Tuesday, October 1, 2013

One of those books

Not too long ago, I finished the second book in the Hyperion Cantos once again. I'm sure we all have those few books, TV series, movies or whatever that just stick with us. Sure, there's a lot of good fiction out there, but only some of it truly resonates with you. It's my dream to one day write something that is as powerful to someone as the Hyperion/Endymion books are to me.


Friday, September 27, 2013

September Silence

I've been silent for a while. I know. The only reason for this is a flareup of my depression. Obviously, I'm massively behind on everything. Publishing, commissions, life in general. There's not really a lot of yarn to spin on this, since this blog is not about my personal life, or depression. All I can say is that I'm getting better, so things should be looking up a bit soon.

My novella is well on its way through proof-reading, and I still have a short story that's near completion. The people I've shown it to have said it's great, but on the other hand, it's a personal project. This means it involves kinks that I love, but the great public probably hasn't thought of or won't like. I don't expect it to be great, but it's something I enjoy writing.

Anyway, that's me for now. Here's to hoping the next few weeks will see tons of writing to make up for what I'm behind. See you.

Friday, September 13, 2013

(Fan)fiction Friday 15: Shallya's Will Ch. 7

With this, Fiction Friday comes to a close for now. I may well add more to it in time, whenever I write more stuff that I can't publish regularly.

The End


Tags: [Futa/F] [Rape] [Combat] [Magic]

The same repeated itself the next day, and the day after that. Vesper was subdued, raped into utter submission with the redhead held back, forced to watch. For the first time since the initiate’s arrival, Julia struggled against the guards again. She fought, bit and scratched until she was held against the floor with a blade against her neck, held down and turned to watch the matriarch violating the mute initiate. For every day that passed with the same pattern, it became harder and harder for Julia to make Vesper eat anything. Suddenly, the daily visits stopped. Days passed in solitude, with the two interred in the cell, Julia remaining at Vesper’s side, always with a safe, strong arm around the girl, but to no avail. She was slipping away, hiding in the confines of her own mind. Every day, the warrior’s worry and frustration grew.

Battles, she could deal with. The tension grew to a breaking point and was released. This was different. She was powerless, stricken with guilt and unable to aid the struggling girl as she retreated further and further into herself.

It got no better when it appeared that the novice had been added to the end of Syrith’s regular fuck-marathon, which apparently meant that any remaining lust, and semen, that the abbess had, was to be taken out on her newest acquisition. Julia herself was only occasionally dragged from the cell. The second night that Vesper was taken, leaving her behind, alone, she found herself wanting to be up there, despite what connotations that prospect bore with it, just to be able to see what Vesper was put through. It was better to be abused alongside the marred girl than to wander aimlessly in the cell, panic tearing at what little sanity was left in her mind.

All that was apparent now was that every time Vesper returned, stained with cum and marks left behind by the abbess’ greedy hands, she grew increasingly isolated, ever harder to get into any kind of contact with. With the initiate’s descent, Julia was losing the last bastion she had had to hold herself up with. A momentary weakness, letting someone else in, was what was slowly eating away at the steely resolve that had kept her sane throughout her time with the cult. Now, she paced the cell in solitude every time she was left alone, waiting for the frail girl to be returned, and every time she was thrown back into the cell, Julia’s desperation grew.

Finally, Julia was taken up to the hall with Vesper. The twisted relief she felt was short-lived, however, as she was not taken up to be beaten or raped, or even fight, but instead to watch Vesper’s hours-long rape upon the dais.

The girl’s food intake had dwindled to almost nothing, but what little fat left on her shook in springy jiggles every time she was penetrated. Each thrust reverberated into Julia, feeling like a red-hot knife being jammed further and further into her chest. Vesper simply laid there on her back, her eyes corpse-like and unfocused. At some point, Julia had tried to wrestle herself free from the grip of the two guards keeping her down, but all that had happened was her ending up on the floor, head pulled back by her dull red hair to force her to watch the abbess pump load after load into the initiate.

*****

Perhaps it was the fact that Syrith was enjoying what seemed to be her newest conquest, or perhaps it was merely because the hour-long session was nearing its climax. Whatever the reason was, the spasming abbess remained momentarily unaware of something Julia’s battle-trained senses did not miss. The clamor of combat from the entrance of the room. Serious, massed combat, not just the depraved rituals and fancies of the common cultists.

The mass of bodies in the room shifted, the constant churning of sweat-stained sin disturbed. The feeling of unease spread like wildfire amongst the cultists, soon followed by shouted words. “The city guard! They’re attacking!”

Matriarch Syrith froze mid-thrust, cold eyes wavering for the briefest of moments as she sought out the source of the commotion. A crossbow bolt whistled by to her right, settling in, almost entirely tearing through the abdomen of one of the guards holding Julia in place. The boiling mass of beasts and humans began wavering, brewing into a turbulent storm as more and more humans tried to flee the hall. Slaves and cultists alike were trampled in the beginning panic of the mass as they fought to get past beastmen, mutants and the more deeply corrupted devotees of the cult, all of which seemed more than eager to throw themselves towards the sounds of steel against steel and barked orders.

In the middle of it all, now some ten feet from the podium that Vesper remained on top of, stood the tall, black-haired abbess, surrounded by a palpable, darkened aura of air. Bolts whistled past her, and a few even seemed to pass directly through her without harm. Julia saw no more of her as she lunged forward, grabbing onto Vesper’s inanimate form to drag her into safety from the veritable hailstorm of bolts. The warrior huddled against the altar, surrounding the initiate’s body with her own as she waited, and waited.

It quickly became obvious that the city guard had gained a foothold in the room, but no more. Julia’s resurfacing mind left her capable of a brief scoff as she listened to the noise of the fight. These men were so obviously not soldiers, but rather keepers of the peace, policemen, trained to fight but largely unused to anything more than a scuffle with a burglar or a few thugs.

The battle continued on, wavering away from the main entrance of the room and onto the floor proper, where it was possible for Julia to observe some of the fights that went on. Uniformed, frightened-looking guards lashed out as individuals at frothing beasts, mutants and utterly mad cultists. More than a few from either side fell with a blade buried in their back, as the battle spread into smaller clumps of fighters. The ground soon ran red with blood, and cluttered with the bodies of dead and dying.

Gradually, it became clear that despite their rage and insanity, the cultists were losing ground. The surprise assault had just barely allowed the guards to gain the upper hand, and now, the groups of tired-looking guards that had finished off their opponents joined their companions. Perhaps another ten minutes passed, as the battle raged on. No human, beast or mutant was going to give up. Those still left in the fight had nothing left if they lost this. The beasts would be executed, the mutants and humans burned.

Still, a few of them broke off, but were picked off by a cadre of crossbowmen in position near the main entrance. It seemed that the ranged combatants had given up on trying to pick off the matriarch after losing the first twenty bolts that should have impaled the woman, but instead passed through her as if she was made of nothing but wispy smoke. Now that the main body of the cultists was defeated, though, a few of the crossbowmen took a shot at the abbess. As tired, bloodied guards advanced slowly towards the stationary, disdainful black-clad woman, Julia withdrew, putting the altar between her and Vesper, and the fight that was bound to take place.

A few more bolts whistled through the air. Rough, unknown voices rang out. A scream tore through the hall briefly, but was cut short. Much too short. Julia dared to look over the podium, seeing Syrith standing over the corpse of a guard cut in half in what looked like a single swing. The woman carried no weapons save for the strange, shadowy tendrils that once more snaked around her arms, looking as if they were caught in a storm that only they felt.

The guards withdrew, forming a half-circle around the imposing, black-clad woman. A few more bolts whistled past, but it was clear that no one wanted to go near the imposing woman. Finally, the ranks of the guard parted, allowing a man looking to be in his forties to step forward. He was clad in eclectic, flowing white clothes and carried a myriad of pouches and bags, as well as a glowing staff. The man was obviously a wizard of the college of light, a Hierophant.

It was against this man that the abbess now turned her attention. She appeared to mumble a few words, and then a dark, purple cloud veered off from the aura surrounding her, briefly enveloping the white-clad man. He remained calm, chanting his own mystical spell. There was a blinding flash of white light and a raging, gurgling scream from the abbess, as well as surprised gasps from the guards. Julia retreated back behind the altar, clutching Vesper’s lightly shaking body. Her eyes darted over the floor in front of her, seeing the dagger of one of the guards that had been restraining her earlier. Carefully, the redhead freed herself from Vesper, making sure that the girl was nestled up against the altar in relative safety, and then she crawled over the floor, grasping the hand of the dagger in a shaking hand.

Flashes of light replaced darkening nights in a violent dance behind her, the matriarch’s enraged screams rising and falling, entwining with the measured and restrained grunts that Julia assumed were from the hierophant. She had seen mages battle once before. The fight had been over in less than a minute, and had ended with the loser in a flash-cooked heap of flesh after lightning had struck him from a clear sky.

This battle, however, wore on. Crackling, blitzing tendrils of light and dark arched through the air, clinging briefly to the floor and the ceiling, even just at the air. The two mages were locked in mid-cast, their will and power pitted against the other’s in a dazzling, electrical display of raw magic. Streaks of lightning of so stark, so pure white light that Julia had to look away immediately danced around the hierophants skull, his milky-white eyes alight with fiery white flame. In contrast, the aura of darkness around Syrith pulsed like an unholy heart, drawing nebulous tendrils of shadow seemingly from the very air around her, feeding into the crackling tendril of darkness that collided with the Light Mage’s power.

The guards seemed in awe, or perhaps they were truly paralyzed. Julia had a hard time making them out in the jerking, flashing light provided by the display of power between the two sorcerers. The only person seemingly still in full control of herself in the emptied orgy hall was Julia. She cast a glance down at the dagger she held close, looked to the shivering, mute girl at the altar, and then took a decision.

Syrith’s eyes signaled a silent cackle. This place was an unholy site, the winds of magic favored her here. Yet this mage, powerful as he may be, assumed himself capable of besting one of Slaanesh’s chosen in her very home? The cackle was replaced by a sneer, and a redoubling of her efforts. It was an insult to her power.

Out of the corner of her eye, towards where the podium was, the matriarch caught a flash of movement. Her eyes widened, her concentration fizzling for one fatal moment. She remembered. The redheaded whore who stubbornly refused to break, she was still there, clutching the senseless, deluded girl. She had been.

Bare feet smacked against the stone floor once, twice, thrice. The abbess knew she was too late. She could feel her failing concentration breaking down the raw lightning she was streaming at the Hierophant. Her right arm swung around, but she moved in slow motion, caught up in the warping, extreme outpour of magic. Her body refused to channel the winds of magic at such a rate and function physically at the same time. The naked form of the redheaded slave crashed into the black-clad woman, toppling both of them. The Light Wizard immediately withdrew his hand, the disappearance of the supreme, powerful exchange between the two leaving a deathly silent hollow.

