by A. J. Markam
His voice went from accusatory to more conversational – even kind. “It’s not your fault, of course. You were raised by women. You were indoctrinated by women. You were formed in their image. You have never known your birthright – your true place in the order of things – because you were never taught it. But I believe you have been sent to me by fate, for one single reason: so that I might show you. So that I might guide you into becoming the man you were always meant to be.”
I can’t tell you all the emotions that rose up during Saykir’s speech.
Shock that he seemed to know me so well – or at least the vague outlines of my background.
Shame that he could see my deepest, darkest fears.
A sort of pride that he thought I could be his equal.
Fear that he was right about how I reacted to Alaria. Like a total, average chump –
And then my natural defenses reared their heads like a hydra and struck back.
This guy was an asshole. He was a self-serving, narcissistic prick. He was a freshman college dorm room, 3AM-and-high philosopher king spouting misogynistic bullshit.
Superior male, my ass.
He didn’t even win based on his own goddamn arguments.
For instance: I had the hottest woman ever. I was in love with her, and she was in love with me.
Not to mention that over the last few days, I’d had numerous kinky threesomes with her and a pirate queen MILF.
I wasn’t going to be condescended to by a blue asshole in a silk robe drinking tea with his pinky out.
“You know, it’s funny,” I said. “You talk like a bunch of guys on the internet, who’ve got it all figured out, and know so much about women… and then they watch a bunch of porn, jack off into a sock, and go to bed alone on a Friday night.”
Saykir looked at me quizzically. “I do not understand your references. Internet? Porn? ‘Jack off’?”
Of course he didn’t understand. I tried again.
“You talk an awful big game for a guy who…”
My eyes flitted over to Eluun and Varisa, the priestess and the mage.
I remembered the hundreds of female warriors.
And I realized I’d made a bad tactical error.
This guy didn’t have a woman he was pining over. He apparently had hundreds at his beck and call.
Saykir smirked again. “Did you just work out the logical fallacy in your intended insult?”
I ignored his question – largely because he’d kind of just pwned me – and asked instead, “Why aren’t there any guys around here except for you?”
“When you have constructed a paradise such as mine, one must be careful of those who would try to usurp your place and steal it from you. So I have removed the potential serpents from my garden, that I might enjoy all the fruit within. And trust me… I enjoy it all.”
He grinned, then silently mouthed, Anal.
I swallowed the sour taste of being one-upped.
Alaria was my bright and shining star, yes, but suddenly I wasn’t feeling so macho about kinky sex with a MILF in the grimy back room of a flying boat.
“Have you ever seen something you wanted, and taken it?” Saykir asked. “Deliberately, even violently seized it, with no thought of others’ opinions or judgment – knowing that you are the sole authority worthy of judging your own actions? Have you ever done something, consequences be damned, just because you could? I have. And I can assure you, there is no greater pleasure in the world.”
“You sound like a sociopath,” I said.
“What is that?”
“Somebody who doesn’t feel guilt.”
“Ah – then yes,” Saykir smiled chillingly. “I claim that title gladly.”
I shook my head in disbelief. “Sociopaths can’t feel love – ”
“Love?!” Saykir laughed. “Would you love your darling little succubus if she were old and fat, missing one eye and all of her teeth, and her breasts dangled down to her knees like limp clumps of seaweed? Would you love her then?”
Okay, that was a rough image.
“…yes,” I said.
“Really. You seemed to hesitate.”
“I don’t know if I would love her the same way – ”
“Then what good is your ‘love’ but a spasm of muscles and tissue? It’s not the realm of poets, but of barnyard animals rutting in the muck. Mind you, I am all for pleasure. Our entire religion is centered around it. And we hold pleasure in the highest regard. But we are intellectually honest, and do not elevate ‘love’ to the center of the pantheon. That is the way of self-deceiving, simple-minded fools.” Saykir’s face brightened. “But perhaps I should show you. Eluun.”
The priestess walked up beside him. “Yes, Lord Saykir?”
“Take our young apprentice to the Temple of Pleasure, and show him the mysteries within, that he might see the folly of his ways.”
“Yes, Lord Saykir.”
A new window appeared:
Go Elf Yourself
Visit the Temple of Pleasure with High Priestess Eluun and discover the mysteries within.
500 XP
I hit ‘Accept.’ I really didn’t have anything else to do but sit around, drink tea, and listen to bullshit.
“Go with Eluun, but do not try to escape or make mischief.” He waggled one finger at me like I was a naughty child. “I shall be very put out if you do. You are my guest, and I shall treat you like an honored one – so long as you comport yourself in a fitting manner.”
“I’ll try,” I said sardonically.
“Good. You’ll find it much easier without the temptation of summoning any of your demons, since I have a spell in place that prevents you from invoking them while you are inside my kingdom. Just in case you had some elaborate plan where they commit suicide, and then you bring them here to defeat me.”
I stared at him in shock. I actually had been thinking about something like that, wondering if Stig and Alaria might have thought of it, too.
I checked my action strip and all the icons on it –
Yup. I hadn’t noticed it before, but there was a thin, red border around every single demon in my menu.
