No Demons But Us

by A. S. Etaski

  Unlike in the city, there was no light here, and I could not see the color spectrum. My eyes could detect heat to a degree, but more than that, it was the other Radiants beyond Light forming shape and depth when I looked around me now.

  One of our tutors at the plantation, a mage from the Wizard’s Tower named Hortis, had once described this natural ability for our people to see in the dark. I had listened with half an ear most of the time because I wasn’t a mage and never would be. The lesson on Dark Sight was one of the few things he’d explained that stuck with me.

  “Everything moves, or emits movement,” he said, motioning dramatically with his soft, scholar’s hands. “Living creatures, the four elements, everything. Waves of energy radiate out even from stone, from water and air, just as much as fire. If we cannot see color, that energy is a Radiant showing us another view.”

  “So?” I asked. “Other races see that way, too. Maybe in even weirder ways.”

  “Ah, but none can use Light and Radiants like we can,” Hortis countered, staring at my eyes more than he did Jilrina or Kaltra. Maybe it was the color. “For example, invisibility spells wrap Light around the caster, creating a chameleon effect where a mage’s body does not break those waves of energy as it normally does. That spell does not work without fire or some other glow being present.”

  I remembered thinking then how I would use that to sneak up behind Jilrina. Now only I thought of a specific invisible wizard in a candle-filled chamber.

  “Magical darkness also masks energy, both Light and Radiants,” my childhood tutor continued. “For a limited time and in a specific location, we can direct both views elsewhere, we can remove enough around us to darken even our sensitive eyes and leave our enemies blind no matter what.”

  “Send energy elsewhere?” I repeated, confused. “Not just make it vanish?”

  Hortis laughed. “Magic can mask energy or direct it, but we cannot destroy it. Energy can be transformed, sometimes explosively, but never ceases to exist. For this reason, it is complex to get the effect you want in spells and requires an affinity to the elements beyond the ability to perceive it. That is why not all Davrin can do it.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Correct. You, Sirana, are magical enough to use the tools we create for our people, but without any affinity to create your own.”

  Thanks.

  Even without Light, what Radiants remained in the Deepearth cavern were more than enough to give me an entire world of grey shapes and depth. My vision was good enough that I could hit a weaving pincerworm with my blade if necessary; I’d already practiced. The only real disadvantage, of which the Davrin mages were most aware, was that we were unable to read languages or see sketches on flat surfaces. The reading skill always needed Light; no mage could make due with Radiants, the page just looked blank. Hortis had even mentioned they had tried to develop a “blind-reading” technique using our fingertips.

  “It doesn’t work the same,” he said with a shrug. “It seems Light and its colors are fundamental to Davrin magic, and no texture can match the refined, eye-to-voice instruction provided by a quill and parchment.”

  All the better reason to not rely wholly on reading and magic, in my opinion.

  The cavern where I lay remained quiet. No creature was coming to investigate the noise I’d made thus far, I was sure. Now I only had to figure out why I was here, and what to do next. My body started to relax, and I noticed my abdomen was warm.

  Astoundingly warm.

  I slid cold fingers gingerly over my belly, mimicking Lelinahdara as she had been touching me at the end of her ritual. She had told the Prime and D’Shea that I was no longer barren. I was fertile.

  My womb. My womb is hot.

  When I shifted my legs I gasped at the sensitivity of my sex; it was a mistake to reach down and touch it, as all my skin seemed to come alive then and my ability to think left me. Blood engorged the folds between my legs in an instant, and arousal coiled tighter and tighter until it began to hurt. Mental images of sex bombarded me—it didn’t matter what flavor, anything that involved splattering semen. My breathing quickened, and I gasped too loud in the still chamber, kept gasping as I grew alarmed through my haze.

  What’s wrong with me?

  I was alone. I didn’t know where I was, but I had to find a male. I just had to! I pulled my hand away from myself and rolled to get on all fours, intending to stand up.

  I didn’t make it.

