Sanguinifex

What's in a Suit Fetish?: A partial profile of John Fitzgerald Byers

Wed, 05 Dec 2018 04:46:39 GMT

Byers is, at first glance, the most milquetoast member of the Lone Gunmen trio from the X-Files and the Gunmen's eponymous spinoff. He's the intro, the audience's liaison to the strange, secret world of hacking (at least, those adjectives were applicable to what they were doing as of the shows' airing), the "normal guy." While Langly and Frohike are eccentric, Byers is supposed to keep the audience within their comfort zone, and, in the XF, providing similar visual cues for Mulder and Scully's involvent with the hackers.

Underneath that forgettable, aggressively normal exterior, however, Byers is actually a psychologically complex character to rival the other Gunmen. The genius of it is that no one thinks twice about a white man in a suit.

Byers as part of the Lone Gunmen triad

The Gunmen's group dynamic fits the rough concept of a Hussian auspisticeship: two rivals and a conciliator. (NB: I did not originally approach the Gunmen with Hussian quadrants in mind. I wrangled the rough shape of their dynamic, assigned the labels "rival" and "conciliator," and only then realized the obvious and ran my hands through my hair while cursing.) Byers is, from the beginning (XF 5.03, "Unusual Suspects"), the conciliator, while Langly and Frohike are rivals, both selling similar products for pirating cable TV. As rivals go, Langly and Frohike are not particularly polarized; much of their conflict stems from their similarities. Byers negotiates between them, defuses tension, occasionally bails them out of jail, and essentially keeps them on task and prevents them from punching or DDoSing each other. He is the also the main strategist, preferring to stay in the hacker bus, rarely physically entering a job unless an undercover role requires the appearance of being part of the establishment, or if a particular job requires a third/fourth pair of hands. In a fantasy RPG, Byers would be the Healer/Buffer, Frohike would be the Rogue/Thief, and Langly would be the Magic User/Debuffer.

(Jimmy, meanwhile, is always peripheral to the Triad in terms of dynamics, and kind of an Ubertank. Byers also conciliates between him and the other Gunmen, who can be a bit cruel to him because they think he's stupid. It's just different skill checks, and possibly a few concussions.)

Conciliators tend to dislike conflict and be relatively submissive and avoidant. Although the methods may look identical, they do not so much try to control a situation to their own purposes so much as avert bad outcomes. Conciliators can be manipulative, sometimes extremely so, but their goal is to avoid group infighting and perhaps stick to a previously established task, not to coerce people into following any other personal agenda. An extremely enthusiastic conciliator may prevent conflicts from resolving properly or reaching closure--their usual method is distraction from a conflict, rather than resolution, unless trained, because they are avoidant--or may overshoot and be offputting or annoying. They will never use threats except under extremely dire circumstances. If they use violence, which is usually a last resort, the prefer surreptitious methods such as sabotage or poisons, and are generally uninterested in seeking the result for its own sake. They usually have a very high fear of failure and/or a very strong reward motivation, and tend to define self-worth externally; consequently, they usually have a very strong sense of conscience, and in all cases a high standard of some sort of professionalism. They can be obsessed with rules and hierarchies, though this is by no means ubiquitous, often have high verbal skills, and tend to plot out "conversation trees" several exchanges in advance when possible. While a conciliator is a huge benefit to almost any group, the group may be taxing to the conciliator. Often they are not just the only one doing any emotional labor, but the only one who realizes that the emotional labor should be done. Impulsive or argumentative individuals in the group usually do not realize that they are stressing the conciliator, and the conciliator, being avoidant, will rarely spontaneously bring this to their attention. Instead, they are likely to become increasingly avoidant if an individual is beyond their power to read or deflect conflict; the other party may mistakenly see this as aggression or hatred instead of conflict-avoidant behavor.

Interestingly, Byers is usually the public face or public leadership of the Gunmen (because he's the one who looks like an Establishment figure). However, as often as not, the other team members contest his lead. Byers is more of a mediator (again) between the Gunmen and the outside world than their leader per se.

Byers' suit fetish

Anyone who's watched more than an episode or two of LGM knows that Byers has an unusual obsession with his suits. Even when cash is short, Byers' outfits are impeccable. At one point, he changes out of one blazer into another seemingly identical one while in the midst of a conversation, saying that the first jacket "didn't breathe right." In a flashback to middle school where the Gunmen are shown talking about their aspirations to the future, kid!Byers wears a horribly oversized brown corduroy suit and says he wants to be "a bureaucrat" like his father, making him possibly the only U.S. citizen to have a positive association with the concept of bureaucracy.

To Byers, a suit symbolizes paternal authority. Byers seeks to emulate his father. By putting on a suit, he does so in a material way, yet also effaces himself and hides his own body to fit this template. A suit is also a physically constraining set of garments; the jacket is heavy and limits the range of motion in the shoulders (even if the suit is very well-fitting, there will still be some restriction compared to a knit fabric), the shirt sleeves put pressure on the wrists and the collar and tie on the neck, and the belt cinches the waist or weighs on the hips. The full coverage and thick material cut off sensory data from many parts of the body that one would receive while wearing clothing that bared more of the body or was made of thinner or softer material. Many people find some or all of this constriction uncomfortable; Byers likely finds it grounding, or considers the pressure and sensory discomfort to be a reprieve from a world increasingly full of chaotic stimuli (remember, the canon era is the digital revolution). Alternatively, his mental satisfaction at following The Rules For Suits may outweigh any physical discomfort. Finally, the tie is notoriously phallic, and may reinforce Byers' sense of his own masculinity and adulthood--the latter especially relevant, since he always feels a bit like a little boy in comparison to his dad.

The material of a suit suggests wealth, power, and authority, but specifically in the context of serving an existing force or institution. Byers is quite comfortable with leadership roles, but he strongly prefers to be able to reach for external validation of his beliefs and suggestions, whether that validation is the law, his employer, or an ideal such as The Truth. Ultimately, these are all stand-ins for his father's approval, which is the one thing he can't get, especially after he leaves a promising career with the FCC and starts publishing The Lone Gunmen. (I mean, I wish Byers was at the real-life FCC! We'd still have Net Neutrality.) In this sense, the suit is a uniform, making his fetish a particular subset of uniform fetishes as a category: identity, authority, service, belonging.

An additional consideration: There has been some debate in the second-generation LGM fandom on Discord over whether Byers is/was Catholic or went to a Catholic/private high school. I think the consensus is there's about a 60% chance he did. Catholic school in particular would have reinforced Byers' suit fetish and taught him how to wear suits and similar clothing, due to its uniforms, and may also have given him a corresponding fetish for girls' catholic school uniforms or clothing reminiscent of such. Assuming a bisexual or heterosexual Byers, a schoolgirl uniform fetish could be the one component of his fetishes that he would actually admit to, if questioned--it is not considered particularly unusual, due to the number of adult men whose adolescent sexual awakenings took place in the context of attending schools that required uniforms or strict dress codes. Catholicism in particular would likely produce a more sexually repressed and naïve Byers, with a side of some nice juicy guilt to play around with. YMMV. This paragraph is in the realms of pure headcanon, not really media analysis, and you can take it or leave it as it suits you. (Pun retroactively intended.)

Byers' suit fetish: practical applications

Now here's where it gets fun. Now that we know about Byers' fetish, and some of the possible sensory and psychological components behind it, how do we use that to turn him on?

The tie. Start with the tie. It is highly symbolic and attached to his neck. Pulling his tie is an assertion of power over him and an immediate physical sensation. It may be meant to lead him, or to choke him. He is probably more amenable to the former than the latter, but probably not entirely adverse to the choking, either, if he knows you aren't actually trying to kill him. Alternatively, use the tie for something ties are not normally used for. Tie him up with it. Shove it in his mouth. Tease him with it, as if it were a feather toy. Active destruction or severe misuse of the tie would constitute violating a taboo, which may be sexual to him: get body fluids on it, rub it on him or his partner, tie knots in it (possibly as a precursor to using it for impact play), put pins in it, use it as a cleaning rag (for sexual or non-sexual messes), even cut, tear, or burn it. Have another character masturbate with the tie. The possibilities with the tie alone are nearly endless. Once YouTube is invented, Byers will probably watch a lot of "how to tie a tie" videos and wonder why they make his brain feel so good--he may or may not get an erection just from watching fashion advice. Probably not, by his late 20s.

The suit proper. Byers probably prefers to have sex with most of his clothes on, especially during shorter encounters, due to their complexity and their prominence in his sense of identity. However, for longer scenes, or in a more adversarial or D/S dynamic, he would consider it humiliating to be made to disrobe or (as an adult) to be forced to wear ill-fitting clothing. Some of the same principles apply as with the tie. Get that suit dirty, or alternatively, threaten to. However, it is unlikely that Byers would actually consent to permanent destruction of a blazer or pants. Those things are expensive. (Ties, by comparison, are relatively inexpensive, and "disposable" ones for play can be obtained for pocket change at a thrift store.) So avoid cutting, burning, or staining major articles of clothing; depending on Byers' financial status at the moment, anything that can be fixed with a trip to the cleaners is likely okay, and the threat of any of these things certainly is. Byers may also like choosing someone else's outfit, having someone else choose his own outfit (think: clothes shopping porn), videos or TV/story plots about male characters getting makeovers, or scenarios where an improperly dressed or underdressed man is humiliated for his clothing choices. The satisfaction of following a dressing ritual, or the punishment/atonement for/correction of improper dressing is the theme here. Byers will prefer the submissive role in such scenarios, or at most that of the mentoring expert.

Shirts. If stripping off the blazer is humiliating, being made to remove the shirt is more so. Byers may be aroused by having his dress shirt cut or torn off; if so, don't do it with his nice shirts. He's practical, and there are always aspects of one's fetishes that cave to practicality. If you're going to destroy his shirt, get him something from Goodwill, please. Most of the time, Byers probably also wears an undershirt, because it's Proper, except in very warm weather. However, if he's planning to have sex fully undressed later, he might skip the undershirt, considering it to visually clash with his preferred image, unless he thinks he might need to have one in order to have a shirt at all, after. That said, if you're going to cut his shirt off, he'd probably skip it. Too much chance of cutting up the undershirt, and those things are surprisingly expensive. (And then whatever store you go to is inexplicably out of the style and size you want, half the time.)

Pants. Again, having to even open his pants is vulnerability. Having to take them off is potentially looking ridiculous. Byers' legs probably haven't seen the sun since he was 19. He's probably insecure about them. I really want to stress how much of Byers' central fetish is centered on self-image. He is concerned with the image he presents and how people see him. Being really looked at is a point of vulnerability, if he's less than perfectly coiffed. If Byers is naked in a sexual situation, either he's deflecting from his own appearance, or he's sexualizing the humiliation and exposure of being unclothed. He may even consider ejaculating in his pants or underwear to be less humiliating than having to be looked at with his pants off (particularly if his shirt is still on). He may also consider the idea or actuality of this arousing, since it involves defiling his suit (in a relatively fixable manner).

Shoes. Byers cares about wearing the right shoe for the occasion. He likely finds catalogues of dress shoes mentally pleasing, but not arousing per se. However, something like a video where the narrator makes you guess where someone is wearing the right or wrong shoes for an occasion and then makes fun of the people wearing the wrong shoes or praises the ones who wear appropriate shoes would be pretty close to porn for him. If Byers actually cares to search out porn, he might end up on a foot fetish forum at some point, but he'll more likely end up "wanking" about shoe transgressions than actually wanking. Similarly, with various other accessories (besides the tie), Byers cares more about whether they're tasteful or appropriate than about the specific items. He's not going to get a boner over a pocket square, but he will get annoyed if someone wears a pocket square with the wrong outfit, and might just get turned on if someone else then takes them to task over it.

Conclusion

I want this post to be done, and this is probably more than enough inspiration for how to write suit kink Byers. You may want to consider looking up guides to men's formal clothing or finding some back issues of GQ as reference material. Anyway, Byers' behavior with respect to suits indicates that he probably has a suit kink, and the psychological triggers for it are identity and service, image/being seen, propriety and conforming to a visual standard and a ritual, and, on the other hand, transgressing against the suit. He may also have sensory components to the the kink, but the psychological ones are probably far more integral and certainly formed far earlier. Vanilla, Byers is not--or at least, vanilla chai, with a lot of cinnamon and pepper in it.

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News: Home--Almost!

Tue, 29 May 2018 20:08:03 GMT

I'm back in Harrisburg! Not at my house, but I'm in an area I know. It's amazing how much my anxiety level drops when I know how the streets work. I planned on taking the local bus, but...I think I'll just take an Uber. I'll eat an actual meal at home, not here, and take an Uber. The local bus stops a mile from my house, and I am just not up to dragging a suitcase for a mile in this humidity. (However, my sinuses feel normal, for once. Small benefits.)

So now I'm sitting in Little Amps, which has probably the best coffee in Pennsylvania, having a latte as an excuse to use the Wi-Fi, and attempting to have a brain again. I didn't even try to get anything done on the bus--I read old sff mags I bought at WisCon for the first leg of the trip, and then slept most of the rest. Now if only this magical ability to sleep in moving vehicles had kicked in on the way to....

I'll try to get something done to post by the end of the week. The last couple weeks have been taken up by 1) preparing for WisCon, and 2) attending WisCon. (I really thought I'd hand out more business cards, too. I think I still have over 200 left. Boo.) So I have like three different short things that I never got the chance to edit. Oh, wait, I have chapters for something else that are finished, so that's what will be coming out probably tomorrow. I hope the like two people following this like teenage elves getting into trouble at a dystopian magic school!

But anyway, I am all but home, and not stuck in somewhere like Chicago. Not knocking Chicago, it's just not my home. It's good to be back.

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News: At WisCon!

Sat, 26 May 2018 22:15:35 GMT

I'm at WisCon! I've been going to a lot of events, and so, ironically, not writing terribly much. I did do a speedwrite yesterday for a storytelling workshop that turned out to have more seats at the last minute, but that was only 400 words, as I found when I transferred it from my phone to my computer. There are so many events that choosing which ones to go to is always a terrible compromise, but today I went to a workshop on how to get into pro writing markets, and one about food in literature!

And if you want to find me when I'm not at an event, not that anyone is probably reading this (except for the like six people I gave business cards to, who are at least as busy as I am?), I'm probably going to be in the TGQ Safe Space. (It's low-lit and chill, perfect for when I'm "over-peopled.") If you're cis, you'll have to knock on the door and ask for me--sorry! Or if you hear KMFDM on the 7th floor, also me. I only do that when the roommates aren't there, though.

Anyway, I'm glad I decided to go. It's nice to have an excuse to turn my brain back on, it's nice to be able to talk to people and make new friends, it's nice not to have to perform masculinity just to get some androgyny, and it's nice to learn new things. I plan to come back next year.

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News: WisCon Bound!

Wed, 23 May 2018 19:47:02 GMT

I'm taking the Greyhound bus to WisCon. I have been reminded why I only traveled Greyhound once in college. The bus was a full hour late (meaning, even if we don't get any worse off schedule, I have approximately 5 minutes to catch the next leg at the Pittsburgh terminal) and smells like pee. The armrests all have the plastic cracked off to reveal foam underneath. The outlets at my seat don't work.

That said, I'm really excited to be going to WisCon! A long weekend of friends, writing, and being Extra Gay. Look for me there!

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Don't People Usually Do This with Ginger?

Sat, 19 May 2018 16:54:10 GMT

Originally posted to AO3 on 2/19/2018

“I’m not bidding on that job,” said Taliesen. “Have you seen the security on that place? I wasn’t even scouting it at the time, but I’d rather rub peppers on my dick.”

“What kind of pepper?” asked Zevran. “It depends, doesn’t it? Like, the expensive ones from Seheron might warrant that level of horror, you know the bell-shaped crinkly ones, but just pepper peppers, the ordinary ones? Probably not.”

“Dude. Peppers. Dick. It hurts. ‘Wash your hands between peppers and taking a piss’ is like the first thing you learn about cooking, even with our education.”

“Taliesen, you know what I’m into.”

“He’s got a point,” said Rinna.

“Clothespins,” said Taliesen.

“Needles,” countered Rinna.

“Still not peppers.”

“Guys, I’ll do it.”

“Zev, no,” groaned Taliesen.

“I’ll fucking do it,” said Zevran, getting off the bed and going over to the kitchenette. He returned with a thumb-sized green pepper and his belt knife.

“Dude, seriously?”

“I’m interested,” said Rinna, sitting up and swinging her legs over the edge of the bed, as Zevran sat down on the other bed and unsheathed the knife.

(The apartment had two beds, which was supposed to be one for Zevran and Taliesen and one for Rinna. Of course, they all three piled into the double bed whenever they actually all slept or fucked at the same time, which meant the other, smaller bed was basically a couch—its threadbare blanket permanently tucked in on all four sides like a sheet, except when they spilled too many things on it and had to wash it.)

“Don’t listen to her, she’s nuts,” begged Taliesen, resting his chin on Rinna’s shoulder, as Zevran sliced the stem off the pepper. “Maker, you’d better not be planning to eat that after you’ve put it there,” he added, noticing where Zevran had cut it.

“You’ve had his dick in your mouth before,” chided Rinna. “Same difference.”

“Did you miss the part where I’ve been very against dick/pepper combinations this whole time?”

“You didn’t say ‘in food,’ no.”

“Rinna, you’re going to want to watch this,” said Zevran, holding the cut end of the stem just above his glans. He swiped the wet flesh of the pepper in a careful circle around the head, being careful to avoid the urethra itself. That would be too much, for sure. For a few seconds, nothing happened, then—oh. That was extremely tingly. Burning, really, to no surprise. His cock began to fill despite a complete lack of actual arousal, as if he had put in an inexorable but rather slow pump.

Rinna caught the hitch in Zevran’s breathing and squirmed against the mattress, dislodging Taliesen (who huffed and put his chin in his hands, still watching Zevran in mild horror). She wanted to go over there and touch him, but what with the peppers, that was probably a bad idea. She was significantly less into genital pain on herself. Zevran, meanwhile, was stroking himself vigorously, trying to turn engorged and burning into pleasurable. Truth be told, this was a little more intense than he actually liked, but he could probably still get off with this. He’d taken worse and done it, though not quite like this. He was pretty sure there was going to be no actual damage—after all, people put these peppers in their mouths, and he himself sometimes just ate them dipped in honey—but the pepper juice was burning more than he had expected. Zevran realized that his mouth was used to peppers, while his dick, unsurprisingly, was not. He lay back, still trying to beat pleasure into his inflamed shaft, and used his un-peppered hand to tweak his nipples. On the other bed, Rinna had planted her feet on the floor and was rocking against her hands.

By now, Zevran was visibly sweating and looking a bit grayish. The pain was just on the far side of being amazing. The head of his cock felt like he was about to come, but the rest of his body just would not catch up, could not quite turn this into pleasure, and the longer he tried, the worse it got. He thought he might actually cry, for once—just tears, though. But he could hear Rinna enjoying this, the soft panting and the creaking of ropes against the bedframe, so he kept trying.

“Did your training have anything like this?” asked Rinna, breathlessly. “It seems like the kind of thing they’d have in the Test, for you.” Not that anyone normally talked about the Test, once you passed it, or training, but this had already turned into torture, and Rinna was good at it. Good at knowing when.

“Not—ah—quite,” said Zevran. Words were a bit difficult. “People usually do this with ginger. It is somewhat less intense. I don’t know why they didn’t in the Test, though. You’d think someone would.”

“Who needs a rack when they’ve got peppers? Inexpensive, portable, and intimate.” Rinna paused for a few moments, grinding forward and throwing her head back. Her voice was breathier, higher pitched, when she spoke again. “Maybe I should take the rest of the pepper and put it inside you. Score it with a fork first to let more of the juices out. Just take you out to the market or a bar like that, make you act normal without breaking while you’ve got fire inside you.”

“For the record?” said Zevran, wiping sweat and tears out of his eyes, “Don’t do that. I will use my word if I see you look at the rest of that pepper the wrong way. You can try it with ginger, but we do it in the apartment first.”

“Too far?” asked Rinna.