Only two sounds were heard in the abandoned hall. Gasping breaths, and repeated, violent thumping. Julia sat on top of Syrith’s chest, the abbess’ arms locked to her sides. The warrior’s left arm clutched around the woman’s neck, and the right arm hammered up and down, mechanically jamming a bloody, thin dagger-blade into every opening in the matriarch’s face. Julia released the woman’s neck and instead grasped around the dagger with both hands, hammering it into one bloody eye socket. She lifted one hand, slamming it back down against the handle of the dagger repeatedly. Soon, a sickly crunch was heard as the dagger tore through the back of Syrith’s skull. Pressure gave way, spraying fluids and blood over the naked warrior.

As Julia was about to free the dagger and repeat the exercise with the matriarch’s other eye socket, a soft hand was placed on her shoulder. Something in the touch compelled her to stop, to let go of the rage that coursed through her. She simply sat over the bloody corpse of the cult’s former mistress, breathing heavily.

“Stand up, my child. Leave her be. She has sullied enough souls in her life, don’t let her taint yours in death,” said the man.

Julia nodded. She could see white garb through the corner of her eye. The wizard was right. She knew it. It was over. They were- “Vesper!” The shout surprised the stunned guards, freeing them from their trance. Several of them looked away as the naked, bloodied warrior stormed back to the altar to find the shivering, frail girl still lying there. Julia sat down on her heels, wrapping her arms around the initiate’s shaking body. She sat there, holding Vesper close, too overwhelmed to speak for a long, long minute. Finally, as adrenaline was replaced by deep, complete exhaustion, the toned warrior was able to let out a quiet whisper.

“She’s dead… She’s dead, Vesper, she’s gone…”

Friday, September 6, 2013

(Fan)fiction Friday 14: Shallya's Will Ch. 6

Descent


Tags: [Futa/F] [Rape] [Slaaneshi Cultists] [More Rape] [Dungeon] [Healing] [Nightmare]

Vesper’s entire body was weak. Her muscles churned with the dull ache of exhaustion, and her arms tingled as feeling flooded back into them slowly. Worst of all, though, was the slimy feeling of the huge load of spunk abbess Syrith had pumped into her still slightly gaping pussy, the viscous, heavy beads of cum slowly rolling out of her and down onto the floor. She shivered. The disgust was so deep-seated in her now that she felt like not even tearing the flesh from her bones would ever dislodge the sense of complete and utter violation.

For a few long seconds, the initiate remained still against the rags, absorbed in her own misery. At first, she barely registered Julia’s breathing in the background, but slowly, as if she was walking ever closer to a hissing ocean, the warrior’s superficial gasps for air made their way into her mind, settled there, became background noise, and then rose up once more. She realized suddenly that, despite her own state, the redhead had not only been raped, but taken a severe beating as well.

She dragged her tingling arms under herself and stemmed against the floor, feeling how her elbows almost x-ed beneath her for every inelegant move she made to close to distance to her protector’s shadowy form. Somehow, the darkness of the dungeon felt more oppressive, now. The previously vague sounds of the other residents had become a hellish, whispering backdrop. 

Vesper reached a shaking hand out towards the warrior’s lightly heaving shoulder, pressing two, then three soft fingertips against her skin. It felt lukewarm, and, as the hand came more into contact with the form under it, wet. The novice swallowed, dragging her legs under herself, sitting on her heels. Reaching another hand forward and wrapping it around Julia, she struggled to pull the heavy, largely unresponsive form into her lap. 

It felt almost as if her exhausted muscles would become overworked and snap like warm, sinewy butter, just from the little exertion it was to pull a person closer to herself. Gently, the girl placed her companion’s head against her thigh, resting one hand palm-down against the woman’s boiling forehead. 

Julia had been repressing the strain on her body for too long. She had grown weak, and finally, after today’s beating, all the effort devoted to hiding away her pain had blossomed into a fever.  She could just barely open her eyes to look up at the, to her temperature-clouded eyes, angelic figure above her, forcing a weak smile to curl her lips for but a few heartbeats. The girl’s hand against her forehead felt cool, soothing, almost unreal. The mere presence of it drove her illness back.

The initiate smiled down at the redhead, then closed her eyes. She dispelled the slimy darkness surrounding them from her mind, she forced the memories of what had happened out, at least for now, leaving only the calm, warm feeling of mercy. With her next exhalation, she mumbled a few quiet words, a prayer unheard in the temple building for years. 

Holy, cleansing energy blossomed between their two forms. It was inside neither of them, and could not be seen, but rather felt, wherever the initiate’s hand touched Julia’s skin. The feeling spread through her slowly. In much the same way as sand tumbles down the side of a dune in its everlasting journey across the land, wispy tendrils of energy now slowly rolled through the redhead’s body, dispelling fever and injury where they came, leaving only tired muscles in their wake.

Julia was already drifting off when Vesper removed her hand, grabbing a blanket to drape around the already deeply breathing redhead. The initiate herself remained stationary, once again placing her hand against the warrior’s forehead. The smile on her face only slowly faded into a content expression. 

*****

Rasping breaths were suddenly grating at her dry throat. What had been a cool, comfortable spring breeze a few moments ago was now a battle to pull into her convulsing body. It was all her mind could comprehend, foggy as it was with mists of pain. She could feel her hands clutching the open wound in her stomach, her skin growing more slippery for each passing second, blood and cold sweat mixing in her palms.

Smell was what came back to her next. Hay, the almost ethereal, yet thick scent of blood, and finally, the combined feeling, smell and taste of wispy clouds of dust assaulted her. The creaking of leather, the clanks and grating screeches of metal, the last living breaths of her sisters in faith drowning in their own blood, it all hit her in a way that the blade never could have. The screams came next, some persistent, others rough and frequently, rhythmically interrupted. 

She opened her eyes, seeing what she already knew would be there. The dead, mangled bodies of her temple’s faithful. The few that were still alive were being raped by gangs of blood-crazed mutants and chaos-warriors alike. But beyond all of that, beyond the gruesome beheading of a kneeling abbess, her eyes caught a last, desperate look from well-known face. Amelia. She was being dragged away.

*****

Waking up after only a few hours of rest, Julia had cradled the sleeping girl positioned against the stone floor next to her. They shared warmth the same way as they now seemed to share a fate. “No,” mumbled the warrior into the initiate’s softly twitching shoulder, “My fate will not be yours. I swear on my life.”

She had, with difficulty and suppressed groans of pain from the few bruises that still remained on her, maneuvered the two of them closer to the wall. The redhead laid next to the stone, her back against it, holding the shivering brown-haired girl in her arms. There was nothing she had to do tonight but hold the girl, comfort her and soothe her when she woke from her nightmares. After the treatment they had both received, the cultists knew better than to bring them out to play immediately after.

The realization, that she knew the habits of these depraved would-be overlords, almost made Julia chuckle. Almost. She shook her head with a melancholic smile, instead carefully placing a hand against the back of Vesper’s head, leaning the girl gently against a strong, muscled shoulder. The faint, gasping whines grew quiet, and all that remained was the despairing, jerky caresses of the initiate’s skin against the warrior’s shoulder as the smaller woman’s body arched, writhed and so obviously longed for comfort that the continued nightmares offered none of.

*****

The passage of time had seen Julia slide down along the stone wall gradually, now lying on her back. Vesper had been pushed outwards slowly, as the warrior’s sleeping form found its most comfortable, with an arm still resting around the initiate’s naked, pale shoulder, supporting her head.

It was like this that Vesper awoke, rags and blankets wrapped around her form. The first few seconds of semi-consciousness had been the best moments of her waking life the last long time. The few seconds where she was in the limbo between awareness and sleep, when she remained briefly unaware of aches and hurts, where her ever-churning mind had yet to conjure up the torturous thoughts that so often plagued her.

This awakening was different, horrifying and pleasant at the same time. The first few seconds of perception passed by, and feelings welled up in her. Aches, pain, shame, disgust and fear all competed amongst each other for her attention. The memories of her temple, of Amelia, of her time in this depraved mutation of a cult that had once been of her own faith, they flooded her mind, made her blue eyes shimmer with anguish as she opened them to take in the dimly lit cell. But above it all, keeping it all in check, there was a fragile, flickering feeling of safety and warmth.

Vesper closed her eyes again, taking one gasping breath before she forced herself to calm again, for fear that the moment might pass prematurely. She was safe, warm, her cheek nestled against her protector’s toned shoulder, an arm draped over the woman, on top of the blankets dragged tightly over her body. Carefully, with a confusing, excitable feeling settling in her tummy, the brown-haired girl moved her arm down to rest on the warrior’s stomach instead.

It was hard to truly describe what she felt. She had no idea she could even feel like this, safe in someone’s arms in spite of the horrors dooming them both. For a long time, Vesper simply stayed still in the loose, entangled embrace, feeling her insides rise and fall in rhythm with the calm breathing of the woman next to her. It felt, in that brief period of peace, as if merely feeling Julia’s breath was enough to keep the crashing waves of everything else the initiate felt at bay.

With an apprehensive, lopsided smile creasing her lips, she opened her eyes once more, taking in the sight before her. Up close, numerous smaller and larger scars became visible on the warrior’s skin. Vesper’s eyes traced over Julia’s neck slowly, following the contours and concaves, up to the woman’s jawline where yet more small discolorations, lines and patches of oddly stretched or molded skin were discernible.

She could not help but let her eyes wander, catching a thin, pale line of skin crossing from just next to the redhead’s nose, to the middle of her cheek. Somehow, it seemed as if the warrior’s nose had avoided ever being broken, at least it looked as natural as ever, curving slowly out from her face, ending in a small, slightly sharp tip. 

The initiate’s eyes were suddenly drawn to Julia’s creasing, dry lips. A light sigh passed from the redhead’s body, an anomaly in her previously calm and regular breathing that signaled clearly enough to Vesper that the woman was waking up. After a few seconds of frantic thinking, she rolled off her protector’s form, ending up lying on the thoroughly warmed blankets with just a strong, toned arm under her head and around her shoulder. 

Lazy, warm moments passed, turning seconds to minutes as the larger, stronger of the two women climbed back into the waking world, her shoulders rising, body tensing briefly as she did a small stretch without wanting to roll free of the girl who, after knowing her for what could at best be two or three days, was already sleeping so close that she might as well be glued to her.

“Mmh…” The redhead let out a sleepy, pleased groan, squeezing Vesper’s shoulder gently, pausing a moment before whispering. “Vesper, you awake?”

It took a few long moments before any reply came, but in that time, it was clear enough to Julia that the brown-haired girl next to her was awake. Her breathing was too irregular, her shoulders and head moving a bit too much, a bit too unpredictably for her to be sleeping. The answer finally came, a meek, breathy whisper, as if the initiate was afraid that the moment would be stolen from her if she spoke of it. “Yep…”

The silence was apprehensive, nervous. They both knew that sooner or later, they were going up there again. Whatever warmth and calm they found in this cell was but a temporary respite from what waited in the hall, a pause from the meticulous tearing down of their mental and physical freedom.