  My groan dampened by a constricted throat, I lowered my head down to my forearms, my hair falling to cover my face. My knees open and my backside high in the air, I prayed that a male gifted with an erection would magically appear behind me and plow my sex hard and fast.

  I swear to Braqth, I’ll even welcome Kerse! No games this time!

  Quivers of uncontrolled lust passed through me, frightening that I could not deny them. How was I to think, to act, or defend in this wilderness if I was paralyzed with this crippling heat? The Red Sisters had known this would happen, hadn’t they? I would bet the Priestess had told them, just as she’d told me, taunted me, as I submitted to their ritual.

  And they had left me alone like this.

  With a growl I reached back between my legs with one hand, my forehead braced on one forearm, to slap my mound sharply. I wanted to squelch this unnerving rush, to make it stop with pain. I flinched at each burst of sensation that was neither pleasure nor pain, but both. Soon the arousal returned, stronger than a few moments ago.

  This was not a fire that could be beaten down and smothered.

  After another strained look around me, convinced I was alone, I rubbed furiously at my sex, thrusting my fingers inside with urgency. My eyes squeezed shut, and I bared my teeth as my spine tensed and my toes flexed. I just wanted to cum, I just wanted it to happen, to get it over with!

  If that stupid Priestess couldn’t heal without forcing this on me, too, so be it! I’ll, I’ll—

  “Nnggh,” I grunted, suppressing my voice even if the squishing, sloshing sounds from between my legs negated my efforts to be quiet. The wave of pleasure was good.

  Oh, very good, ohhhh, that’s it.

  I came down, but not far enough. I wasn’t through. No, I had to go one more time.

  Fine, one more. Or maybe another.

  By the fourth orgasm, the warm spice of my arousal was all over my hand and seeping from my own body, announcing to the entire Deepearth wilderness that a lone Elf was here, flopping around helpless and exuding her scent to fill the cavern.

  Ready to be eaten at their leisure. Fuck, fuck, fuck!

  Grouchier than I’d been in my entire life, snarling and frustrated as my slit still throbbed and pleaded for a real cock, not some poor substitute, I rolled and planted myself down to sit, leaning back against a stone.

  How long will this last? Will it end?

  I snorted a quiet laugh at the irony. Now I would beg that faceless wizard to fuck me, to let me cum, to do as he liked with my body if only he sprayed his seed into my snatch at some point.

  I might even thank him for it.

  My body already sweated but I flushed both hot and cold at once, and I bit down on my first knuckle to try to focus on that than the other realization.

  I’m terrified. This is real magic.

  Real magic could take my will and reduce me to a gibbering mass. I still clung to my intense distrust of Priestesses and all the divine magics. I had every reason to. Give me a sword or dagger, rope, chain, or poison, I could control that. Give me a secret and a sense of a weak spot, I could exploit it.

  I twitched where I sat, started rubbing between my legs again. I was getting sore already, but I couldn’t stop. I can’t control this. I can’t!

  Could Lelinahdara have prevented this? Was it a plot of the Red Sister Prime, or a punishment? Just an oversight? Simple practicality to keep me away from males so as not to catch?

  Had they not realized I’d be like this u
ntil it was too late? When they realized it, the Priestess will have doomed me to a unique exile. One where I’d slowly waste away for want of mating. Perhaps not even water and food could interest me.

  I ground my teeth. No.

  I’d not give up that easily.

  I leaned forward and crawled on all fours toward the edge of the cavern pool. I made myself drink, to replace what moisture I’d lost already. The temperature was almost tepid. When my lips touched the surface, I sucked in long, satisfying gulps.

  At least one thirst could be satisfied.

  As soon as my nose lifted from the clean pool, I could smell myself even more. I badly needed to wash. Not only had I just creamed my inner thighs to where they might stick together as I walked to make a rash, but the Red Sisters hadn’t done me the favor of bathing me before abandoning me. Every mark and substance from their abuse in the secret chambers was still present on my body.

