by A. S. Etaski
Panagan was still displeased with my actions; her eyes flicked to the side.
Probably thinking of the Prime.
*Option to fuck her before the others, or skip it and turn her in.* Now the archer smirked a little. *Hasn’t been that long since your turn. Thought you’d remember.*
For the next few ticks I imagined “initiating” Jael as had been done with me.
After the Sathoet attacked her at her House. After the Prime beat her up and took her in for more of the same. After nearly dying from blood loss and a Tragar hook and chain…
Gaelan never knew all I’d already gone through when she’d caught up with me, but I supposed it had been enough to “go easy.” I had the insight to know even more about this young recruit, and her life was still at risk for my having given her my healing potion, regardless of her own efforts.
How much must a novice take before she proves tough enough to be a Red Sister?
Though I questioned, I knew Rausery would say: As much as she can.
We had to retrace our steps past the scene of the bloody battle. Scavengers had already arrived and were spreading the meat, bones, and tools, but nothing larger than us or half as intelligent was among them. They growled a threat to defend their find, and when we passed on the edge without interest, they returned to eating and dragging carcasses away.
Returning down the tunnel where I’d felt Kain’s ghost, I was afraid. I did my best to hide it from Panagan, breathing slow and determined not to lose my senses once again. My magical cock remained hard in my pants and my mind drifted to how Jael’s body might feel wrapped around it.
My Sister. Not his Tugren.
If we caught up to her, we would have the option to fuck her first.
I’ll take it.
Heart pounding louder than I would have wished, I made it through without drowning in memory. I knew where we stood. I smelled Panagan’s scent, though I recognized where I was, where I’d killed him.
I glimpsed a raw, beautiful blue out of the corner of my eye and paused.
~There it is. Just beneath the surface. I need a pickaxe or a chisel…~
*Come on!* Panagan’s fingers rapped my shoulder.
I’d ruin my blade’s edge using it as a poor substitute, but I had nothing else. I drew it and signed, *My Elder wants this.*
*Wants what?*
*Dwarf stone. We retrieve some, it’s protection against the Prime’s wrath.*
*Fucking rock?*
*She’s a Sorceress, archer. She told me she wanted this.*
Though aggravated, Panagan aided me after I’d rushed to the spot, tinkering with places soft and brittle to work some of it out of the crevice. It was clear that the stone wasn’t like sapphire to Panagan’s eyes as it was to mine, but the mage could at least tell it was a true element over basic bedrock. She didn’t sign that I was crazy, and she pocketed a piece herself. I noted where.
*Done? At last?*
I nodded. *Let us catch her.*
Observing the sentries, Panagan and I knew that Jael had stopped somewhere short of the gate. Perhaps the recruit was still working out how to cross the border unseen and unseized. Meanwhile, we had used the jump circle and were on the side of Sivaraus already. Unlike the Dwarven confrontation with which the recruit had collided, we made it in time to prevent the one with the sentries.
If she makes it to the border, we grab her.
I understood now that this was enough. Jael didn’t have to make it past the sentries, the wards, the obstacles and into Sivaraus proper. Neither had I, during my test. That I discovered that tunnel to swim through and come out within the Great Cavern, finding Auslan on a farm of solitude, was something which surprised the Red Sisters, Gaelan in particular.
*It’s gone now,* Panagan had told me when I suggested using it to approach Jael from behind. *The Prime ordered it sealed after Elder Rausery told her how you got in. House D’Verin was required either to raze that outlying hovel or staff it properly with guardsvrin. I heard some sacrificial Noble Daughter was fucked for the negligence in place of the Matron.*
I smirked. Outwitting my seekers held its own satisfaction for me but hearing that the Matron could buy her way out of a Red Sister ass-fuck did not surprise.
*Did the Matron choose to raze it or guard it?* I asked.
*Guard it. You think they’ll give up even that spit-sized plot of land to the bordering House?*
Of course not.
*Boast confidence to the border keepers,* the archer signed to me. *We tell them to, and the sentries will let us through.*
My grin widened in the dark. My first solution to any problem had never been to demand others to obey me—that had been Jilrina’s method—and I still wasn’t used to the idea that I could order most of our people’s defenses around.
