches and grinds me.
I have nothing left; armor and fatigue weight me into the sheets. I’m at her mercy. The room is quiet, magnifying the tap of metal and leather each time she rolls her hips, and our gasps like airy screams.
Callista plunges down my cock, thick ass grinding the bones low on my gut. Her first tremors of climax tease my cock, dragging a conclusion from my worn body.
I raise between her thighs, hold her fast and crush deep inside her. Energy crackles between us; my body is a well, spilling over even as a flood replenishes it. Callista flows into me and I flow into her, hot and bright, pumping until I’m spent.
She collapses to my chest and we lay sweat-soaked and tangled.
“I can feel it,” she breathes against my shoulder. “All those gifts.” Callista raises a hand, flexing.
I feel it, too. Tired, but not worn to the bone anymore. Her strength suffuses me, and I can’t explain it but I’m sure that whatever happened when I put on the armor is amplifying the artifacts’ power.
The last two trials feel a lot less soul-crushing.
-The Garden-
Etain of Eirenè
The women are eating when I reach the terrace, except Freya, who repeatedly clenches her hands into fists, and Etain, who I assume doesn’t eat, but seems to drink wine by the cupful. Freya’s eyes are locked on Etain’s soft profile, and from her plucked-up shoulders I think Etain knows and is ignoring her. I really hope this isn’t a bad sign.
Kumiko dares a glance at me. Something in her expression is timid, still haunted, not ready. I swallow worry at this. I really don’t want to face a trial without her, when it comes to it.
But I’d made my choice, today, the moment I woke up, refreshed. “Meridiana,” I call. She’s presently sucking grapes out of various parts of Finna, while the slime girl drips from the sofa into a puddle on the stones. Shameless, both of them.
“Oh.” Meridiana sits, reclined on her hand and dabs moisture from her pout. “You’ve remembered me, I gather.”
“Oh, I never forgot you. You just happen to be useful right now.”
She hisses, skin blanching soft pink. Just when I think I’ve gone too far, a wicked laugh vibrates in her throat. “I tremble and obey, my king.”
“Careful; I could get used to that.”
Meridiana yawns. “Are we going or not? I’m not in the mood for idle conversation.”
Apparently, neither is Finna, who shoots daggers at me from the couch.
“Fruit seduction will have to wait.” I say this to Meridiana, but I can’t stop watching the silent interplay between Freya and Etain. “Is something wrong?” If our team is falling apart, I’d like to know now.
For the first time, Etain faces Freya, who swallows and ducks her face. “No,” she says with a quaver. “I was just trying to find a way, to offer…I can heal you.”
Etain’s eyes blaze. “Because I need healing.”
“No. No!” Freya draws up, rigid beneath her robes. “But you obviously didn’t choose this. You were alive once. I was only offering that back.”
Etain turns her face away and stares out over the garden, stony. Tension freezes us all in place. Freya glances to me, but I can only shrug.
“I’ve been a Dullahan so long,” utters Etain. “I don’t remember much before it. What’s the use in being human again?” Her eyes squeeze shut, and she rests a hand at her chest. “I would lose the last fragment of soul inside me. It’s all I have left of her. So, I think…” She nods. “I think I’d prefer to be what am.”
She faces Freya, whose bereft expression must mirror mine. “But thank you. It was kind of you to offer.”
Tension drains away, but not entirely. Kumiko asks Callista about a run. Finna murmurs her excuse about the pond. I nod to Meridiana, who saunters off toward the south wall.
When we’re alone, Etain meets my eyes and her chin raises a fraction. “I don’t require favors. I was queen in my own right; that’s never changed.”
“You had no help? Not a single person, including those villagers in the undertaker’s camp, supported you?”
The flames in her eyes draw back, but their glow intensifies. “I saw the look on your face when that illusion manifested. You know the weakness love brings as well as I do.”
“Meaning?” I want to know the whole story, feel a connection with her over this.
Etain shrugs. “There’s a reason every part of my body is autonomous, except my heart. I have no idea if Ewanach did it unknowingly, or as a punishment.”
Realization washes over me. “That’s one of the reasons you didn’t want Freya to heal you.”
“She longs for immortality, and her true form. For her there’s no greater gift.”
“And for you it’s the real curse,” I realize.
“Padair of Beragand was Elouin’s true father. I have his heart and her soul, and I won’t give them up...not for something so paltry as another struggle through a mortal life.”
“It’s not all gone.” I know what she saw on my face, but that wasn’t everything. “I have my sister; one member of my family, but she’s the whole world.” I hold out my palm and focus: consume. I’m not ashamed to admit I flinch; fire historically hasn’t been welcome on my hands.
Flame shoots a good foot in the air. The ability is growing on me.
Etain smiles. “This new armor suits you.”
“Meaning?”
“You should go. The Oryllix have breached this place once. Mordenn will send his pets again, when he’s sure what he’s dealing with. Go; we’re all getting a bit shut-up in here.”
“I’ll see you after,” I promise.
She nods, gaze moving out over the garden and then to somewhere farther away. “My sword is ready.”
