He had been riding for the paper mill on the southern end of Shadehaven, feeling the wind in his hair as Mistsong sped past the dark forest. The spotted grey pony was a Yearfall gift from Andrax two years ago, and Herrik had named her for the pale gossamer flowers that bloomed in Shadehaven’s fields during the autumn rains. She may have been no match for Andrax’s magnificent Nightgift, but she was swift and strong through the morning air. All around the world was silent, as if the harvest had been completed and the Fay already lay in their simple homes and dreamt of the warmth that followed winter’s reign.
There is something amiss here, he thought as he neared Old Birk’s farm on the border of the southern village. Andrax had not sensed it, but he had been lust drunk from his nocturnal escapades with the nymph. Herrik had heard their fierce coupling, and once or twice he had considered descending the attic steps when the nymph’s screams had pierced the night air. At first light he let the nymph out and she had asked if Andrax would want her to come back later. As Herrik turned Mistsong toward the bridge he smiled sadly, remembering the girl’s deep black eyes glittering in her expectant face. You are merely a staunch for his wounds. You lay with a living man and he sleeps with ghosts. The world had fallen out beneath him when he found the Dunder twins athwart his path.
Oxell and Orthos Dunder stood four foot apart in the middle of the road, with the water nymph Tessyn wailing between them. The grinning Oxell had his cock buried in the wet red hair between her thighs while Orthos held the nymph beneath her arms and filled the O of her mouth with his swollen prick. They turned her between them like a suckling pig on a spit while Oxell slapped the nymph’s smooth pink skin, his hairy fingers pulling at the hard nipples spilling from her ruined dress. Tessyn was not complaining however, and her eyes were big and alive with a terrifying greed. Her arms jerked spasmodically at her sides, and he saw that massive engorged clits grew from the palms of her hands and she was furiously moving her thumbs across their puffy hoods. Dumbstruck by such a brazen exhibition of abandon (and staring at those impossible clits), Herrik had not noticed the twins’ heads turning toward him.
These were not the same sun-kissed boys he had known since they were squalling, oversized tikes with grips stronger than many adult wood elves. Nor was this the same Tessyn. Tessyn was a maiden nymph popular around Shadehaven for her unfailing good spirit and charm. Herrik recalled the impish way she smiled at the men in the village as she leaned forward to reveal the plunge of her cleavage. He had often thought of that bursting chest and coy smile in the quiet of a lonely night, but all trace of that coquettish girl was gone. A thirst had taken over the familiar features of these Fay, and Herrik felt their eyes drinking him where he sat frozen in his saddle.
Mistsong reared and unceremoniously threw Herrik into the dirt when the twins rushed him. Oxell released his end of the Tessyn knot just as Ortho’s cock plopped out of the pit of her mouth with an incisor embedded in the base of the shaft. Herrik hit the ground hard and rolled to his side, watching as the twins followed their absurdly large cocks to where he lay. Mistsong kicked out at Oxell, but Oxell vaulted onto the pony’s back and wrapped his brutish hands over her rolling eyes. Orthos came to a stop when the crawling nymph clutched at his ankle, moaning for the cocks that had been so recently filling her. Oxell was slobbering on Mistsong’s back as a hand slipped beneath the pony’s belly to probe at her sex, and Orthos was shaking the awful hooded hands off his bare foot. Realizing that he stood no chance against these raging behemoths (and that Mistsong’s gentle visage now snarled and snapped at her former master), he took his chance and leapt off the top of the bridge into the gently churning water beside the waterwheel. Then he had swum, shooting headfirst into a murky world where sound could not penetrate and the hellish visions of the world above faded.
Herrik trembled at the recollections, but he knew he could not afford to dawdle. From what he had gleaned in his frantic journey he had to avoid skin contact. The flesh was where the disease lived, and if he should be corrupted by these abominations he would be doomed. He had to get a wall between himself and the advancing skin plague, and Bower Ridge was the biggest wall in all of Shadehaven.
Rorke Bower was the wealthiest Fay in Shadehaven, and his homestead was a miniature castle complete with spindly gold turrets and gold-leaf crenellations. He had built the castle from the fortune he had amassed from his goldmines, and no doubt he found it appropriate to paint his castle the same gilded tint of the precious metal. It was surrounded by a moat filled with treacherous spikes and cutterfish, so he could not swim beneath the lowered iron portcullis. The old man had grown paranoid in his later years, and Herrik saw the glint of silver catapults lining the battlements.