“Only because I thought you might actually be planning to do it.” Zevran bit his lower lip and dug a thumbnail into his frenulum while angling his little finger for the sweet spot behind his balls, trying to force himself to come. He would have used two hands, but he was trying to keep the other one away from the pepper juice.

The other two both knew what the gesture meant, that Zevran was having trouble getting off. Usually, that only happened when he was trying for a second or third round. This probably counted as the first, since the last one was over an hour ago. Rinna was quite content to watch Zevran’s frustrated writhing almost indefinitely, but….

“Zev, I can’t take this anymore. I’m going to get something to wash that off of you.”

“She likes it, though.”

“Yeah, but I don’t, and I think you don’t, particularly. Also, my dick hurts just watching this.”

“Are you sure that’s not a boner, my friend?”

Taliesen looked down at himself, quickly. “I’m at least ninety percent certain it’s not.”

Taliesen got up and crossed the room. Zevran heard the click of the fireless stove’s rune locking into place, and then the scrape of the teakettle against the coil over it. Once it started to steam, Taliesen would mix it with cold water until it wasn’t scalding anymore. Sure enough, a couple minutes later (with Zevran still futilely attempting to jerk off, in white-hot pain, and Rinna still riding her own hand much more effectively), he heard the sound of heating metal hissing, and then pottery against the countertop, and splashing. Taliesen came back into view, holding a bowl of soapy water and a flannel.

“Move your hand,” he said.

Zevran gasped in relief as the soapy flannel covered his cock. At first it mostly just spread the burning sensation around, but then Taliesen sloshed it around in the bowl again and wrung it out, getting the worst of the pepper out of the cloth, and this time the burning actually almost stopped. Only almost, but it was now far below the upper limit of what Zevran considered enjoyable, and besides, someone was now attentively rubbing his cock with a warm, soapy flannel. Zevran bucked into the sensation.

“Tali, I really am going to come if you keep doing that, just so you know.”

“You sound like I’d have a problem with that.”

“Just like…warning you, that you are in fact lovingly caressing my shaft with a wet, slick, object, so you don’t get jalapeño jizz in your eye while dutifully sponging me off.”

“Zev, I am aware that I’m touching your dick. Get off on it, if you want.”

Zevran thrust into the tight, soapy heat. It was moist and slick, and it wasn’t unbearably searing, and the hand holding the flannel belonged to another person. It probably would not be anywhere close to the best he had ever had, but he had been chemically edging himself for nearly half an hour, and he hoped it would at least be worth it. Quickly now, he felt a deeper heat than the peppers rise along his shaft, and it finally crested as he thrust even harder into the flannel.

Taliesen completely failed to catch the jets of cum in the cloth, as Zevran arched his back and thrust past the folded edge of the flannel. He did, however, manage not to get hit in the face with it. The first jet arced onto the wall, and the next few mostly on the bed and Zevran, as he shuddered and moaned through what had to be a pretty intense orgasm. Taliesen did not think he was playing it up for Rinna’s benefit, either.

Zevran sagged back against the bed, suddenly very done with sex, for once. Brasca. They would probably need to wash the blanket, and laundry shops charged a lot for blankets.

“I think I’m just going to lie here, for a bit,” he said, curling up on his side and putting his arms over his eyes.

Rinna huffed in amusement. “Taliesen, you ‘up’ for some fun?”

“After seeing him come like that? I guess. As long as I don’t think about how that started with him rubbing a pepper on his dick.”

“No peppers,” promised Rinna. “I think we’re only doing that once.”

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Elf Games

Sat, 19 May 2018 16:50:26 GMT

Originally posted to AO3 on 12/25/2017

Rudolph sobbed in his stall. None of the other reindeer would play with him. Or talk to him except to make fun of him. He’d put up with it all his life, hoping it would stop as they all got older, but no, even now that they were all grown up and would be pulling the sleigh this year, it was still all insults and kicks. This morning, someone had shat in his manger, on purpose, and so he hadn’t eaten anything all day. Someone would clean it, eventually, but he’d be hungry until then. He couldn’t clean it himself, because he didn’t have thumbs. Rudolph crossed his eyes until he could just barely see his own nose. His hideous, unnaturally red nose. Other than being bright red and faintly luminescent, it was a perfectly good nose, but it was weird, and that was enough for the others.

Footsteps. One of the elves was here. “Holy mackerel, something smells! Rudolph, did you do this?”

“No. Someone else pranked me.”

“Pretty bad prank, huh? They don’t like you much. Santa’s worried you’ll be trouble for the sleigh team.”

“I’m not trouble! They just don’t like my nose!”

The elf seemed to be thinking. “Want to prove you can work as part of a group, with people who don’t hate your nose?”

“Huh?”

“Instead of trying to get in on the reindeer games, how about you join me and the other elves for some elf games? If you can do that, Santa will know you’re not the problem.”

“You’d do that for me?”

“Sure!”

“What about my nose?”

“Elf noses are almost as red as yours, Rudolph. Nobody’s going to mind.” It was true. Nearly all elves had extremely rosy cheeks and almost as rosy noses. Rudolph suddenly wondered if there were elves who were ostracized like he was, but for not having noses that were red enough.

The elf led Rudolph out of his stall, out of the barn, and then out of the reindeer pastures. Soon Rudolph was in a place he had never seen before. “Where are the elf games?” he asked.

“They’re in the North Pole Community Center,” answered the elf. “That’s in the town where the elves live. Really not bad for a company town, either. Infrastructure’s pretty good even in the parts tours don’t go through. Still not allowed to join the Teamsters’ Union, though.”

They turned off the main street in front of a large and cheerfully decorated brick building.

“And here we are! Careful on the steps with those hooves, now. Or there’s a wheelchair ramp in the back, if that’s easier.”

“Stairs are fine,” said Rudolph.

There were lots of other elves inside, in a big room with lacquered hardwood floors.

“Hey dude, is that who you meant when you said you were bringing a friend?”

“Yeah? Problem?”

“I just don’t know if he can play this game. He doesn’t have thumbs. Elf games generally involve thumbs.”

“He can be the one in the middle then.”

“Okay, that works!”

“What’s the game?” asked Rudolph.

“It’s…well, basically, you’re it, so you stand in the middle of a circle—that’s the rest of the players—blindfolded, and you try to catch everything.”

This seemed almost like a prank. But Rudolph really wanted to prove he could work as part of a team, so he didn’t run out the door. The community center’s floor was so smooth that running would have been difficult, anyway, with hooves. He also wondered if it would hurt if he missed the things thrown and was hit by them instead, but then, the other elves would be at the same risk of getting hit if he missed, so whatever they were throwing couldn’t possibly be anything that could hurt a reindeer. If it was a prank, it wasn’t going to be the worst one of today, for certain.

“Ok!” said Rudolph. He bent his head and let the elves put a blindfold on him.

Now in darkness, he stood and listened for balls being thrown, but there were no sounds except muffled grunting and a curious soft slapping. This went on for several minutes, and then something wet hit Rudolph’s face.

It smelled like frosting.

Rudolph thought it was odd that the elves would be throwing frosting at him, but frosting was frosting, so he stuck out his tongue and licked it.

It did not taste like frosting.

Rudolph snorted and spat, as more jets of the mysterious, deceptive substance hit his face. Some of them went into his mouth, which just made the taste and the sickly-sweet smell more intense. The flavor was bitter, but something about it made a place between his legs feel weird—a good kind of weird. But he barely had time to notice that, because he was still being covered head-to-tail in the cloying buttercream slime. It was getting in his nose, and between the liquid and the overpowering scent, he was mostly concentrating on figuring out how to breathe.

One of the elves removed Rudolph’s blindfold. At some point, the deluge had stopped without him noticing. He blinked a bit in the sudden light, noticing that both he and the floor were covered in sticky goo, like an egg white gone cloudy.

“You did great! Did you like it?”

“Er…,” said Rudolph. If there was an adjective pertaining to how he felt right now, he didn’t know it.

“My turn to be in the middle!” said another elf, from somewhere.

“But then Rudolph can’t play, because he can’t reach his icing piper with his hooves!”

“I’ve got two hands,” said the elf who’d brought Rudolph there. “I can help him out. Double-frosting!”

Rudolph got into the circle, and the elf snaked a hand under Rudolph’s belly. That was pretty ticklish…oh. There. That felt good. Rudolph decided he liked elf games.

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Game Over => Your Save File Is Corrupted

Sat, 19 May 2018 16:45:59 GMT

Originally posted to AO3 on 12/22/2017

The other Wardens almost rebelled when she insisted they take The First along, but there were a lot of demons, and they were down a mage. Velanna’s body lay still on the ground, blood draining out of the mouth, nose, and ears, and Anders could do nothing. The Baroness had used her life force in that last spell, he thought. Mahariel told him to get that spirit that had come through with them out of Kristoff’s corpse and into Velanna’s, while it was still fresh.

“That’s…I’m not a maleficar,” protested Anders. “If the Templars couldn’t make me one, you can’t.”

“Are you defying an order?” asked Mahariel, hands on her daggers.

“I’m saying I don’t know how to do it. I don’t even know how the Baroness did that, though obviously Justice got caught in it.”

“Well, at least ward the body until you figure out something. You do know how to do that, right?” Keepers did that, when someone died. Shemlen probably did it differently, but they had mages, so they must do something. Or maybe not. Mahariel had fought an awful lot of skeletons.

“Yes. I know how to do that. I’ll do that. Happily!” Anders’ smile looked anything but happy.

“There are multiple veil tears,” said Mahariel, to the rest of the group. “We’ll split up. Oghren and Howe, one way; the First and I will go the other.”

“Alone?” asked Howe.

“Yes. Why?”

“That is a darkspawn.”

“Thank you for your observation, Howe. He is quite upset at the Mother’s betrayal and dislikes demons, and has agreed to cooperate.” She turned heel and marched out of the clearing. “Let’s go!”

“Why did you spare me, really?” asked the First, as soon as they were out of earshot.

“If I tell you, will you keep it a secret?”

“I will not tell the others,” promised the First.

“I find you attractive,” said Mahariel.

“Attractive?”

“I want to fuck you.” At the look of incomprehension on his face, she continued. “I want you to put your penis inside my vagina. I know you have a penis; I’ve seen enough darkspawn bodies to tell. They’re always male. It will feel good for you, but you must keep it a secret from the others, because they don’t like you and might get mad at you if they knew.”

“O…kay. What about the Veil tears, though?”

“The others will deal with them. Let’s find a place where we can do this.”

They found a drier pile of dead leaves without too many sticks. Mahariel began stripping out of her armor. It was too cold to take it all off, which was a pity, but the stuff on her legs had to go. The First took off his own armor, all of it—he did not seem to feel the cold—and then, at Mahariel’s urging, tried to line himself up with her cunt.

It didn’t work. He wasn’t hard yet. Mahariel barely contained herself from flying into a rage. Ever since she had contracted the Taint from that mirror, and later felt the power that it had given her, she had dreamed of fucking a real darkspawn to gain more of that power, and to fail now? Maybe darkspawn actually couldn’t become erect, and now this one had blackmail on her anyway? But she should actually prove that, before she just killed him. Her hand met his around his shaft, and after a few brisk pumps she felt it begin to fill and thicken.

“What are you doing?” gasped the First, who seemed to have gotten clumsy about breathing. “It feels…like….”

“Good? It’ll feel even better when you stick it inside me.” She lay back, and this time his fully hard shaft entered her, stretching and filling her cunt.

There was no lube. Despite her own copious arousal, the First’s thick cock caught and dragged on her labia, pinching terribly. Mahariel bit her lip not to cry out. Oblivious to her discomfort, the First simply kept going, forcing himself in to the hilt. A few more painful thrusts—painful for her, apparently ecstatic to him—and her own fluids caught up with what was going on, and the discomfort eased. She began rubbing her clit, and pretty soon she was coming around the darkspawn’s cock. Somehow that didn’t push the First over the edge, surprising for how inexperienced he was, and soon Mahariel was approaching a second orgasm. This time, as she clenched, she felt the First thrust in and hold, and knew he was coming with her.

She was not prepared for the sudden rush of fluid. It filled her cunt to the brim, and then forced its way into her womb. This hurt so much that she momentarily fainted. Coming to her senses, she tried to push the First off her, but he simply kept thrusting and held her down.

“You’re weak,” he growled, as his cock battered her bruised hole. “You asked for this, and now you don’t want it? I’m not done yet.”

“Get the fuck off me! What did you even do?”

“You have the Song in you. The one the Mother seeks. Don’t you know how broodmothers are made?”

“They catch the Taint from being fucked by darkspawn? But I’m already Tainted. It won’t work on me. I’m immune, until…not that it matters to you. But that fucking hurt. I’m done.”

“And I’m not. What are you going to do, tell the others? You’re pathetic, Warden.”

“Yes. I’ll scream.”

The First pulled a knife out of somewhere and held it to her throat. “You will stay quiet until I am done.”

“And how long will that be?”

“I don’t know.” His thrusts sped up, and soon he was coming again. This time he bit down on her shoulder, so hard that the bone snapped. Between that and the pain of his second enormous ejaculation entering her, Mahariel passed out again.

Howe and the others (including Anders and Justice, who was still in Kristoff’s body; they had gone back to get them after the first Veil tear) found them several hours later, having fixed all the Veil tears and killed the Baroness themselves. The First was still rutting into Mahariel’s half-eaten body, making very loud noises of obvious pleasure. Flies buzzed around the trails of gore spreading through the leaves, though none would go too close to the darkspawn.

Howe killed it with three arrows through the back. At first they thought that the darkspawn must have overpowered her, but then they found her leg armor and pants nearby, which seemed to have been taken off willingly and folded neatly, not scattered and ripped.

“You mean she turns me down, but fucked a darkspawn?” said Oghren.

“I imagine that by comparison to you, the choice was obvious,” snapped Howe, immediately regretting it. “And she’s dead. Does that mean I’m in charge now? Fuck.”

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Happy Fucking Halloween

Sat, 19 May 2018 05:35:10 GMT

Originally published to AO3 on 11/5/2017

The ghost was confused.

The last thing he remembered had been a sordid encounter, his own costume pulled down just enough to free the important parts, his partner’s just the same—and then he had slipped and fallen at the height of it, and all had gone black.

And then, immediately, he was in a field. He did not know how he had gotten there, or how he had done it so fast. Maybe time had passed, after all? But he would have known. Even after sleeping, you know time has passed. So then he had hit his head, and must have stumbled outside, in some kind of fugue state.

Except that the town was nowhere in sight, or it had changed to such a degree that it had become unrecognizable. The glow of distant towns lit up the ink-brown night sky, but here there was only rain and a sprawling field of vines and gourds. Pumpkins, he realized, bending down to touch one. His hand passed through it, breaching solid rind and firm vegetable flesh without marring it. He pulled back, thinking that it must have been rotten for his hand to enter it so easily, but the pumpkin’s surface was clearly unscathed, and he realized the truth of his new being.

He was dead. He had hit his head falling down during drunken Halloween-party hookup sex, and now he was dead. A certain part of him wondered if he had been handed a spiked drink and was hallucinating this entirely, but that was a problem for the morning. For now, he would proceed as his senses advised him, and they were advising him that he was dead. There was, after all, a deep gash at the base of his skull, on the right side (as he felt around with his fingers), but it was not bleeding and did not hurt, and the rain was not making his clothes wet—it passed through his body, and the passing drops made him shiver in a way that was not wholly unpleasant.

For there was another thing that was just as it had been at his moment of death. His ghostly penis was, insofar as it could be while being incorporeal, rock solid.

The ghost was not at first particularly in the mood. For one thing, he had just found out that he was dead. That tended to put a damper on things. He was also curious about his new ghostly abilities. More slowly, this time, he phased his hand through the pumpkin again.

The hard, prickly fibers of the rind passed over and through his skin, slowly blending into the softer, wetter cleaving of the pumpkin flesh. And then, finally, the slippery, chunky roundness of the seeds at its core. It was more real than his real; his flesh gave, not the pumpkin’s. He experienced the pumpkin, in its life and solidity, and a low moan escaped from his ethereal lips, unbidden.

The pleasure from merely putting his hand in the pumpkin was insistent, and then on top of that, another thought struck him. Wasn’t it said that ghosts were those who died without fulfilling some purpose? And what purpose could be more insistent to a dying soul than an imminent climax? Perhaps an orgasm was what he needed to pass on. He did not see much point in haunting anywhere, or especially wherever this was, which was boring except for the fuckable pumpkins, and the fuckable pumpkins were fuckable indeed. It was a decision quickly made.

His crotch was still exposed, as it had been during his demise. It was a simple matter to line up his penis with the pumpkin, though a bit more daunting. The reflexes of life still clung to dead synapses, and the ghost found it impossible not to fear breaking his dick.

He entered the pumpkin slowly, the head of his translucent cock breaching the shell only millimeters at a time. But soon it was in to the maximum of its girth, and the ghost held back no longer, and slammed himself in to the hilt.

Beyond the hilt, as he soon discovered. He was accustomed to his hips and stomach limiting the extent of any penetration, but they were just as ethereal as every other part of his anatomy, and, under the force of his onslaught, his entire pelvis followed his penis into the pumpkin.

The sensation was indescribable. It was as if he were fucking, being fucked, and physically converted into a 3D matrix of pleasure. Rich pumpkin flesh caressed his cock and buttocks, while seeds ground at the inner core of his prostate. He rocked back and forth inside the pumpkin, kneeling, while his hands desperately roamed over his throat and nipples. The vegetable fibers within him felt so good as they ran through every part of his incorporeal core, and in just a few minutes he was once more on the brink of orgasm.

The ghost drove his hips faster through the pumpkin’s meaty solidness and then stopped transfixed, wailing “Ooo-ooo-ooo!” as he sprayed ectoplasmic semen into the vegetable’s own seeds. The world wavered before his eyes, and all sensation fled. Finally, he thought, he would know peace. He felt a faint whisper of curiosity about the possibility of lasting effects on the pumpkin, as he faded.

Then he woke again, once more in the pumpkin field (though outside the pumpkin), with his lust and erection unabated.

“I guess that didn’t work,” the ghost said. He considered the pumpkins again, for the heat in his loins was maddeningly insistent, but he did not want to be known solely as a committer of indecent acts upon pumpkins. He also suspected that the owner of this field would not be particularly well disposed towards such a haunting. A perpetually rutting ghost was probably bad for property values.

Nonetheless, the ghost had a spectral erection to deal with, and he searched for some way to take care of it. Oh, look! There was a scarecrow. Perfect. He could probably fit his whole body in that. The ghost glided in that direction, stroking himself and wailing softly in pleasure: “Ooo-ooo-ooo! Ooo-ooo-ooo!”

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In Our Eternity

Sat, 19 May 2018 05:21:33 GMT

Originally posted on AO3 from 10/25/2016-11/3/2017. This is the first chapter; read the rest at this link (18+ for later chapters).

Chapter Text

He lay curled up on the cave floor, humming softly. First he had fought with the Legion, shielding and healing them, and then when they had still fallen, he had coaxed spirits into their bones and fought with those instead, and then when his magic came more and more from the darkness inside him than from the Fade and the good spirits had grown afraid and would not answer, he fought alone. And now the darkspawn did not even realize he was not one of them, and did not come to attack him, and their silent song was dizzying in his ears and the Blight-fever spun his mind, so he gave up fighting and rested.

Alim Surana had all the Deep Roads for his grave, and living dead he lay in them.

“So you have come here at last, then,” said a familiar voice. “I had thought I had gotten the count wrong.”

“You’re dead,” said Alim. “I killed you. Though, I suppose I’m not surprised you didn’t stay dead, given you’re the same thing as Corypheus, probably. Or else we’re both dead, I suppose.”

“Not dead, neither of us, but dead to the world. And yes, I am like Corypheus—I did not lie to you, back then, I simply had no memory. You fixed that, strangely enough; when I reincarnated after that, I remembered. It must have gone wrong, the time before that.”

“And the Old Gods’ song—can you hear that now too?”

“No. Of the Seven, I alone have never been able to. We each changed differently, after we fell. I can control the physical course of the Blight, but never hear it. The priestess of Zazikel became the first broodmother. Corypheus, he could touch minds within the Blight.”

“I had a firsthand demonstration. Please don’t tell me you’re planning to do that as well.”