  I felt dizzy a moment when I stood up, but I stared down into the water and focused as well as I could below the surface. I watched for any sign of movement, of light, of danger. After longer than I cared to admit, I detected algae glowing dimly far below and small fish cutting silently through the liquid. Knowing there’s always a bigger fish, the lack of one now didn’t clear the pool as being completely safe to bathe in, but if I was quick?

  Hmm.

  My attempts to be quiet hadn’t made any difference in my safety, now that I thought about it. No doubt I could be scented from two tunnels away. Either I had been fortunate while unconscious or the Red Sisters had chosen this location well.

  I grimaced as the magical heat began to rise in my womb again. Soon I’d have to climax again. Just be quick.

  The pool served to cool me down temporarily, and it was refreshing. Everything from my long, white hair down to my stone-scraped toes I cleaned in the black, underground pool. The swirling water constantly caressed between my legs, and my mind wandered far from the weaker sex and their spurting, creamy seed. The Sisters leaving me here was both the least effort they could make, and the most torture they could inflict.

  Or so my cunt kept telling me.

  My cunt is a groveling mate-eater.

  Curse all mind-altering magic anyway!

  I wrung out my hair after climbing out of the pool, shook my hands and let the rest of the water drain down my skin and onto the stone. Without thought, I caressed my netherlips again with one hand, and then grimaced, pulling one hand away with the other. I gripped my hands together and shivered in a way that had nothing to do with being cold.

  Should I leave this area? Was I supposed to find my way back to the Great Cavern or find something here? Were the Red Sisters waiting for me elsewhere, or had I simply been left to find my fate in the wilderness?

  A note or a sign might’ve been helpful.

  I braced myself against a boulder with arms straight, gripping rock as I was assailed again with overpowering imagery of mating again and again. My legs parted, and my back arched, begging to be mounted and ridden. The emptiness was agony, the lack of willpower maddening.

  My ears perked at the sound of tiny, tiny footfalls. I opened my eyes to see the familiar motion of a large spider crawling closer to my hand.

  A spider.

  Braqth’s symbol. Already I could imagine the excitement a Priestess might show for such timing.

  I stared hard at the grey arachnid as it crept and stopped, sneaked and stayed. It wasn’t heading toward my hand directly; in fact, it tried to avoid me after realizing it had moved too close. I reached out to block its path. It decided to go around my hand, and I blocked again, deftly slipping my fingers beneath its forelegs to lift it onto my fingertips and closer to my scowling face.

  I could make out small black eyes in a ghostly face, tiny hairs on a still, hunched body sensing the heat of my skin. Small hooks held tightly so that even if I turned my hand vertical, it would hold on.

  A sign from the Spider Queen, am I to take this? Jilrina would have said so. Are You watching, Braqth? Entertained by these rituals shown the Davrin? Do You lose interest when the plaything stops struggling in Your Web?

  My sex pulsed again, a frustrating amount of drool anointing my netherlips just now cleaned. I bared my teeth at the spider and slammed my hand down, crushing it then smearing its goo across the rocks.

  Well, I haven’t stopped yet, so keep laughing, Goddess. Fuck Your Threshold.

  The wave of anger passed too quickly, bowing to my craving once again, and I washed my hand of spider guts, preparing to stroke my slit. The Spider Queen’s Priestess had left me to face a similar fate. I imagined, enough time spent in the wilderness, and I would be so focused on finding a way to get my cunt stuffed that my senses would fail to recognize a giant threat until I stood next to it.

  Squish. The end.

  Smooth stone lined the edge of the pool, and slowly I traced the cavern in which I’d been left. I wanted to go before I was so sore I couldn’t walk, but I also wanted to be sure I knew what I left behind. It would be just like an assassin at Court to say later, before killing me, “I’d left something for you. If only you’d looked around and not stumbled off like a witless cock.”