Julia felt it stronger than Vesper, having been in the possession of the cult for far longer. She was forgetting what life had been like outside of the cell and the hall. The mercenary units she had served with, her travels, the people she had met, her old friends, it was all slipping away. It had been, until the cult had for some inexplicable reason decided to throw this vulnerable girl into her cell and into her life.

Were they really that unaware of the warrior’s mental state? She was weakened, battered from the daily abuse, but she was not broken. She was not a silent, empty shell to be used at the leisure of the abominations and depraved humans up in the hall, like some of the old priestesses of the temple now were. 

Perhaps the cult simply did not realize that she was not yet broken? Perhaps they had hoped that by putting the frail initiate together with the supposedly tough mercenary, she would be broken even quicker? Instead, they had put together two people desperately searching for something to hold on to, desperately searching for anything in their lives that might make just a little sense. 

It dawned on Julia, finally, that all of this might just be exactly what the abbess wanted. To spark hope in them, to watch them during the final descent, after finding a brief light in each other, only to realize that there was no escape, and nothing they did or said would help the other, resulting at last in complete surrender. She opened her eyes, looking up into the eternal pitch-black darkness near the ceiling of the cell. She was going to hold on, and she was going to force the girl to hold on too. Somehow. Enough souls had been forever tainted and destroyed in this place, but she was not going to let them take away Vesper’s young life.

“Why me, Julia? What have I done?” The initiate’s whispered words reached the redhead’s ears after a long silence between the two. “Why does she insist on taking me? What have I done?” 

The anger in Vesper’s words was obvious, but beneath it, a deep desperation could be sensed. A boring, consuming understanding hid beneath the surface of the brown-haired novice’s words, an understanding that worried Julia far more than the girl’s anger. She squeezed a tense shoulder gently, exhaling tiredly. 

“Because…” she let the word hang in the air for a second, searching for the best way to say what little she knew, finding nothing. “Because you are what you are. A Shallyan.” Julia stared up into the darkness for a moment, silence descending over the two, then she spoke again. “She used to be one, I think. Now she just enjoys breaking them.”

Vesper nodded, but without even looking, Julia could feel that she was unconvinced. She had found her own reason, whatever it was, and the way it was consuming her was almost palpable in the quiet cell. The tired warrior let out another quiet sigh, and turned to her side, her arms wrapping securely around the girl’s body. The two laid with arms around one another, the oppressive silence around them slowly replaced with the usual low murmurs of the dungeon.

*****

The concept of time was difficult to truly grasp while in the cell. Occasionally, food would be shoved in between the iron bars, but seemingly not at any planned interval. After a long, uneventful “day” with no food served, the two of them fell asleep again. Lying close, but not in each other’s arms. Vesper was too hesitant, and Julia sensed that even though she thought the initiate needed someone, she desperately wanted to be alone, too.

Their slumber was broken off by the same trio of guards that had brought them up the last time. Yet again, Julia refrained from resisting or fighting, and the few punches thrown by the guards seemed habitual more than anything. Vesper’s struggles were muted and quiet. The two laid briefly against the floor of the cell, staring into each other’s eyes. 

The redhead’s eyes were already dimming, losing their luster. She realized vaguely that now, after the meek, tortured girl had been catapulted into her life, she no longer wanted to close off and shut down whenever the time came for the cultists to abuse her. For a moment, Julia’s eyes shone with despairing compassion, but the shimmering emotions withered away as quickly as they had blossomed. She wanted to say something, do something that would make whatever was to happen to Vesper now okay, but nothing came to her. She was powerless both physically and mentally, unable to protect the writhing, quietly gasping novice.

Julia’s eyes grew dull, corpse-like, offering little comfort to the initiate. There was nothing they could do, anymore. Nothing to do but wait, and hope that the girl’s mind would suffer the horrors inflicted on her and come back without injury. The larger woman laughed bitterly inside herself at that notion, but the feeling of self-loathing disappeared soon after, along with almost all other feelings. What was left was simply self-hatred for what she was unable to do for Vesper, and hopelessness. However much she might wish to help Vesper, she would be lucky just to see what happened to the shivering young woman.
They were brought up into the hall, and separated, Julia dragged off to some remote corner, where the opponent of her last fight had some private time with the warrior. As always, she gave nothing away, taking beatings and abuse with stoic silence, whenever her body’s reflexes allowed her to stay quiet. Her mind was elsewhere, something that infuriated the well-equipped mutant to no end.

Vesper was, as she had feared and known, brought to the abbess once more, placed up against the end of the small podium she had been tied to and raped on, the first night. The brown-haired girl’s shoulders sagged, her eyes focused on the floor. For a time, she was simply left alone, there, sitting against one side of the dais, arms tied behind her back.

The abbess’ black high-heelers stepped into the initiate’s field of view with no hesitation, not the slightest flinch. Every time those heels tapped against the stone floor, merciless, tingling tendrils washed through Vesper. She had gathered her legs and tucked them as far up near her chin as she could, but it was a difficult position to maintain with her arms securely tied to each other behind her. 

Syrith’s night-black thigh-high socks and stiletto heels halted less than a foot from the novice’s face. But, rather than being dragged up and put through abuse, Vesper was ignored, in favor of some other unfortunate victim placed on the podium. With the blue-eyed girl sitting between her thrusting, powerful legs, the matriarch hammered an orgasm into a silent woman, and then, without as much as pausing for breath or a refractory period, she proceeded to slam herself in until another burst of cum exploded into the woman. 

Vesper simply sat on the floor, against the dais, shaking with anxiety as her tormentor poured seemingly unending reserves of spunk into her current toy, just waiting for the inevitable.

It never came.

Woman after woman was placed on the platform by silent guards, each and every one pumped full to the point where Syrith’s repeated orgasms made the sticky, hot spunk run and even squirt from stuffed pussy after stuffed pussy. It all carried on for hours, with Vesper sitting huddled below the matriarch, trapped there by the woman’s powerful legs. 

Finally, no more women were brought before the black-haired cultist. She simply stood over the shivering initiate in silence, her breathing labored after the marathon fuck-session. The chaotic, cacophonous sounds of the hall returned to Vesper’s mind, and for a moment, the woman over her faded to the background. The initiate dared to cast a look to the side, seeing more than she had ever wanted to in her life with but a single look. 

A man, still alive, being dissected. A grotesque bar, where the counter was supported on bound women, each of them fitted with a gag that kept the mouth open. Most of the spots at the bar were filled with men and women equipped similarly to the matriarch, and each of them was gently bouncing back and forth into the waiting mouth of a slave-girl, as if it was the most natural thing in the world to do while conversing.

Vesper’s attention snapped back in front of herself as Syrith crouched down. She placed a finger under the brown-haired girl’s chin, raising the novice’s face slowly, but firmly. The tall woman’s pitch-black eyes spellbound the initiate in a heartbeat. Sounds, smells, sights, everything around her drowned in those bottomless pits. 

“You’ll get your turn, girl.”

The words were more felt than truly heard, the message absorbed by the girl’s eyes, seeping into her brain. She sat there, huddled, without knowing for how long, the imposing cultist keeping her rooted in place by virtue of a single finger. When Syrith got up and lazily wandered back to her throne, Vesper realized that she was gasping slightly for breath. The woman’s mere touch did something to people. Stole away their will and their resistance. Barely a minute passed before the girl was hauled back to the empty cell, feeling almost as despoiled as if she had been raped.

She sat against the stone wall, lost in whirling thoughts as she waited for Julia to return. When the warrior finally did, she was dragged limply between two guards, with the abbess in tow. Vesper could see blood dripping slowly from Julia’s lips, and could see almost as obvious, glowing red patches. Marks left behind by the warrior’s tormentor. 

The guards dragged the redhead into the cell, but rather than dumping her on the floor, they remained stationary, holding the woman between them as the matriarch herself entered the cell. Vesper dared not look into those night-black pools of corruption, instead watching the dagger heels cross the floor, kick some spread rags into a pile, and then approach her.

Syrith grabbed Vesper by a fistful of slightly curly brown locks of hair, dragged her to the center of the room and forced her down over the pile of rags, on her stomach. With a cheek pressed against the stone floor and a steely grip of her hair, Vesper was raped by the abbess. Not just once, but again, and again. Syrith exploded within the girl, and just kept going. For what seemed like hours, she rammed herself hilt-deep, copious orgasm following copious orgasm. When it was finally over, she leaned down and hissed two simple, cold words.

“You’re mine.”

The matriarch left, flanked by her guards. Julia, who had been dropped to the floor, dragged herself laboriously towards the center of the room, draping her arms around Vesper’s shaking, convulsing body. The two of them had no words, no energy left to try and make their life worth living. The girl remained with her head turned away from her supposed protector, only relieved from her bitter tears by uneasy sleep.

Tuesday, September 3, 2013

Two Months as a Published Indie Author

The amazement at this actually being real has sort of dimmed. Not that I'm not excited, I definitely am, but the weight and length of this project, my being a writer, has finally hit me. I don't think I'll hurt anyone by disclosing the size of my Amazon earnings for June and July. I ended up at around 18$ for June, and around 38$ for July.

Yeah, in the grand "I want to make a living at this" scheme of things, that's pathetic. But from a more optimistic point of view, it's a doubling. In other words, this basically shows that I am doing what I'm supposed to. Things are moving as they're supposed to. Writing and releasing short stories is not about becoming rich, or selling 50.000 books overnight. It's about selling 5 copies a month of a story, every month.

So, as you slowly release more work, you slowly move closer to being able to make a living. I suppose I'm hoping that that's what's happening now. I'm releasing 1-2 stories a month, and I'm seeing the slow buildup of income from that. It's not glorious, but it's not meant to be. It's meant to be something I work hard at, like any other thing you want to make a living of, and then maybe in 3, 5 or 10 years, I'll be able to live off my writing.

This isn't just something I do as a passing fancy. I'm settling in for the long haul. My goal, with A Different Prince Charming added to my already available books, was to end up at 17 sales this month. That might be a weird number to you, but basically I wanted 15 sales from my already released stories, and then 2 from A Different Prince Charming, since it was released in the middle of the month. I ended up at 23 sales. Can't complain about that! With 4 stories now out, I'll be hoping for 20 sales next month, hopefully with a little added on from a new release.

Note: Going to combine this and the other report into one, from next month on. It's just easier.

Sunday, September 1, 2013

Three Months


This month and a half, I worked on my first 2 paying commissions. One for a follower in the game Trials in Tainted Space (Yes, TiTS), and one for a friend of mine. The scenes I am writing for the follower may or may not be included in the game, that isn't up to me. Other than that, I got back on track with my writing a lot more, sticking to my writing goals.