“I see no value in becoming a god. It did not go so very well the first time. Nor is the surface mine to take even as an earthly ruler, I have learned. So, my dominion is here.”

“Still awakening darkspawn? Is that what you want me for?”

“You’re too far gone for that, and turning you back is not what I want for you. You alone drank Avernus’ potion—yes, I know about that; I want to see what you can do in the Blight.”

“Control over the physical Blight itself—I still don’t know how you did that to Fiona, or what you did to the others with her.”

“How do you, a mage, light a candle or put it out?”

“By wanting to. But the Blight’s a miasma, not magic, except for sympathetic magic. It’s not the same.”

“Unless one is the Architect of the Blight.”

“What are you doing with me, then? I’m no threat. I’m dying. Even the darkspawn know it, unless you’re actually the one keeping them away.”

“You’re not dying. You are, but you’re not. The Blighted do not die unless killed. Most Wardens are killed, but the rest, they become the Blight.”

“Ghouls? Everyone knows that. What’s to stop me from offing myself, right here?”

“Ghouls are infants. And I will stop you. I know of Avernus, and I know some of your work, more these last few years, as the Blight grew stronger within you, and I will have what you know.”

The Architect scooped up Alim, carrying him in his arms. Whether it was a spell or the sickness, Alim did not know, but he was helpless to resist.

“You are changing now, and you may as well do it somewhere more comfortable. I could speed up the process, but I feel you would want to do it naturally, and will be stronger that way anyway. Sleep now.”

And darkness far blacker than that of the Deep Roads fell on Alim and swallowed him up.

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Weapons Development

Sat, 19 May 2018 05:16:35 GMT

Originally posted to AO3 on 8/4/2017

Everyone has heard of Arainai before, but the first time Surana meets him, it is to consult on the field ergonomics of a new bioweapon.

“The delivery system needs to be easily used, but also easily concealed, wouldn’t you say?” Arainai is a surprisingly small man, dark-skinned and wiry, with blond hair that no one believes is natural until they read his file. His way of speaking is odd, but well documented; almost always phrased as a question, even when it carries the weight of an order.

“So it should look like an everyday personal object?” asks Surana, falling into the other’s cadence—though this is a genuine question. It is safer not to assume anything, with a man like Arainai. Also, the structural engineer, the third man in the room, might say that he was being an idiot. “I was thinking, maybe have the actual delivery system work somewhat like an Epi-Pen. Press and click to inject the weapon. Perhaps disguise it as a lighter? It would be a rather large lighter, but passable. The internal system would not look suspicious in that context, if you go through a security scan.”

“Hmmm. Now don’t you think it should have a safety latch, so I do not accidentally kill myself by putting this in my pocket? Because that would be very sad indeed.”

The consult finishes a couple hours later. The structural engineer 3D-prints a prototype, having assembled the component parts with a 3D modeling program, and Arainai tests it and pronounces it “a bit draggy on the action, but you will fix that in production development, no?”

They certainly will. This particular mechanism is being created because Surana’s newest bioweapon is incompatible with existing models—it eats through the plastic, and most metals—but truth be told, it is time for an upgrade. Most foreign intelligence agencies and many of the better security teams know what their old models look like. The new “zippy,” which is definitely a joke on “Zippo,” will be able to inject anything from Surana’s new “Blight Mark V” to ricin to solutions of peanut protein, as the need may be. They are also going to develop a version that looks like a tube of lipstick or a keyfob, for missions at non-smoking events. The structural engineer suggested an asthma inhaler, but they dismissed that as too likely to place a security burden on actual asthmatics. Besides, Surana is pretty sure that that is a Robin Cook novel. Or maybe it’s Dean Koontz; he doesn’t remember. The idea of hiding ricin in an inhaler was the only memorable part of it. Not that it would work very well; an aerosol that tiny does not get very far. A few security teams considered banning inhalers, having read the book; they soon realized this was likely to have a higher casualty rate than allowing them. For more ordinary circumstances than heads of state, mass murders were much more likely to be due to guns or bombs anyway.

Arainai leaves, but the memory of the man stays with Surana. Several weeks later, he watches the news and sees a story about an anti-government militia leader dying in circumstances described as “a bizarre drug overdose” but what clearly point to the Blight Mark V, if one knows about it. He asks about it, the next day, and is told that yes, that was his bioweapon, and yes, it was Arainai, and that the rest of the details are irrelevant to what he needs to know. But his commanding officer offhandedly mentions that such an assignment was “a good fit, with his background,” and Surana is intrigued enough to check out Arainai’s file—what his clearance allows him to access of it.

Arainai’s mother was an immigrant; she had been engaged to a man who could grant her legal resident status, but he had died unexpectedly before their marriage could be finalized. Shortly thereafter, and before Arainai was born, her visa expired, and she became an undocumented immigrant. Unable to find legal work, she became caught up in sex trafficking, despite her pregnancy—there is an arrest record in the file, with the mugshot showing her to be visibly pregnant; she was bailed out and then skipped town—and died of a postpartum infection, according to the autopsy report. Her body was found in a Dumpster, but no one was ever arrested because her death was due to natural causes.

There is no official record of Zevran Arainai’s birth. According to Arainai’s own statement, in his file, he remembers growing up in the trafficking ring for several years. He claims not to know whether he himself was trafficked, though it seems likely. At some point between the ages of five and eight (in his statement, he estimates this by the state of his deciduous teeth at the time), he was sold to a militaristic religious cult (the name is redacted), and was trained as a child soldier. God had paid the price for his “salvation,” he was told, and now he would fight for God’s army. It is unclear whether he actually believed this or was simply smart enough to follow orders. In any case, his current religious beliefs are listed as Christian-leaning agnostic.

When Arainai was seventeen, the cult was taken down by W.A.R.D.E.N. Most of its child soldiers were placed in foster care or reform schools. Arainai knew his own last name, but there was no legal record of his existence prior to the cult sting. DNA testing revealed who his mother was, and sure enough, she had been engaged to a man named Arainai. Zevran himself, however, was entirely undocumented. Legally, he did not exist. Only as “Baby Doe,” a footnote to his mother’s case, and that had been speculative. His date of birth had however been narrowed down to a range of a few days, per that autopsy report, so he was also only a couple months from the age of majority.

W.A.R.D.E.N. was intrigued by the idea of an operative who would truly have no traceable past. The only record of his existence, the cult sting, was already classified, so it was a simple matter of having that doctored to erase his role in it. Furthermore, he had been trained quite well by the cult, making him ideal for a future career in physical intervention. Arainai had finished his education entirely off of any records that could ever be requested via FOIA during his lifetime, tutored exclusively by W.A.R.D.E.N. employees. He was sent on his first hit at the age of twenty-three and performed quite swimmingly, though most of his handlers noted that he tended to flout minor regulations—most often involving dress code or safety equipment.

He also has mild generalized joint hypermobility beyond what could be explained by his training regimen. It seems like an irrelevant detail, but it is one of the few things beyond his general life history that is not redacted. Surana is science division; perhaps that is why his clearance lets him see Arainai’s medical info. He is not actually Arainai’s doctor, so he skims over all the rest of that except for allergies, which are always good to know. He has a mild allergy to black mold, and nothing else.

All details of his missions are redacted, except for the barest-bones info on his latest one, with the Blight Mark V. Name of target, kill method, date, time, mission status. Surana is pretty sure he would not even be able to see that if he were not on the team that created it. Apart from that, all he knows is that Arainai has not been assigned another mission yet—hardly surprising; it has only been a couple days. The list goes on for pages and pages; despite the redaction, he can tell from the format that there are several dozen targets.

Arainai is a deadly ghost. He is whatever he is supposed to be for a mission, and then he disappears again. Apart from W.A.R.D.E.N.’s internal documents, the only record of his existence is if he happens to walk past a traffic camera, and he wears hats pulled low at all times outside and hair that covers his ears.

Surana wonders what the man is like, beyond the steel and mystery that W.A.R.D.E.N. has built up around him. He does not know why he cares so much to find out more about this odd man whom he met for a few hours once, but he does know that he would like to.

He sees Arainai a few days later, when the man decides to tell him about his new tech’s field performance.

“It was quite easy,” Arainai admits, smiling. He has a tattoo on his cheek; it is only visible when he throws his head back like that. Who let him get a tattoo? That is a terrible decision for an agent. Maybe it is from his time with that cult. However, Surana knows that there are special makeup sprays that feel like skin once dried, last for several weeks, and can only be removed by a special cleanser. They are usually used to cover up scars, but they could work for Arainai as well. Arainai is still talking, and Surana realizes that he is staring at him.

“I offered him a light, and then clapped him on the back when I was done, with the hand holding the lighter. Just like that. You even got it to work like a real lighter! Very useful, no?”

“That was mostly Structural,” says Surana, still staring at that tattoo, or rather trying not to. He suddenly realizes what his fascination is. Oh no. This man is much too dangerous. He is a hitman. His job is killing. There is no way it could be safe for him to be with this man.

He realizes that a large part of his brain does not even care.

“I really like how it has a two-step activation, that is quite strategically good. A prion, but only activated by a catalyst, which is not toxic in itself. It is practically undetectable! So, do you have any other interesting poisons in the works?”

“Uh, yeah. Sure. I do. Do you want to get coffee and talk about it?” Surana curses himself. That was terrible. He has not been that un-smooth since college. Then again, Grinder usually does not care about this dance of semi-formal preliminaries. In fact, although he is bisexual, Surana has slept with mostly men because of that. Romance and dating feel rather contrived, and it is much easier to admit honest lust in spaces that welcome that admission. Faced with that desire but for a person he has only met in real life? Surana is years out of practice.

(He realizes that Arainai probably does not have a smartphone, what with not legally existing and all. He himself has separate ones for work and…well, mostly Grinder, and the one Yahoo email he uses to sign up for things that he does not want his legal identity attached to. W.A.R.D.E.N. knows about it, of course, but the purpose is to keep everybody else from finding out he works for W.A.R.D.E.N.)

Arainai raises his eyebrows just for a fraction of a second, then smiles again in a way that is even more attractive and makes Surana feel uncomfortably aware of his own nipples. “I would be delighted,” he says. “And do call me Zevran.”

“Uh…and call me Alim, then.”

Surana is so fucked.

The W.A.R.D.E.N. campus is one of the few places in the world where Starbucks staff are required to have security clearances. Surana orders his usual iced Americano, while Arai…Zevran gets a venti smores frappucino with whip and crushed caramel candy bits. As they sit across from each other at the food court table, Surana eyes Zevran’s drink enviously. Damn field operatives and their active lifestyles. But really, he’s looking at the drink because he’s a bit nervous about looking at Zevran’s face—at least while maintaining any kind of coherence. Right. Experimental poisons that Zevran is eventually going to be working with. They can talk about that.

“So you liked the dual activation aspect, you said?”

“Mm-hm; it’s a lot safer and harder to detect that way. I would actually prefer to have the components separated, for safety. Harder to administer, in some ways, but then one could put one agent into, say, a meal consumed by a large group of people, while delivering the other only to the target, no?”

“Definitely.” Yes, adverbs are a thing he can manage.

“Or perhaps something that reacts with completely ordinary compounds that the target habitually has contact with, but is harmless on its own. Like, I don’t know, violin rosin. One of my targets was a church violinist, once. Of course, he was also the head of a child sex ring that was funding arms dealers. Good riddance to bad rubbish. Or maybe even to a particular brand of toothpaste? Would that even work?”

“I don’t know,” says Surana. “I can work on it. The problem is that you have to find a chemical that bonds or reacts with something in the target substance to make a toxin, without previously being toxic itself, or reactive to something you don’t want it to be.” He stirs his drink a bit, moving the ice cubes around. “Do they always send you on missions that remind you of your past?” he blurts out. “I’m sorry—I read your file. Basic history and all. I probably shouldn’t have.”

“I mean, I read yours, if that makes you feel better? So I know a little—foster system, science magnet school that you applied to on your own, MIT, and then you joined W.A.R.D.E.N. because it offered you loan forgiveness. That does not actually tell very much about you.”

“I’m not sure what I expected. …For the record, uh, I like cats but I actually have a dog, and my favorite color is blue?”

“I have no pets, my favorite animal is ravens, and I collect little gold and silver figurines.”

“Why take missions that would remind you of being raised like that, though? I mean, to each their own, but I mean, half the reason I work for W.A.R.D.E.N. and not Teach For America is because I couldn’t stand the thought of looking at a child and seeing a childhood like my own, and not being able to do really anything about it. I mean, I turned out alright, but there are many things I try not to remember.”

“From my handler’s and superiors’ perspective—I know my way around those kinds of social milieus better than any other field operative we have, and so I am much more likely to be able to emerge alive by the power of sheer improvisation if the situation were to, as we say, ‘go balls up.’ For myself…well, again, I am used to it. Working for W.A.R.D.E.N. is a good deal better than my old life, but in many ways not very different. And if I can make some truly evil bastards pay while I’m at it, as opposed to just those who happen to threaten the interests of some company that donates a lot of money to a number of U.S. senators, well…you would choose those jobs too, no?”

“I suppose I might,” says Surana. These are heavy thoughts. Better to look at the line of Zevran’s jaws, and the swirls of that illicit tattoo over skin.

“See something you like?” asks Zevran.

Surana snaps back to awareness with a start, almost spilling his drink. As it is, a few drops fly out the straw and land on the table. Oh well. It’s mostly ice water at this point, anyway.

“I got the tattoo when I was fourteen,” Zevran continues. “The Crows of the Apocalypse had puberty rites. Normally they are done at fifteen or sixteen, for boys, but nobody actually knew how old I was. They estimated high, since I was doing well in my training. It is supposed to be the mark of those whom Christ has bought, to prevent us from falling victim to the mark of the Antichrist. Sometimes, after having worked here for so many years, I wish some of them were still alive so I could tell them that the real mark of their Antichrist is no marks at all. W.A.R.D.E.N. wanted to remove the tattoo before they inducted me, but I pointed out that it was a large area and that bioskin is a thing. Eventually, they agreed to let me keep it. It does look sexy, after all.”

Surana chokes on his Americano-turned-icewater. “Why come on to me?” he asks, once he finishes coughing.

“Because you liked me before I tried to, Alim,” says Zevran, softly. “Do you know how I get close to a good half my targets? I seduce them. I do so because it works, because I have been trained how. You are quite attractive, but I must confess I was not directly interested, that first time. I was not trying to seduce you, or even, to the best of my memory, using those tricks without meaning to. And yet…I saw how you looked at me, today. I got a notification when you read my file, the other day. It is nice to know that someone is interested in me, who I am or even how I look, without me having manipulated them into feeling that way. I like to be desired, for real.”

“You’re…right about that,” says Surana, softly.

Zevran’s apartment is in a pretty terrible part of town, an old public housing project—according to his cover identity, he is an Iraq veteran with too much PTSD to hold down a normal job. In some ways, Surana suspects, much of that is actually true. (Even the Iraq. Zevran had a couple of missions there, over the years.) After all, being W.A.R.D.E.N. hitman is not exactly a normal job. And for all that Surana lives in a normal suburban duplex under his own name and works a nine-to-five shift five days a week, being a W.A.R.D.E.N. research biochemist is not exactly a normal job, either. Normal jobs do not have the history of the world hinging on personal success. He only develops the compounds, but his kill count by proxy is probably higher than Zevran’s.

“Stand back,” says Zevran, after he unlocks the front door. Behind the regular Section 8 housing door is another door, a few feet down, and this one has biometric locks. “The area between here is trapped. Normally I don’t take anyone back here, but neither of us wants to brave Beltway traffic for a hookup, no?” Zevran presses various points on the walls and something whirrs. Then he presses his palm on the biometric door’s palm reader and peers into the retina scanner. “Safe now.” He beckons Surana to come in.

Inside, the apartment is a bit run down, much as the whole building is, but scrupulously clean. And, true to Zevran’s word, there are small metal figurines adorning all the bookshelves. There are, in fact, a surprising number of bookshelves, and the books in them all look well read. Glancing at the titles, Surana sees that some are about numismatics or figurine collecting, but many others are about science or history, or works of classic literature. Probably most of them were part of Zevran’s “schooling” in his early years at W.A.R.D.E.N., he realizes.

Of course, Zevran notices his glances. “I do like reading,” he remarks. “I know I’ll never have most of the experiences of a ‘normal person,’ but books are a close second, wouldn’t you say? There are so many ideas in the world. I especially like the ones that the Crows of the Apocalypse used to forbid.”

Zevran winks. At the same time, Alim notices the trashy erotica shelf, further into the room. And God, that is truly trashy erotica. He has read an alarming proportion of those titles himself.

“You’re a fan of David Holly? Huh. Wouldn’t have guessed.” That is actually one of the less trashy authors on the list, but definitely one of the kinkiest.

“What can I say? Tentacles are hot.”

And, yes…Zevran Arainai, tattooed sex god and honeypot operative, is actually blushing.

“Well, I’ve only got one ‘tentacle,’ but would you like it inside you?” jokes Alim—yes, leave last names outside the bedroom door, he thinks.

“Yes, I would definitely like that, so long as you do not call it that during sex,” says Zevran, already shrugging off his shirt. “Condoms are in the lower nightstand drawer. I’ve got like a million kinds, mostly left over from missions. Check the expiration dates.”

“‘Textured with realistic suckers’?” Alim reads off a condom wrapper, a minute or so later.

“Oh my God. That was for a target!”

“It’s expired,” lies Alim, and picks another.

comments

A Rescue of Queens

Sat, 19 May 2018 05:00:56 GMT

Originally posted to AO3 on 8/2/2017

“No. Absolutely not. We are not going in without reconnaissance.” Arl Eamon and Erlina stared at Zevran, surprised that he would interrupt. Alim and Alistair also stared at Zevran, probably surprised that he had used three consecutive declarative sentences.

“But I know where the Queen is!” protested Erlina. “You just have to follow my directions!”

“Well, are you disguising yourself as a guard, too, and following us?”

“No…I’m too short and slight; I’d never pass.”

“My point stands. This Arl Howe is hiring human guards, is he not? What was it we saw in the Alienage—‘Elves who have swords will die upon them’? Hardly likely that we would be applying as private security, then. I am also too short and slight to pass as a human, even with my ears covered by a helmet. Alim’s presence might be plausible, as a mage, but me? No. For my reconnaissance, I must have some other disguise.”

“Who said you were doing the reconnaissance?” asked Arl Eamon.

“Have any of you ever infiltrated a hostile target’s mansion, alone, with the purpose of stealing information or killing your target and getting out alive? No? Well then, it would seem that I am the only man for the job, don’t you think?”

“And just how are you going to do it?” asked Alistair.

“There are rumors about Howe. Or rather, about a man with a pinched face strikingly similar to his who preys on those the authorities care little about. I will infiltrate the Arl of Denerim’s mansion disguised as an elven prostitute.”

Zevran paused for effect, gauging the others’ responses. Erlina looked impressed; the Arl looked shocked and appalled; Alistair blushed. Cute, that last, but if he was to be king he needed to better control his reactions.

“Well?” he asked the room. “It will work. I am very charming, and I can handle myself should he decide to take any liberties I do not wish him to. Moreover, I can even do so without killing him, unless you wish me to kill him. Now, what are we waiting for? Get me a dress.”

Zevran was taller and broader-shouldered than any of Arl Eamon’s female elven servants. Fortunately, Sanga at the Pearl had heard the rumors about the predacious man who looked like Howe and dressed with the same expense as Howe, and moreover had significant experience equipping employees who did not strictly adhere to the usual gender categories. She took Zevran into a walk-in wardrobe while Alim and Leliana waited in the bar. (Oghren had wanted to come along, but everyone else had forbidden it.)

The duelist, Isabela, was there again, fighting more drunken idiots who thought having a metaphorical sword meant they were automatically proficient at the non-metaphorical sort. Why this was allowed in a brothel was beyond Alim or Leliana, but Sanga seemed okay with it. Perhaps it was a job, though whether as security or as a dominatrix was rather in doubt.

“Hello, sailors,” Isabela said, waving to them. “Up for another voyage? Though I see Zevran’s not with you.”

