Barbarian Gladiator (Princesses of the Ironbound Book 4)

by Aaron Crash

  Della felt tingles between her legs. She’d been under so much stress lately, and she longed for release. The Princept knew she should go to her room to relieve herself, but she wanted a more intense experience. She wanted to push her limits, and while she couldn’t do that with anyone at the school, at least she could do it with herself.

  Lightning flashed around the Coruscation Shelves, clearing the ironbound books of rust and sending scintillating light flashing as far up as her room on the seventh floor. The eighth floor was the Illuminates Spire, where they kept the forbidden texts and the most dangerous magic items.

  The festival’s music drifted up from the Throne Auditorium. All those horny scholars would be there, looking for an uht to suck or an oheesy to lick. Then Della thought of her almost-kiss with Gatha. The Princept would be spending a great deal of time with the she-orc, smelling her and watching her muscles flex. Della knew all about Gatha’s reading habits. She’d often had to talk with the head librarian, Maezelith Bealheam, about Gatha’s love of erotic literature, drawings, every type of pornography. Maezel whispered that she thought Gatha spent a great deal of time in the Scrollery, reading her smut and masturbating. That bothered the head librarian.

  Della found the idea hot. Now, standing in front of the sixth-floor alcove, Della clutched her tits, feeling her nipples rising at the idea of seeing Gatha with her legs spread, maybe fucking herself, maybe pulling on her nipples, but always rubbing her ohi.

  Della shed her robes and lay back on the couch.

  She spread herself wide. Anyone could come by and see her working herself to an orgasm. They would see her lips, her clit, her clipped white pubic hair. She could’ve cast a spell to warn her, but she didn’t want to be warned. She wanted to feel the danger of being caught.

  She rubbed her aching button with the fingers on her right hand. At the same time, she slid her left hand down her chest, cupping a jiggling tit. She’d been overwhelmed by stress lately. This would be her reward. This, and the forbidden fantasies of fucking her scholars.

  She wanted something inside of herself. Her sex was sopping wet and slippery, and it was easy to slide two fingers into her horny hole. She worked her fingers and in and out of herself while continued to caress her ohi. Dammit, she wished she had her phallus. She felt so open and aching.

  Ymir would fill her. He must have a huge cock, and it would split her little oheesy open so well, fill her up so well. He’d grunt like an animal while he used her.

  She shifted around, getting on her knees in front of the couch. She pushed the table away because if anyone did come, she wanted them to see her masturbating. She rested her knees on the carpet and put her face on the couch. Then she reached around to open herself up for her imaginary lover, maybe a fresh-faced student, shocked to see their Princept being such a whore.

  She worked her hand over her greasy rosebud to her pussy lips. She stuffed two fingers into her yearning hole. With her left hand inside her sex, she rubbed her pearl with her right fingers. She heard a sigh to her right, and there, in the shadows, was someone watching her.

  Judging by the long hair and curves, it was a woman. The lightning flashed around the Coruscation Shelves, growing closer and closer. They would soon be lit completely, first Della, then the woman in shadows, watching.

  Della was being watched. She should’ve leapt to her feet, run away, or begged the woman to keep her mouth shut. The truth was that Della couldn’t stop. It was too good, getting caught, and from the motions of the woman, she was touching herself. Yes, this horny little voyeur was loving watching the Princept fuck herself.

  “I’m going to come,” Della hissed. “Do you want to watch me come?”

  “Yes,” came a whisper from the shadows. “Please.”

  The electricity of the Moons magic crackled around the shelves, coming closer, and Della had her eyes open as the light crept up the robes of the woman. Those robes were open, showing the ghostly white skin of her thighs, her belly, then a single huge tit, sagging from its delicious weight. A big rubbery nipple tipped the end. The woman had black pubic hair, stubbled so she had clear access to her own slutty clit. She was rubbing herself, watching Della, whose body was lit by the lightning.

