by D. R. Rosier
Her whole body vibrated in anticipation of later that night as they ate together, the wait was rather delicious to tell the truth. The only part of it she hated was it was a reminder of the masters taking advantage of that sort of thing in the past, when she was young, naïve, trusting, and still in awe of the masters of the church.
Before she’d finally admitted the truth to herself, about their corruption and debauchery.
It was different with Andy though, even if they were just close friends, there was an intimacy and appreciation of who she was as a woman, warrior, and spell caster. He saw her as a whole person, and not just a horny woman to take advantage of because she’d been channeling too much magic. Sometimes she wished she truly loved him, but she didn’t, and she didn’t think he felt that way either.
Sometimes, she wondered if she was even capable of that emotion, after what came before.
Still, she’d take shared pleasure with a friend through respect, it was enough, or at least that’s what she told herself.
After dinner, they spent some time together in one of the bathing rooms cleaning each other up, they were both grimy and sweaty after the long workout. The delayed gratification and anticipation were delicious, and them getting cleaned up together was even a little fun on its own as they teased each other with light touches.
She was excited, and more than ready for him, when they retired to the bed…
Chapter Five
The building was extremely slow going as I tried to maintain a constant level of lifeforce power in my crystal. Soaking up the raised ambient magic was a relatively slow process, and it didn’t look like any of the bastards in the church were going to do something stupid and die for me so that I’d get a big hit of lifeforce energy. It’d been a full day, and I had maybe two and a half rooms built out on both new levels.
Five rooms a day, thirty rooms a level, so I was looking at twelve days before those levels were complete. Maybe ten or eleven days, if the rate increased as I added mobs to help me with magic absorption.
I also hadn’t heard from Astrith yet, and I was actually a little worried about the delectable imp.
She was a wild thing, a little scatterbrained, but surprisingly joyful and sweet for a fell creature. So far at any rate. I knew of course, from my own mother, dungeon imps weren’t as twisted and evil as most fell creatures of the lower planes. Dark magical affinity didn’t make someone or something evil, their actions did. That was even truer on the upper planes, where good or evil was a choice, and dark was just power. It was the lower planes where most dark creatures were twisted into evil and free will didn’t really come into it. Of course, it didn’t change the truth that only actions made someone evil, it’s just the fell demons and other dark creatures didn’t get a choice in taking those evil actions.
Dungeon imps though weren’t twisted that way, because they were designed to serve dark dungeons, backstabbing a dungeon which empowered and supported them would be foolish. An imp could never gain ascendency by acting in that way. Their dark ambition also tended toward knowledge and power, rather than rule and cruelty, which made them good partners. The stronger the dungeon, the stronger, more knowledgeable, and more capable the dungeon imp.
I wasn’t sure who’d made that decision, or even how it was possible, but that’s the way it was.
I’d also made a lot of progress controlling my temper the last day while I built and watched the public part of my dungeon. It wasn’t so much that I got over it than I took advantage of being a dungeon inside a dungeon crystal. My mind was still mostly the mind of Narian, a human, but I was also a dungeon. Dungeons had a much higher amount of will and ability to multitask than any human alive. My mind could be partitioned.
One part of me was watching the live dungeon, another partition was building, another was absorbing magic and transmuting it to life force, while another part brooded and planned my revenge. That last partition was pretty much at a stall in that moment though, I needed more information before I could even start. Another part of me was experimenting with mobs, while yet another was designing rewards, enchantments, and other bonuses for dungeon divers in my new levels. My old levels as well, since I was currently giving away crap. Not that I wanted to reward the church people, but I felt the drive and need to do it anyway. It was how dungeons worked.
Besides, once I was free I was sure I’d be attracting other adventurers, especially if my reward system wasn’t screwed up. Even if I could defend myself against the church, I couldn’t fight off the whole world, which meant I needed to behave like a good dungeon, or the adventurer’s guild would destroy me at the church’s prompting. Which… would really complicate my revenge plans, since attacking the church aboveground would classify me as a runaway dungeon.
Point was, which I got away from for a minute, I’d spun off another partition of myself to do nothing but contain my rage. There was a part of me raging in the corner of my mind, and the fire of anger and hate against the wicked church of light grew each time the spells around me tightened and treated me like a puppet. But… the rest of my mind was clear of it, and I could think without letting that rage color everything I did. It also meant I’d be more cautious, and I wouldn’t move too early on my plans out of an impatient and impotent fury.
I’d also mourned the last twenty-four hours in yet another partition. I certainly wasn’t done yet, or ready to move on, but I got over the self-denial and shock, and had grieved in yet another partition for the loss of the love of my life. It was a strangely hollow feeling to mourn as a dungeon, without the ability to shed tears, feel pain in my chest, or sob. But it was clearly grief.
Partitioning that grief also allowed me to think clearer about things, the rage hadn’t been my only distraction, and I was no longer spinning into a downward spiral of depression. At least, not as a whole, my grieving partition was pretty down, but it didn’t affect the rest of me.
It felt a little alien and weird to me to be honest, having it all separated out like that, but it was needed. I’d need to be able to focus on my tasks and plans, and rage and grief wouldn’t have helped me there.