“Business, this time, I’m afraid,” Alim admitted, while Leliana looked at the ground. “We won’t have time before we have to head out again.”

“Zevran in a dress?” Isabela exclaimed, when Alim had explained. “I must admit I’m curious. Positively throbbing with anticipation. But good on you; two birds with one stone. I’ve heard about what’s going around; the girls on the street call him ‘the Rat-bite.’ ‘The Rat-bite got her,’ they say, like that. The guard doesn’t care when poor women go missing, especially when they’re elves or queens with a lowercase Q, or both—not when there’s a Blight and a low-key civil war, anyway. I haven’t been in Denerim long enough when there wasn’t to tell. And if the Rat-bite really is Howe, that could explain it, too.”

“If it is Howe, I’m surprised no one else noticed,” said Alim.

“He’s only been Arl of Denerim for a few months. Most people wouldn’t know him from an actual rat. Most people also expect an Arl to have more upscale taste in sex workers, too. I did. I mean, we all knew he must have money, if the witnesses got his clothes right, but you still don’t expect the fucking Arl of Denerim to be a serial killer.”

“Ah, Isabela! I did not see you on the way in. Everyone, how do I look?”

Alim thought he might pass out if his blood redistributed itself to his nether regions any faster. Distantly, he heard Isabela whistle. Zev had always been pretty, but now he was…extra pretty. That was the closest word Alim was capable of thinking of. The dress was real silk—a bit crumpled and faded in places and stained or moth-eaten in others and obviously third-hand, but more authentic-looking for all that. It had loose sleeves, gathered at the wrist, that would hide Zevran’s muscles and the training they indicated. The skirt draped into dozens of tiny pleats, but the bodice was unadorned and cut fairly high, lying flat across Zevran’s chest. The whole thing was richly purple-pink. His hair had been curled, and he was made up, tattoos hidden.

Zevran’s whole posture had changed, too. Normally he had an air of insolence or wariness, or even an almost catlike playfulness. Now he seemed regal, spine rigid, yet somehow all the more inviting for the seeming disdain. Like a spun-sugar cake ornament, if one did not know the reality: stiff and sharp, but able to be crushed or melted into sweetness.

Alim understood for the first time why drag queens were called queens.

Zevran laughed, almost giddily, seeing Alim’s reaction—smiling more genuinely happily than Alim thought he had ever seen him. “So you like me either way, I see. Maker, I missed this. It has been too long since I got to be pretty. The Crows usually only use the youngest mieleros for this role, so I have not done it since I was twenty.”

“The Crows are missing out, then,” said Isabela.

“I was prettier when I was seventeen. A few less lines around the mouth, you know? Still, I should do.”

“Zevran, I say this as a connoisseur of Orlesian fashion,” said Leliana. “You are amazingly beautiful in a dress, even one that looks like it was made sometime during the occupation of Ferelden. And for the role you are playing, you need a dress like that.”

“Yes. That,” said Alim, who was still trying to get his mouth to work, while distracted by the worry that his robes were failing to hide his state.

“And you don’t look old. With makeup, you won’t even at forty. And sometime before then, I’m going to take you to Val Royeaux and find you a proper dressmaker. Oh, and a shoemaker, too.”

“That, too.”

“Now, you are responsible for the dress and the shoes,” Sanga was saying. “If anything happens, you’re paying for it. Fortunately, with those moth holes, I’d have sold it cheap at our annual rummage sale in a few weeks, anyway. We haven’t had anyone his size in a few years, truth be told.”

“Bill it to Arl Eamon of Redcliffe,” said Zevran airily, with a wave of his hand.

“Oh, he’s good,” said Leliana to herself.

“If he ever retires from his current line of work and needs a job, I’m offering him one,” replied Sanga.

The ‘rat-bitten’ stroll was on the outskirts of the alienage, in a human slum. Though, looking around, Alim was pretty sure at least a third of the humans were actually ‘halves.’ Just human enough to live outside the alienage; not human enough to have been able to learn a trade as children, and faces strange enough that most would know what they were. It was something about the world outside the Circle that seemed particularly cruel and senseless: Deny an arbitrary group of people the means to live well, then use the results of that deprivation to justify it in the first place.

Zevran slipped into the crowd of people of various apparent genders wearing dilapidated clothes that had once been fine. Now all he had to do was avoid notice until the ‘Rat-bite’ came along, then suddenly become conspicuous.

Several hours passed. Alim, Leliana, and Isabela took turns watching from the second floor of an abandoned building. Funny how people never looked up. They wondered if the Rat-bite would not show—he did not always, though tonight had seemed likely given his pattern. Then…

“That is definitely Howe,” said Leliana, confirming Alim’s suspicion. “You should have told us you were nearsighted; we wouldn’t have made you watch.”

“Okay, maybe I can’t see his eye color from fifty feet, but I can catch how he feels in the Fade, and in some ways that’s more accurate. It just gets muddy when there’s a lot of people who are all projecting their own fears onto one person.”

“Huh. Are you a spirit medium, too, or just a scryer?” asked Isabela.

“Spirit healer. I don’t have a particular gift for talking to spirits, just picking up Fade stuff. Someone in your family a mage?”

“I’m from Rivain. Lots of mages get to be out of the Circle and all, up there. Everyone knows a wise woman or two. You should go to Rivain, sometime, if you’re good with spirits.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Leli, what’s Howe doing?”

“He’s talking to Zevran. Zevran’s flirting. Touching him on the arm, doing that thing where you stand to make yourself look a little smaller, probably looking into his eyes. He is definitely good, I’ll give him that. He didn’t seduce you the same way, did he?”

“Maker, no. I just liked his ass.”

“They’re starting to walk away. We should follow. Inconspicuously.”

“I’m beginning to wish I’d picked up some civilian clothes,” said Alim.

“It’s the Long Stewpot,” said Isabela, referring to the stroll. “Your hair will stand out more than your robes. Just put your hood on, and come on before we lose them.”

Isabela and Leliana both had actual training in subterfuge. Alim did not, but he had been evading Templars for years. Howe occasionally looked around, but not particularly thoroughly. Part of that was undoubtedly Zevran’s fault, since he kept caressing Howe or appearing to trip over cobblestones. Alim suspected that Zevran was pretending to be drunk. Howe appeared to have no guards; however, he did have a pair of daggers on his belt, according to Isabela, in addition to his personal knife. Likely he was a proficient fighter, then—but Zevran had to be at least as well trained, both with dual weapons and unarmed fighting, and close to thirty years younger. Alim hoped, desperately, that the difference would be enough in Zevran’s favor, if it came to that.

As the capitals of countries go, Denerim is fairly small. Also, people like to live where they can get servants—or rather, when a city is built, the servants of the rich tend to settle on whatever unclaimed ground nearby that none of their employers are willing to build on yet. Collections of huts eventually become slums. The alienage and the Poor Quarter were actually fairly close to the Drakon Area and the Arl of Denerim’s Estate, less than a mile, though uphill. It was indeed to that estate that Howe led Zevran, thus confirming that he was indeed Howe. The three trailed them to the servants’ gate, then dared go no further.

Zevran had said to come after him if he were in the Estate for more than two hours. So they waited.

At first, Arl Howe led ‘Zinnia’ to his bedroom. This was all well and good. Even when he had locked the door to that bedroom, Zevran was not too worried. It was not hard to lift keys, after all, and any man might want to be sure he would not be disturbed during sex. Then, though, Howe unlocked another door in his room, and snapped at ‘Zinnia’ not to “sit on the bed, you filthy slattern!” Then he grabbed Zevran’s wrist and half led, half dragged him down a flight of steps behind the door. The bottom was unmistakably a dungeon.

One might think a survivor of the Crows would not be afraid of a dungeon. This is false. Zevran did not fear pain, but he did fear permanent damage. By the time Zevran had been an advanced enough fledgling for serious pain training, the Crows had actually had some vested interest in his survival. They had hurt him, but he had known that he would not be outright maimed or killed unless either he or they seriously fucked up. With targets, though, it was all unknown. Whether by accident or design, they could easily make him unable to walk or use his hands again, and it would not matter to them. Now that he had fled the Crows, there was no pension or sinecure waiting for him if that should happen. So Zevran was afraid. But he kept that fake-drunk smile on his face and joked about Messere being “an adventurous man” and did not show it. That much he could do.

Howe turned right, left, and then left again into a large room with a couple of racks. One of them was already occupied. Not a threat. A torturer stood next to it. A threat, but the man was at least fifty and did not look agile. If he could find a way out of whatever restraints these two were obviously going to put him in, he could escape. He prayed that there would be no paralysis runes. Nothing else he had ever faced was quite so bad as magic making it so that you could not breathe.

Fortunately, the restraints were rune-free. Perhaps Ferelden was not so rich a country that arls could afford runes, or perhaps on that one time long ago Zevran’s target had been unusually paranoid. That had been an uncomfortably similar mission to this one, only it had been supposed to look like a natural death…no, he was not going to think about that, or what the Crows had done to him for fucking up that (and to Rinna and Taliesen for saving him and finishing the mission, but badly). The torturer strapped Zevran into the rack, dress and all—not as tightly as he really should have; he was probably hoping Zevran would try to flail and damage his wrists and ankles. It would have held most people, but Zevran was able to dislocate his thumbs pretty much at will. Right now, it seemed like the rack was just being used to keep him immobile while other things were done to him.

Zevran looked up, as much as he could. Howe had his pants open and seemed to be stroking himself slowly. Zevran wondered if it was too much to hope that the man just enjoyed the aesthetic of bondage. Then he heard Howe say “Do it,” and the torturer jabbed him with a needle in the sole of his foot.

Zevran made a good show of screaming. In reality, he was almost overwhelmed with relief. The torture was not going to be very bad, at least to start out. The Rat-bite took victims every three or four weeks, according to the rumors. It seemed likely that Howe gradually escalated the torture of each victim until he killed them, but for the timeframe of a few hours, it probably would not be worse than a number of things he had endured completely recreationally. Worst case, he might get lockjaw, but Alim or Wynne could probably cure that. He just had to lie here and get stabbed in the foot with a pin and make a show of being in pain. It looked like Howe got off to that.

Howe took absolutely forever to get himself off. Apparently he preferred to watch, which was something of a relief. Since the torture did not escalate much, Zevran assumed he was edging. The torturer kept poking him at random in most of his limbs, but nowhere that would cause permanent damage. It was actually almost boring. Some of the sticks barely hurt; the torturer was barely more than an amateur, not a real interrogator. Even Zevran knew more of how to stick pins in places that really hurt for relatively little damage. And they hadn’t even tried genital torture yet.

It seemed like hours, but at last Howe came with a sharp grunt. He did up his pants and left. Immediately the torturer went to work on the other unfortunate prisoner. So Howe had to have an interest in his…objects of desire apart from simply the act of torture, then. Good to know. Well, probably Howe would be dead before the night was out, if he had any say in it, but Zevran filed the fact away anyway, out of habit.

Now he had to get out. Zevran had hidden lockpicks in his hair, but he had to get his hands free first. This part always sucked. Grimacing, Zevran dislocated his thumbs, feeling the joints pop, and carefully slid his hands out of the manacles, biting his lip to make no sound. Still lying flat on the rack, he popped his thumbs back into place. His hands would be sore for days, but at least he was out. And they had not even locked the ankle cuffs, just latched them! Idiots. Lazy noble idiots, who preyed on people too weak to fight back. Zevran had had such targets before; for all their flaws, the Crows did take charity missions sometimes, when powerful men stepped too far. It had the side benefit of getting in the authorities’ good graces, when they knew who had done what but could not formally act. Honestly, it was not even the first time that Zevran had dressed up as a street queen to seduce a target.

(He wondered, sometimes, if his use of the disguise made people more hostile to street queens, but then again, he was pretty sure that he would have been a real one if the Crows had not scooped him up. Or, on the other hand, it might make people think twice about taking their lives for granted. At the end of the day, it was effective for his primary goals, and he looked good in a dress.)

He had no weapons save his table knife—they had not even searched him!—or whatever was at hand, but he did not need those. He had completed missions with far less. Now, he crept up on the preoccupied torturer and pounced. He considered breaking the man’s neck, but realized at the last second that Alim and Arl Eamon would probably want the man to testify. He himself was unwilling to leave the man alive, since he had undoubtedly been complicit in the murders of at least half a dozen innocents, but still he just rendered the man unconscious via pressure on the carotid arteries, then locked him into one of his own racks. (Really locked, this time, both hands and feet. Zevran stole the keys for good measure.)

He then turned to the racked prisoner. Fortunately, the man had had the sense to keep quiet. Zevran released him.

“I cannot get you out of here, right now, but I will come back for you,” he promised—the man could hardly walk, no surprise there, and Zevran was going to have enough trouble getting himself out. “Lock yourself into a cell, quickly, and they will think you are just another prisoner, or that these people are done torturing you. I will be back with friends, in a few hours.”

“What about the jailer?” asked the man—a noble accent, interesting.

“If you are very lucky, the others will mistake him for you, no?”

“I…guess.”

There were cells not far down the hall, with more people in some of them. They showed clear signs of torture and starvation. Maker, they would have to clear out this whole place, and as soon as possible. No waiting for backup or warrants; these people’s lives came first. Zevran locked the man he had rescued into an empty cell, and gave him the key off the ring he had stolen from the torturer.

“I doubt that is the only key, unfortunately, so others than you may be able to take you out of here, but at least you will be able to get yourself out, no? I suggest you hide that in your person, as opposed to merely on it.”

“Who the Void are you?” asked the man. It was, Zevran supposed, a fair question. People were rarely rescued from dungeons by…anyone, really, but especially not by apparent streetwalkers with assassin skills.

“A friend,” he answered, that being the simplest truth. “And I will bring more friends. That is a promise.”

“Are you going to get the rest of us out, or just this noble blighter here?” asked an elf in the cell across the hall.

“All of you. Unless you have done something particularly bad that you actually should be locked up for, and then we will try to have you transferred to a more legitimate prison that will actually feed you.” He turned to the noble prisoner. “I was not hired by your family, and in fact I have no idea who you are. If I did know, I might be able to explain all of this to my real…employer, who thought this would be a simple reconnaissance mission?”

“Oswyn, son of Bann Sighard. One of my friends was at Ostagar, and then he told me that—”

“What Loghain did. I suspect that is why you are here. Now enough. I must leave, so that I can come back. That is how it works, no? You all sit tight here, and do not tell the guards. Our secret.” Curtseying deeply—he was still wearing the dress—Zevran made his exit.

After that, it was a matter of sneaking through the dungeon, avoiding the guards. Zevran was beginning to wish he had not worn pink. There had been a lovely grey dress that had fit him, but he had turned it down because it had showed too much of his arms. Howe would not pick someone who looked too strong, he had reasoned. Zevran got into Howe’s bedroom—Howe was not there, he noted—and began exploring. Where was the Queen? She had not been in the dungeon.

Shortly after, he found a door with a magic seal. It felt like magic, anyway—kind of tingly. He knocked, and a woman answered, claiming to be the Queen and to be locked in. Whether or not it was actually Anora—and it seemed probable—she needed to be rescued. Zevran promised her that she would be, and decided to get out of there. Servants’ entrance. Where was the servants’ entrance? Howe had brought him in the front, but there was no way an unaccompanied whore would be allowed to leave that way. He snuck through the halls and eventually found the kitchen, and the way out.

Zevran returned just as the others were on the point of going in to get him.

“How’d it go?” asked Alim.

“I am fine. A lot of other people are not. We were right about Howe; he is indeed the Rat-bite. He is also holding and torturing political opponents, and a large number of other people, and he seems to be starving them. We need to go in there now. As we are.”

“So you do have morals,” remarked Leliana.

“Who said I did not?” shot back Zevran, turning to look at her.

“What did they do to you?” asked Alim, already gathering his magic.

Zevran laughed, and described his very minor injuries. “And can you believe it? All that, and he does not even try to stick it in me. He just stood there watching his butcher stick my feet with pins, of all things they could have done to me, just stood there and—” Zevran made some appropriately suggestive hand motions. “I pretended to cry, and he just ate it up and tugged his sausage. Of course, he probably escalates things eventually. Since he keeps taking new girls, I suspect the other ones end up dead. And then he left, once he finished, and I slipped the cuffs and put the torturer in them.”

“Popped your thumbs?” asked Isabela.

“Yes,” said Zevran.

“You’re going to destroy your hands like that!” said Alim, healing him there as well—he had already healed his feet. Zevran felt the soreness in his hands ease.

“I try not to do that very often,” he reassured Alim. “But I am very bendy. I have to do hand exercises to make sure that sort of thing does not happen by accident. Look.” Zevran grabbed the fingers of his left hand and bent them back until they were at right angles with the back of his hand, popping them out of their joints a bit. It hurt less than thumbs did—a bit less muscle around there, probably.

“I just healed that,” groaned Alim. He healed him again, anyway.

Leliana just looked vaguely alarmed and disgusted.

“Then I rescued the other prisoner, and put him in the comparative safety of a jail cell. He is a noble, by the way. If we rescue him all the way, that could be a vote for us in the Landsmeet, no?”

“Definitely,” said Leliana.

“And the Queen is at the end of the hall from Howe’s bedroom—beginning of the hall from the front door side, I guess. But we cannot go in that way, no? We will have to take the servants’ entrance and go through most of the house. We rogues must be sneaky. Alim will probably be mistaken for one of the mages in Howe’s employ, and besides, he is surprisingly sneaky as well.”

“Let’s go, then, I guess,” said Alim, getting up and picking up his staff.

The servants had some idea of Howe’s extracurricular activities, and were willing to look the other way as Zevran returned with three conspicuously armed people. One maid was even kind enough to show them a servants’ passage that Zevran had not previously found. Her brother had died in the alienage riots, she whispered, and Howe kept leering at her, but there were few other jobs around, with the troubles and all. And so they popped up in a little closet across from Howe’s room.

Alim tried to dispel the seal on Anora’s door, but it did not work. Someone was actively maintaining it, and probably with a fixed glyph, for this level of strength, complexity, and durability. Alim was willing to bet that the glyph was somewhere in the dungeons. So they went back down the hall to Howe’s bedroom.

In the dungeon again—thank you, stolen ring of keys—the guards were, unfortunately, on high alert. It seemed that they had found the torturer Zevran had incapacitated. After they fought their way through them, they found that rack empty—but at least Oswyn had not been put back on it. Probably, they considered torturing him further to be the least of their problems. Meanwhile, it turned out that one of the prisoners was another Grey Warden, and a senior Warden at that. He was in too poor condition to fight with them, unfortunately, but well enough to escape on his own, now that he was out. They told him of the servants’ passage, and he made his way out.

They also found the dungeon records. There was a list of all the current prisoners, and their crimes and cell locations. Zevran found the entry for the elf he had talked to earlier.

“He killed the son of the previous Arl of Denerim?” Zevran asked, eyebrows nearly to his hairline.

“Someone did, anyway,” said Isabela. “Vaughn Kendells tried to steal an elven woman from the alienage on her wedding day. There were riots. Rumor has it one of her relatives snuck in and killed him. Or at least, Vaughn hasn’t been seen since. Good riddance to bad rubbish, by all accounts.”

“I say we let him go,” said Zevran. “See, this is why you need assassins. Otherwise the nobles think they can do things like this.”

“And common people can afford the Crows?” asked Leliana.

“If a noble has gotten that destructive, we kill them without being hired. It is in the spirit of our founders, we say. Of course, the real reason is likely that all the rest of the nobles dislike riots, and atrocities, especially graphic and unpunished ones, tend to cause riots. A case in point here, no?” And besides, half the Crows were elves, and a good many more were halves, even some in the leadership. Most had backgrounds similar to Zevran’s own. No matter how much they believed in their own elitism, the fact was that they had been chosen for that exalted path, and if they had not been, they would be the same as the other unfledged masses of poor that the more arrogant nobles preyed on. Not that the Crows were not themselves cruel, but senseless violence against uninvolved parties was frowned upon.

“Hold up,” said Leliana, scanning down the page. “This says Vaughn Kendells isn’t dead?”