  The shelves next to Della gleamed as blue arcs danced from one section to another, and Della cried out. She loved being seen. She loved being nasty. She adored being caught. This was what she really wanted—to push the limits of her sexuality and do things she shouldn’t.

  The mysterious voyeur cried out as well.

  But something was wrong. The lightning crossed the alcove and hit the next shelf, and Della should’ve seen the voyeur, but instead? Nothing. No one. Della turned, sank down onto her ass, legs spread. She was quivering. She felt the electricity in the air, literal energy, making every one of her cells dance.

  Where had the woman gone? How had she disappeared so fast?

  Who was she?

  Della groaned and sucked on her fingers, tasting herself. Then she went back to fucking her pussy, fucking her mouth, rubbing her clit—such a dirty girl, so nasty—until she came a second, a third, a fourth time. Then she scooped up her robes and hurried to put them on.

  Trembling, she crept around the shelves to try to find the stranger. She leaned over the railing, hoping to see a figure rushing down the steps, or circling the tower. No one.

  Della then cast a Flow spell to see if she could catch the woman in a vision.

  She was given a brief image of a dark-haired woman, no...not just dark, black. Hair so inky, you could get lost in it. And elven ears, pointed and delicate. Both of her arms were bare. Then the image was gone.

  Della wandered back to the sofa, sat down, and covered her eyes with her hands. Damn, she’d been caught, and yet the woman had run off. What did that mean? And would Della soon pay the price for her indiscretions?

  She didn’t think so. The voyeur liked it as much as Della had.

  Some part of the Princept hoped that she would come back. Della planned to keep using the sixth-floor alcove to pleasure herself, however dangerous.

  In six weeks, there was the real possibility she’d die in the Kurzig Durgha. Then? What she did with her overheated little oheesy wouldn’t matter at all.

  Chapter Seven

  CHARIBDA DELPHINO STOOD in the Librarium Citadel, trying to get the courage to go into the Throne Auditorium for the Summernight Festival.

  The mermaid thought that maybe a bit of wine would give her courage, but she didn’t like to drink. Recently she didn’t like anything. Her world had ended the minute she’d heard that it was her own uncle who had murdered her father, many of her mothers, and many of her sisters in the Red Tide Massacre.

  Two of her mothers had survived, including her own flesh mother and three breath sisters—half-sisters, or that’s what the dirt worms called them. It wasn’t like that for the Aquaterreb, however. For the merfolk, there were your breath sisters, as close as breath, the same father but a different mother. Then you had your flesh sisters, as close as blood, with the same mother and father.

  She remembered standing in the Flow courtyard, then a battlefield, and hearing her uncle confess to the worst crime in the history of the Delphino family...perhaps the vilest slaughter in the history of Raxid’s Aquaterreb people, from any ocean, from any family.

  For years, Charibda had hated the dirt worms. Her uncle had sowed that hate in her, and that suspicion, and it had driven the mermaid princess to learn to fight—that, and the endless squabbles between the merfolk families.

  The land people hated the Aquaterreb, and she hated them right back, with as much of her heart as she could muster. She adored her mother, now the Queen Mother Divine of the Delphino family, and she loved her breath sisters, and she was loved by her people under the sea, where life made sense even with the sorrow of the Red Tide Massacre.

  Charibda’s hate was the reason why she was at the Majestrial Collegium Universitas. Her flesh mother had sent her there to learn to let go of tha
t hate. It had been impossible. The more time Charibda spent at the school, the more she sneered at the dirt worms, and the more they hated her in return.

  Strangely enough, Charibda had learned to enjoy that hate. Their nicknames, their complaints about her snoring and belching, which underwater made far less noise, both amused her and infuriated her.

  Her only friend was Toriah Welldeep. In some ways, that didn’t count because Tori had no enemies. Everyone loved the freckled little dwab, always so full of cheer, always working so hard to give people food and make them comfortable.

  Charibda justified everything she did to make the dirt worms hate her, except she felt bad when she was cruel to Tori. However, cruelty, like anything else, could become addictive.