I also tried using goonwrite.com for my covers for the first time, and was not disappointed. A Different Prince Charming, Becoming His and Solon's Maiden will all have covers from there.

Monthly Words

My goal for this month (Running from the middle of July to synch reports to months) continued to be 1000 words a day. I have written a total of 46.124 words, coming to 981 words/day. Beginning now, my goal will be to write 1250 words a day. While that may not seem like a huge increase, it does take my monthly goal from 31k~ to 38k~. Hopefully that'll motivate me a bit more without becoming too much.

What I Have Learned

The main lesson of the past roughly 1½ months has been that a word count goal of 1000 words a day is too little, now. With 3 hours of daily work and using the Pomodoro technique, I can write roughly 4500 words. While I cannot keep up this pace every single day, it does mean that I end up being -wildly- ahead of my goal. This, in turn, leads to difficulties motivating myself to write.

I won't bore any potential reader with the details of my spreadsheet record keeping, but I can tell very easily from them that I could have written more. Basically, I have a day where I write 4-6000 words, then maybe another day like that, and then I don't write for 2-5 days. Not because I don't want to, and often not because I don't have anything to write. It's simply because I feel like I am so vastly ahead that, well, why bother? I don't think I can readily change this part of myself. Rather, I'll simply have to move my daily/monthly word count goal up or down until I find a sweet spot that motivates but doesn't overwhelm.

At the end of the month, I also experienced a drop in wordcount. I have had and will continue to have family visits. This naturally lowers my wordcount on those days, but it also seems to mess with my internal balance. It drains me of energy, and leaves me unable to write for a while after. This is the reason why I fell a tiny bit short of the 1000 word/day goal this month. Still, it is something I will have to learn to manage, since being a hermit isn't an option. :)

Finished Work This Month

TiTS Commission Scenes written: 4 (Each between 2500-4000 words)
Solon's Maiden nearly finished.
Becoming His finished (Assassin story, being proof read)
A Different Prince Charming published.

Note: Going to combine this and the other report into one, from next month on. It's just easier.

Friday, August 30, 2013

(Fan)fiction Friday 13: Shallya's Will Ch. 5

The New Role


Tags: [Futa/F] [Rape] [Huge dick] [Cum] [Beating] [Anal]

During their rest, they had slipped down along the wall gradually, until they were both lying on the spread-out bundle of rags and blankets, with only a sparse few bits of cloth wrapped around them. The dungeon was dark and the low noises of many women echoed quietly between the walls, but with no nearby opening to the outside, it was a pleasant temperature, at least. It remained impossible to tell what time of day or night it was.

Julia had for the first few days in the hole felt like she knew what time of day it was, but she had forgotten now. It was getting harder to remember how long she had spent in here. A month? Two? The first cuts were well-healed by now, and so were many of the subsequent ones. The redhead sighed, turning her head to the left to watch the brown-haired girl sleeping against the warrior’s arm.

That Vesper, she had barely fallen asleep before she started to twitch and whimper. Julia had never experienced anyone so wracked with nightmares. It had taken a very long time for her to get used to the tossing and turning, but she had finally fallen asleep herself. Now, she simply laid on her back, next to Vesper, refusing to remove the arm wrapped safely around the initiate. She obviously needed the comfort, even in her sleep.

The warrior squeezed Vesper’s tense shoulder gently, looking up in the darkness above them. There was a stone ceiling up there somewhere. During her first days here, she had tried to get out, screamed, crawled, punched and ripped at every conceivable exit, until the abbess herself had finally come down to the cell. Julia ran her hand carefully over her toned stomach, wincing a little at the memories. Not really the pain, more the words that Syrith had said. They echoed in her mind even now, after so many more nights and days in this hellhole.

“You don’t have to understand, Julia. You only have to accept that you are but one cow in a herd of cattle. You live or die by the whims of your betters.” She had whispered the words quietly, to herself. With a deep sigh, she pulled up the blanket covering the plagued initiate, hiding her more prominent features. “Not that it matters,” thought the warrior. “They’ll be here to start it all over soon enough…”

As minutes passed for the quiet redhead, Vesper’s whimpering grew into something resembling crying, though there were no tears. Finally, with an almost exasperated sigh, Julia rolled to her side and reached her other bruised, muscled arm over the girl’s stomach, turning her to her side. Their bodies squashed together lightly, with one still asleep and one covered in the marks of a fight.

At some point, the tired, beaten woman heard a wet gasp and felt the novice’s body jolt. Hesitant arms and cool, soothing hands wrapped around Julia’s back. She squeezed Vesper as best she could, holding the shaking girl close. It took a moment until it dawned on her that the initiate was quivering with barely-contained tears. All she could do was hold Vesper close, her head sagging against the novice’s shoulder lightly in shame. The frail woman needed comfort, and all she had was a beaten, gruff warrior who only had one weapon when it came to emotional damage; Suppression.

The two laid there in the darkness, one ashamed and one deathly afraid of what the next hours would bring, both wondering when, not if, their captors would return.

*****

As time wore on, guards came and went in the dungeon, to remove and replace the inhabitants of the cells. Cell-doors screeched against stone and were followed by silence, screaming or low moaning. Julia instinctively curled her arms tighter around the quaking girl in her arms. Each time a boot-clad foot hit the stone outside their cell, she could feel the initiate shake with fear.

She could have peered out through the cell door, she could have seen the guards drag naked women off, but instead preferred to lean her head against Vesper’s shoulder and neck. For once, she preferred not to see, to instead hold the young woman in her arms and pretend that today, the gods would have mercy.

Three sets of metal footsteps came to a halt outside of their cell. “Of course not,” thought the warrior, struggling to hold back an ironic, hopeless smile. She squeezed the shivering girl in her arms, and then loosened her grasp.

For once, Julia refrained from struggling. Two guards pulled her apart from Vesper. She managed to catch the third guard planting a knee in the vainly struggling girl’s lower back, only for him to grab at the novice’s arms to tie them behind her back. The warrior knew very well what she had coming, herself. After the first many days of fights, scratches and kicks, the guards were all too keen to deal out punishment to her when they could.

One guard had hooked his arms under hers and held her in place. A fist slammed against her already blue and yellow jaw, turning her face along with the impact. Thin ropes of spittle flew through the darkness from her ruptured lower lip. She spat at the floor defiantly, running her tongue over the small rupture in her lip. She was more prepared for the punch landing against her stomach. The hit was met by taut muscles. It hurt, but that was all. She gave them no more reaction than what they could force out of her reflexes. The warrior quickly became a boring target, and was dragged over the floor, only a little behind a struggling Vesper.

*****

The short journey from the cell up to the orgy hall was no longer much of an event for Julia. She deliberately let her bare feet drag limply over the floor, listening to the softly grinding sound. The guards clearly cared little for what she did. They had dug their gloved fingers into the flesh of her biceps and simply carried her along. She could almost physically feel their surprise at the lack of struggling.

For Vesper, however, it was a different story. With her arms stretched down along her sides and then tied by the wrists over her curvy little butt, she stumbled along, panicking, wet breaths catching in her throat. Her teary, ice-blue eyes scanned the stone brickwork of the hallways, looking for doors or exits of any kind, but there was very little except the occasional black stone corridor stretching to the side of the main path.

As she rounded a corner, the guard pulled harder, causing the scared initiate to stumble and almost fall. The guard grunted and simply dragged her along by the arm he had hooked under hers. Her shoulder strained painfully, but she had no time to get back up with the tempo the man had set.

*****

It started off as only a low, occasional noise, barely registered in the background inbetween the dragging of feet against stone, heavy breaths and intermittent, high-pitched sighs of pain. Eventually, the sound of steel against steel became louder, and below it, other sounds grew and blossomed into their own horrible melody.

Steel hit steel. A gurgling, desperate scream rose, then the sound of bodies smacking into, against other bodies followed. The thump of fists against soft skin, the sharp sound of bodies hitting the stone floor, both of them mixed with rhythmic moans, sighs and pleads of forgiveness, or begging for more.

Vesper was dragged around a corner, and suddenly, as she stumbled forward, the hedonistic overture hit her straight on. The enormous room opened around her, overwhelming her senses with impressions. It was all too much.

The room was one giant mess of circles of people surrounding slaves, small arenas where people fought, clusters of bodies piled on other bodies, rapes carried out surrounded by what appeared to be intimate scenes. Goat-headed, rippling creatures sparring with regular humans were everywhere in the room, flexible girls and women danced around iron poles, and innocent youngsters were murdered and bled dry into the waiting mouths of mutants and humans alike.

The guards forged a path through the utter chaos of humanoid forms, dragging the two young women towards the opposite side of the large room. They were heading towards what appeared to be a wooden throne. The wide armrests were held up by intricately detailed, naked young women carved into the block of dark wood that made up the large seat. In the throne, with obscenely spread legs, sat the leader of this cult. The now naked, raven-haired beauty who had welcomed Vesper on that first night. Abbess Syrith.

As she came closer, she could see more of the matriarch of the cult. There was apparently going to be some spectacle to amuse the bored-looking woman, as the floor immediately in front of her was clear of any writhing bodies in a relatively large circle. Vesper’s eyes travelled up along the abbess’ shapely, athletic legs, and then stopped. The tendrils of worry lashing around inside her stomach solidified to a block of ice as she saw it, a hefty, veined cock lying limply against the throne, between the woman’s statuesque legs.

The intiate’s breathing accelerated rapidly, her chest heaving and falling. The images of the last time she had been up in this hall flooded her mind, a lightning flash in her mind bringing back the images she could now imagine herself in the middle of from the night before. The dark-haired beauty on the throne, hammering into her defenseless form. She shuddered, vividly remembering feeling the slimy come drip from her, before she was dragged away.

She ripped her eyes free, for now ignoring the rest of the well-trained form on the throne to focus on the eyes of the figure. The orbs that met her were crowned with pitch-black irises, staring haughtily, hungrily back at her. It felt as if the blackness tore at her, into her soul, consuming her in an instant and then growing bored with her again. The feeling seemed to only last for a moment, but when the shivering novice emerged from the hold of the abbess’ eyes once more, she was in front of the woman, held in place by her arm by the silent guard.

Behind her, Vesper heard a low grunt and the sound of naked skin against stone, and then a low thump. She wrestled her frightened eyes from the horribly enchanting being in front of her, to cast a look behind her. The two guards carrying Julia had thrown her on the ground, and one had apparently given her a kick in the side. Still, the hardy, battered fighter was getting on her feet, almost before the guards merged with the convulsing, lewd mass of creatures surrounding the matriarch’s spot.

At the sound of whispered words, the girl’s head snapped back to look at the dark-haired woman on the throne. Dark, wispy tendrils of blackness were coiling around Syrith’s right arm like lazy, thin snakes, extending through the air towards the brown-haired plaything in front of her.