“Hmm? You are right. He is being held here; a different hall of cells. All the more reason to let the elf go. So Howe is not even a legitimate Arl, then, at least not here. Not that I would want Vaughn to be arl, so I think we should arrange an ‘accident’ for him while we are here, but it may be easier to prosecute Howe if he is not even in charge of this city, no?”

“Yes. He is going to be in a lot of legal trouble just for that,” said Alim. “I think we should keep Kendells alive for the Landsmeet, though, and arrange for him to be tried for rape, after. Or for public endangerment, or inciting riots, or something.”

“Are you sure I can’t kill him now?”

“We need to get Howe and Loghain.”

“All right,” said Zevran, dubiously.

They made their way through the rest of the dungeon, releasing people and trying to avoid having to kill guards. According to the records they had found, nearly all the captives were political prisoners or petty criminals who had committed offenses against the Arl’s own household. A number of entries, mostly women’s names, were listed as current prisoners and accused of “pickpocketing” but were nowhere to be seen in the cells. They agreed that these were probably Howe’s victims.

And then there was a large room with Arl Howe, two mages in robes, two guards, and, as Alim had suspected, a glyph drawn on the wall. Manually drawn, instead of magically inscribed to prime an area with a triggerable spell, so dispelling it would (and had) done nothing beyond making it flicker for a second. There were a few seconds of surprise, for both parties.

“Well, well. The Grey Warden. I must say I’m surprised Eamon would condone you invading my castle and murdering my men. Is he losing faith in the persuasive powers of his Landsmeet?”

“It’s not even a real castle,” said Alim. “It doesn’t have crenellations.”

“Oh, I think the nobles will find the evidence of what you’ve done here quite persuasive,” said Leliana.

“We came for the queen—well, really, I came to plan how to rescue the queen—but I could not see all of this and just leave these poor souls to their fates, could I now?” said Zevran.

Howe finally noticed him. “You hussy! What are you doing here? How did you get out?”

“Easily, my dear. You nobles are so confident in your money that you do not even lock people up securely. If you survive this, maybe you will not take working girls for defenseless playthings anymore, no?”

“Hi there, Rat-bite,” said Isabela, waving.

“You rabble will regret that accusation,” said Howe, paling. “And after certain upstarts are brought to heel, Loghain will end the Blight you go on about. Something your pathetic order of second sons can’t seem to get done. Ferelden needs a king who has known command. With the proper advisor at his side, of course.”

“Yes. Too bad you killed the last one. Oh, and that you’re a parasite who gets off on killing women.”

“Please. Cailan was a symbol, the coddled idea of the royal bloodline. He wasn’t a real leader. You should have left when you had the chance, Warden. Snuck off to the Anderfels to hide with the rest of your kind. This Landsmeet is a farce. Loghain will triumph, and you will die.” Howe signaled to his lackeys, and everyone attacked.

Alim reached around through the Fade and mentally gripped the fade-half of the nearest mage, wrenching it brutally. The man went down. For someone as attuned to the Fade as a mage was, the shock of such a thing was often fatal. (Even for a lot of mundane people, it could be quite unpleasant.) Alim had no time to check if the man was still breathing; there were other people still trying to kill him. He could not cast Mana Clash again so fast—it had taken most of his mana reserve—but he managed to cast a minor dispel and started aiming hexes at the other mage, while shielding himself and everyone else. And that was about all he could do, besides casting staff bolts. He was reaching for the last bits of his mana, and pretty soon it was going to be a struggle to stay upright. He had no lyrium potions, because he hated using the stuff. He considered blood magic, but these were people. Alim still was not sure if he could give them the Blight by bleeding on them.

“Try to take Howe alive,” he yelled, digging at the Fade to give him more power. The Veil was surprisingly robust here, for all that must have happened in this house, and for all the years Denerim had been a city.

Isabela stabbed one of the guards, and Alim had his answer. The guard was already bleeding anyway, and was fighting against them; he could use that man’s blood. Rushing over and dipping his fingers in it, he pulled its power into him.

Leliana was hiding behind a pillar and shooting at the second mage. (Alim had not recognized either of them; they must be apostates or from Jainen.) At that moment, they decided to turn into a spider. Alim was too distracted to tell if it was actual shapeshifting or just very good illusion magic, or even a summon that the mage had ducked behind. Unwilling to use Mana Clash again, he merely froze the spider-mage and followed it with a stonefist. Bits of frozen mage-spider broke off. Real shapeshifting, it seemed. Maybe they were an apostate.

Zevran incapacitated the second guard, and began helping Isabela fight the Arl. Since he was unarmored, he let Isabela distract the man and snuck in a blow when he could from behind. Of course he had hidden mail, dammit. With clothing over it, even The Rose’s Thorn could not easily get through it. Suddenly, their blades began to glow, and he realized that Alim was helping them. A couple seconds later, the Arl began glowing with a series of hexes. They were in too close proximity for Alim to use other spells, he realized.

Finally, Isabela got in a gut stab, and Howe finally dropped.

“Maker spit on you,” wheezed Howe, clutching his intestines. “I deserved…more….” He flopped back, unconscious.

“Yes, you do deserve more,” muttered Alim. “Like hanging.” He was already healing the comatose Arl. “There,” he said a few minutes later. “He won’t die, but if he does more than walk slowly for the next few months, he’ll probably bleed out on the inside. I must say I was tempted to give him a few nasty adhesions, but that goes against my professional code as a healer, and Wynne would yell at me.”

“She already yells at you,” pointed out Zevran.

“She’s just mad about how I prefer herbalism to pure magic. Not that she’s above using potions, far from it, but she has this rivalry with the herbalism enchanter. I don’t want to give her an actual reason to be mad at me.”

“Could you have made it so his dick doesn’t work?” asked Isabela. “You know, in case he weasels out of hanging somehow.”

“We have witnesses to what he did. He’s not going to escape hanging unless the Blight takes us. I mean, I could have, but it would be harder to hide that I did it.”

“Or Zev could just cut his junk off.”

“He’d bleed to death.”

“I’m not cutting anyone’s junk off, yes?”

“Then it’s settled. Lock him up, junk intact, leave a note saying that if he exerts himself he’ll die, and rescue the queen.”

“Right,” said Zevran. Alim broke the glyph sealing the queen’s room, leaving as much of it intact as possible for evidence.

In the next room, there were more cells. They left Vaughn in his cell, after Isabela tricked a strongbox key out of him, and the severely ill Templar who refused to leave with them. Alim regretted not carrying lyrium, for the second time that day. From what he could tell, the man was a typical third son who had gone to the Chantry for lack of much else to do, and besides, lyrium withdrawal was not something he would wish on anyone.

They put Howe in another cell, and left the dungeon behind.

Anora had already discovered that her room was unlocked, but had been afraid to leave it, alone. They agreed that the best option for her safety would be to take her back to Arl Eamon’s—secretly, if they could.

This was not to be.

“Warden! In the name of the regent, I am placing you under arrest for the murder of Rendon Howe and his men-at-arms. Surrender, and you may be shown mercy.”

“It was self-defense!” said Zevran.

Alim had seen enough of the sort of mercy the regent condoned. “Isabela? Leli? There’s too many for us to take. Do you have any smoke bombs?”

“Yes, a few,” said Leliana.

“Throw them. I’ll take care of the rest. We’re going to run.”

And as pottery broke and smoke rose from the mixing chemicals, they all ran.

“Get them!” yelled Ser Karen? Cowden?—Alim could not remember, but he had managed to summon a sandstorm (yes, a sandstorm; a blizzard might have chilled the smoke bombs too much, so he combined the blizzard and earthquake spells, sort of) and cast Haste on his own people, and the guards had no idea where they were. He could tell where he was going just fine, of course.

They made it back down the hall and into the servants’ passage, and then to the kitchen and out. They slowed to a walk, then, because running was suspicious, and finally reached the safety of Arl Eamon’s estate. They explained why the mission had…accelerated. Zevran was still wearing the dress.

“Maker,” groaned Alim, back in their room. “That should not have worked.”

“The important thing is that it did work, no? And I did not even get any blood on the dress.”

“You look really good in it. It’s a shame we have to give it back to Sanga.”

“You don’t mind me wearing dresses?” asked Zevran, hopefully.

“I wear robes, Zev. I hardly have room to criticize anyone’s clothing choices. Besides, it looks good on you. If you like wearing dresses, wear dresses. My opinion shouldn’t be a factor in it—but I’ll have you know, I approve. Wholeheartedly. Whole other organs, too.”

Zevran’s relief was almost palpable. “Well, we have a few more hours before we have to return the dress. We should have some fun with that, no?”

“Oh, definitely. If you’re okay, after earlier?”

“Howe did not even touch me. You healed my sore feet. And I suggested this, did I not?”

Zevran straddled Alim where he sat on the edge of his bed, spreading the full skirt over both of them. Alim grasped Zevran by the waist as they ground against each other, feeling the novel texture of the fabric beneath his hands. His hands traveled down to the front of the dress to rub Zevran through it, as Zevran bent down to lick his ear and the curve of his throat.

“Fuck. You’re not wearing smalls under that, are you?”

“No, I am not. It would not be realistic to the disguise, you see.”

“That’s…entirely logical. Wait. Did you leave your smalls at the Pearl, with the rest of your armor?”

“Yes. Why?”

“It’s funny, that’s all.”

“Leaving my smalls at a brothel and not even having ‘used’ the brothel, hmm?”

“Yeah.”

“I am still getting laid, though, you must agree.”

“And I still have my own pants as well as smalls on, and that’s something we need to fix, for this position.”

Zevran rolled off Alim and pulled his robes up and his leggings down. He was going for doing it sexily, but Alim was much too eager to help, kicking off his shoes and pulling his robes over his head without bothering to unbutton them all the way. Soon he was in just his shirt—it was always cold in the Estate, despite the fireplaces.

“Can you lie on the bed and pull your skirt up, Zev? I want to see you, but while you’re wearing that. If that’s okay.”

Zevran did so, smiling. So tentative, and this was barely even a kink. At times like this he was reminded that his Warden was younger than he was, and needed that much more care and consideration than he himself would. It was a carefulness he was always willing to give, and never to mock the need for. It was a carefulness he sometimes wished he could need for himself. So he lay on the bed as asked, spreading his skirt out under and over him like a fan, and bent his knees up to his head.

Alim nearly drooled at the sight. The pink of the dress contrasted with Zevran’s dark skin, yet it also drew out the rose tones deep within it, especially in the thinner skin at his entrance and the flushed head of his hard cock. He wanted nothing more than to lick him forever. And those pleats and ruffles—there was something indescribably appealing about Zevran in frills. Zevran should wear frills more often, he decided.

For now, he followed his desires and began licking all the parts of Zevran he so wanted to lick. It was as if Zevran’s body was made to be adored, to be kissed and adorned like a missal of the Chant, draped in gowns the way the decorated tome was displayed on an altar cloth. How could one person’s cock and ass possibly be so perfect? He licked and kissed his way down to Zevran’s ass, then stayed there and lavished his attention on the tight ring there, flicking his tongue insistently until even his magic could not undo its weariness, until Zevran was panting with need and writhing beneath his adoration.

He finished with one last, long lick, all the way up from hole to sac to cock, lapping up the bead of moisture that had appeared there. Zevran whined at him, wanting him to do something.

“Just a second,” said Alim, casting grease and stroking it over his hardness. There was a tiny wet spot on the linens where his cock had been while he was eating Zev out, he noticed. Shuffling forward on his knees, he lined himself up with Zevran’s entrance and eased his length inside.

Zevran’s hole was quite relaxed from the extended foreplay, but he was still so tight and hot inside. Alim let out a long groan as that sensation enveloped him completely, almost unwilling to pull out of it at all, even just to thrust back in again. But soon the need for more became overpowering, and he drew back and thrust in again, slamming his hips forward.

“Ah. Fuck. Yes. Keep doing that!” gasped Zevran, grasping the sheets and continuing to make little noises of pleasure that mingled with Alim’s grunts and hissing breaths. “Go as hard as you can. I’m—Ah!—not going to break.” Alim had teased him for nearly a quarter of an hour, and while his mouth was fantastic, he wanted to be fucked. He wanted to be filled up so full and so deep that he would feel it for hours, if not days afterwards. He needed all the sensation he was capable of bearing—and that was a lot—and it was almost, almost enough.

Alim felt the heat building within his loins, and knew he would be undone in a few more thrusts. “Zevran, I’m going to—do you think you could ride me, like earlier?”

That would work. Alim would probably last a little longer, if he had to thrust up. He nodded, and carefully he and Alim rolled over, until once again Zevran straddled Alim’s lap. He rocked up and down, and oh fuck yes, that angle hit his prostate so hard that it hurt, and that was very good. Hanging onto Alim’s shoulder with one hand and frantically stroking himself with the other, he rocked up and down on Alim’s cock, panting from the exertion, guided by Alim’s hand clutching his ass.

It was finally enough. He ground down on Alim’s cock and stayed there, with it pressed into his prostate so hard he saw white, as he stretched his whole body and came into his hand, careful even at this moment not to get anything on the borrowed dress. He felt Alim begin to shoot out inside him, brought over the edge by the sudden squeezing, crying out with a noise of pleasure and surprise. He wiped his messy hand on Alim’s shirt—while still half dazed from his orgasm—and rocked a little on Alim’s still-hard cock, savoring the aftershocks.

It was a couple minutes before he came down all the way, and before Alim began to soften inside him. Pulling his skirts up, making sure not to stain them, he slipped off Alim’s cock, leaking a trail of cum from his ass to its tip. He lay back on the bed, every limb loose and thrumming with satisfaction.

“So you really do like me in a dress,” he said, when he felt sure he could trust his lips to work again. He had thought so, before, but he had not been sure it was not just shock, at the Pearl.

“Maker, yes. We should get you some of your own. Leli probably knows what the fashions are.”

A weight Zevran did not know he bore seemed to lift from him. It was such a small thing; it should not mean this much, that Alim thought he was pretty in a dress, to be desired as that, but it did. Maker, what had he done or not done to deserve this man? He wondered if, perhaps, this was what love really was. And then he fell asleep, as one does.

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Distractions

Sat, 19 May 2018 00:47:58 GMT

Originally posted to AO3 on 8/2/2017

Zev, I know you’re there,” said Alim, not looking up from his writing.

There was a slight rustling noise as Zevran abandoned his attempt at stealth and looked down, hanging from the rafter by his knees. “Admit it. You would not have known I was there without your magic, no?”

“Fair enough. I’m not the only Fade scryer on earth, though. Probably one of the best south of Tevinter, I’ll admit, but not the only one. You can’t guarantee you can sneak up on a mage.”

Alim finally turned to actually look at Zevran, marveling at how he could actually see his face all the way across the room, with his reading glasses on. “And do please get down from there. I know you won’t fall, but I can see how high up that is, right now, and it’s making me nervous.”

“Fine, fine,” said Zevran. He pulled himself upright by ab strength alone, then launched himself off the rafter and onto Alim’s bed.

“Zev! That’s not how I meant!”

“I’m fine, the bed’s probably fine.”

“I know how high the ceiling is. It’s fucking terrifying. Actually, fuck seeing, for the moment. No way I can concentrate on distillates of rashvine nettle now, anyway.” Alim took off his glasses, and everything resolved into familiar Fade-annotated blurriness. Some would think it a loss that he could see Zevran’s face less well, but it just let him focus on the magical essence of the man—a truer measure of his being, to a mage’s mind. Many had sold themselves to demons over the centuries to gain the clarity of magical perception that Alim had developed naturally and mostly involuntarily to compensate for abysmal eyesight. “You’re bored, obviously,” he said to the elfy blur across the room. “I don’t suppose you’ll stop worrying me until I fix that. Any preferences as to how I should do that?”

“Hmmm. I think you are the one who really wants to be distracted. I was just trying to assassin-proof your room.”

“For the third time in one month?”

“Fair enough. I was a bit bored, and I would not turn down a blowjob, if you are up for it?”

“‘Up’ may take a couple minutes, but I can definitely get a start on it.” Alim had already crossed the room and knelt where Zevran perched on the edge of the bed; now he undid the skirts of Zevran’s leather armor. He pressed his nose against the leggings underneath, and the start of a bulge within them. Zevran smelled of leather and musk, but also what was unmistakeably himself—a bit herbal and metallic, from everything he took to keep up his poison resistance. A lot of the compounds showed up in his sweat. “To catch an assassin, smell them,” he had half-joked, when Alim had expressed concern about it once. Inhaling once more, Alim finally untied the laces of Zevran’s leggings.

Zevran wore no smallclothes underneath. This was hardly unusual—he rarely did unless there was snow on the ground—but it was still incredibly sexy, with how his cock sprang out like that, even just half-hard. Alim licked it into his mouth, taking it to the hilt while he still could with relative ease. Zevran threw his head back and gripped the blanket tightly with his right hand. His left found its way to Alim’s head and carded through his hair. Alim purred, pleased at having his hair played with, and Zevran made a small noise of pleasure at the vibrations.

Zevran’s cock was fully hard now, and Alim drew back a little, laving the head while scratching Zevran’s thighs with his fingernails. He flicked his tongue insistently at the slit; too much for himself, but Zevran liked it. Actually, Zevran seemed to have some general issues with peripheral sensation; he refused to talk about it. Perhaps he thought Alim was criticizing his preferences, not merely concerned. In any case, when it came to sex, Zevran’s reactions were within the realm of masochistic but normal, so Alim did not press the issue.

He moved on to Zevran’s balls, licking and sucking them till they stopped tasting of sweat and instead only of his own spit; meanwhile he jerked Zevran off, digging in his nails just the tiniest bit every few strokes. Zevran’s breathing quickened further, and he wrapped a leg around Alim’s back. By this point Alim’s cock was fully hard and it ached, but he preferred to deny himself and get Zevran off first. Giving a last few licks to the meeting of sac and groin, he returned his attention to the cock proper, licking off the bead of fluid that had gathered at the tip. It, too, was unusually metallic; Alim had come to associate that taste with Zevran, so it made his desire burn all the hotter.

Zevran was obviously getting close, breathing irregularly, so Alim gave it his all. He jerked Zevran’s shaft as he licked and sucked the head, and with his free hand drew scratches over Zevran’s thighs and stomach. Then he put the slightest trickle of electricity into the tip of his tongue, and just managed not to choke as Zevran thrust into his mouth involuntarily. He kept it up as Zevran rocked his hips back and forth minutely, chasing his pleasure but trying to be considerate, and caught all his spend when he stopped that rocking and cried out, continuing to suck until he was actually told to stop.

Then he climbed onto the bed, erection tenting his robes despite his undergarments, because kneeling on the floor was not something that he liked doing longer than necessary. Zevran, still looking a bit dazed, helped him unbutton his robes and took his cock out—it was flushed almost purple with neglect.

Zevran knew to use a comparatively lighter touch on Alim—firm, but not much squeezing. Alim had waited long enough that his pleasure built fast, and he thrust into Zevran’s hand with abandon. The heat and pressure built; his piss slit began to tingle; and then that feeling enveloped his entire cock and he was coming, gasping as he continued to thrust and spurted cum all over his shirt.

Alim leaned back on his elbows, eyes still shut and head still thrown back. Every several seconds he shivered a bit and his now half-hard cock twitched as Zevran still held it in a loose grip. Finally he looked down at himself.

“Fuck. That was amazing, and I need a new shirt. Did any of that get on my robes?”

“Hmmm. I think you could just leave your shirt like that and button your robe over it, for me?”

Alim groaned and thrust his hips forward, cock already stiffening to full hardness again. “Fuck. That’s just not fair.”

“Warden stamina?”

“Yep. And since I’m guessing you need a few more minutes, the dildo’s under the pillow. No, on the right.” While Zevran fished around for the toy, Alim took the opportunity to get his robe off properly—it was, in fact, unscathed—and his pants as well. Zevran eventually found the rod of smooth, artfully-shaped clear glass and returned with it.

“Here, hand that to me, I’ll warm it up,” he said. Magic was very useful, that way. Alim bent over the edge of the bed, still holding the dildo. He summoned just the tiniest bit of grease and slicked the first few inches with it—glass did not need much—and then handed it to Zevran, base first.