He lived with his three maiden granddaughters, who he was said to guard as jealously as his gold. His two sons had left Shadehaven to fight in the Border Wars and they had never returned. Overwhelmed by grief for the sons he lost and possessive over his last remaining heirs, he had taken to a hermit’s existence within the high walls of Bower Ridge. He and his daughters were never seen, and the castle was sealed shut against any incursions from the outside world.
Which makes it the safest place in Shadehaven right now. But how must he convince Bower of a truth he still could not bring himself to fully believe? These Bowers were notoriously arrogant, and it would not surprise him if they closed their ears to the pleas of a naked wood elf screaming plague and hysteria. He cupped his hands around his lips and shouted at the lone guard posted on the walls. The helmed outlander looked down upon the naked wood elf with detached curiosity before disappearing from sight.
Guard!” shouted Herrik, briefly fearing abandonment before Trixie Bower leaned over the barrier, her pixie face flushed and ringed by curly yellow hair.
“Who goes there?” inquired Rorke Bower’s eldest granddaughter.
“Please, Lady Bower, you must help me. I am Herrik, Andrax’s very own servant. Forgive my nakedness, my lady…I’ve been attacked…A…sickness is sweeping the village, I do not know what. You must let me in! If I can borrow a horse and some weapons, I can fly for the Overseer and give warning!”
A flash of panic crossed her face, and she whispered a command to the outlander beside her. He hurried down the tower and drew up the iron portcullis. Well, that was easy, thought Herrik as he ducked underneath. The beautiful young Adonis standing sentry gave him a cloak, and he rushed to deliver his terrible tidings to the merciful Bowers.
Trixie Bower waited in the deathly still of an empty antechamber. She was a few years older than the younger Bowers, but she shared their strawberry hair and aquiline features. “My father awaits your audience, Herrik, as do my sisters. A naked wood elf in need of a horse? How fascinating…”
She led him into the great hall, where Rorke Bower’s rotting corpse presided over a most unusual performance. He was flanked by Brandi and Halla, their skin aglow as they fingered themselves on their raised seats. Oh, no… thought Herrik, but they were not crazed like the other Fay, and their naked bodies appeared to be proportional. A group of four men were gathered at the foot of the platform. They were all beautiful blonde outlanders like the first guardsman, but these were not clad in plate and helm. They were fucking each other in full view of the unseeing lord and his strumming progeny, golden backs doubled over and cocks pounding into each other’s sculpted backsides.
“Welcome, to the Hall of the Bower Women, wood elf,” giggled Trixie before the helmed guardsman lifted the confused wood elf by his neck and dragged him screaming through a maze of dark corridors, his cloak dropping to the floor. A bright blue light flashed in the corner of Herrik’s vision as he passed one guarded room, and the next thing he knew he was flung callously into a dank cell. Does Andrax know the base carnality and frenzy that roam the harvest fields? Herrik muttered an entreaty for the isolated outlander. You are Overseer of Shadehaven, and I have failed you. You are our one hope. The distant surge of the Heartriver and the closer din of ecstasy merged into one great, uns
toppable roar as he slipped into blackness.
Chapter Five: Moonmother
Minerva snapped her steel-tipped whip just above the heads of the silent team, her slender white arm licked by the red glare of torchlight burning in the wall sconces. They were a crew of twenty effete young men, arranged in two rows of ten and yoked in pairs by iron chains that looped around their necks and linked them into one shuffling mass. The queen wore a sheer, low-cut dress of sparkling mirrorsilk, the fabric reflecting the waking palace around her.
“With haste, or you shall not receive the moon this evening!” roared their queen, who some had taken to calling Moonmother in honor of her gift of rapture that deified the body and brought divinity within their grasp. The team began to move faster, twisting through the deserted corridors of the Imperial Palace, ceaselessly pulling the ornate chariot of painted blue oak past snow-flecked windows and ornate tapestries that honored the joy of the free flesh.