A black tendril grazed the novice’s forehead, pushing an unruly lock of hair away. A second tendril coiled around the initiate’s ear, and then pressed lightly against her temple. A third tendril extended, mimicking the second, on the other side of Vesper’s head. A final, fourth tendril came to rest under the bound woman’s chin, pushing her slightly downcast face upwards. The matriarch more spat than said a last word, causing the tendrils to jolt, sending the girl’s eyes rolling upwards in a forced, standing trance.

*****

Vesper heard wicked laughter first, and then all the other sounds of the orgy room. Vision, smell and feeling returned to her gradually as the black tendrils receded. She felt slow and heavy, spent, as if having worked hard an entire day. She looked at the abbess sitting in front of her, seeing her lips curl in a cruel, amused smile.

“Orphan,” she said nonchalantly. The word hit Vesper like a whip.

“You live for others, punishing yourself for events you could never have influenced,” the abbess cooed, slowly getting up, taking the three fluid steps necessary to reach the girl standing in front of her, running a hand along the novice’s soft shoulder, up along her neck and into the long, slightly curly hair, taking a firm hold that drove a hissing gasp of pain from Vesper.

“You think your pathetic goddess is testing you, don’t you, girl? You desperately search for wisdom and meaning in a world where there is none, you seek a mythical better tomorrow…” The raven-haired beauty’s lips curled into a hateful snarl as she jerked the girl’s hair roughly, her voice rising to a shout.

 “There is no tomorrow!”

“Shallya’s world failed before it even began, little one. Tomorrow is -never- coming,” said the abbess, her voice gradually falling to a low whisper. She looked into the icy blue, darting eyes so close to her own, smirking once more. Leaning back, she pressed her tongue out between her lips, withdrew it and then spat at Vesper.

The transparent glob of spit splattered against the initiate’s face, her eyes only barely closing in time. She stumbled forward blindly, the demanding hand stuck in her hair pulling her towards the throne. She felt and heard the abbess sit down once more, then felt a hand clasp around her middle, dragging her close, squishing her thigh up against the thick dick. She shivered, but clearly felt that there was no getting away from someone with the kind of strength that held her in place against the abbess’ center.

Shaking her head, Vesper blinked her eyes open once more. She looked down, seeing black-nailed fingers spread slightly against her firm tummy, then a hand came into her field of vision under one leg, lifting it up and placing it so that the novice’s knee and lower leg hung on the outside of Syrith’s thigh. The positioning was repeated with Vesper’s other leg, and she was then pulled close to the body behind her, feeling large tits squash and flatten a little against her taut back and tied arms. Directly below her exposed pussy, the wide, veined shaft was coming to life, hardening, growing thicker and longer.

“Now, Vesper… You simply have to accept your new role. You have to see what the world is becoming. Look out at my disciples, see the truth.”

From her perch atop the abbess’ thighs, Vesper could more clearly see the room at large. Her eyes quickly scanned the depraved landscape of the room, seeing deadly fights and acts of torture side by side with scenes that looked like star-crossed lovers had at long last found an opportunity to complete their love.

There were sensual scenes of affection, the snaps of whips, an overflow of unions spanning the spectrum from violent to loving, and even what appeared to be a station of tied women to be used completely at the discretion of anyone in the room. The initiate quickly looked away from the room at large, preferring instead to focus her eyes in front of her, on Julia.

The proud, tough woman was circling a four-armed, amazonian woman. Apparently, the fight had been going on for a little while, as the four-armed being was bleeding from her nose, and Julia was rolling her left shoulder, as if to restore feeling.

After this myriad of different impressions, Vesper had almost forgotten where she was and how she was positioned, but it quickly came back to her. The matriarch’s black-nailed, spread fingers pressed harder against the initiate’s flat stomach, while the other hand came to rest just a few inches down the inside of one of those widely spread thighs.

Vesper felt hot breath against her ear, and soon after soft, wet lips closing around her earlobe. Then, gradually, she felt a mounting pressure against her pelvis. It was an odd feeling, warm, soft, but at the same time insistent. The initiate looked down, her heart clogging her throat as she saw what she assumed to be the first half of Syrith’s hefty dick between her legs, rubbing lazily against her exposed inner thighs, smearing a little sticky, transparent precum into her skin.

With breaths catching in her throat, the novice started twisting, wriggling and flexing nervously, but she was held in place easily enough, achieving little other than grinding the head of the abbess’ cock against her skin and nether lips. Seconds felt like eternities as the bulbous cockhead pushed up against her cunt, the initiate’s struggling increasing despite the now rough handling of her stomach and thigh, nails digging into her tender skin.

At the very last moment, when Vesper could feel herself her body beginning to hesitantly spread around the abbess’ shaft, a heavy thumb and a grunt pierced the atmosphere immediately in front of the two on the throne. The pressure against her stopped, and she relaxed ever so slightly. In front of the throne, Julia had been slammed against the ground by the four-armed woman. For a moment, Vesper felt sure that she saw the redhead send a quick glance up at her, barely a noticeable diversion of her attention, but still one that the initiate sensed.

For a short while, Syrith’s attention remained on the two struggling forms on the floor in front of her. The vicious beating that the insolent warrior received from the four-armed amazon was met with rapidly waning interest, though, especially after Julia managed to free herself. Still, her sides were glowing red from the amount of hits she had received.

Once again, Vesper felt the insistent pressure against her clenching cunt, her toes curling as she felt the thick shaft begin to push into her. Her breathing came in shaky, superficial gasps, her entire body tense as tight, aching pussy slowly became stuffed with two inches of potent, steely dick. She barely registered another loud incident in the fight in front of her, and it appeared that Syrith’s attention would not be easily diverted either, at this point. All Julia’s new attempt solicited was a brief stop in the slow, grinding entrance into the shivering girl as the matriarch glanced towards the fallen warrior, and then once more focused on her prey.

Vesper could, by now, only stare down her front. The sounds and sights of the fight in front of her grew distant, blurry shades barely registered in the corners of her eyes. The domineering hands grasping her relatively small form rearranged slightly, providing her a moment of respite as fingers trailed over her front, teasing against her vaguely defined ribs until they reached and harshly grabbed one of her breasts, kneading the flesh.

The hand on her thigh merely moved below her taut leg, enabling the black-haired abbess to lift the initiate upwards, off of the turgid member and then let her clenching walls slowly spread out again as she was simply held in place, gravity doing the majority of the work. Her eyes remained fixed down along herself, watching with mildly fascinated horror as she bulged just a fraction of an inch outwards when the tip of thick, hard dick slowly bored into her pressuring, tense cunt.

It became harder to track time for the novice, as Syrith seemed to be content with merely massaging the tip of her massive shaft in her new toy.

“Take… What you want,” came the matriarch’s almost sensual whisper, causing Vesper to snap back to reality, her eyes straining to try and catch a glimpse of the raven-haired beauty. She could feel teeth gently tugging at her earlobe.

“The only thing that matters, is yourself…” The last two words were stretched out in a hiss, and with them, the initiate gradually arched her back, her eyes bulging as she felt the woman finally sink her cock in deeper in a slow, languid slide. A frantic inhalation caught in the girl’s throat, her toes curling as she felt herself utterly impaled, yet the abbess continued on, stuffing more pulsing cock into the meekly whimpering initiate on top of her, pressing, almost hammering in the last possible bit of cockflesh she could fit, finally drawing a satisfying, shaky sob from her victim.

For an eternity, the two sat on the throne. The brown-haired, naked initiate’s back arched madly, and the victorious, pleasantly smirking matriarch merely stayed in place. Vesper’s body shook with a sob again, her body clenching, shaking slightly as she refused to relax her muscles and let her rapist have her way entirely. For more than a minute, the two were as a single, obscene statue.

Finally, with a wet, despairing gasp, the novice could hold no longer, her body relaxing and falling against the strong body that held her in place. The hand groping her breast slowly snaked its way down over her side, feeling almost as if it laid claim to her skin as it descended down her form, ending with a firm grasp of her thigh.

With the initiate’s body once again conquered, it seemed that the revered mother had but one care left, and that single need had to be sated now. She managed a few testing, rolling thrusts, but soon seemed to lose control, her fingers squeezing the sensitive skin of Vesper’s thighs as she manipulated the girl’s form up and down at increasing speed, battering her rock hard, immensely-thick fuckrod into the writhing, whimpering woman on top of her.

“Nh, nnh, nhah! Mhnh!” The young woman’s initial, whimpering gasps quickly grew into more high-pitched, gasping breaths as the grinding, tearing pain from her stretched insides grew more insistent for every pounding thrust. Her body shook for every time she was skewered, pushing against the slightly sweaty form of the matriarch behind her.

After reaching a momentary crescendo, Vesper’s high-pitched squeals died down to meek, quiet sobs for every time she the fat cock bored into her tight snatch. The firm, domineering hands on her thighs and the lips around her earlobe were beginning to show a hint of desperation and lack of restraint, but the initiate barely felt the difference. Her mind was already clouded with permeating pain and a desperate, flickering fantasy of what life could, should have been like for her, to an extent that she was almost in a trance.

Through this trance-like state, she vaguely, between hammering thrusts, noticed Julia held against the stone floor by the four-armed beast. Vesper’s head lolled around aimlessly as she was slam-fucked against the abbess’ strong thighs, but she could not get the image of the grotesque beast jamming a large cock into the woman she had for a brief moment imagined as her protector in this place, someone who might, somehow, save her.

That hope was thoroughly extinguished as she watched the warrior simply lie on the stone floor, rocking back and forth as she was asspounded. Almost as if it was not her body being violated, Vesper faintly noticed that the grinding fuck had stopped, and that she was now pressed down around a spasming, cum-spewing rod. The foreign warmth felt alien, disgusting as it splattered against her cervix.

She would have cried, attempted to struggle even, but her eyes were locked with Julia’s green orbs, drawing strength from her beaten cellmate, somehow. Full feeling slowly returned to the initiate, her anchor in reality restored by Julia’s shockingly calm look. Her cunt involuntarily convulsed around the thick cumcannon that continued to spew rope after rope of jizz into her, so much so that she could feel it obscenely bubble from her clenching pussy, rolling and dripping down the part of the shaft left outside of her.

The hot, thick strands of semen continued hosing into her, the pressure against her inner walls mounting slowly. She was simply too stuffed full of wide fick for the copious amount of jizz to have room to dribble out of her at the rate that it was fired in.

Just as she started to thrash weakly, the fountain of cum died down, shooting a few last blasts of cum before it slowed to a dribble. Vesper let her head hang, her cheeks burning as she realized that Julia had been staring up at her the entire time. The warrior could not possibly have missed seeing the chewy, flooding cream leak from her abused cunt.

*****

Vesper was left impaled on Syrith’s softening cock, the hand previously guiding her body up and down instead exploring and caressing her moist skin. The initiate could clearly hear the rape taking place in front of her, but could not bear to see her protector be violated. Oddly, there was very little sound save for the panting of the assailant, and the odd grunt from Julia when she was hit or kicked by someone.