Zevran worked the head of the dildo into Alim’s ass and then slid the rest in with one motion, as Alim gasped at the sensation and frantically pulled at his own cock. Zevran found the right angle, and then began hammering at Alim’s prostate, drawing an incessant series of moans, whimpers, and gasps from the other man. He was always so much louder when he was being fucked, and Zevran loved it, loved how he could do that to him. (Well, so could anyone with a cock or a suitable dildo, and occasionally ‘could’ became ‘did,’ when they found a compatible third party, but Zevran was definitely an expert both at fucking and at fucking Alim in particular.) He did not think he himself would be ready for another round before Alim was done, from the pitch of the noises and the tension in Alim’s legs and fingers, but he drank in the sight all the same, saving it in his mind for the next time he had to go to Antiva. He slapped the luscious, tensed ass before him lightly, just to watch the pale skin redden, and was rewarded with a sharp cry and a gasped “Do that again.” So he did, while still thrusting with the dildo, until that ass was pink on both cheeks and the man it belonged to was writhing and cursing. Then he stopped the slapping and started two-handing the dildo.

At last, with a screamed “Fuck!,” Alim came for a second time, slumping against the side of the bed and soaking the blanket with jizz. Maker pray that was washable. Zevran just fucked him through it, albeit a little more gently, until he looked like he was going to cry, and then eased the dildo out.

“Are you okay? Has the Warden stamina given up yet?” Zevran asked. He was pretty sure he would be able to get it up again in another couple minutes, if Alim needed him to. Too sensitive for glass was not always too sensitive for another’s flesh.

“’M fine. I just get a little weird sometimes, after the second one. And yeah, done for now, or I’ll end up sleeping through dinner.”

Zevran helped Alim onto the bed properly and stroked his back—he was still wearing his shirt. Probably best not to remind him what was on the front of that shirt, if he wanted to be done for the afternoon. “What’s for dinner?” he asked. Vigil’s Keep tended to have very good food, for a military base.

“I forget what all. I do know the dessert is nut porridge, though.”

“Nut porridge? I could do something with that, no?”

“Don’t. And hazelnuts.”

“I will refrain from jokes so long as you do not spill the literal porridge on the bed.”

Alim made a face. “Fuck. I did get it on the bed, didn’t I. And…from my shirt to the bed. Why isn’t there a spell to clean up semen yet? Get up, I need to change my shirt and this blanket.”

Well, if Alim was complaining about jizz on things, he was definitely done for now. Chuckling to himself, Zevran got up and started picking up his armor, listening to Alim fuss in the background. In a couple weeks he would have to go back to Antiva, but for now he had this. He would take his peace and pleasures where he could.

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An Interlude in the Deep Roads

Sat, 19 May 2018 00:45:41 GMT

Originally posted to AO3 on 8/1/2017

“Hey Zev?” asked Alim. “Can I convince you to work your awesome massage magic once we set up camp? Sleeping on rock is fucking up my neck, and just throwing healing at it doesn’t work.”

“Of course. After all, my skills are ridiculously awesome.”

“Zevran, that line got old the second time you used it after stabbing an ogre,” said Alistair.

“But stabbing ogres is ridiculously awesome!”

“You have to admit, it is,” agreed Alim.

“Yes, you’re definitely thinking about some kind of stabbing,” said Morrigan darkly.

“I promise never to make that much noise again, okay?” Who would have thought that echoing was actually a property of stone, not just weird Circle surveillance architecture? And it had been just once!

There was no way to tell day from night in the Deep Roads, but eventually everyone agreed that it was time for “dinner”—the second meal since “breakfast”—so they made camp; building a fire, unrolling bedrolls, and painting spider repellant on everything around them. As soon as everything was mostly set up, Alim flopped onto his bedroll, facedown. “Ow,” he said, as he realized an instant too late that the bedroll was not padded sufficiently for flopping.

“Are you still in need of my awesome massage magic, my Warden?”

“Yes,” said Alim, into the thin pillow. “That would be double-awesome.”

“You should have your robe and shirt off, to do this properly.”

“Ugh. Sitting up. All right.” Alim sat up and unhooked and set aside his robes, then took off his (rather sweaty) linen shirt.

“Please don’t get naked,” remarked Morrigan, from the fire, as she stirred the stewpot.

“I’m keeping my pants on,” he shot back.

For some reason, a lot of people thought that mages wore their distinctive robes and nothing else. Even in the middle of summer, this was largely untrue; most people wore at least a linen shirt to protect the fabric. When it was not summer-temperature, one actually followed the official dress code, which dictated having under one’s robes not just that shirt but also leggings and smallclothes. Alim had left the Circle, but saw no reason to change his style of underwear, merely changing the externals to be more sensible for fighting. (Circle robes were nigh-impossible to run in. Circle shoes were little more than socks made to be noisy.)

Now wearing only his pants (and the smallclothes underneath), Alim lay facedown on the bedroll again, more carefully this time. Zevran had also partially disrobed, taking off his own armor and shirt. He dug around in his pack and produced a vial of scented oil.

“So, where does it hurt?” he asked.

“Left shoulder. No, higher up. Ow! There.”

“That looks like some adventurous sleeping, no? We’ll have to do something about that knot.”

“Any sleeping I do is adventurous. I’m pretty sure this counts as an adventure. Fighting darkspawn, stopping the Blight, the Warden business. It includes sleeping rough.”

“Well, yes, I suppose. Are you having difficulty sleeping, though?”

“I’m a Warden. I’m also a mage, and the Veil is weird here and there’s traces of lyrium in everything. So, yes. I’ll live.”

“There are herbs that can help with that.”

“I’m aware of that. I also don’t wish to be eaten by deepstalkers or darkspawn in my sleep. I’ll save the valerian for if someone actually needs it.”

A few minutes went by in silence, save for the crackle of the fire and occasional muffled curses and sharp intakes of breath from Alim, as Zevran’s fingers found painful knots. Zevran was putting most of his weight into the massage, working Alim’s back properly now that the worst of the shoulder was done, and his muscles flexed as he worked. (Leliana was looking on appreciatively while pretending to mend clothing. Zevran pretended not to notice, and secretly reveled in the attention.)

“Stew’s ready,” called Morrigan.

“Okay, that’s probably enough for your back,” said Zevran to Alim. “You should eat.”

“I’m not tired enough to skip food,” said Alim.

The stew was deepstalker, deep mushroom, and dried fruit—heavy on the deepstalker. The flavor combination was a bit odd, and a bit bland, but salted well enough. Zevran was strongly considering unpacking his entire mortar and pestle set and grinding part of a dried pepper, from his sadly dwindling supply, but Alim just shoveled the mess into his mouth.

“You actually like this stuff?” Zevran asked.

“It’s not oat porridge or lentils. It has a lot of meat in it. Therefore, I like it. Would be better with boiled walnuts, though. And milk.”

Zevran suspected that Alim would eat nothing but meat, nuts, and dairy, plus the occasional spring salad and seasonal fruit, if he could. The Dalish in the Brecilian Forest had certainly seemed to. Though, the ones who were not Wardens (or running around fighting) seemed to eat fairly small portions, which balanced out the nutritional intensity, he supposed.

Alim had finished eating, and was now leaning on Zevran. “Hey. If you are going to fall asleep, maybe you should be lying down.”

“Can you stay by me?”

Zevran had wanted to sharpen his daggers, but he could do that at breakfast, he supposed. He had cleaned them well enough after the last fight that they would be fine.

“Of course,” he said, curling up around the sleepy mage. They would probably regret not having their shirts on, later, but for now the skin-to-skin contact was nice. Especially for Zevran; despite the chill of the Deep Roads, Alim always ran hot. He said it was a Warden thing.

Alim was asleep in a few minutes, still except for the flickering of his eyelids as he dreamed. Zevran hoped it was not the “darkspawn Templar” nightmare again. He pressed a reassuring kiss to the tip of Alim’s ear, and then simply held him as he fell into sleep himself.

The next morning, the first one up was an unusually chipper Alim.

“So, I take it the massage helped?” Zevran asked, as he tried to choke down the absolutely dreadful Dwarven coffee.

“Wonderfully. I haven’t slept that well since we went into the Deep Roads. You are indeed incredibly awesome.”

“Maker’s sake, please find another word!” grumbled Alistair into his own mug.

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Birds in a Snare

Sat, 19 May 2018 00:42:36 GMT

Originally posted to AO3 on 7/26/2017

“You won’t get away this time, Osprey.” The Lark’s voice rang out loudly off the catacombs’ stone walls.

“Oh, but don’t you know ospreys eat larks for dinner?” It was the best response ‘Osprey’ could manage, in the face of the vision of justice that stood before her. Such beauty existed, and had not yet realized what it could do or have if turned to selfish ends. Instead, ‘The Lark’—no, ‘Cosette,’ for each knew who the other really was—wasted the flower of her youth fighting crime and taking nothing for herself.

Osprey—no, Eponine—could not understand it. Those who do not take have everything taken from them. So they had both learned, she had thought, at that wretched foster home. Eponine had learned to curry favor and fatten egos, and had taken every reward she could get for it; Cosette, disliked from the first, had never tried to change anything for herself, doing as she was told and asking for nothing. Then Cosette had been adopted, and she must have finally learned that lesson, to please an old man so, yet here she was, once more sweeping up for an entire city that gave her nothing in return.

Eponine had been a ‘real’ child, playing henchman for the ‘mother.’ It had been natural to work for the Thenardier’s larger business—they had run the foster home as a money-laundering operation. That it groomed children to be henchmen for a national crime syndicate was merely a bonus. ‘Alumni’ became recruiters, easing younger friends into crime with pocket money or candy or other small comforts.

Eponine played these roles gladly. Yet, confronted by the almost inhuman vision of righteous beauty now trying to steal her prize out of her hands (and donate it to a museum, not traffic it and use the money to bring more drugs into Paris!), she almost regretted her path. A pity, what she was about to do.

For Eponine had been warned about the dangers of this part of the catacombs. Had Cosette come a moment later, the threat would have been temporarily neutralized by a repellant spray, and the Lark would have defeated the Osprey, plucked up the relic, and been on her way. But Cosette had arrived when she had, and now what Eponine had first perceived as danger would become her own salvation.

A short tussle; Cosette won, would have won even if Eponine had not let her win, with that superhuman strength. Eponine denied that she wished Cosette’s hands had been on her longer, even if just to deliver more painful blows. From the floor, ‘defeated,’ Eponine watched as Cosette strode towards the altar on which the relic lay, oblivious to the danger of the short stretch in between.

Then, what seemed as a living vine grabbed her, and she cried out. Even her super-strength was useless against such a foe. Above this catacomb was a stretch of the Paris sewer, and it leaked, sending its toxins down through the earth, mutating what lived between there and here. So it had mutated what once had been an earthworm or a slug, turning it into a great beast with many fleshy limbs and a strange affinity for human—or superhuman—prey.

As the monster savaged her foe, Eponine leapt into action, throwing off her mostly-false guise of hurt. Climbing the walls of the catacomb like a spider, she escaped the monster’s reach by inches, grabbing the relic and racing back the way she came. From there it was but a moment’s work to make her exit, and barely a quarter hour more until she reached the sun’s light.

It would have been. For, at the hall’s archway, Eponine paused, even as Orpheus, and looked back. She glimpsed her Eurydice, and was transfixed by the sight.

Cosette was held immobile by the tentacles of the mutant creature. Already it had undone most of her clothing, and now one of its limbs rubbed over the thin layer of her panties. In a less lewd situation, Eponine would have laughed at her for such panties: full-cut white cotton, the only concession to vanity being a band of white lace at the waist. The very innocence—almost prudishness—of those panties made them seem all the more scandalous, now, soaked through and transparent with the monster’s slime and, from the sounds, Cosette’s own arousal.

Even as Cosette was bound by the tentacles, Eponine was bound, rooted in place, by those sounds, by the tableau before her. She watched as the monster rubbed slimy tentacles over Cosette’s breasts, over every inch of her body, pressing itself against her lips and then into her mouth. The tentacle insistently nosing at her panties finally tore them, diving deep and slickly into her cunt, as Cosette screamed at the intrusion. It did not seem to be a scream of pain.

Cosette kept crying out, louder and louder, as one tentacle fucked her and another slid up and down her clitoris. Eponine could not tear her eyes away. Her task and the relic were forgotten. Then the pitch changed and Cosette thrashed hard against her fleshy bonds in obvious climax, and Eponine’s knees almost buckled with arousal.

The tentacles did not stop their assault. Cosette began to wail with overstimulation, imploring them to slow themselves. Eponine shook herself from a fog of lust as she realized what was happening. It was one thing to trick your opponent into a tentacle monster’s embrace as self-preservation, or to watch as she enjoyed it, but to leave her helpless to be raped, to witness but walk away…somehow Eponine could not do that. Years of hard lessons screamed at her to save herself, yet within the Osprey was a songbird’s heart, and for once, without even thinking about it, she resolved to perform a selfless act. Leaving her pack on the floor, she raced toward the monster, spray-can in hand, darting between the tentacles to spray the repellant on the body of the beast itself.

The spray did nothing.

Horror-stricken, Eponine realized that either some hero had foiled her—perhaps even Cosette herself!—or that she had been betrayed by a Thenardier. For what offence, she did not know, but she knew she must have deserved this end, as more tentacles gathered her up and immobilized her alongside Cosette. As the tentacles began to strip off her clothes, she felt naked, not so much in body as in soul.

The tentacles had a much harder time removing her tight, tactical thieves’ clothing than they had with the Lark’s costume—Cosette had worn an actual dress, grey and brown printed feathers, and tactical shoes made to look dainty. Being a registered hero, she had no need to avoid being seen or leaving traces. The tentacles had disrobed her almost instantly. Meanwhile, they struggled with the buttons and zippers of Eponine’s black stretch jeans and leather jacket. But all was undone at last, and Eponine felt a slime-covered tentacle caress her folds as no human lover had ever done.

The slime tingled, and left pleasure in its wake. That explained how the prude Cosette had succumbed so easily, thought Eponine as heat bloomed within her, making her earlier arousal at seeing Cosette’s ravishment seem like nothing. In truth, though, Cosette had welcomed the rare excuse to take pleasure. A hero must be pure, a hero must be above common things; but now, overpowered so completely that she could not resist, it was no shame to submit and respond to the tentacles’ caresses, since she could do no otherwise. So Cosette submitted, thrusting back against the tentacle that impaled her, wishing her hands were free so she could reach down and shove her fingers in alongside it. She had been overstimulated for a few moments, but then her arousal had caught up again, almost before Eponine’s futile attempt to ‘rescue’ her.

Then, the tentacle inside her widened and changed shape, hitting exactly the places she wanted, and becoming even more slippery as it pumped out more of that arousing slime. Could it read her thoughts? It was responding to what she wanted. Curious, Cosette imagined a thin tentacle trailing the curve of her ear, and then several seconds later, one did.

Meanwhile, Eponine shuddered through her first climax, as a tentacle ‘fingered’ her expertly, slick with slime and yet grippy enough to expertly slide the clit hood over its head, pressing on both sides in a V, even as she might do herself. Only this was without any effort on her part, while also filling her cunt so deeply it was almost unbearable—and all she had to do was thrust into that wonderful pressure; no need to worry about her hand cramping up. Now if only the tentacles could vibrate, that would be perfect…and then they did, barely even buzzing against her skin but sending extra sensation deep into her core. Eponine screamed as she came again, and this time she felt herself squirting, felt it mingle with the strange lubricant the creature produced. Beside her, Cosette moaned with renewed force; turning her head, Eponine saw that the tentacles had realized they should vibrate for her, too.

Cosette! Still a vision of righteous justice, even in half a tattered dress, hair mussed and dripping sweat, muscles flexing as she fucked herself on those tentacles. Justice subdued by nature, submitting to its force; justice submitting to nature, even as the law passes a lighter sentence on crimes committed in extremity. Eponine saw her, and desired, the criminal craving goodness even as she knew that that goodness was itself flawed, as the law is flawed by those who legislate it. The tentacles read her desire, and turned Cosette and Eponine towards each other, bringing them skin to skin—and without thinking, Eponine kissed Cosette.

It lasted a long moment, and then they broke apart, realizing what they had done. The avatar of justice had kissed a criminal; a criminal had kissed a hero of the law. And then as one they realized that it did not matter. They were being ravished by a tentacle monster, and any indiscretions could be so excused. And if they still felt for each other later? Well, that would be later. For now they kissed once more, pressing against each other as close as they could, still held and being fucked by the tentacle monster. Together, still kissing, tongues twining, they came for a third time, clenching around the invading tentacles.

And then, as if that number had magically sated it, the monster set them down. It retreated into the crack in the wall whence it came. Eponine lay stunned on the floor; Cosette, with her strength, recovered first. She unzipped Eponine’s abandoned pack, removing the artifact and holding it up.

“I will return this to the good people of Paris, then,” she said. She also took Eponine’s spare jacket—her own clothing was in tatters, after all, and this was technically Eponine’s fault. She would give it back later.

Eponine was still too dazed to try to stop her.

Hours later, Cosette was unlocking the door to her apartment, when someone came up behind her. It was Eponine.

“Perhaps it is just the lingering effects of the tentacle…thing,” said Eponine, “but that kiss was no lie. I am done with the Thenardiers; they set me up to fail, today. I know I can make it right with the law, and join the heroes’ league, but can I make it right with you? Will you have me?”

Cosette was, unsurprisingly, taken aback. Still, it was not her first tangle with the Osprey, and she had to admit, the chemistry was there. Had they not been on opposing sides of the law, had she not so much pressure to seem above human banalities, she would have asked Eponine out long before this. It might not work out, in the future, but that was for the future. For now…

“Yes,” said Cosette. “Please, come in.”

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Uncle Sam's Firecrackers

Sat, 19 May 2018 00:39:38 GMT

Originally posted to AO3 on 7/4/2017

President Trombone squinted at the antiquated Samsung phone in his stubby hands, tapping the on-screen keyboard almost hard enough to break the screen. “Poor people—very bad! Only productive Americans deserve to live, if they obey police and government and reject (((fake news)))! Make America Grate Again!” Now how to get this masterpiece of condensed hatred into 140 characters? Trombone peered at the screen. He really needed reading glasses, but those would look unpresidential. Besides, he was the most healthy septuagenarian president ever, with great stamina and eyesight. No one could possibly suggest otherwise.

A great bang resounded, and the Elliptical Office filled with a cloud of smoke. Despite his unquestionable health, the president almost suffered a cardiac event. Unfortunately for nearly 8 billion people, he avoided this fate. Trombone called for his Secret Service, but no one answered.

The smoke cleared, and a figure was revealed within it, dressed in the bright colors of his nation’s flag. Stripes, stars, and an odd hat…and holding an enormous bunch of firecrackers. Explosives! How did those get into the Cream Domicile? Trombone attempted to shrink away from the bundle of death, but instead tipped over his desk chair. His current tweet was erased, and a new one produced via autocorrect as he and his phone tumbled to the floor, ending in an unintelligible seven-letter word starting with “C.”

The intruder strode over to the supine, flailing ex-businessman, as if nothing had happened. He prodded the man’s ill-fitting suit with the toe of his shoe, huffing with distaste.

“Really, you should have thought of the dignity of this office before you ran for it,” the stranger said. “You’re a billionaire, behind the on-paper losses, and you can’t even get your suits tailored. No wonder you had to turn to Russia to get elected, despite running on the oil well of hatred that permeates this country like a cancer. But that’s not what I’m here for. I’m here because you have used up America’s entire allowance of hateful public statements from a sitting president—for the next hundred years.”

“Huh?” said President Trombone from the floor, still struggling to sit up, like an overturned pillbug.

“Nations aren’t just geopolitical areas. They are concepts. Believe in a concept enough, and it produces a physical manifestation—such as myself. I am Uncle Sam. Any country has enough people in it to produce that kind of manifestation. America is well enough known that I have a fully functioning physical body, and powers beyond those of mortals. But the actions of a country’s leader affect the actions of its manifestation. It is a geas. Therefore there is a quota on the amount of evil you may publicly express, so that I do not end up wreaking havoc on the psychic plane. But you have exceeded that quota for the entire century, in less than six months! Fearing for the world, I petitioned the Fae UN to lighten the geas upon me. They relented, since Russia had illegally interfered to elect you in the first place—but as a price, I must ensure that you spew hatred no more. All the havoc that you have caused will be visited upon you, instead of your nation and the world. They will not show mercy a second time.”