Minerva insisted that her carriage bearers be androgynous young men with well-shaped torsos and long flaxen hair. The Queen of Desire’s arrival should be heralded by a beauty that transcends the arbitrary codes of normalcy embraced by man and Fay alike, Minerva had said when Neora questioned the value of a cockless man. Neora teased that it was evidence of her narcissism, implying that it thrilled Minerva to work and punish these girlish boys because they resembled her with their blonde tresses and pale complexions. Many of them were eunuchs with smooth skin between their thighs or abominations with stunted pricks and multiple sexual organs. She chose her lovers similarly, preferring creatures that resisted easy definition. She had a particular taste for hermaphrodites who had the good sense to be born with both sword and sheath, and of course the changeling was capable of meeting any physical requirement her queen demanded. Neora said that Minerva’s perfect lover was in her mirror, minus a healthy portion of regal cock.
Neora presumes too much these days. If Minerva sought punishment, she need only snap her fingers and a hundred men, women and variations of the two would suspend her from chains and degrade her in any way she wanted. Minerva’s preferences had little to do with self-obsession. In truth, Minerva had favored ambiguous toys ever since Andrax’s escape. No man she had acquired since could satisfy her as the prodigal had, and her resentment blazed within her whenever she encountered a masculine specimen who invariably failed to meet his queen’s exacting standards. Andrax had been a devastating lover, and memories of nights spent in toe-curling ecstasy with his cock feeding her core had ruined the appeal of regular men.
I give him too much power over me, and it has only grown during his long absence. It makes me weak. Minerva detested weakness, so she chose to deny the naked truth that she shunned whole men because the one she had lost placed all others in shadow. She desired the soft flesh of women too, but she felt no need to be submitted to the tyranny of any partner for longer than it took to come. There is only one whose tyranny I long for, and the time is growing near when he will be powerless to resist me. The man she loved and despised in equal measure was the reason she had unleashed rapture on Shadehaven, and the reason why she was rushing to Neora’s latest unveiling.
She was being led to the theaters of pain in the cold glare of morning, her thoughts on an appropriate punishment for Neora’s treachery. Last night’s memory of the bitch between her thighs gnawed at her. The changeling had even hesitated when she had screamed for Andrax’s mask at the height of her bliss, and an uneasy feeling had stirred in Minerva’s breast. Neora had been growing possessive of her queen’s affection lately, so Minerva had visited the Moonheart to see how much rapture the bitch had truly taken.
Lying cunt. She had procured enough of the essence to destroy Shadehaven and its Fay five times over. While Minerva had crafted adequate defenses to ensure her crimes could not be detected by the prying eyes of the Council, there were limits to her subterfuge. An overflow of rapture as large as the one Neora had unleashed would cause chaos in the balance of the weave that shielded the Fay from mortal eyes. The Negress was ever watchful for a sign of the fallen Fay, and she could sense disturbances in the weave that even the most powerful Council seers could overlook. And if Shadehaven was gone before the prodigal returned he would have no need to beg her mercy.
At the door to the theatres, she dismounted her carriage, walking on the stepped backs of the thralls who comprised her human stair. She could feel their hot skin and sharp bones beneath her icy feet as she descended, and she ordered them to await her return while a thin eunuch pulled open the door.
The theatres of pain were aptly named. High-ceilinged and cavernous, the huge space was divided into dozens of discrete viewing chambers. The theatres were stages cut into the marble floor with rows of wooden seats rising above them in ever widening circles. On any given morning, the lashings and punishments would be meted out in these pits, and crowds would cram the seats and marvel at the sights and sounds of the transforming flesh below them. Minerva found the loudest theatre, knowing that was where the changeling would be.
Neora had devised a new game. She lay naked on a smooth marble plinth, a pretty young girl with her hands tied behind her back kneeling to lick her clit. Clips in the shape of dogs’ heads were fastened to her nipples and the light blue ink under her skin pulsed visibly beneath the pinched flesh. Five clear tubes hovered above her face, which was dripping with perspiration in the stark light offered by a floating orb shaped like a crescent moon. The tubes rose vertically to the men hanging from the roof above her.
“Come on, boys! Do none of you want to win your freedom? Come, come, come!” Neora’s shouted command was quickly taken up by the crowd, and Minerva realized that the men were racing.