At some point, the guard who had dragged the girl up to the hall returned and roughly pulled her from the matriarch’s lap. The trip back to the cell was unclear to Vesper, her mind already straining from the events that had transpired. As she stumbled along, she could almost physically feel the second rape layering itself on top of the first. By the time she was thrown back in the cell, she was shaking with disgust and pent up tears that she refused to let out. She was dirty, sweaty and stained with the abbess’ fluids, she ached and could barely feel her arms or shoulders anymore, still tied with the rope around her wrists as she was.

By the time the guards dragging Julia came, Vesper had wormed her way onto the rags and blankets near the wall of the room. Lying on her stomach, she more felt than saw the presence of the guards, especially as one of them made his way over to her and bent over her. She froze up entirely, her eyes wide as she stared backwards and up as much as she could. For a long, long moment, the man stood still, then she felt something bite into the rope holding her wrists in place. With a light snap, the rope was cut, and the guards disappeared as quickly as they had entered, closing the iron bar door, leaving the two lightly panting women behind them.

Friday, August 23, 2013

(Fan)fiction Friday 12: Shallya's Will Ch. 4

Darkness, A New Friend


Tags: [Futa/F] [Rape] [Drugging] [Nightmare/Flashback] [Blindfold] [Ritual] [Imprisonment]

The first thing she noticed was that breathing was harder. Something was covering her, but she was still stuck in the split-second between sleep and awareness, darkness retreating from her mind and senses. She wanted to move, to sit upright, but found her limbs sluggish, easily held in place by a hand against her shoulder. Sleepily, her eyes cracked open, swimming a little. She could see the threatening shape of white cloth very close to her eyes, held over her mouth. Above her, a hooded shape hovered. All that was visible in the faint light of the beginning morning were strong, feminine lips and an equally powerful and somehow sensual chin.

Vesper’s vision had already begun flagging, feeling as if she was spinning around inside herself. She remained entirely conscious that she was lying still on the bed, on her back, throughout the experience. Colors drained from the world slowly. The shape above her grew monstrous for a brief moment. Finally, she sank back into blackness.

*****

The first half second, she felt no pain, merely registered that the blade had penetrated her robe, her stomach and finally stopped when the tip settled in the pillar behind her. The force of the thrust had pushed her body into a slightly angled posture, from which she looked down and saw the blade sticking out of her, saw blood flooding out along the blade. Clasping at her stomach, the initiate looked up at the black-armored warrior in wide-eyed shock.

The giant man stepped back, yanking his weapon free of the girl in one violent movement, pulling her with it until she simply fell forward. Vesper hit the ground sideways, her body prickling and convulsing, the thorny flower of agony blooming inside her. The only thing that came out of her mouth was blood, her eyes remaining wide, almost bulging with shock. Blood spilled from her mouth and from her stomach, quickly spreading from the clingy, damp cloth of her robe and onto the ground.

With her eyes misting, she more felt than heard or saw the bodies around her hit the ground. Muted screams tore through to her blurred mind, screams born not only of impending death, but of worse things happening before the final release. Vesper’s mind was awash with so many images. Thoughts of Amelia surfaced, desperate thoughts of how she would now never complete her ordainment, but above all, the all-consuming need to relieve the pain. She attempted to summon up the will to stutter out a prayer of healing, but only bubbling gasps burst from her lips.

Weakness crept over her mind and body, her previously spasming legs merely flexing instinctively, her thoughts drifting as she became more and more numb. The world was slipping from her grasp. Thoughts evaded her and left nothing but pain itself. Soon, even the scything pangs of pain grew distant, leaving only apathy. Her head fell to the right, her cheek landing against the ground roughly.

The scene played out in front of her should have horrified her. The few of her sisters that were not dead were being abused around her. She could only passively observe as the revered mother, the abbess of the temple, was dragged out of the main building and forced to her knees. Vesper could see tears on the old grey-haired woman’s face as she looked out over the courtyard filled with butchered women. The ruins of her temple, littered with the dead or dying youths she had helped raise for so many years, would be the last thing she ever saw.

*****

Something wet and slightly rough pressed against her face hungrily, then disappeared again. She felt the fingertips of a feminine hand trail from her thigh up over her body, circling briefly around her slightly protruding hipbone. Her lips cleaved open, ropes of built-up saliva bridging the gap, quivering as she took in a deep gasp of air.

Something was covering her eyes. It felt and seemed to be dark cloth. Her head hung over the edge of what felt like a polished and smooth block of wood. It reached from her shoulders and down to the middle of her firm  bottom. She tried moving, but quickly discovered that her wrists and ankles were tied to something at the base of the block. Only when the feminine hand trailed further up, over her gently rounding side and up to the bottom of her ribcage, did she realize that she was naked.

Vesper flexed, straining as best she could against the ropes. There was little she could do. Whoever had tied this certainly knew how to handle rope and keep someone in place. Slowly, the scent and sound of the room around her infiltrated her mind. A tangy, sweaty smell with a sweet note was all-pervasive. Around her, sighs and moans of satisfaction and pain mixed with the lewd smacking of skin against skin. In the background, there was the faint sound of steel on steel, and shouting.

“N-no!” The protest had burst from her lips as the hands trailing over her form had reached her breasts, caressing gently over one, twisting the nipple before ending up on the initiate’s shoulder, holding her even more firmly in place. She was soon answered by coarse laughter, both male and female.

The hand left her shoulder. For a few brief moments, she laid there, bare and unable to see, feeling the bodies all around her in whatever room she was in. The petite girl turned and angled her head, attempting to hear the people around her better. With a shriek, her head was dragged upwards with a hand in her hair, the parted lips of the panting initiate meeting a luscious, slick set of lips.

Vesper was breathless, gasping for air through her nose as a thousand prickly needles bored into her scalp. The grip of her hair did not let up, it only grew stronger as someone stole a deep, demanding kiss from her, shoving a tongue into her mouth. When her lips were finally free again, she could feel hot breath against her skin, then her ear.

“Mmh… You’re going to be so much fun, just like your sisters.” Warm air from the feminine voice filled her ear, making her shiver slightly. The breathless initiate’s back arched slightly as she once more strained against her restraints, only to be yanked down again, her back resting against the wooden block. Vesper’s shoulders and thighs were beginning to hurt from the strain of having her limbs tied below her, but she had other things to occupy her busy mind with.

The hand gripping a fistful of her long, curlish, golden-brown locks started pulling downwards, dragging her head with it, eliciting a pained, wet gasp from the novice. As her head was forced down, her tense neck became increasingly exposed, tendons defined clearly due to her pain-clenched jaw.

Vesper’s form jolted as hot, moist lips pressed against her neck, nipping at her skin lightly as they made their way down over her form, trailing over her collarbone and down over the gentle rounding of her flattened left breast. The initiate could not hold back a gasp as her nipple slipped between those suckling lips, once more soliciting laughter from the unseen crowd around her.

As soon as those lips left her body, she started writhing and struggling against her bonds again. Her teeth gritted, her entire small form tensing in an attempt at overworking the ropes holding her firmly in place. A hand from landed on her thigh with a sharp smack, making her gasp. A warm, dull ache spread where the hand had hit.

She could feel the air move against her skin. Someone walked around her, walked from her side to where her knees pointed. The bound initiate pressed her knees against each other even more resolutely, instinctively trying to cover what she could of herself. The hand on her thigh dragged over her soft skin, fingertips circling gently around the tip of her knee. A second hand landed just above her other knee, sliding to the inside of her leg.

Vesper barely felt the mounting pressure outwards at first, but as both hands increased the strength of their push, her thighs tensed, tendons in the back of her knees stretching the skin. Her pearly-white teeth began to show as she gritted them, her breathing coming powerfully through her nose. With all her might, she forced her legs against the pull outwards, her back pressing down against the wooden block, her shoulders straining upwards against the bindings.

After another ten heartbeats of struggle, a hand was removed from her knees, and the one left relaxed its pressure. The initiate relaxed ever so slightly. The next moment, a fist slammed knuckles-first into her taut stomach, driving a gasp of air from her lips and forcing her to reflexively curl up as much as she could in her restraints. Immediately, both hands were back on her knees, pulling her legs apart. Hips were jammed in between her thighs, leaving her open and unable to stop what was to come. Coughing, with beading sweat and droplets of spit running from her mouth, up into her nose up over her face to be soaked up by the blindfold, she continued to struggle in vain, thrashing her head from side to side.

Around her, the room had grown more and more silent as the struggle played out. Now, as she had been split open, a vague, monotone mumble rose to a chant. For a moment, her insides froze in terror. Images of what she had seen in the forest, on the night her temple was burned, tore through her mind. But there was a different note to this chant, she realized. It felt like a horrible call, as if it was egging someone on.

Over several minutes, the chant slowly rose in intensity until it filled the air, surrounding the struggling, blindfolded girl on all sides. Vesper continued to vainly try and force the strong hips between her thighs out, but there was little to do but lie there and wait.

Finally, as the chant seemed to be nearing an almost feverish crescendo, the girl’s legs were forced further apart, painfully far due to the nooses around her ankles holding her legs down, limiting her flexibility considerably. Her chest rose and fell swiftly, her twisting, revolting body giving a jolt as hands lifted something and let it go. A heavy, warm length landed against her pelvis and firm lower belly. The strong hands quickly moved to her sides, fingers spreading slightly as they dug into her skin.

The initiate’s struggles gradually died down until the only activity left was the heaving of her chest and occasional turns of her head when she felt someone or something come close. The chanting around her wavered back and forth in intensity, and the smell of the room seemed to grow increasingly oppressive. The shaft against her tummy pulsed lazily, soon reaching up far enough to almost reach her bellybutton. She struggled upwards, her blindfolded eyes staring blindly down in the direction her captor had to be in.

The fingers grasping her sides grew more painful, their grip tightening. The form between her thighs withdrew slowly, as if to ensure that the bound novice felt the entire length slide from root to tip off of her center. Vesper’s toes extended, then curled and extended again. What muscles the girl had bulged in a last-ditch attempt at freedom.

She felt the hard, wide cockhead push up at her, parting her, stretching her more and more widely. Her thighs tensed harder than ever, her hands balling up, nails digging into her skin. The initiate let out a gasping sob, but it drowned instantly in the chanting around her.

“N-nnnh-nnn-“ her voice strained, tinges of pain flowering inside her pelvis as the wide length forced her apart. Too tired to keep her head up any longer, she let it fall over the edge of the wooden block. It took only moment before tears pooled against the inside of the blindfold, soaking it only to reform and flow down into her hair. She writhed, her protruding hipbones pressing against her skin as her back arched. The shaft continued to firmly press into her tight pussy, past the point of fullness. In the back of her buckling mind, she wondered how much more of it there could be.