President Trombone whimpered on the floor.

“What are you going to do to me?” he asked. “You’re not going to kill me, are you? I have money. I’ll give you one of my businesses. I’ll give you Trombone Airlines—no, wait, that went bankrupt; how about Trombone Steaks?”

“I am a being of the eldritch plane. I want none of your money. I want to restore myself and this country, and truly make America great, for the first time, beyond even what its founders hoped it might be—something you could never do in a thousand terms, with your mind so full of greed and hate.”

“B-b-but tax cuts! A great America is great for business!”

“Business? The exploitation of the working class for the gains of a select few? An America where a dozen people have more wealth than half the country? An America where two people working full-time at minimum wage will be homeless because not only is that wage depressed, but landlord cabals and deregulated startups have priced housing out of any reasonable expense, especially when half the potential tenants are thousands in debt just for daring to try to get an education? An America where children starve and are raised illiterate because money is put above lives? An America where patent abuse and corrupt corporations turn sick people into cash cows? An America where slavery is effectively legal because the definition of ‘crime’ is so arbitrary?”

“It’s the illegals’ fault! Kick them all out, and those problems will go away.”

“No, because it is not the fault of people running away from situations so intolerable that the hellscape which is America now is preferable to staying where they were born. The problems of America are the fault of men like you, and getting worse because of you, yourself, and the people you have put into power.”

“It’s not fair!”

“Oh, it is fair. Look”—Uncle Sam brandished his bunch of firecrackers, shoving them at the trembling president’s face. “Each of these is an evil you have perpetrated, against America, Americans, and the world. Against me. There are far more of them than you can see in this bundle. I am returning them whence they came. After I leave, I will do the same to your co-conspirators.”

Uncle Sam picked up the president with unnatural strength, and flipped him face-down over his desk, scattering papers everywhere.

“You have become a resounding instrument of evil, President Trombone. I now return the echoes of your malice whence they came. But not by the route from which they exited. I will return them to the true bell of this instrument.”

And with that, he grabbed the waistband of the poorly-tailored polyester pants of the crying man before him, and tore them off with a shriek of ripping, overpriced fabric.

“Excrement would be considered sacred compared to what you say and do. To the orifice of excrement it will return.”

Uncle Sam selected a firecracker and shoved it into President Trombone’s dry asshole.”

The pain was unbearable, like that experienced by water protestors shot with rubber-coated bullets, or like the anguish of a mother finding out that her town’s tap water has irreversibly poisoned her children with lead. President Trombone shrieked loud enough to wake Ayn Rand’s ghost, and pissed all over the carpet underneath the desk. The only real surprise here was that he had not done so earlier.

The first firecracker had gone in, and Uncle Sam selected another stick of metaphysical dynamite. This time, the passage was aided by blood. Trombone struggled to free himself before another foreign object could enter his intestines, like an illegal immigrant entering the US, he thought, but a supernaturally strong hand held him down on the desk. He panted, dazed from his uncharacteristic exertions, drooling onto some important document.

A third firecracker joined the others, and this time Uncle Sam accidentally nudged his prostate. President Trombone felt a small surge of pleasure, though the presidential hotdog remained limp—he had left his Viagra in his other mistailored blazer, and anyway the intern he liked to sexually harass had her day off, today. Trombone was filled with horror. Liking having things up your ass was a gay thing! Vice-President Nickel would stop being friends with him! He might have to issue a statement supporting Pride Month next year! People would read secret meanings into his disgust at the idea of women bleeding! He struggled, as if that would remove the sensation, but it only had the opposite effect.

Uncle Sam inserted another firecracker, and another, and another. Really, how did they all fit? But the president was too overwhelmed with the strange sensations to care. His ass hurt, and his groin felt strangely aroused (yet his prick was still limp), and his mind was filled with the shame of being so unmanned and demeaned. Surely the Secret Service could not have ignored what was going on. This was some sort of treachery they had planned in collaboration with his old enemies, that bitch Jovial and the fake news media and the socialists. Firecracker after firecracker, all on one fuse string, and President Trombone finally submitted to his fate.

At last, Uncle Sam inserted the last firecracker—there were so many that the size of the president’s stomach now lifted his feet off the floor—and stepped back, dusting off his hands.

“One could hardly believe so much hate could be contained in one person,” he said. “Perhaps that is why you constantly spill it everywhere—you are such a potent source of it that it must spew forth from you or kill you with the buildup. But you still have not experienced the full effect of the harm you have unleashed upon the world. It does not just stay as words. It…explodes…into whole movements of violence and death. You wanted this responsibility, remember. Now take it.”

Uncle Sam snapped his fingers. All the metaphysical dynamite inside President Trombone detonated.

Ordinary dynamite would have turned the man into so much red smear on the contents of the Elliptical Office. Metaphysical dynamite causes the equivalent amount of suffering, but leaves the flesh mostly intact. Mostly. President Trombone screamed and involuntarily ejaculated on the piss-soaked floor, limp penis swinging wildly, and then expelled dozens of feet of ectoplasmic burnt fuses, a lot of blood, and the odiferous remains of several overcooked Trombone-brand steaks.

Uncle Sam smiled. “Consider this justice done. Please try to contain your hate in the future.” He checked his watch. “Ah, good. It looks like I can still catch Vice-President Nickel before he leaves for dinner.”

He disappeared in a puff of firecracker smoke.

At this juncture, the Secret Service suddenly heard the screaming, which had been mysteriously inaudible before. They rushed in, and found their pantsless president lying across his desk, surrounded by a quite literally execrable mess, with no indication of what had caused it. The ectoplasmic fuse remnants had already evaporated, and the smell of ethereal explosives was overpowered by the smell of presidential shit.

Not knowing what else to do, the Secret Service bundled him into the presidential limo and drove him to the hospital, where he was admitted with the diagnoses of an acute psychotic episode, and hemorrhoids.

The press secretary, on hearing the news, swallowed an entire, wrapped three-pack of cinnamon gum and hastily reached for another 54 sticks of Trident, but quickly rallied and convinced the news to focus on the president’s last, nonsensical tweet and the arrest of a deranged “Trombone impersonator,” whom Civet News dubbed “the tuba.”

For, indeed, President Trombone’s “bell” had been enlarged so much that it now far better resembled the deepest brass instrument. From time to time, sequestered pockets of metaphysical dynamite gas further made known that resemblance. These were now the only presidential utterances, because he was heavily sedated after ripping out an IV and calling his proctologist an “illegal immigrant homosexual.”

Washington descended into chaos as the Vice President, the Cabinet, and the Speaker of the House all became unable to be reached for comment. A few weeks later, Trombone became the second president of the United States to resign, citing health concerns. Everyone in the line of succession declined the office, until that line reached the first moderate in the cabinet. The tuba-assed Trombone retired to one of his hotels’ penthouses, never to be seen again.

A far-left Democrat was elected the next election cycle, and gradually the country became a slightly more compassionate America. Uncle Sam returned to his usual schedule of waking up only for holiday parades and elections. The Fae UN and the real one were both pleased.

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Sir Ewain and the Giant Spiders

Sat, 19 May 2018 00:37:04 GMT

Originally posted to AO3 on 4/20/2017; DW's editor is messing with the linked footnotes and I'm not going to try to fix it.

He had had his horse’s shoes checked by the blacksmith at the last town. There was no reason the animal could not handle the open forest; indeed, the way it was shod, there was less cause for a problem that way, than on the road. A roughshod horse could easily throw a shoe on a cobbled road, and would loosen the stones, and would tear up a well-packed dirt road. Generally, there were few roads in this part of the country, which was why his horse was roughshod in the first place—that and the recently-ended winter—but this one had been left behind at the fall of the ancient empire. It was still strong, all these centuries later, not even moss growing in the minute spaces between the stones[1] (and the masons of today were still trying to figure out just how that was done, for their own roads had to be recobbled every few decades)[2], and Sir Ewain did not want to be the one responsible for damaging that. Leave it for the wagoners, who actually needed it.

He turned his horse into the woods, ignoring its protests, for it wanted to go down the smooth, easy road. Deus forbid a warhorse had to navigate uneven terrain and trouble its head with finding its footing. It was not even very muddy, today, as the zephyrs of May-day had for the last week been drying the rains of April. Indeed, if one went by the weather, one might guess that today was past midsummer. Ewain’s surcoat covered most of his armor, shielding it from the sun, and now that he was off the road the trees gave him shade, but even so, he was sweating through his shirt and into his gambeson. He noticed a still-swampy area downhill from where he rode, a sort of thing between a wide place in a stream and a small pond, with small insects swarming above it. Fumbling in his left saddlebag, he pulled out a pot of musky-smelling salve and smeared it on his exposed face and hands (removing his other gauntlet, having already removed one to use the salve) and on his horse. It was supposed to keep bugs away; he had never tested it, but a large number of locals a few towns back had sworn by the stuff. He had not been able to get citron oil,[3] there, when his personal supply had run out, and the mystery salve did not seem much more expensive, so he had bought it.

He put his gauntlets back on—the horse had kept going, directed only by his spurs, all this time. The lack of citron smell in the bug salve was a little unnerving; every little breeze still made him feel as if there were imaginary bugs that he needed to brush away from his face. Midges were so annoying. His brothers had always laughed at him for his “girlish precautions,” but it was far better than getting fleabites or midge bites behind one’s testicles. He had learned that the hard way.

Reaching into his saddlebags again, Ewain pulled out his compass,[4] checking the swinging needle against the position of the sun. What a wonderful thing, Moorish technology. At least, he was pretty sure it was Moorish technology. Most of the good inventions were. He was pretty sure, from his readings, that if he left the road-bank and cut through this hilly stretch of forest that the old road curved out around, he could get to the next town on his father’s lands before nightfall. As the oldest son, he was responsible for familiarizing himself with the holdings that would someday be his, though, Deus willing, not for years yet. He would ride through a third of the fiefdom, each spring or summer—for the rest of the year, he was learning the running of the estate proper, and it would not do to continually miss one season’s workings—learning each little town’s infrastructure and meeting its inhabitants, dealing with immediate problems such as bandits or wolves, and bringing less time-urgent grievances to the attention of his father. But it was only the third year since he had returned from his squireship as a newly-made knight, so he had never been in this exact part of the holdings before. (When a son of the family was not available, this circuit was the duty of the undersheriff. Of course, that was much less inspiring and impressive than a real knight, to the peasants and lesser lieges.) After a final glimpse at his compass, he returned it to the saddlebag and pointed his horse in the straight direction to the next town.

It went fairly well, for the next couple of hours. Then, suddenly, it very much did not. Some…thing dropped out of a tree and grabbed onto Ewain’s face.

Ewain was not a stranger to combat. He had been in training as a squire recently enough to actually remember his lessons, he had fought two or three real duels, and he had spent the last few months occasionally dispatching wolves and bandits. The thing with human and canine opponents, though, is that they do not generally attack men on horseback from trees and by jumping onto their faces. Arrows from trees, in the case of bandits, yes, but not downwards tackles. Bandits also generally set up ambushes on established roads, in valleys or at bridges or other tactical bottlenecks of frequent traffic. Ewain was riding through a forest of plane trees,[5] navigable only by compass (so thick was the leaf cover); literally no one but him had a reason to ever be there.

Blinded, Ewain flailed and clawed at the thing clinging to his head. His shield was on his back; he could reach his sword and dagger, but he had just the presence of mind to realize that that would likely end with him stabbing or bludgeoning himself in the face.[6] He scrabbled with mailed fingers at the thing attacking his face—whatever it was, it seemed to be about the size of a dog. Only, dogs could not climb trees, he thought. He was pretty sure of that. Absurdly sure, for a man who was being slowly smothered to death. That was curious; why was this thing not clawing him, not eating his face? But he was unharmed, save for a few scrapes and bruises from its landing, and of course lack of air.

Eventually he managed to dislodge the thing and throw it to the ground, where it spooked his horse, more than it must already have been from the behavior of its master. For the first time he got a look at it, as he blinked in the sudden return of light, and—no, he must be hallucinating from near-suffocation; that could not be a spider. That had to be some kind of…very large cat, with sticks caught in its fur. Spiders were not that big. And then another one jumped him, this time on his back, to one side, and the weight of it dragged him off his horse, to the leaf-strewn ground. From where he landed, Ewain saw a third creature jump onto his horse itself. Unsurprisingly, the horse ran off, rolled, got up, and kept running, screaming in terror.

The creature that had been on the horse’s back scuttled back towards Ewain as he struggled to his feet, as several more emerged from the treetops and underbrush, and— Deus, Jesu et Maria,O Sanctes, that was a spider, that could be nothing but a spider, that was a giant, fucking, bloody spider the size of a birding dog, and there were at least five of them. Ewain tried to fight them with his side-sword, but they had carapaces as effective as his own plate at withstanding blows. He tried to beat them down and run, but there were too many, and he could not get the space to take his shield from his back. It was but a buckler, made for easy transportation for a traveling knight, and so the vambrace, rerebrace, and pauldron on his left side were flared in proportion. This helped him a little more, but not enough. And then all the spiders leaped upon him at once, and bore him to the ground.

As Ewain kicked and struggled, several spiders bound his wrists and ankles with webbing—thick as ropes, it was—while others began to tug off pieces of his armor, tearing the chain that covered the gaps in the plate, biting through the lacings with jaws like pincers. They tore through his surcoat, already half torn off in the tussle. His open helm had already come off in the fight or the fall; now chitinous limbs tore off his coif and pauldrons. He felt a tugging at his legs, and realized that his cuisses were being stolen as well—what did the monsters want with them? Did they simply covet anything shiny, like magpies? And then his cuirass and faulds were torn off as well, as he struggled in his bonds, and his hauberk ripped open down the center; but even then, he did not realize the spiders’ full intent.

Claw-hooks tore through Ewain’s gambeson and shirt, baring his chest, and then one of the spiders bit him, sinking its fangs deep into his shoulder. Thinking they meant to eat him alive, as ordinary spiders did to flies, Ewain cried out and struggled all the harder—the webbing stretched, a little, but did not break. Within moments, though, a curious warmth and weakness spread through his limbs, and he went limp, still trying to break free, but unable to command his body. As he twitched futilely, the spiders tore off his chausses, leggings, and smalls as well, and finally Ewain realized what the creatures meant to do to him.

“No!” he gasped, rendered by the venom unable to scream, indeed barely able to draw breath. “I am not your kind. Why are you doing this?”

The spiders, being dumb creatures, did not answer.

“Jesu protect me from these demon-spawn! Or wake me, if I am dreaming!”

The heavens did not answer. Instead, a spider bit him once again, perhaps deciding he was too loud, and another dose of venom coursed through Ewain, making him feel as though he were burning, and, to his horror, awakening his fifth limb even as it paralyzed the other four.

Spider limbs traced over his skin, leaving arousal in their wake. Ewain’s cries of distress turned to moans, as despite himself he could not help but crave more. The stroking continued, eventually centering on his groin, and were he not all but paralyzed by the venom, he would have thrust into it.

A spider straddled Ewain’s face. A slit in its belly opened, and a spiny appendage extended from it, glistening with clear, musky fluid. Chittering, it tried to push the thing into Ewain’s mouth. He attempted to clench his jaw, as it smeared itself across his face, but his muscles were toneless and slack, and the spider’s rigid member easily forced his mouth open, sending strange pleasure through his body as it passed through his hypersensitive lips.

The fluid coating the spider’s cock tasted strange, but not unpleasant. After a few passes of the spider thrusting in and out, it began to make Ewain’s mouth and tongue tingle. It alarmed him somewhat, but he could still breathe, and the feeling sent a wave of bliss down through his body to his own cock. The rest of the spiders were still stroking it; he could feel their strange limbs tracing over it. Some of the things touching him there seemed sticky, but he could not see why that was so, with a spider all but sitting on his face and thrusting its thick mentule into his mouth.

The spider continued to ravage Ewain’s throat, and as it did so, Ewain thought he sensed a change in the liquid slowly seeping from its member. Perhaps it was the venom in his veins, or the action of the earlier liquid on his mouth, but where before it had tasted mildly salty, now it seemed metallic yet sweet, and somehow the best thing he had ever tasted. Before he could stop himself or protest the indignity, Ewain began to suck eagerly on the invading spider prick, trying to get more of that delicious substance out of it. He was rewarded by a pulse of stronger-tasting fluid, and he greedily swallowed it down, before he remembered, through the venom haze, that this was a spider raping his mouth, and realized that he had just willingly participated in this violent and shameful humiliation. He was a knight, and knights simply were not irrumated by unnatural beasts in bewitched corners of forests! For that must be it, why the ancients had avoided this part of the forest and built their road around it, and he, a fool, had ignored that wisdom of the past. And now, to pay for it, he lay half-naked on moldering leaves untouched by men for centuries, being raped by infernal spiders. He had not believed in the fae, trusting instead in the teachings of the Church. He did not know if these spiders were the fae, but he was much more willing to believe, now.

But the combination of the venom and the lack of air was making Ewain’s head swim, and soon once more all he could think about was the need to suck on that spider phallus and taste that delicious fluid. Perhaps the other spiders could sense that spider’s reaction to his sucking, for they kept pace with his every suck and lick, so that the faster he sucked, the faster the spiders stroked Ewain’s cock, tying the submissive act to his own pleasure. Realizing this with his body—for his mind was now out of the equation—Ewain intensified his oral worship of the spider cock, licking great sweeps over the spiny ridges at its tip and slavering along its alien shaft.

Suddenly Ewain’s mouth was filled with an ambrosial deluge, as the spider face-fucking him reached orgasm. As he gulped down the decadent liquid, whatever simples were in spiders’ spend sent a wave of tingling pleasure to his own core, starting in his throat and stomach, and Ewain spent himself in turn, thrashing weakly against his bonds and spraying a torrent of white seed over the limbs of the gathered chittering creatures.

The spider pulled out of Ewain’s mouth, leaving him whimpering at the loss. Within seconds, though, another spider had taken its place. This one’s cock was shaped a little differently, with more of a concavity at its end, but it was in his mouth, and it was leaking a slightly less sweet but no less delicious and mouth-tingling fluid, and that was all that mattered. Hardly had he settled into the rhythm of sucking again, though, when some of the spider limbs moved from his cock to his hitherto-unmolested hole.

Ewain squeaked in alarm at the sudden, new sensation, some vestige of self-preservation returning to him. It was bad enough for his mouth to be used in such an unseemly fashion (he continued to swallow around the spider phallus all the while), but for the core of his virtue to be so defiled as well? Ewain was not ignorant of what vices men could engage in with that part; had heard whispers of pleasures to be gotten from a mysterious thing referred to as “the walnut” or “the catamite’s womb.”[7] He had had several opportunities to indulge in them himself, as a squire, but had chosen to spurn such advances and keep his purity, according to the dictates of the Church. And he had kept it through to the day of his knighthood, only now to have it taken by vile beasts? But the spiders were relentless, as they poked and licked—for those could only be tongues, though strangely shaped—and their venoms worked their power on his flesh, and his sphincter tingled and laxed and let the spider tongues slowly slip inside.

Ewain keened and moaned as more spider tongues entered his ass, licking at the gland therein. It felt so good, all those spider tongues plundering him, stimulating something inside him and forcing him towards pleasure. Three spiders had their tongues in him, he thought, three tongues jabbing at that sensitive gland. Ewain felt a desperate need to come, egged on by the spider tongues stimulating his most sensitive parts.

Then, a spider cock slid into him. It was big and spiny, ridged like the one that had gone into his mouth. But this was his ass, and the stretch burned, the phallus being so much larger than the array of spider tongues before it, and Ewain screamed around the spider cock at the pain of it. Then suddenly, his rim felt…wetter, and the pain lessened. He only hoped that the wetness was not blood. The spider thrust in and out a few times, and then its angle changed. Suddenly, instead of being merely bearable, the spider’s thrusts were now a source of unimaginable pleasure. Ewain was ruined, he knew, corrupted by demon arachnids, turned sodomite by their infernal appendages. How could he be a lord of the land, after this? He still desired women, but he knew he would never be free of the memory of these beasts, or consider pleasure only as a man should, without the wish for this shameful penetration. And yet more strongly driven by the drug, he endeavored to push back onto the phallus impaling him, even as the webbing and those same drugs rendered his attempts at moving useless.