  In the end, the mermaid wanted the dirt worms to hate her. The strange land people had murdered her family, or so she’d thought, so fuck them and their primitive lungs that could only breathe air. Pathetic.

  All of that changed on the Flow courtyard. Suddenly, she was the cruel bitch because the dirt worms were blameless.

  On the night her uncle attacked Old Ironbound, Charibda had rushed out there to fight with him. No one at the stupid school knew how skilled she was in the warrior arts—that too had come from her legacy of hate and bloodshed. She spent hours with the sword, the net, the trident, both in the water and on land, honing her skills for the war, which would teach the Sorrow Coast Kingdom that the holocaust they’d rained down on the Delphino family would be met with murder.

  Charibda had used those skills to keep the Delphino family in power, because the underwater families were always fighting for territory, for trade rights, and to avenge slights, murders, and insults. So the mermaid princess had raw battle experience, far more than most of the dirt worm students at the stupid school.

  While fighting other families was fine, if bloody, she’d really wanted to use her trident on King Velis IX himself. That worm. She knew she’d have to be the best, and so she’d vowed to be the best. No one at Old Ironbound knew that. To them, Charibda was just the bitchy mermaid with the blue and purple hair who was gross and difficult and easy to hate.

  How could she change that now? Now that she didn’t have her hate to cling to, she was lonely. What could she do to ease the longing in her heart? Her mother’s lover, the Princept, had told her to find friends, and to start with Tori. Being friends with Tori meant being friends with Ymir. He was handsome, even for a dirt worm...not that she should think of the land people like that anymore. Ymir wasn’t just attractive, he was also clever and infinitely capable. Sometimes he smiled at her, maybe because she was pretty, or maybe because he found her ridiculous.

  Was she ridiculous? She was. She knew she deserved her nicknames...Rib, Ribby, or the worst one, Ribrib. She hated them, while at the same time wanting to like them. She was torn, conflicted, and, yes, her life had ended that ruinous night of death, when the Fractal Clock had again been used to destroy her people.

  Now that Charibda was looking for a change, she figured she would start with Ymir and his harem. She’d messed that up.

  It had taken a while to get the courage to walk up to the second floor the day before the Fourth Exam started. She’d wanted to be more subtle, to be flirty maybe, or just friendly. But their confidence and their ire had made her angry. She’d lashed out, demanding sex with them all immediately. She’d forced them to reject her. It was silly, all of it, silly, and it showed a weakness in her.

  Well, she could change that now. She’d passed the Fourth Exam easily enough, and she would be staying the summer in the Zoo—again, on her mother’s orders. By the dark blue depths, the Ocean Mother Divine was determined for her daughter to have friends on the land, and not just friends but lovers as well. Beryl wasn’t shy about her lusts, not even when talking with her daughters.

  Charibda gulped in air, so thin compared to the comforting feeling of saltwater filling her insides. She could do this. She was a Delphino, a princess of the sea. This was a simple festival. The music was very loud, too loud actually, and so clear. Underwater, music was as much about feeling it on her skin as it was a matter of sound pleasant to the ear. You felt the rhythms with your whole body. This, like breathing, felt so thin in comparison.

  And what the land people did in the bedroom? Most touched themselves, which was shameful and laughable. Why bother touching yourself like that? And then there were those who wanted only one other partner. Just one other body? That seemed as lonely as masturbating. No, it was the Aquaterreb’s way to make love in groups, a swirl of bodies, all together, in tangles of lust, kisses, and embraces—intertwined knots of tentacles, breasts, cocks, and cunts.

  The orcs called orgies ttoogs. For the Aquaterreb, they were called bitribibs, or sex knots.

  She had memories of her friends making love to a boy, all together, giving of themselves in a swirl of water and splashing and laughter. She’d wanted to tell Ymir and his girlfriends about her special sex power, but it had come out wrong, more like bragging than wanting to share, honestly, about her life.

  Charibda licked her lips. She sniffed at her armpits because that was something she had to worry about now that she wasn’t in the ocean all through the days and every night. She smelled all right, or so she hoped. This bathing thing was nice, though it had become another mundane task she’d been saddled with.