  It took longer than I would have liked to check the cavern. Twice in my turn about the place, I sank to my knees, gasping, unable to catch my breath for the sudden waves of want which overtook me. The need was constant, but it also surged and withdrew, allowing me brief respites of relative lucidity where I could climb back to my feet and move again. I knew I would still be in trouble if I ran across something dangerous while in the grips of this…this…

  Breeding trance.

  For all my recent cursing about magic, there was still that inborn sense a Davrin could develop. It worked to better detect a hidden passage or a magical item nearby; I had that sense, and I did value it. To sense Elven magic was my heritage. Even my straightforward weapons were fashioned through various methods unique to Davrin. If a blade possessed no magical effect in its use, it still held the taste from its blacksmith’s skill.

  It was because of this I finally found something. I slowed and turned my head toward a small outcropping, partially hanging above my path along the pool’s edge. I was on the far side from where I’d awoken, and a silent, familiar vibration beckoned me closer to that outcrop. I found tucked between the stones a dagger in its sheath as long as my forearm. I reached with one had first to touch it; subtle recognition answered my instinctive inquiry.

  Yes.

  I used both hands to carefully release it. I felt the curving designs upon the sheath and the hilt with my fingers, so stark and familiar that I could see them in my mind’s eye: House Thalluen. I drew it to check its edge; it had an elegant curve made of black metal to reduce reflection. Single edge blade, double fullers on either side running its length. The sheath possessed the crest of my House in the form of inlays, but those were matte black upon black as well. Simple and beautiful, one of the stealth blades.

  There was no belt, so I would have to carry the long dagger in my hand. There were no other supplies found as I checked the rest of the area, either; nothing to bring water from the pool, nothing with which to clothe myself, and no food. They had left me a weapon from my own House as my only tool and defense in the wilderness.

  Unlike the spider, I could say without a doubt that this was my sign and my instruction.

  I must find my way back to House Thalluen.

  They were testing my previous training, perhaps? How much did I remember of the Palace Guards’ survival trials? It wasn’t so long ago; I wasn’t worried. I also considered that there were two ways in which they could evaluate me. First, wait and see if I ever came back. Or second, have at least one Red Sister stalking and watching me.

  My closed smile was as unconscious as the squeezing of my thighs. Too soon to tell which one, so—

  I gasped and hunched over once more as I was gripped by the divine lust, and I clenched my teeth as I
waited for it to recede.

  Just make it stop!

  When I could straighten again, I tried to get my chain of thought back, but after a moment shrugged to myself.

  The point is I must leave.

  After one more drink of water, I climbed upward and left through the only opening which would lead me from the cavern above the waterline. It was large enough to walk bent over and only single-file. I occurred to me that I hadn’t been left fully exposed while left unconscious.

  Only one way in, larger predators won’t fit, and the cavern was well off the main travel-way.

  I confirmed this as I found myself at the other end of the tunnel, looking down from the lip of an abrupt drop into a broader, barren cavern. There was only one other exit to this one as well. I had to climb down, across the basin, then climb up again and out.

  By the time I had navigated the obstacle course to finally reach a real travel-way in the Deepearth, I had become intolerably hungry. I had not eaten since before the Red Sister called Qivni had collected me upon that balcony. Through that entire time—through pure endurance coupling with three different males and the mind-wrenching personal exposure I faced atop Braqth’s altar—until I woke to find myself here and climbing through whole valleys to locate a road back to Sivaraus, I had burned more energy than I had in my most intense cycle of martial training.

  I stood on the path and waited for my senses to tell me which way to go to return to the Great Cavern. Unfortunately, my grumbling stomach and Braqth’s “divine,” fuck-me-now hangover obstructed my answer completely. I cursed under my shuddering breath and choose a direction—there were only two, I picked the one leading downward—at least to hunt for edible fungus and small creatures.

  A pity I wasted that spider from before.

  Braqth’s creatures tasted unpleasantly bitter, I knew, and some were deadly if one forgot to pinch off the head, but one couldn’t be choosy in an area without much growth. Or I could have stayed to fish in the pool; a little late now to be having that thought. Again, I thanked the Priestess for clouding my rational choices.