They were still alive, so I couldn’t summon them anyway – but even if they weren’t, the red border prevented it.
Saykir had anticipated a plan that I’d only half formed, and checkmated me ten moves early.
My confidence shaken, I got up unsteadily from my chair. “This conversation isn’t over.”
“No, my young apprentice… it is only beginning.” Saykir smiled. “Go with Eluun, seek out the truth, and let the blinders of ignorance fall from your eyes. Then we shall speak again.”
14
Eluun escorted me out of the castle, through streets carved from ice, down to an ornate temple. It was unlike anything I had ever seen before – not a chapel like the one for Chalastia, nor anything in the real world associated with Christianity or Islam or Hinduism. It was a spiral of smaller buildings surrounding a domed cathedral, all of it connected by an enclosed walkway, with erotic statues carved from ice standing along the rooftops and ramparts.
When I say erotic, I’m not kidding. Multiple statues depicted naked female ice elves – and only female ice elves – kissing, fondling each other, touching themselves, standing behind one another and cupping the other’s breasts, and more. It was like some pornographer’s fever dream realized by the most talented ice sculptor imaginable.
We entered the main vestibule, where hundreds of silk robes hung on hooks by the front door.
This was promising.
I might’ve been monogamous, but nobody said I couldn’t look.
“Our temple is dedicated to Jaiya, the Goddess of Pleasure,” Eluun explained. “Here we partake in the mysteries she has taught us, and practice the rituals handed down from on high.”
The main corridor curved in a spiral, meaning I couldn’t see further than 40 feet before everything disappeared around a bend. Along the walls were more elaborate ice
sculptures, even more titillating than the statues on top of the temple: group orgies, every position imaginable, every configuration imaginable – and all women. The bas-relief figures were lit by torches, and the flickering lights cast shadows that made the beautiful figures seem to writhe in ecstasy.
As we walked down the corridor, Eluun elaborated a bit more. “We practice sex magic – the energies that unfold from the sacred union of the flesh.”
“So everybody’s married?”
Eluun looked at me quizzically. “Why would they be married?”
“You said ‘sacred union’…”
I guess I was betraying my Protestant roots there.
“No, there is no marriage here, just kindred spirits meeting for pleasure. For us, pleasure is the greatest sacrament of all.”
We rounded a curved hallway into one of the smaller buildings. By ‘smaller,’ I don’t mean some tiny little room – it was just smaller than the central cathedral. No, this was an enormous hall with ornamental pillars, sculptures, and alcoves, all of it lit by torchlight. The floor was covered in furs of various types – and on virtually every square foot there either sat or stood a naked female frost elf.
My eyes bugged out. It’s not every day you see 100 gorgeous naked women in the same place, much less blue-skinned ones.
Before this, I hadn’t seen much of the elves beneath their furs and leather armor. The naked women in front of me had skin of differing shades of blue, and the pointed ears common to all elves. They also had thick, lustrous white hair, all of it long and arranged in a multitude of different hairstyles: braids, tangled locks, various sweeping up-do’s that exposed their graceful necks. Their noses were slightly different shapes and lengths, their lips ran the gamut from thin to full, and their faces and jawlines had all the variety of human faces: round, thin, heart-shaped, oval.
I’d seen all that before, though. The one thing I hadn’t seen much of was their bodies.
And damn they had some nice bodies.
It was a little strange, though, because they all looked so similar. Tall, lithe, toned, slim with small breasts. Mostly A- and B-cups in all sorts of shapes – pear-shaped, round, perky, firm. Very rarely did I see anybody larger than a C. Their nipples and areolas were much darker blue than their surrounding bodies. The white hair on their heads – well, let’s just say the rugs matched the drapes. Although some were varying degrees of bare down there, there were a multitude of soft patches of curly white hair between those beautiful blue thighs. Their asses were more like serious yoga devotees then Alaria’s luscious bubble butt, but they were pretty damn fine all the same.
I could feel myself growing a bit larger in the inseam, if you know what I mean.
What was really strange, though, was that none of these naked elves were actually doing much. They stood or sat on the ground facing each other, staring into each other’s glowing eyes. Some women hovered their hands over their partners’ breasts, close but not touching. Some even held their fingertips right over the other woman’s nipples, which were invariably hard and erect with desire.
My favorites were the standing women who got their breasts soooo close to their partners’ chests, their nipples alllllmost touching but never quite all the way.
There were also women lying on the ground, bodies sprawled out on the furs. Other female elves knelt next to them, fingertips placed just a millimeter above the woman’s clit, almost touching skin but not quite.
And yet, even with the lack of touching, there certainly wasn’t any lack of sound.
The women getting ‘almost-touched’ were groaning pleasurably. Not loud, and not like they were having the times of their lives – but there was this lovely moaning going on throughout the room. Sort of like a woman who has reached a plateau and isn’t climaxing, but just staying on the same level of pleasure. A low, steady murmur of ‘ohs’ and ‘unhs.’
Things got even tighter inside my pants.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“This is the Hall of the Energetics.”
“The what?”