  She couldn’t look weak. She couldn’t look afraid. And so Charibda swaggered into the Throne Auditorium with her hair done up and her shimmering gown hugging her scant curves. She did find the thick bodies of the women alluring—such wide hips, such big tits. It was strange, though, that they couldn’t change their legs. She could...from two footed legs, to a single fin, to a splay of glorious tentacles with her quim at the center. Tori used that word. For Charibda, it was her little clam shell, or her roon. Sometimes, to be nasty, she thought of it as her roony.

  Charibda ignored all the stares and looked for Ymir. He was tall. She was tall. She should be able to find him, but she couldn’t. She did see Lillee Nehenna dancing with Jennybelle and Tori, the three trying to make a quadrille work by clapping out the beat where the fourth person should’ve danced

  The blue-haired mermaid had studied up on dancing. This was her chance. She didn’t know where Ymir or Gatha had gone to, but she could be their fourth. Would they want her?

  She should demand that they take her because it made sense. However, being brusque had not worked with the land people. By the dark blue depths, she hated being so weak. She stormed over and nodded at Tori. The mermaid felt herself frowning. She couldn’t help it. “I want to dance with you three. You’d be stupid to say no because this is a dance from the Age of Withering. It’s meant to be danced with four people. I don’t need to be the man. One of you can be the man.”

  Jennybelle laughed—that girl was always laughing, or being mean, or being too pretty for everyone. She was such a princess and she knew it. “I was acting the part of the man, Ribby. But you can join us. Sure. We do need a fourth.”

  Lillee’s face was flushed. She was dancing, though she had her essess on. Charibda knew exactly what that cuff did. It made her curious. If she plucked it off, would Lillee become a sex maniac? That would be something to see. Lillee was so beautiful. What kind of games could the two of them play?

  The mermaid princess twirled when it was her turn. She moved between their bodies as she got used to the loud music. The dancing was nice, almost like swimming in its own way. Being closer to the musicians, the elves on the stage, she could feel the drumbeats, or the squeal of the violin, or the tweeting of the flute. Her ears felt it all, and her heart matched the beat, and she found herself having fun, more fun than she’d had in months, if not years—those long years at Old Ironbound, hating.

  Tori stood back, blinking, her feet stuck. “Ribby! You’re the best dancer! I can’t goshing believe how gosh-dang good you’re dancing!”

  Charibda found a smile for her only friend. Dancing, fighting, you had to be light on your fe
et, and you had to have control of every muscle.

  Lillee flashed her a smile, and Charibda returned it. Could she be friends with these women? Could she be more? That was the plan, though a part of her thought it wouldn’t be possible. Hope bloomed in her heart, however, and it made her dance harder.

  Then it was time to dance with Jennybelle, and the Swamp Coast witch took her in her arms. Yes, a witch, because everyone knew that those blackwater women were all witches. Jennybelle was shorter than Charibda, clumsier on her feet, but the mermaid was deft enough to keep the beat. And when the bottom of her scant breasts touched the big titties of the witch, a little thrill went through the mermaid’s roon. Oh, it was exciting to be pushed up against this sweaty creature. Sweat was weird. Even stranger—to have sweaty sex outside the water. How would that even work?

  Jennybelle thrust Charibda aside, and for a moment, a fury made the mermaid want to scream. However, Jenny didn’t mean anything by it. It was just time to switch partners as Tori took up the dance with the swamp woman. That left Lillee and Charibda circling them, and each other, as the music grew to a crescendo.

  For a second, Charibda found herself caught up in Lillee’s green eyes, so bright compared to her own. Her glowing smile was shy yet still somehow brazen.

  Again, Charibda felt the lightning between her legs. These women were full of life, and strange smells, however sweet, and their sweat would make them slippery since there would be no water to wash it away. How strange, how enchanting, and Charibda swore she would be nicer to them. She could be nice. She hadn’t always been so prickly.