-Curse of the Morning Star-
Andraste sits on a flat finger-shaped stone above the pond. She turns when she hears my footsteps. She doesn’t look much older than Esmanth now, despite her timeless quality.
Her breath hitches as she looks me over. When she takes the hem of my tunic between her fingers, the brush of her hand is electric. But I can hardly feel her thumb from the other side; the silk is light but dense as armor.
“I wove this so long ago.” Her voice is soft and musical. My head swims on a rush of breeze, and I have the most visceral sensation of her hand skimming up the tunic, baring my thighs. It’s so real, real as any memory I carry.
Andraste snaps her hand away, smiling at her lap. “I forgot you can do that. No aspirant has ever had so many gifts.”
It takes me a moment to catch my breath. “He took you as spoils of war?” I tease.
She bites her lip, blushing. “I let myself be taken. We both knew the risk.”
Pieces start to fit. Defying Mordenn. Becoming cursed. “Mordenn cursed you for choosing Cocidius. And Cocidius made the temples to break your curse.”
“And to break the curse of creatures like me. To punish Mordenn for his brutality against mortals and lesser beings.”
“Why so many temples?”
“Better chances?” Andraste’s face falls. “After Mordenn created the Oryllix, nothing was certain.”
I nod to the bust. “Where is h
e now?”
“A wise man in the library of Finna’s realm. A bird in Freya’s longhouse. A spirit the undercroft of Meridiana’s lair. Mitigating the destructive jaws of Fenrir. Waiting, watching.” Her eyes hold mine. “You understand all those realities still exist? You’ve suspended them, but they don’t terminate until the curse is broken. The realms wait.”
Hungry, circling. Kumiko’s haunted eyes and tight shoulders are more poignant than ever.
I turn to go, and something stops me dead in my tracks, that sense of fate slamming headlong into destiny. “The ring.”
Andraste still watches me. “Cocidius has sight I don’t possess. Perhaps he knew your family’s fate, but he didn’t engineer it. You possessed the shield bracer, and Mordenn likely wanted it. It was an ancient and mysterious relic even when I was new.”
“And bound by blood to my mother’s line.”
She nods. “Kill your mother, kill your sister. Mordenn would have the shield for himself. Who knows the power he could imbue it with.”
“So, it’s coincidence that Cocidius aided my father and I became an aspirant.”
Andraste snorts, a delicate sound. “Oh Lir. There’s no such thing.”
“Reassuring.”
She stands and cocks her head to look me over. I can’t believe she was the statue, the Gardener. “I thought mortals had become a disappointment on the whole, but you never fail to surprise me.” Andraste presses me away. “You’re between moments in time right now. That makes it difficult for Mordenn to see you, but it won’t last forever. Suspending the astratempus is a temporary boon. Be fleet.”
I bow to her,
“Stop that.” She laughs, swaying back along the path toward the terrace.
Meridiana waits for me by the portal, propped suggestively against the wall. “You had a profound conversation with the Gardener.”
“You can feel that?”
“No.” She laughs, straightening. “You speak loudly. Yes, I can feel it. Your desires are laced with conflict.”
“Nothing some hand-to-hand combat won’t relieve.”
“I have a more immediate remedy…”
“No.” This one word contains all my mortal frailty.
“It’s been some time...your agitation would be less.”
“We should go...”
She balances on her tail like an acrobat and slips her legs around my hips. “It wouldn’t take long.”
“You’re punishing me for interrupting your time with Finna.”
Meridiana slips her arms around my neck. Her full lips are soft and damp, flavored like ripe summer fruit. Her kiss feels like fucking when she fills my mouth with her cool tongue. Our lips crush, suck, painting our mouths with spit. She tears her mouth away, skin flushed dark. “I’m punishing you for not joining us.”
“But I see only one of you is exacting punishment,” I pant as her fingers brush my inner thigh. “That seems selfish.”
“You’re not telling me anything I don’t know. Anything that isn’t true, so stop talking” She grabs my half-hard cock and tugs, buckling my knees. It’s Meridiana who gasps. “I knew it – you’re bigger. Everywhere.”
I’d almost forgotten. Coupling with Callista, letting her take me, I’d been so tired, and it’d been so intense. But Meridiana is right. Twenty-six years in this body; I’m familiar with how it should look.
“So much bigger…” She licks my bottom lip, sucks my tongue into her mouth in time with my cock pushing between engorged lips. She gives a yelp before I’m fully inside, and her body softens to take all of me.
I brace my palms against stone, pin her high on the wall and thrust. Meridiana lets out a shriek that tempers to a moan against my throat. “You’re bigger and you’ve been with Callista,” she pants, excited, deepening a shade.
Fingers twined in her ruby hair, I snap her head back. Meridiana shivers.
“After I returned earlier,” I breathe against her cheek. “Does that excite you?” I already know; this is what she wanted to hear.
Her nipples bud into hard points beneath her silk, and she wriggles between me and the wall, impatient. “Show me.”
She’s wet, slicking my shift, but tight. Or I’m that much bigger. She gloves me, pulls the skin of my cock, begging with her pussy each time I pull out. When I ram back in, I’m so long I push against the back of her pussy, a bump that distends her belly with each thrust.