It took what felt like an eternity until the initiate for the first time in her life experienced the unfamiliar feeling of churning balls pressed up against her. By that time, blood was dripping from her clenching hands, so hard had she dug her nails in. Her chest heaved heavily, and her form felt slick from the thin sheen of sweat that was forming on her. Her jaws hurt from having been closed tightly for so long. But it was nothing compared to the wide, horribly warm and veiny shaft hilted in her stretched cunt.

The nameless body between her thighs stayed hilted in her forever, long enough that, in the end, Vesper simply could not hold herself taut anymore, falling down against the wooden block in a gasping, sweaty mess. The chanting around her came to an abrupt and immediate hold, replaced with rough, promiscuous cheering. Warmth rushed in around her. She felt the hands and tongues of many, many people press against her, tug and caress her hair, face, feet, breasts and body.

The balls felt sticky with their combined sweat as they peeled off her skin. What could have been a moment of relief for the initiate barely even registered. She was overflowing with fright and uncertainty as every inch of her skin was licked, caressed and nibbled on. It was only when the wide cock began plowing steadily into her that she fully registered it. The rape was coming to fruition. In the middle of an insane, licking, grasping throng of heretics, she lost her innocence to an unknown cultist.

Vesper’s form rocked back and forth, the pounding she received making her gasp. Gradually, the mass of hands and tongues dwindled, the last of them leaving with a longing lick of the girl’s nipple. Then, it seemed, the unwilling performance was back to merely being eyecandy. The lewd noises of the room started again around her, and she simply rocked back and forth, back and forth.

Occasionally she would struggle against her restraints vainly, but otherwise, all that existed was the cacophony around her, the enveloping smell of sweat, sex and blood, and the wide cock pistoning in and out of her stretching, grabbing pussy. Vesper’s back arched lightly as her rapist entered a more feverish state, thrusting at a harder and harder pace. She felt the hands on her sides clench painfully, and then the thrusting slowed some, as the large dick pulsed out thick, sticky cum, splattering into her abused cunt.

It was an unwelcome, foreign feeling of warmth. She felt dirty, even more dirty that she was, covered in spittle and sweat. The person holding her seemed wracked with pleasure, hilting one last time in the initiate and then pulling backwards. The last weak ropes of sperm launched at her, one shooting up over her pelvis, splattering stickily around her bellybutton, the others landing against her slightly gaping pussy. The warm, gooey liquid made her shiver with goosebumps as it rolled down over her abused form. She felt it drooping, felt the weight of the gobs of spunk redistribute as the ropes became long, obscene strands hanging down from her.

Vesper had halfway expected the next cultist to come up and repeat the rape, remaining tense for quite a long time, but there was no further contact to her skin. She was simply left in the center of the room, her body stretched in a wide, inverted U around the sticky wooden block. It was hard to tell how long she laid there, bare and open for all to see, but it was long enough that the cum dried on her skin.

Eventually, even her thoughts gave way to nothingness. She simply hung from the block, disgust slowly creeping into every fiber of her being. Disgust, and regret.

*****

She was awoken by hands untying her wrists and ankles. She was dragged off the wooden block, her feet stumbling as they fell against the stone floor of the room. She could hear and feel sleeping forms close around her, but the two figures hooked arms under her shoulders, and pulled the stumbling initiate along the floor, outside of the reach of any one of the bodies she could feel around her.

The atmosphere changed drastically, and the low, mumbling noise of the room she had been in disappeared behind her. The air became colder and more damp, and increasingly oppressive. This had to be below ground. The two people dragging her by her shoulders stopped, and she heard a metallic, grating sound against stone. The initiate regained her footing shakily, only to be pulled off of her feet once more when she was pulled through the opening. After a few more seconds, she began to hear breathing, low mewling, crying and faint moans around her.

Vesper felt her bearers stopping and turning, and once more she heard the grating sound of metal against stone. She was carried forward, and then thrown. She landed heavily against the ground, only barely managing to take most of the fall with her hands. The door was slammed shut behind her, and footsteps paced away, quickly lost amongst the other faint sounds of the dungeon.

With a shaking, cold hand she reached up, pushing the black blindfold up to her forehead. Almost no light hit her wide eyes, but enough that she could just barely see the outline of a female body in the dark, up against the wall of the cell she was in. The initiate pushed against the floor, her skin sliding uncomfortably over the cold stone as she dragged herself up against the opposite wall, her eyes fixated on the other woman in the cell. Slowly, she got up into a sitting position, pulled her knees up under her chin and wrapped her arms around herself. The cold of the stone seeped into her, made her shiver, but she was too scared and unhinged to notice the pile of rags in the corner next to the other figure.

“I ain’t going to hurt you. They got their hands on me too.” The voice had a foreign accent. Vesper was too tired to begin considering where the woman might be from, but she did relax a little, examining her once again. The other woman was a far more impressive sight than Vesper imagined herself to be. The woman looked like she was around Vesper’s age, she had dark, dull red hair that looked almost black in the faint light of the dungeon, a proud face and a well-toned fighter’s body. Her breasts were considerably larger than Vesper’s two handfuls-and-a-half, too. She was covered in superficial cuts and bruises, but appeared to be taking it quite well.

“Name’s Julia. You okay?”

The huddled initiate simply nodded in return, her empty eyes darting around until they came to rest on the small pile of rags and blankets next to Julia. She swallowed, grimacing a little. Her throat was dry. “Julia… I-I mean, I’m Vesper.” She glanced at the redhead’s eyes before looking at the pile of cloth again.

Julia’s green eyes scanned the scared woman in front of her. “Really, with her demeanor, girl’s more appropriate than woman,” she thought, but immediately regretted her judgement. No one came through the first nights in here without noticeable scars, emotional or physical. The bruised woman attempted a reassuring smile, but it turned into a grimace rather quickly. Smiling made her abused face ache. Instead, she gathered up the pile of blankets and rags in one arm, stemming her other hand against the wall to push herself up on slightly shaky feet.

“Listen, Vesper. I’m, ah… Sorry. Everyone here deals differently with, you know. It all.” Julia realized that her sudden apologetic behavior probably came off rather strange. It was usually everyone for themselves in here, but the quiet, shaken strength of the brown-haired girl thrown into her cell had somehow pierced the tiniest of holes through her shell. She felt dirty for having fallen into judging this Vesper as quickly as she had. The fighter took a step closer to the girl. Their eyes met and locked.

Vesper swallowed, looking down and away from Julia. It was obvious that she was trying to hide tears, but even the faint light in the cell illuminated the wet, wavy lines down her cheeks. With a quiet sigh, Julia took the last three steps to the other wall, sinking down along it, her behind hitting the floor with an audible smack. She grimaced. Her strength had been sapped entirely by a long night of fighting in the orgy hall. “The Hall of True Beauty” she had heard the cultists call it.

“Fucking freaks,” mumbled the redhead.

Vesper barely registered the redhead’s voice, so quiet was the whisper. The woman sitting next to her radiated warmth and a measure of safety, but then, so had the abbess. She stayed still, frozen in place as Julia began wrapping one of the blankets around her. The woman removed her arms once the blanket was in place, wrapping them around her own knees. Vesper swallowed, resting her head against the blanket hanging between her knees. She began rocking back and forth.

There was no concept of time in the dark place. Not a single sign of the time, not a single window to let in fresh air. Vesper had no idea how long she sat curled up, rocking back and forth. Finally, she heard the woman beside her sigh. Not an exasperated sigh, but one of frustration with herself. The initiate stayed very still as she felt a toned, strong arm carefully drape around her shoulders. She felt herself pulled lightly against Julia, and did not resist.

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

A Different Prince Charming Published


Description: Putting everything on the board, Amelia's father has gathered his army and even brought his daughter along to the front. He plans to confront the elven army and establish his supremacy once and for all. Plans and strategies have a habit of not surviving contact with the enemy, though, something that the monarch's daughter soon learns in a very personal way.

A Different Prince Charming is an erotica short story that details the meeting of two people of different races with entirely different ideas about how the world should be. One cannot refuse the other's idea of teaching, and things quickly take a turn towards the carnal in the royal tent.

This story contains 8000+ words of scorching, interracial fantasy erotica, featuring an amazonian futanari (A woman, except with cock and balls) elf and her reluctant, dubious princess partner.

Author Notes: So, this was actually something I wrote a couple months ago. I was uncertain about publishing it back then, perhaps because it was the first thing I had written in a long while at the time. I guess I regained some confidence (Whether warranted or not) in my writing over the past few months, so here we are.

I should also note that this is the first of 3 stories that will be using covers I got from goonwrite.com. I'm pretty satisfied with it, and James, the guy who adjusted the covers I ordered, did so within 24 hours as advertised. I really can't say anything bad about the service. It's cheap, fast, and while you may not be able to get exactly 110% the kind of cover you want, there is a staggering amount of premade covers.

Guess that sounded a bit advertising-ish. I don't work there, but I think the cover looks much better than anything I've made myself.

Without further babbling; I hope you enjoy the book.

Sunday, August 18, 2013

An Update on my Writing

Hello, blog. It's me again. Not dead from sun poisoning or whatever.

I took a break from writing some time during the summer, and when I slowly started back up, I only managed between 1000 and 1500 words a day. That was my goal, sure, but it was pretty pitiful. I felt like I was back to where I started this journey. Still, I kept on target in terms of wordcount for all of July.

Now, we're about halfway through August, and things are going -much- better. I have rediscovered my love for and remade my writing schedule, and as a result I am now able to crank out 4-6000 words a day. A day. A month ago, that was what I'd write in a week.

I have gotten to this point by using a very simple technique. I struggle to call it a technique, really, but I believe it's called the Pomedoro technique. Basically, you set a timer to 25 minutes and work on your task, then take a 5 minute break. You repeat this as many times as the task needs you to, and then you're done.

Previously, I'd just sit down to write. That pretty much ended up as nebulous as it sounds. I'd write for a while, then end up surfing the net, playing a game or watching TV as my brain stopped being able to concentrate. I'd waste large amounts of time on this, because you don't "just" check the news, or check imgur.com, or whatever.

Now, with this new technique, I write for 25 minutes, then give my brain a break for 5 minutes, then repeat. This has meant that I have easily been able to write for 3 hours. That is the amount of time I have in the mornings. From 9-12. In that, I'll usually end up at around 4500 words. In other words, a pace of about 1500 words an hour. This, again, is up from around 1000 when I "just" wrote.

As it stands right now, I am 5 days ahead of my 1000 words a day schedule, and I predict that I'll blow it away easily.

All of this is very exciting to me, because I realize that I have been very quiet on the publishing front. Only 1 book released in the last 2 months. -Not- good. I have a novella being proof-read, though, as well as 2 short stories almost finished and ready to be sent off to proofing as well. Best of all, I have the covers for them already!