A large swirl of shadows appeared, and to my shock I saw Astrith passed out on top of a hill of… stuff, completely out. I checked through our bond, and saw she’d exhausted herself completely, and fed her a trickle of life force to speed up her recovery.
She didn’t have to bring it all at once, it was obvious the same outrageous exuberance she applied to nail paint and wickedly scandalous dresses also applied to her duties, and probably everything else in her life. No, my life wouldn’t be boring with her around, that was for sure. Hmm, speaking of dresses, I noticed she was now wearing a bright red dress that looked like a tube of stretchy fabric. It hugged her every curve from her breasts to mid-thigh, but it left absolutely nothing to the imagination. She was a hot little thing, and she looked fantastic in it.
I slowly absorbed the pile, and I learned the patterns of all she’d brought me so I could recreate it at will. Slowly, because I didn’t want her to fall to the ground from eight feet high, as the mound of stuff disappeared she slowly lowered to the ground instead of dropping to it.
I learned a lot in a very short time, and I worked to break it all down and file it away in my mind. I’d absorbed several animals, squirrels, wolves, bears, foxes, and a monkey. There were also several varieties of insects which gave me several nasty ideas. The rest of the pile held grass, parts of several tree varieties, bushes, flowers, herbs, salt, and different rock types. At least ten of the herbs were ones I’d known about as a human mage, and they were good potion ingredients for healing, magic recovery, antidotes, poisons, and things of that nature. Now I knew how to create them.
I handed all the animal and insect patterns to my tester partition, along with a few of the trees and bush types. I could imagine they’d make good mobs if I enhanced them and made them evolve with magic. I also used my main focus while that was going on, to start designing levels nine through twelve.
I decided on larger tunnels and caverns, with a forest like atmosphere, instead of smaller rooms. Each level would have less rooms, ten instead of thirty, but they’d be much larger. They’d have air enchantments of course, the wolves, bears, and monkeys would be powerful mutants of the types once my experiments were complete. The squirrels and insects would be poisonous and attack in great numbers, and the trees and bushes would mostly be normal, but a few of them would be organic traps to kill the unwary. I also designed normal traps, snares and spiked pits. The rewards would be both the potion ingredient herbs, parts of the animals themselves, and perhaps a chest or two with weapons or coin in each of the rooms, near a particularly nasty trap.
It didn’t take long for the layout, but it would take time for my mutation testing. My intent was for the four undead levels to cover initiate to apprentice level three or so, then apprentice level three to journeyman level three for the four elemental levels. At the moment, the elemental levels went all the way up to adept level five, but those jumps in danger were way to big. Point being, my forest levels needed to cover journeyman level three to adept level three. It might take time to get the mobs and flora up to that kind of danger level. That was okay though, I wouldn’t be ready to start building them for over a week yet, save some idiot dying in my dungeon, which was doubtful.
At that point, I’d need four more levels for adept level three to master, and possibly four more levels after that for the top three tiers of master before I made my move. Sixteen to twenty levels total before I could gain my freedom. The church undoubtedly had masters, and I’d need to be ready for them before I made my move. That meant I had twelve of the twenty levels I felt I’d need at a minimum before I moved forward with my plans.
It was all still a bit vague, I badly needed intel on the enemy. Outside of the church of light still running the two kingdoms, I had no idea what their power, numbers, or anything else looked like. It would also go slowly, since I couldn’t open up the new levels as I added them…
Astrith moaned and sat up about an hour later, she looked a little confused and out of it, it was cute. Almost like she had a hangover.
“You outdid yourself. I love the exuberant effort, but next time take more trips.”
She smiled, “Yes, master.”
“Umm, shouldn’t you have a home down here?”
She nodded, “I wanted to get you what you needed first. I’ll work on that now.”
She stood up, and then flounced over toward the corner of the room, which made her overly bountiful breasts bounce and sway in a mesmerizing fashion. She started to build what looked like a crude nest, I considered offering to help, but by pact I couldn’t. It was one of those rules, a dungeon never messed with his imp’s or fairy’s abode. It only looked crude in the beginning however, as the nest was quickly transformed into what looked like a comfortable bed, and walls built up around it. As a dungeon imp, she enjoyed a very limited amount of my creation ability, in addition to the dark and fire magic she already wielded as a demoness.
She added dark spell glyphs to the walls, which would give her privacy. In my body, my dungeon, or not, I wouldn’t be able to invade her privacy inside her abode. At least, not without her express verbal permission.
“Love the new dress.”
She looked over her shoulder with a happy smile, and then shook her ass at me teasingly. It was a very nice ass, bubbled and taut looking, supple. Of course, I felt both guilty for enjoying the view given my grieving, and a little wistful about the whole not having a body thing at the same time, if in different partitions. It was… weird.
“Do you need more stuff?”
I replied, “Eventually I’ll need ideas for the last eight levels, but I think I’m all set for the next few weeks. I might be able to make the last four highest levels with golems, but I need to experiment. Still, even if that does work, it leaves us wanting for the four mid-adept to mid-master levels.”