Meridiana wriggles, grunts, shoves her hips encouraging me back. “Give it to me,” she pleads. “Fear agitation, thirst for blood...it’s what a succubus lives for.”
I impale her, fuck her with the smack of tight wet flesh. She draws the darkest things from me on each stroke, not selflessly. I can smell her arousal, sweet and strawberry and laced with sin the more she takes.
“M...m…”
More. She wants more. I grip her ass and turn animal, suck her nipple through the silk, nip it. Brutality sends her over the edge.
Meridiana arches. Her tail twines my balls and she moans like the souls in Helheim. I cum hot and long inside her, a violence magnified by the absence of doubt and fear.
“One more,” she gasps, eyes closed, teeth sunk into her lip. She quivers around my cock; she helps it along with a few sharp squeezes of her pussy that make me grunt. “Come on, Lir. Once more before we go.”
“No! Absolutely not. I’ve dragged enough today.” I pull from her too slowly to be taken completely seriously.
She doesn’t smile. “Maybe I’ve changed my mind.”
I realize she could. Meridiana could walk away now and leave me to the trial on my own. I knew it, but never appreciated it until now. None of the Artifacts have to help me. Being bound doesn’t earn me anything they’re not willing to give. I’m not sure I’ve been as grateful as I should have.
“Ach.” I slide my fingers around her cool, sweat-beaded wrist and tug. “You haven’t changed your mind. You wouldn’t give up a chance to make mischief with me.”
“I think we understand each other.” Her meaning hangs weighty between us, musked by the scent of rough sex.
My mind starts to function again. “Do you need a weapon? Do you have a weapon?” I ask, looking over what little of her is covered.
“Lir.” She tsks, scowling as though what just happened should make her next words unnecessary, “I am the weapon.”
-Lysperia-
Gateway of the Fallen Champions
The garden fades away as Kalymnou flows into being. Meridiana and I are crushed together in a hot stone alcove that feels like an oven. A pitted portcullis rattles up on weary gears, nearly taking my nose with it, and over its sound I hear a storm. Thunder or horses, an army or a mob; I can’t tell. A dust-caked plank ramp stretches ahead of us, up into darkness. I look to Meridiana, who watches the stone archway. “Lust. For blood, for battle, for fucking.”
“Sounds as though we’re in the right place.”
“You’re a deviant.” She tail-lashes me as I start up the boards.
“Lust. Feel anything else?” I ask her under an ocean roar of noise above.
“Primarily lust.”
“Primarily?”
“I don’t know how to explain the rest. Something darker, but very faint. It could be this realm, this structure, whoever inhabits it…”
We reach a pair of doors at the top of the ramp. “Then let’s introduce ourselves and find out.”
Doors creak wide, revealing a long stone chamber cut by shafts of dusty sunlight from above. Shadows move between the columns, no one silhouette like another. Furious cries are louder now. Still, hot air is pungent with salt and blade oil and the wild mint of healing liniment.
A man appears from shadows at the chamber’s far end, headed for us, weaving deftly between the dance of bodies despite the gnarled tree-trunk of his body.
He was a mortal once, a human. Every sort of being I’ve encountered has a kind of symmetry, a beauty to its own kind. The man approaching us it twisted, disfigured by the slow, awful
work of unseen hands. One eye sits higher and wider than the other, making him almost a cyclops, but his dark eyes rest clearly on us. His armor, its dark metal crude but sturdy-looking, is cut for a stout straight frame. Made for him before he mutated. In cavalry style, it’s strapped on tight over muscled, misshapen thighs. The odd angles of his arms don’t look any weaker than mine or Callista’s when he idly spins his blade.
“I am Halkor, man-at-arms to Empress Maeve.” He nods over me and Meridiana. “You have come to die in glory.”
“Uhhh…” Let’s not be so hasty, Halkor. First things first. I want the lay of the land. “I was told Lysperia is a realm between other worlds.”
“A simple explanation. Lysperia is a world,” he lisps between thickened lips. “Our place in the heavens is far from the worlds of champions who come to fight.”
A wave of shouts crest overhead. Dust pounds in trickles from between the ceiling planks. Halkor glances up and turns a broken smile on me and Meridiana. “Sounds as though it’s almost your time. Do you require a weapon?”
“Do people arrive without weapons?”
His awful grin twists wider. “For some, the arena is a surprise.”
Huh. “No, thanks.”
“Show me what you have for blades,” Meridiana utters, not bothering to hide her disdain for the place.
Halkor leads us between two of the columns to a row of sad, splintered chests sitting lidless against the wall. Leather peels from each haft inside, and while blades are sharp and tended, they’re ancient-looking, steel pitted and cloudy with the tarnish of time more than use.
Meridiana picks up several with her tail, flicks the blade’s edge with a finger, and throws them back. I don’t blame her; the weapons look tended enough to retain some fatality, but they’re not an item of strength or pride.
While we stand examining the sad makeshift armory, other combatants gather in the aisle, not hiding that they’re openly sizing us up. Only one looks anything like me, and he sits half in the shadows at the far end, polishing his gladius, maybe not caring because I look the least like competition.
Temple of Cocidius - Book 4 Page 3