I spent 75$ on some professional-looking covers. The reason I can afford that at all is because I've been spending time working on some commission work for a game called Trials in Tainted Space (Yes, T.i.T.S). Rather than blow the money from the commission on dope and booze, I've been spending it on staying alive, having a roof over my head, and book covers. Ah, yes. Adulthood! Sensibility! (It sucks)

That was my unscheduled update for the time being. See you around!

Friday, August 16, 2013

(Fan)fiction Friday 11: Shallya's Will Ch. 3

A Sign Of Things To Come


Tags: [Story] [More of Shallya's Work] [Mutant Child] [Ominous End?]

It was high noon when Vesper crested the last hill and laid eyes on Ostermark’s capital for the first time in her life. Bechafen was an enormous city by her standards, with more than 10.000 inhabitants, she had been told. The temple she grew up in could have fit inside the city’s walls a hundred times, probably many hundred times.

Vesper raised her petite hands to provide some shade from the sun, scanning the city for a white-washed temple like the one she grew up in. The heat was sweltering, even on the hilltop, with a weak, cool breeze grasping at locks of her tangled hair. The initiate paused her search for a moment to run her fingers over her forehead, sighing quietly as she felt the thin sheen of sweat pool along her fingers. A few drops ran into her hair, the rest she shook off her hand, to the ground. The hooded robe really was not made as summer wear, at all. She reached up and pushed the hood back, free from her neck with a small shudder. The cloth clung hesitantly to her skin for a moment, only to let go, leaving an uncomfortable wet patch.

Standing on the tips of her toes to add a few inches to her unimpressive five feet and a few inches, the novice let her eyes scour what she could see of the city once more. Finally, she caught a glimpse of what she thought could be a temple of Shallya. It was situated in the rich district of town, opposite to the gate she was close to. With a small smile on her lips, she set off towards the city gate.

*****

Some twenty minutes later, Vesper crossed the threshold into the city, giving a small nod to the two guards keeping a watch over the surrounding lands, and again to the two standing on either side of the entrance inside. Immediately, the initiate felt enclosed. Not to a claustrophobic degree, but the large city and the mere knowledge and feeling of thousands of other people going about their daily lives around her was quite breathtaking. She did not even realize that she had stopped to look up at the two-story buildings until one of the guards cleared his throat quietly. With a mumbled “sorry,” the girl continued down the main street, into the city.

It would not take long for young neophyte to realize just what conditions many of Bechafen’s inhabitants lived under. There were beggars on every street. The coughs and groans of the malnourished, the sneezes of the diseased, it was all only a few steps away from the main avenues running through the city. She continued onwards, passing through a wonderful market that was absolutely brimming with exotic and wonderful things. A troupe of performers awed her for the better part of ten minutes, and the herald’s news for double of that. The war against Archaon’s forces had left much turmoil.

Finally, wrestling herself free from the grip of the lively, beating heart of the city’s commerce, she set off down a less-travelled street. As she walked, the houses became progressively less well-maintained, the kids playing in the streets increasingly thin, and the amount of people sitting or standing around without work or a goal in life grew ever bigger.

After a long walk, she came upon a small square lined with ramshackle houses and empty food-stands. A group of kids were fighting over some sort of toy, and several groups of people were dotted around the open, unpaved area, many of them looking ill or even crippled. The initiate paced to a free bench and set down her things, drawing in a deep breath, feeling the familiar tingle of satisfaction that she always felt as she was about to start work in an area.

Vesper opened her bag of medical supplies and looked up, smiling at the lone, elderly man with a measure of surprise. Normally, she would be crowded with patients the instant she was ready. She reached out her left hand and placed it on the man’s right forearm, a calm, serious expression settling on her face. Often, people needed someone to listen just as much as they needed physical assistance, so she always remained prepared for both. The man looked down at where she touched him. He was visibly surprised for a moment, then relaxed.

It turned out that he had a minor infection in a wound on his leg. The ardent novice cleaned the injury and patched him up again efficiently, receiving the deepest thanks from the man. Like everyone else she had treated after the night the temple burned down, he commented on how cool and soothing her touch was. She merely smiled to him at the remark, otherwise conversing idly as she worked. The more focus she could take off someone’s wound, the better.

After the man had been treated, it seemed as if the rest of the square became less wary of her. Vesper wondered briefly why they had been cautious at all, given the mission of all Shallya’s faithful, but quickly let the thought go. There were plenty of wounds to bandage and heal, and plenty of minds to mend.

Hours passed as she treated everyone who came to her in the small square. The stench of sweat and long-unwashed clothes hung in the air from the crowd of people around her that needed treatment, even long after the summer sun fell below the walls of the city. At some point, someone offered her a meager meal, which she declined as politely as she could. These people obviously needed it more than her. “Give it to the next beggar you come across, madam. Thank you, and go with Shallya’s blessing.” Vesper gave the middle-aged woman a smile, and returned to stitching up someone’s wounded arm.

Finally, as night truly settled on the square, the initiate started to pack up what remained of her supplies. She finished the day off with blessing every single person present along with promising to come back the day after, and then set off back towards the market square.

*****

A frail, bony hand gripped her left sleeve and held on. Vesper was forced to lurch to the side a little. The initial fear of being gripped vanished quickly, as she looked into the eyes of an obviously desperate woman, somewhere in her thirties. Ragged blonde hair surrounded her starved face.

“Please, miss. Please! It’s my boy. Please, you have to help him! You have to help!” Her voice was pleading, but still barely more than a whisper.

It was hard to say if she was truly so weak that she could barely speak, or if something else was the matter. The startled girl put what she hoped was a calming hand on the woman’s shoulder, smiling peacefully to her. “I will gladly help your son, ma’am. I promise that he will be fine. Take me to him.”

Before turning to lead Vesper down an alley by her sleeve, the blonde-haired woman’s eyes turned abruptly painful as the initiate said that the boy would be fine. It took only twenty seconds for the stumbling novice and the hunger-wracked woman to reach a collection of planks and clay that could only be classified as a house in the most liberal sense of the word. It was more a hut on the verge of collapsing than a proper building. The low-hanging ceiling was wet despite it being summer, and it arched downwards heavily, forcing even the petite novice to bend down as she entered.

Inside was darkness. A figure rustled around in the back of the one-room hut, but with no light inside the house, she was unable to truly distinguish much of anything in there. “Ma’am, I am going to call upon Shallya to create light for us, so I can see while I work. Please, do not be alarmed. This is an entirely harmless prayer.”

The young initiate waited for a few seconds, more sensing than seeing a slow nod from the woman, now standing just inside the hut after closing the door. Vesper mumbled the words she had been taught so many years ago, now, and held out her hand. From nowhere, a small sphere of light flickered into existence, almost as if someone had breathed out and the globe had followed. A milky-white, cloudy ball formed, and a soft light illuminated the entire hut.

Vesper’s eyes focused on the woman first. She looked scared, oddly, but determined as well, standing guard at the door. The girl followed the older woman’s eyes as they flickered from her and to the back of the hut. What Vesper saw made her jolt backwards. She exhaled sharply as her head bumped against the soft, wooden ceiling, her eyes rapidly taking in the sight in front of her.

A boy, probably around ten or eleven years of age. As so many others in Ostermark’s capital, he bore the distinct signs of having had too little food for too long. But that was not what had shocked the initiate. The boy’s hands… Where he should have had hands, his arms transitioned into obscene, orange-red crab-claws big enough that it seemed a wonder that he could even stand up with them. Despite this obvious mutation, he had not charged the foreign girl entering his home. He whimpered in the light, and pressed himself up against the back wall. Vesper cast a glance at the woman by the door, her voice at once frightful and accusing.

“What has he done to become a mutant? What horrible deed runs in your family’s blood? How have you restrained him from attacking me?”

The questions hit the older woman like lashings from a whip. She shrunk away from the novice, though remaining committed to guarding the door. Her voice was tearful and desperate as she spoke.

“I-I don’t know! I don’t… Two months ago, his hands started to change. He has always been a good boy, I swear by the twin-tailed comet itself! We have done nothing to deserve this, miss. I only wish that someone could change him back-“

Her voice broke. She abandoned the door, running over to cradle the equally frightened boy in her arms. When she looked up again, her face was lined with trailing tears. There were no more words, she could not speak, only look desperately at the untried initiate, hoping for a miracle.

Vesper’s lips parted, but she stopped herself from speaking. It was impossible for her to suppress a very sharp tinge of fear as she looked upon the mutated boy. She certainly had no idea how to cure mutation, if there was a cure at all. But how could this boy be a mutant at all? He could not have made the journey to Mordheim and back here unnoticed, and there was not a hint of chaotic insanity in him. Yet, he still bore those enormous, scissor-sharp claws.

She swallowed, wet her lips, and hesitantly spoke once more. “I… I’m very sorry, ma’am, but I can’t change what has happened to your son. I don’t know of any cure for mutation. Your secret is… Safe, with me, but I cannot help you.” She glanced at the boy, meeting his eyes briefly. They were wide, scared, and above all, contained a deep-rooted sadness. Far too much bad had happened far too quickly to such a young boy, Vesper thought before bowing her head and hurrying out the door.

For the first five minutes, the initiate scurried through the mostly empty streets of night-time Bechafen. Her thoughts whirled unrestrained, but kept returning to the look in the boy’s eyes. He had not been mindless. He was an innocent victim of a cruel world. What did that mean for the mutants that had attacked Mercy’s Light? Had they once been what this boy was now?

Vesper’s light run slowed gradually. She wandered slowly through the city, across the empty marketplace, past noisy taverns and whorehouses, barely noticing what was around her. She knew the general direction she had to take to get to the noble district, and certainly needed time to think before meeting her sisters in faith. So lost in thought was she, that she did not notice a young man walking opposite to her stopping dead in his tracks, glancing at her robes and the red heart and drop of blood over her chest. The man paced ahead of her towards the noble district, and was soon out of sight once more.

After more than half an hour of wandering, the tired, pale initiate stepped through the gate to the noble district. She sent a smile to a guard in a metal breastplate and asked for directions to the temple of Shallya. Upon receiving the directions, she offered a blessing to the guard and walked off purposefully. The temple was some four hundred steps up ahead, in the middle of a lavish, paved square. “Perhaps a bit too authoritative”, Vesper thought. Especially the five steps up to the double doors seemed an odd choice to the ascetic, giving servant of Shallya who now stepped up them.

Having knocked on the door a few times, she was received by a lightly panting, dark-haired abbess in white robes. The initiate noted the lack of the bleeding heart upon her left breast, but the revered mother certainly smelled like Vesper sometimes believed she did after a long day working in a crowded hospital. They exchanged brief pleasantries, the woman introducing herself as Abbess Syrith. She was in her late twenties, surprisingly tall and certainly very good-looking, Vesper noted mentally.

The initiate was shown to a small, sparsely furnished room with a prayer mat, a small desk and chair, and a roughly hewn bed. The abbess excused herself, and left the tired girl to drift off to sleep in the small, cool room.