But I held that power now. If I needed it.
I watched Panagan the first time, noted which sign she used to gain the mage-captain’s attention, and how she phrased it. I stood bold and stern as her flanking Sister, maybe mimicking Jaunda a little. Except for the officer, the guardsvrin were all caits not much older than me, and their eyes widened to see us here. I could smell a change in the air.
They are afraid. Worried it is one of them we’ve come for.
It didn’t occur to me to wonder whether any of them had specific reason to believe so; I wasn’t looking for it. I was looking ahead. For Jael.
*There’s a Davrin out there, Red Sister?* the mage-captain asked with appropriate caution, not a slant of her hand toward skepticism.
*Yes,* Panagan commanded the mage-captain. *Suspend and open the Gate, only a sliver’s width.*
This was not a simple, one-step action, from what I understood. Suspending the Wards on a giant metal door was akin to unfurling a layered work of art made entirely of many-colored spider silks in exactly the right order and holding them there until one was ready to drop them down again. I imagined a mage hoped it didn’t become tangled.
The captain remained calm; she needed the aid of two other subordinates and one peer, and Panagan and I needed to be patient before they could open the Main Gate to Sivaraus even a little bit, just enough for us to slip through. The moment we were on the outside again, we bolted into the black without a foot fall’s echo.
Panagan found a spot where we could hole up and wait for sign. Comfortably I crouched down with her, waiting for long enough that I felt for the raw stones in my pouch again, feeling the shapes. It helped my patience, aided my focus. No caravans passed by in the time we waited; nothing of size wandered through. The huge tunnel was largely empty.
Just us and the frogs, rodents, and pincer worms.
Finally, there was Jael.
I was sure it was her. I sensed exhaustion, a will worn down to a nub. Uncertainty bled out like a deep wound. A lost sense of direction. I knew how that felt. I had thought it was a good idea to try to steal my way back to the Palace. Jael didn’t even have that as a goal.
*What?* the archer signed as I lifted my chin and turned my head toward the wilderness.
*She’s coming,* I replied.
Panagan made a face in the dark, irritably turning her own senses in that direction. I waited through the pause. *How do you know?*
*I hear her coming.*
Sort of the truth.
My Sister blinked twice, all astonished skepticism and annoyance, but she waited long enough to finally get that physical proof she sought.
*Right,* she acknowledged, pulling out a familiar wave of cloth, which she draped over her knee. *We seize her. Put the black bag on her head to hide her face. Take her through the Gate as a prisoner. You help me get her to a holding spot not far away, I’ll show you. I want to spear her ass first. It’s my right. You can go second, if you want.*
I nodded, though now reluctant and bewildered at this response. I had enjoyed the mental image not long ago of seducing the naked scrapper, of experiencing her body pumped up with sp
irit, having survived the danger that she had. I imagined making the Aurenthin cum before the other Sisters got her, like I had Reishel and Gaelan, but realized that wasn’t realistic with the archer here.
Panagan wanted to mount her as a status symbol only, and she would enforce rank. I also knew exactly from whom she had learned that focus. My netherhole and I’d suffered under Thena’s rule of caits for three straight cycles, and I’d wanted to kill her, to kill all four of them, Panagan included. I wouldn’t be waiting for Jael now if I had. If Jaunda and Gaelan hadn’t come to pull me out of their room.
I pursed my lips. *Gonna make it hurt?*
The elder frowned at me. *Haven’t learned, Sister? It’s what we do.*
*I haven’t tortured a new Sister yet, archer,* I returned, mouth askew. *Just been on the other side.*
*So?*
*So Gaelan fucked me when she captured me, but didn’t make it hurt.*
Panagan made an ugly face. *So?*
*So, it made me curious about the Red Sisters. Jael will be the same.*
*You were under the influence of Priestesses. Jael’s not.*
*She’s already taken the Prime and a hoard of Sathoet. What’s the point trying to top that?*
*Speaking of which. We’ve got a bigger problem: your healing potion and the Prime.*
I blinked, leaned back, repulsed. *Will you try to ‘undo’ the healing on Jael?*
I saw white teeth flash in a snarl, and the archer nearly barked with her hands. *Wouldn’t work anyway, and it doesn’t have to hurt, but unavoidable if she struggles too much. She should know that by now! The croot just has to learn her place.*
Somehow, I didn’t think Jael would care. New threat, new fight. Simple as that.