She nodded, and bit her lip, I could see the signs of her usual exuberance, but she was obviously still very tired from overdoing it earlier. Still, her positive attitude cheered me up a little, she was a wild little thing, and I could still see signs of it even in her exhaustion.
“I put out the word that your mind is free at least, so it’s possible some dark creatures will seek to serve you, which might work for those four levels. Time will tell.”
I replied, “You don’t sound that sure?”
She blushed, and then turned away to mess with her abode before she spoke.
“You’re enslaved, and those new levels will be closed off from the public dungeon for a while. It will be hard to find a dark creature willing to cool their heels for weeks or months absorbing magic for you while you build up power. They usually want to serve for the opportunity to kill humans and grow.”
Right. That sucked.
“We’ll get it figured out, it shouldn’t take longer than a month, maybe two. I’ve already got a bear fifteen feet tall with foot long claws as strong as steel, and skin the equivalent of enchanted leather armor.”
It was true enough, my experiments were making progress. The bear mobs were ridiculously fast and strong. I had poisoned bugs already too, a swarm of those will cause someone to have a really bad day. I was still working on the rest of it, but I had little doubt it would all be ready for me when the time came to build it, which was still at least ten days away.
She smirked, “Glad my efforts paid off.”
“What do you know about our enemy?”
She shrugged, “Not much. The church is even more corrupt now, I can tell you that much. It’s the affliction that brings down most empires, they get lazy and arrogant in their corrupt power, and forget they need to protect it. The church controls the nobles still, but not as guardedly. They’ve also grown paranoid enough to limit their own people. Paladins and clerics need to prove their loyalty beyond all reason before they’re approved for master level training and knowledge. Even anything above apprentice, to reach journeyman or adept level knowledge they have to jump through hoops and toe the line for many years.”
“That’s more information than I expected.”
She nodded, “But I can’t tell you how many masters they currently have, or how advanced those masters are in the disciplines. The nobles are completely denied master knowledge of any kind, but they’re allowed to pursue knowledge up to adept. It’s how they keep them from rebelling, and from taking back their political power.”
She yawned, then blushed and gave me a flirty embarrassed smile, “I need to sleep, Narian. It’s been a long ass day.”
“Thanks, gorgeous, sleep well.”
She smiled wider, “Thanks. I’m very glad to be here Narian, and that you’re awake.”
She gave me a vulnerable look and then slipped inside her new abode. I got the impression there was something she wasn’t telling me, or maybe she was just that flirty with everyone?
I got back to work on my experiments.
Chapter Six
“Fuck!” she cried out as her nails dug into his muscled chest.
It was the next morning, and she’d been riding him in a morning reprise, even if her libido wasn’t supercharged anymore, she was still attracted to Andy and enjoyed the pleasure of their intimacy.
She’d been riding him slowly, teasingly, as she worked his cock with her floor muscles and subtle teasing movements of her swirling hips. Apparently, she’d teased him too much, because he’d reached down, spanked her, grabbed her supple ass tightly with both hands as he bent his legs for leverage, and then started to drill up inside of her with abandon, as fast and hard as he could.
Which for a paladin, was very fast and hard indeed.
Not that she was complaining, she loved every minute of being bounced uncontrollably up and down on his cock like a rag doll, as she dug her nails into his chest and held on for dear life, so she didn’t fall off. The sensation of him pounding up into her, filling her so fully and completely over and over as he squeezed
her ass hard, was incredibly intense and had her racing headlong toward completion. A deep sense of euphoria spread through her body in intense waves.
He grunted and gasped, and she knew he was close, which pushed her towards the edge even faster. She did her best to squeeze him tightly every time their bodies slammed together, to milk him with tight liquid silk friction each time she bounced up.
“Don’t you dare stop, fuck me, fill me, I need it,” she declared breathlessly between gasps. It was so intense, and she did want that, and she knew as soon as she felt him pulse inside her she’d be thrown over too.
She scratched his chest as her body and mind exploded in ecstasy, and the entire world disappeared except for the man below her, filling her, with pulses of his seed. She felt so fulfilled in that eternal moment of luxurious pleasure, as she took his offering inside her, and then it ended all too soon.
She gasped in a breath, and then sighed in pleasure, before she leaned down and kissed him softly, playfully, and deeply.
When it broke, he said, “You’re going to kill me.”
She giggled, “I won’t break you. Promise,” then added as she squeezed his shrinking invader, “I need that too much.”
He snorted, and then nipped her lip before kissing her again.
She raised up and then slid sideways off of his body. She smiled widely, as he pulled her against his side. That’s what she loved about Andy, it wasn’t just about the fantastic sex for him. She cuddled in tight as they shared the glow of post coitus together. They weren’t in love, but they very much did care about each other, at least, that’s how she felt about him. She was only mostly sure he felt the same way, surely he’d have made a move to claim her more permanently by now if he’d fallen for her, or kicked her out of bed if it was just about the pleasure. That kind of shallow attraction waned quickly when it was just about empty pleasure, and they’d been lovers for quite a long time.
Sometimes she wished for more that way, but she was grateful for what she did have.