The five men suspended above her were violently masturbating, the skin of their backs stretched taut by the silver hooks that cut through their skin and connected them to the roof. The tubes were positioned beneath their crotches, where their swollen cocks were convulsing and aiming jets of cum into the tube’s open mouths. The object of this game was to see which of the men could spill their seed on Neora’s face first, and thus spare their miserable life. Judging by the haggard looks on the men’s faces and the amount of viscous fluid dribbling down the tubes, they had been at it for quite some time.
Minerva recognized the men. Neora had caught the five raping a young Fay girl while the castle slept. Sleeping with the girl was not their crime: their wrong was not seeking permission from their queen before they claimed her. Neora’s exhilarated onlookers cheered as they placed bets on who would be the first to baste her face, enthralled by their dark goddess’s perverse performance. Many were fucking or flagellating themselves with crude lashes, their chorus of "Come, Come, Come" intensifying as the gruesome spectacle unfolded on the stage below.
The skin puppets jerked off furiously, their muscles straining against their skin and their hands a hypnotic blur. The tubes did not line up perfectly with the arcs of their ejaculation, so they had to swirl and maneuver their thrusting hips in the direction of their respective tube. They screamed occasionally, blood pouring from the tears in their back as they twisted and spun on the ropes of their own skin. Finally, one of the men shuddered and sent a thick gulp of come down the tube, the sticky liquid sinking until it landed with a sizzle on Neora’s hot face. Neora howled as she came, grinding her cunt against the Fay’s sweet face with such force that she split the girl’s lip. The crowd rose in a riotous ovation.
Sitting up, she motioned at the hanging men, “Cut Gerrol down and clean his wounds. His aim has proven true. Scourge the rest and leave them to the mad women. See how they like a woman’s hospitality then.”
It had not always been like this. The pleasure palace she had dreamt with Andrax was a citadel of desire, a place that ignored the hollow morality of Fay and man alike. Any pleasure was valid as long as those involved gave themselves willingly. Andrax had been adamant on the subject of consent. Begin to take what should be given and you stand at the threshold of oppression. His words
rang hollow in this den of primal screams and dying men. In the elevated seats stood men and women who spent whole weeks here against their will. Some came to be used like dogs, while many others had been sold into bondage or simply taken from the eastern cities.
Cum still shone on Neora’s face when Minerva approached the stage. A hush descended as the crowd parted for their queen. The changeling smiled and went extravagantly to her knees behind a fan of blue-black hair. “Moonmother, what did you make of their performance. I must say, I found their exertions more amusing than arousing, but they had to learn. Their cocks are no longer theirs to use.”
“I went to the Moonheart, Neora. You overreached. The seed is still young.”
Neora shrugged her shoulders, “Rapture is surely spread. The three whores hold Bower Ridge. It is the only secure fort in that vexing land. What have you to fear?”
The taming of Rorke Bower had been Neora’s idea. During her shiftskin visits, she had assessed the possible defensive strongholds in the village, and Bower Ridge had been her greatest concern. “What have I to fear, you ask? Detection by the Negress, the collapse of the weave! You took too much! The aberrations you unleashed will be monstrous. I knew the only way I could draw him would be to threaten his little idyll, not to extinguish it. What if he should fall, Neora?”
“Then let him fall. You have no need of the man. You showed him the moon and he spit in your face. I say we let him reap what he sowed when he decided to fuck the cunt of forever…”
“Silence, slut,” Minerva screamed as she slapped the changeling’s cum-stained face. The theater was as silent as a crypt. “I have indulged your presumptions too long! I am your queen! He is mine! Years I have waited to locate him, and you will not fail me in this task. If anything happens to him, I will peel your bones and leave you in the gutter where I found you!”
Neora looked at her blankly, her eyes a still grey. Adopting a more gentle tone, Minerva knelt before Neora and touched her face, “Use all your powers and skills to safeguard him, and bring him to the slipstream. He must come to me willingly, so do not work his flesh. Convince him that there is but one way to save his miserable Fay, and that is to seek me out.”
Wildlings Enraptured: The Novella: (Fantasy Dark Erotica, Paranormal Sex Stories, Fairy Sex) Page 3