*What if we talk—* I began, but Panagan cut me off.
*She’s here!*
I held still. Silent. I spotted the vague shape of living Radiants stepping out of the pitch darkness. Jael’s feet were sore, I could tell, but she moved normally otherwise. She hadn’t run into anything else trying to take her life. She had made it close to the border, had found the way back to Sivaraus. We crouched, ready to lunge as we watched for other signs of interference, but nothing raised its head by the time we were prepared to spring our trap.
Finally, we grabbed her, and her furious roar filled the tunnel.
“Rraugh! Let me go!!”
Panagan took her wind by punching her gut. I slipped the black hood over her head, cinched it closed. It took both of us to bind her wrists behind her back as she kicked and struggled despite not being able to breathe. That tactic caught up with her and she went limp when she could no longer gain enough air through the sack.
“Come on, grab her ankles,” Panagan huffed, looping arms under Jael’s pits and clasping her hands beneath the recruit’s naked breasts.
I did better than that, lifting Jael’s butt off the ground with the archer by hooking my arms behind her knees. This close, we could both walk forward to the Main Gate, if turned slightly sideways, and I could sneak a glance down between Jael’s open thighs now and then, admiring the lay of Radiants that was her white pubic fur.
Don’t get too distracted now.
Jael was partly aware, emitting a mix of groans and growls as Panagan and I brought her through the Gate with the help of the mage-captain and her sentries.
“Sisters,” she acknowledged with a salute, eyeing the mysterious Davrin we hauled in. There was a tentative question in her tone, but she likely knew she’d get no answer.
“Well done, Captain,” Panagan said. “May the Valsharess favor your vigilance.”
We left the Gate with our prize, safer within the Great Cavern itself as Panagan showed me where yet another cache lay for the Sisterhood’s use. Not much different than the one to which Gaelan had taken me, perhaps a little smaller. It had the same long, low entrance, but this one required a boulder to be moved with a spell or a Red Sister item—one I might be awarded sometime after I’d earned it.
There were interrogation implements and restraints here as well, and a source of water. First focus for me, however, was the one spot we could kneel or lie down that wasn’t on bare stone: a cool, dusty chaise for a Red Sister to lounge.
Jael seemed very confused when her pert tits rested flat against the firm-stuffed platform. I straddled her back, facing her ass and bound hands, and sat down on her shoulder blades, rubbing my still-present erection against her back as I held the in-curve of her waist tight with both gloved hands. Then, I reached behind me to loosen and tug off the black bag so she could breathe better.
Meanwhile, Panagan had lit a smokeless torch, offering a small light so our capture could see the other places in the room she could be bound, instead of where the comfy place she was with me. I watched as Panagan eagerly loosened her leathers, preparing her own Feldeu.
“Goddess, just stop,” Jael wheezed, despair and aggression mixing in an odd tone through her dry mouth. “M-More of this shit? Why didn’t you j-just tackle me back with the Dwarf corpses!”
“Calm, Jael,” I said. “Try to think.”
Panagan raised an eyebrow at me, a warning not to guide as she stepped up with a glossy, black phallus in place. She shoved Jael’s ankles apart and stepped between her legs, closer to the chaise. Jael lay on her stomach, helpless, squealed in anger and tried to twist abruptly, a vain hope to throw me off. I was prepared; Jaunda had taught me well, and the recruit was still in place when Panagan reached out to squeeze the recruit’s buttocks, parting them to look at her target in the light.
I recognized the leer on the archer’s face.
“Wait,” I said. “We have some time, right?”
“Not much.” Panagan caressed her prick with one hand, held Jael’s buttock with the other as one knee hit the chaise. “We should hurry.”