“There are four branches of Goddess Jaiya’s sex magic. The four areas correspond to the ways that living things find pleasure.
“The first is Energetic. Those who possess this trait find their greatest pleasure in anticipation. They longer they are denied, the more energy is generated. Energy transference is the crucial thing. Some achieve this through gazing into each other’s eyes. Others are able to move sexual energy into each other’s bodies. But by far the most common tools – and often the most powerful – are anticipation and frustration.”
“Frustration?”
“When we anticipate something and greatly desire it, and it is teased but not immediately fulfilled, our desire for it grows greater by the second. The energy produced heightens the body’s response to the point that many Energetics can achieve orgasm without ever being touched.”
“Whoa…”
I thought back to the ways that Alaria had teased me – getting close to me, looking me in the eyes, offering her touch and then withholding.
It had been frustrating as hell – but it had also worked me up into a sexual lather, desperate to touch and be touched.
Maybe Eluun and this goddess Jaiya were onto something.
“There is a dark side to each path, however,” Eluun cautioned. “Because the passion generated is almost spiritual in nature, and because they can achieve ecstasy without touch, there is a tendency for Energetics to think they are above others – that they have achieved a level of spiritual awakening that others who indulge more fleshly pursuits cannot comprehend. As such, they sometimes hobble themselves in pursuit of even greater pleasure, and of a fuller understanding of sex magic.
“There is also the downside that if an Energetic is not stimulated in her primary mode of desire, she can feel disassociated from her body. If she engages in the physical act of pleasure with someone else but is not energetically aroused beforehand, she will often shut down and feel nothing at all.”
“That sounds awful,” I said.
Eluun nodded. “As such, it is very important for those who are Energetic to discover their true nature and find partners who are willing and able to arouse them accordingly.”
I stared at all the naked women almost touching each other but not quite. I was pretty amazed I was even able to form a coherent thought. “Earlier you said ‘path.’ Do you choose to be an Energetic?”
“We all contain elements of the four types, but most people are predominantly one of the four with a minor accent in another, along with tiny shadings from the remaining two quadrants. We do not choose our primary orientation – it is something formed from birth and through our early lives and experiences. But with time and practice and intent we can appreciate other aspects of all four divisions, and better connect with partners who are primarily aroused by one of the other quadrants.”
As I stood there watching all these beautiful, naked women murmuring and moaning and almost touching each other, I wished I could play a little pocket pool – but I didn’t want to be creepy, so I kept my hands where everybody could see them.
Not that they were watching me in the slightest, though. They had their hands full (or didn’t, as it were).
Finally Eluun said, “Come.”
Interesting choice of words.
We continued down the curving hallway of ice.
Even before we rounded the corner, I heard the next room.
It was considerably louder than the previous one.
There were hundreds of sighs of pleasure, from breathy to guttural, with the occasional scream of climax.
I reached into my pocket to adjust my warlock staff, if you know what I mean. I couldn’t help myself.
“Here we have the Sensuals,” Eluun said as we came to the next great hall.
Holy shit, she wasn’t kidding.
This room had even more naked elves – but they weren’t just hovering their hands over each other. Whether sta
nding, sitting, lying in twos or threes or even piles of blue-skinned bodies, they were softly touching each other. Hips, waists, legs, thighs, feet, hands, arms, breasts, backs, asses, necks, lips, cheeks, faces, hair, pussies, clits – any place that could be touched, at least one woman was touching another elf there.
There were also a good number of elves that were going down on each other – although oral sex didn’t seem to be the focus of the room’s activity. It was mostly about the touching. Soft, gentle fingers traced circles around breasts… caressed nipples that were already hard and erect… gently trailed down curving backs… softly combed through all that thick, lustrous hair.
Nearly everyone was kissing, too – but softly. Sensually. Lips lingered. Tongues slowly circled each other. There were gentle kisses on necks and shoulders as hands cradled breasts.
My mouth was dry and my erection was throbbing.
“The Sensuals are the second branch of sex magic,” Eluun said. “For them, the greatest pleasure is obtained through touch – and also from smell, taste, and hearing. If you will, notice that the ambiance of this room is different from the Energetics’.”
I’d been so focused on the naked women touching each other and moaning in ecstasy that I’d completely ignored the rest of the room. There were naked female harpists in the corners (usually being touched by naked women behind them) who were plucking out gentle, languorous sounds on the strings. Not really songs so much as notes thrumming with desire and voluptuous longing.
There was also a subtle but beautiful floral scent hanging in the air – probably from the several dozen candles placed artfully throughout the room. The Energetics’ room had been brightly lit, more functional than anything else. In here, though, shadow and light played beautifully over the bodies. It was like an artist had lit the place for the most exquisite orgy ever.
“The downside of the Sensuals is that they need to be fully in their bodies before they can experience pleasure,” Eluun said. “Without soft touch – without being aroused in this way – they tend to stay locked in their own heads, and their own thoughts and anxieties form a prison that does not allow them full access to ecstasy. Caresses and lingering touch both arouse their bodies and quiet their minds. Likewise, a disagreeable odor or irritating sound can distract a Sensual and completely take her out of the act of love.