She gave me a look as she spoke, suggesting that I make space.
“I don’t see why,” I said. “We report and turn her in to the Elders when we’re good and ready, right?”
She peered at me with resentment that I was eating time talking about this, but I knew Jael beneath me was listening closely.
“Let me prepare her asshole for you, Panagan,” I offered.
“Why bother?”
Jael growled underneath me.
“Because it’s different,” I said. “I bet I can make her cum.”
Panagan tilted her head up and laughed. That made me return a smile.
“If I do,” I wagered, “then we talk what to do about the Prime after you’re satisfied. I have an idea how to get both Rausery and D’Shea to back us. Something the Sorceress taught me.”
“What? Is this something to do with—?”
“She cums. You cum. Then I tell you.”
“Fuck you, Sirana.”
A chuckle slipped out of me as I moved my crotch along the spine of our new meat; a little farther forward and I could lay my cock in Jael’s hands. “Come on, Panagan. My Lead always says it’s easier to talk strategy with a clear head, and fucking clears hers. Get off on her ass while you can but let me make her pliable first.”
“What about you? Are you going to spit-roast her with me?”
Heh. Jael bites, no doubt.
“I’ll wait,” I said. “Make sure you’re not interrupted.”
Panagan glanced down at the straining rod inside my leathers. “When did you get that, anyway?”
I winked, leaned forward, and spit a glob of saliva right on Jael’s tight, newly-healed pucker. Dead center. She moaned in angry dread, the crinkled muscle flexing, having the side benefit of spreading the lubricant around. My elder Sister watched with easy fascination and desire.
The archer nudged the recruit’s bare thigh with her knee and spoke to her. “You’re quiet, for once, cait.”
Jael wasn’t that quiet. Her breath was ragged as she struggled for enough air under my ass, her head turned to the side and cheek pressed to the chaise. Her fingers clutc
hed and clawed at empty space, and a startled moan slipped out of her mouth as I reached forward to rub my fingertip in a circle around her netherhole, spreading my spit a bit more. My finger poked inside, just a little, and she whimpered, not eager to be sodomized yet again.
No wonder. It’s been almost a span since we grabbed her from her House.
More important, however, Jael lay still. She listened to me, as I had to Gaelan. I could tell she was biting her lip to keep from talking back to Panagan when the Red Sister prodded her twice more about fighting yet another inevitable prick up her ass.
“Well?” I asked my Sister. “Deal?”
Thank Goddess, Panagan was a little curious what she’d see.
“Fine. Deal.”
“I make her cum by myself,” I clarified.
“Fine,” she grunted again. “Don’t draw it out too long. We don’t want a Lead or Lunent sent out to find us.”
“I imagine they’d be irritated.”
Panagan nodded. “Probably ass-fuck us both before dragging the croot away.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll use all my tricks. I’ve already slurped one climax out of this one’s holes when they were raw, and right now, she’s fresh.”
“Yes, so I heard.”
Panagan backed away, pulled up a stool, and got comfortable to watch, lightly stroking her length. “So. Dive in, cuntsucker. Show me what you’ve learned since you burst your head and needed Jaunda to put it on straight again.”
Yeah. Been working on that ever since.
“Sure, Sister.” I grinned. “You got it.”
Leading to this point as we talked, I had been stroking Jael’s naked body with my warm gloves, smoothing her flanks, her ass and thighs, slipping fingers underneath as far as I could to caress her belly. Some of the tension had leaked out of our new catch as I did this, even more when Panagan moved away, and I hoped Jael was more receptive now. At least, her skin would be awake and sensitive.
Without speaking, I coaxed Jael into position on her knees, face down and her ass up, and turned us perpendicular to the chaise. This allowed her head to hang off the edge toward the stone floor, her spine held in a straighter line as I trapped her upper body and arms in a firm hold between my thighs. With my ankles crossed and knees tight against her sides, her head just escaping my buttocks, she wouldn’t fall off. If I passed gas, it would flit right by her nose. Jael made several irritated noises and ultimately disliked her position, I could tell.