The spider-cock in his mouth pulsed, and Ewain felt a solid yet squishy object slide into his esophagus. It stretched his throat wide, and he gagged on it. Another one slid into his mouth, and Ewain was forced to swallow the first, simply to be able to breathe. What on earth…? He had no more time to wonder, simply to swallow, as the oncoming procession of those mysterious things threatened to cut off his breath. It was a difficult task. The things were the size of small hen’s eggs—perhaps they were in fact spider eggs, Ewain realized; normal spiders had eggs—and the drugs ravaging him made their passage down his gullet agonizingly intense, simultaneously painful and somehow erotic. And all the while, the spider at his rear continued pounding that shamefully pleasurable gland within him, forcing him closer and closer to another peak of ecstasy, even as his very stomach was violated by another spider’s eggs.

After perhaps a dozen of the strange things, the spider emitted a rush of strong salty-sweet fluid into his mouth, and withdrew. Ewain sputtered, coughing, as a few drops got in his lungs; still, he was thankful to be free for a moment from that penetration, even as a part of him, spurred on by the drugs, lamented the loss of it and wished once again to take a spider cock in his mouth. The spider raping his ass thrust all the harder, physically jarring him now that his upper half was not held down by a spider’s weight, and suddenly one of the jolts against his “walnut” gave him such a sharp jolt of pleasure that it grew and spread into true climax, and Ewain spattered seed all over himself once more.

The spider fucking him did not stop.

Ewain began to cry out as the continued thrusting overstimulated his drug-strung nerves to the point of pain. At least he could cry out; that meant the venom was starting to wear off. Fearing another envenomed bite, he forced himself to be quiet. Before long, though, another spider (or was it the first again?) straddled his face, and Ewain’s mouth was penetrated for the third time.

If this was not indeed the first spider, erection renewed, this was certainly the same sort. Ewain recognized the metallic-sweet fluid coating its member, and realized with relief that at least he was unlikely to get another bellyful of mysterious egg-things this time. He hoped he would not later, either, before the spiders were done with him (they must be done sometime, he prayed); he feared his stomach would burst if he were forced to swallow another load of them. Already it had seemed slightly distended, for the few moments he had been able to look down at himself before the current spider had blocked his view.

So great was his relief and continued lust that Ewain eagerly sucked on the new spider’s phallus, stroking the alien ridges with his tongue in loving detail, lingering on every cranny. His suckling kept time with the excruciatingly pleasurable thrusts of the spider indefatigably sodomizing his ass, as he tried not to accidentally bite the one using his mouth. Even disregarding his desire to hide his gradual recovery from the spiders, biting, he thought, would not end well. If sexually frustrated spiders were this formidable, he did not want to even consider sexually frustrated injured spiders’ wrath. Ewain kept his jaw lax, and dutifully sucked.

The ass-spider plunged in even further than before, the pain making Ewain scream as he swore he felt something tear, and then it climaxed, sending burning fluid into his ravaged bowels before it withdrew. For burn it did. Whether it was a peculiarity of spider jism or of intestines, or whether it was the injuries he had doubtless sustained from the abhorrent copulation, Ewain did not know; all that mattered was the stinging pain within him, and the awful pleasure it brought in its wake, even as it felt as if hot coals had been poured into his anus.

He had almost adjusted to the agony when yet another spider’s penis thrust into the starburst center of the anal inferno, driving through his torn and abraded rim like a torturer’s hook into a criminal’s flesh. Ewain screamed even more loudly than before, unable to stop himself, and kept screaming, until he tapered off into heaving sobs, even as he continued to lave the spider cock in his mouth. He could tell that he was still hard, somehow, despite the pain or even because of it, and despite the burning and boiling in his flesh, he felt the renewed thrusting against the shameful gland in his ass as renewal of pleasure, and could only helplessly await a third unwilling climax. He cried and sucked once again in rhythm with the pounding, sobs being forced out of him with each slam of spider-body against buttocks.

Once more he felt a spider drive into him deep and still itself (and the pain was still there, it had never gone, he was nearly at the height of pleasure and utterly consumed by pain), but instead of more seed, he felt a much more insistent pressure, starting at his rim, but then slipping through and continuing up his entrails. Ewain realized almost at once what that meant. He cried with renewed alarm and managed to struggle a little in his webbed bonds, fearing he would die as the spider laid its eggs deep within his bowels. Was he meant to die here, filled with spiders’ offspring, perhaps to be food for the young when they hatched in his bloated, rotten body?

He was sure to go to Hell. That was his most urgent thought, even as the spiders continued to rape his mouth and fundament. He had not confessed in weeks, and he had taken pleasure in the most depraved and unnatural of acts, even if he had not intended to. Unshriven, and without Christian burial if he died here; surely he had no hope of seeing the face of his Creator. He tried to call out to God and the saints, to make vows for his rescue and salvation, but his mouth was occupied, and his thoughts scattered by the spiders’ thrusts and the awful, stretching, burning pain, and the blooming pleasure.

The spider fucking his mouth finally shuddered and ejected its juices into his throat, and climbed off his face. The venom had worn off just enough that Ewain was glad to see it go. Shortly thereafter, the spider filling his guts with eggs finished emptying itself and pulled out. The drag of the flared head of its instrument pulling itself out through his abused rim finally triggered his own climax. Ewain shuddered through his last orgasm, emptying his bollocks weakly, as his seed trickled more than spurted out of him, coating his pintle with a layer of sticky whiteness as it finally, blessedly went limp.

Blessedly, the spiders had disappeared. Night had fallen. Perhaps the creatures feared the more usual beasts of the night, or perhaps they considered him bred well enough, having put both eggs and what might be called semen into both his orifices. Ewain did not want to think about what that meant. He simply worked on freeing himself from the webbing, as movement slowly returned to his limbs.

His clothing and armor lay around him, but much of it was hardly wearable. The spiders had wrenched what of his armor they had torn off, though funnily enough he was still wearing his gauntlets, greaves, vambraces, and sabatons, and the back half of his cuirasse. His leggings and smalls were so ripped as to be unwearable, what was not held on by his remaining armor, nor did he want anything in contact with his crotch, right now. The tatters of his hauberk, shirt and gambeson offered no modesty, for they were torn down the middle. He was unsure where his surcoat had even ended up. Ewain ended up tying on his breastplate and faulds as best he could, for some coverage, and his cuisses, with the remains of his shirt, and put on his helmet, for armor was expensive, but gave up his coif as a lost cause. He must look like an apparition, he thought, and then more grimly, wondered if indeed he was one.

He staggered in the direction of where he thought he had been heading, before the spiders, judging the moon to be in the east, for it had not been long since dusk, and the moon had not risen while it was still day. He managed several hundred paces before his body rebelled against the spider eggs, and he fell to his hands and knees, vomiting up metallic fluid and whitish blobs onto the forest floor. A few more spasms of the same and he felt the urge to squat; and he did so, since there was nothing but air between his backside and the ground anyway, ejecting more fluid and eggs from his rear as he continued to vomit. Shamefully, he felt a few twinges of pleasure from the last traces of the venom as the eggs passed through his abused sphincter; his cock twitched, but thankfully remained limp.

At last he was pretty sure he was done; nothing had come out for a few minutes, and, checking around him, there seemed to be the same number of eggs in each pile of filth. Yes, Ewain confirmed, those were definitely eggs. Their rubbery shells were semi-transparent, and he could see dark masses within them by the moonlight. Mere yolks, or baby spiders? Ewain stomped them all into the ground to be sure, every one of them, trying not to think about what he was getting on his sabatons.

Ewain felt light-headed, but less foul. Not much farther on, he found a small stream, which refreshed him greatly, for he had drunk nothing but spider fluids for several hours, and he had thrown up most of those. Thus he had the strength to arrive at the ancient road, and a half mile later by that, at the next town.

By then, it was nearly dawn. It had been slow going, for he was injured and on foot, nor was the town itself so very near, and he had gone slightly the wrong direction, backtracking himself from his original path and meeting the road before the town. Ewain rapped at the town gates, scaring the lone watchman nearly insensible with his appearance. The man had recognized the markings on his armor, though, after the initial shock, and quickly opened the smaller door set within the great gate; he helped Ewain inside, for the knight was on the point of collapse. Inside the guardhouse, Ewain mumbled something about “wild beasts,” and asked for a priest. Seeing that Sir Ewain was not bleeding significantly from anywhere, the guard decided to leave the priest to sleep until morning, and woke his fellow guard from the previous watch to go fetch the barber-surgeon.

Ewain refused to be examined by the man, too ashamed to admit what had happened under any circumstances other than the seal of the confessional. However, he then collapsed into sleep, and the barber made a cursory examination, for fear the liege-lord’s heir was dying of internal injuries. He guessed the general nature of what had occurred, though he blamed bandits, not spiders, but said nothing of it to the guardsmen, fearing for his own skin when the knight awoke. Still, it would have taken a blind man or a child not to guess the basic cause of Sir Ewain’s injuries, and the guardsmen were still in the room when the state of his trousers and groin were revealed. By midday, whispered rumors swirled around the town.

It was afternoon by the time Ewain awoke. He noticed that he had been stripped and bathed as he slept, which sent fear into his soul, for now he knew someone must have realized the indignities he had undergone. His armor had been cleaned, perhaps by the guardsmen, and put on an armor stand, though pieces other than his coif were missing. He would ask at the blacksmith’s, to see if they had it. A clean shirt and breeches of rough linen had been left on a chair by the bed he lay in, plus a pair of smalls made of finer fabric. It almost confirmed his suspicions of what the townsfolk knew, yet he was grateful for the mercy to his horribly battered privy areas. He dressed, and hobbled out of the guardhouse bedroom; the guard on duty simply nodded at him and gestured at the fireplace, where Ewain found a small pot of broth, and warmed almonds’ milk[8] with a bit of honey. He drank both, and felt waterlogged but much less wobbly.

That was enough tending to his mortal needs; he must tend to his soul. The weight of what had been done and his acquiescence to it weighed on his spirit and threatened to burst from his lips; he felt as if he would choke, if he did not tell it. A priest could not tell. Priests could not even be compelled to give witness to confessed murders, so one could hardly be induced to spread word of sodomy or pathicism. Ewain would just have to send this parish a few barrels of really nice sacramental wine every year for the rest of his natural life, to be safe.

He had arrived at the church. The aged priest immediately realized who he was—perhaps he had been forewarned, or perhaps Sir Ewain was simply the only person in the village right now that he would not recognize. Ewain was ushered into the confessional, where he knelt and drew breath to speak. He was bizarrely aware of the smell of the incense which permeated the church; it was a different one than was used in the chapel of his father’s castle. From the smell, it might have been straight pine sap.

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” began Ewain. “It has been eight or nine weeks since my last confession. I normally go to the priest at my family’s estate to confess my sins, but a matter of urgent guilt has come upon my soul.”

The priest told him to continue.

“I have often heard the psalm that bids the Lord’s spirit to lead us on a level path,[9] but I must never have truly taken it to my heart, for yesterday I strayed from the level path, and thus befell me a great evil, and I sinned. I turned off of the ancient road, thinking to cut across where it curves and reach this town before nightfall. I soon learned the reason why the ancient builders chose such a seeming folly of design, for in the woods I was set upon by wild beasts, like spiders but monstrous in size, and being overcome by them, I was bound by their webs and forced by them to engage in unnatural intercourse.”

“The spiders have been thought to be an old wives’ tale,” interrupted the friar, at this point. “Any other man I would accuse of jesting, if he told me this tale. But I have heard from the guardsmen what condition you were in, when you came here last night, and I must admit some such foulness must have been done to you. But take care you do not invent blasphemies to cover up willing sins.”

“I invent nothing! Please believe me, father. The ancients who built that road must have had some reason to build it that way. There are not even ruins of a town where it curves, thus I saw from a map I bought, which sadly I do not now have, unless another has recovered my horse, which I lost when the spiders beset me; why else would learned architects and mason do such a thing?”

“I believe that you at least believe the tale you relate to me. But being forced by a beast is itself no sin. One may be disgusted when a dog attempts to rut itself against one’s leg, for example, but that is not a sin, since the dog is a dumb animal. If these spiders exist, as fantastical as it seems, or if you were beset by demons in such shapes, though may God forgive us for comparing ourselves to the ascetics of old, that is as that dog, but simply larger.”

“It is worse, Father. I took pleasure in the indignities the spiders wrought against me. They bit me with teeth envenomed, to paralyze me, but also I think to engender such a thing. Enflamed by the venom, I wanted it, wanted every violation, no matter how shameful or painful.

“First one of them climbed upon my face, and committed that type of sodomy[10] that I have heard in whispers called ‘irrumatio.’ I accepted it, at first reluctantly and then eagerly, even sucking and kissing the shameful part of my own free will, for the venom stirred my desires and the taste of the spider’s member was sweet, even as the fruit stolen by Eve was sweet. While it did so, other spiders stroked my member by some technique I could not see, on account of the spider defiling my face; then, after that one reached its completion, I was subject to the same indignity by another spider, which one must have been female, for it laid eggs in my mouth, and forced me to swallow them. As this second spider did this, the others performed on me the ‘kiss of infamy,’ as one hears is done by heretical orders in the Holy Land,[11] and then one of them shamefully penetrated that same part, I think that act is called ‘pedicatio,’ and spent its seed within me. During this time yet another spider…irrumated me, male this time, and then a female spider also penetrated my lower parts and laid eggs there as well. These eggs and the earlier ones I later expelled, after my escape but before I reached this town.

“I enjoyed all of these indecent acts, even as they caused me pain, even as the venom began to release its hold, and reached my own completion three times during these events.”

The priest was silent, for a moment. He had heard many sordid things in confessions, and forgotten most of them, as is the way with priests, but never a tale such as the man on the other side of the screen had related. It could not be possible. The spiders were a well-known local legend, but they were the same fae folk that priests were always trying to get peasants to stop believing in. Good Christians scorned such legends, though paganism ran so deep in the blood of common folk that he and many of his fellows despaired of ever getting rid of it. But for a knight such as Sir Ewain, who was well-bred and Latined, who as a youth had been rumored to have more interest in the Church than to knighthood, to believe such a thing…undoubtedly the poor boy must have experienced some great indignity, perhaps at the hands of evil men, and his mind had seized on the legends he must have heard in childhood from some wet-nurse, turning the evils of men into the senselessness of beasts. Perhaps he had even been drugged, but mayhap with hash-hish or henbane,[12] which might explain his visions.

He would still give the man penance. He could find little culpability, but many times, penance was less for the sin committed and more for the sinner to free himself from his own guilt. The Lord allowed men to be shriven both to save their souls and to heal their bodies, for hoarded guilt caused all manner of earthly ills. The priest read the prayers of absolution, and assigned a penance that would seem reasonable to the man given it.

“Do one entire rosary once a day, for ten years, twice on the Lord’s day, and, as soon as you are recovered enough to do the prostrations, and any day you are well enough, three of the prayer of Ephraim, immediately before slumber.[13] Because you did not end up in that sin of your own accord, you are not required to abstain from the sacrament. You must also relate all you have told me to your usual confessor, when you can.”

Ewain gratefully accepted this penance, merciful in his eyes, and indeed prayed his first assigned rosary right there. Not in the confessional itself, of course, but in the little village church. Then, much relieved of his guilt, though not of the horror, he went about the town, resting frequently, inquiring after his armor (indeed at the blacksmith’s) and his horse (it had not been found). He took a private room at the tavern, on credit, and went to bed even though it was barely dark, for he was still weak from his ordeal, and had exhausted himself.

******

Several miles away, in another tavern, a merchant was waving around a mug containing the last few drams of his sixth pint of ale.

“So I’m out of citron oil, I tell ‘im, b’cus I am,” he said, stopping to take another drink. “So ‘e asks if anyone else ‘as some, because ‘e really ‘ates bugs. Noblemen, y’know. I don’ wanna lose a sale, so I tell ‘im I got a ‘local formula.’”

“You didn’t sell ‘im the spider salve!” gasped the barmaid. “Sammy, ‘e’s not from these parts, ‘e doesn’t know! Anythin’ ‘appens, ‘is da’ll ‘ave our ‘eads, all of us!”

“Nyeeeah, Bess, ‘e’ll take the road. ‘E’s got a ‘orse. ‘Orses ‘ate goin’ off the road.” Samuel leaned-sprawled over the table and stuck his arm out, spilling the last of his drink. This was probably intended to be some kind of emphasis. Or it might have been a request for another drink, but Bess decided to ignore it until he sobered up a bit. “’E’ll take the road, ‘e’ll go round the bend, prob’ly see nuffin’. Mebbe ‘e’ll see…one spider, but ‘e’s a knight. ‘E’s got a sword. So ‘e kills the spider, and I comes along after’n gets the spider juice. C’n I get summore ale?”[14]

******

He dreamt of spiders. Once more they tormented him, weighing down his limbs so he could not move, sitting on his chest and waving their obscene members before his paralyzed eyes. Their spiny limbs skittered over his body, caressing his ears and nipples and teasing his ass and even slipping inside his swelling cock. They even seemed to penetrate him, cramming their horrid mentules into his ass, two or even three at a time, splitting him open and filling him with eggs until his entrails burst and eggs flooded the entirety of his organs.[15]

Ewain woke with a start. He was safe, and in an inn. And then he began to cry from shame and humiliation, as he pulled back the bedclothes to reveal sheets soaked with his own seed, for his nightmares had caused him to have multiple emissions.

[1] Possibly a chemical treatment of the road’s underlayers, perhaps some kind of metal salt? I don’t know if this is actually a feature of Roman roads, or the still-surviving ones, in fact I doubt it, but it seems ultimately too unimportant to look up. This is Fantasy Europe.

[2] Roman concrete was on some shit. The formula for their concrete was lost during the fall of the Empire, as the building method that used it, opus testaceum or opus latericium, relied on components mass-produced from around the empire and shipped to where it was needed, and the increasing instability of the Empire made it not worth using, as it might be impossible to get either concrete or tiles, and neither was much use on its own, at the time. We still don’t know today, in the 21^st century, just what the Romans did to make it so durable, as many of their roads and buildings endure today—this isn’t a matter of chemical analysis, it’s stuff like temperatures and lengths of processes—while our modern asphalt and concrete cracks after a few good winters. Whoever figures it out and manages to make it mass-producible (for the Romans managed to mass-produce it, so it can be done) will probably win a Nobel prize in engineering or chemistry or whatever. Famous examples of this technique include parts of Hadrian’s Villa, which has a wonderful digitally explorable 3D reconstruction available somewhere. Source: http://sights.seindal.dk/sight/330_Opus_testaceum.html .

[3] I am assuming, because I am too lazy to look this up at the moment, that this is the stuff that is in modern citronella candles and most other natural bug repellents, or very similar to it. It actually comes from lemongrass, not citrons, but not a species that would be found in any of the regions where Ewain might live. Given that it has to be imported from somewhere, it is not unrealistic for it to have a similar cost to the mystery salve, even considering that salve’s later-revealed source and arduous means of harvesting. Source: Wikipedia (Citronella_oil).

[4] It’s the late 14^th or early 15^th century, chosen primarily because that’s the sexiest armor. According to Wikipedia (History_of_the_compass), Dante’s Divine Comedy, written in the early-mid 14^th century, mentions the dry compass, meaning it would have been known in whatever deliberately vague part of Europe Ewain lives in.

[5] So no acorns or fruit worth harvesting or letting pigs or other animals to wild there. No use but lumber, and the peasants aren’t allowed to cut trees on their lord’s land, just gather deadwood, which they do closer to the village…especially because of what lives over here.

[6] A large percentage of sword kills were actually bludgeoning enemies to death with the sword pommel, called the “murder stroke.”

[7] I have no idea if these are accurate. The first is likely, but the second is entirely my own invention. There really isn’t any data on what the prostate was called in the millennia that people were doing enjoyable things with it before the word “prostate” was invented in the 17^th century. I asked my favorite gay medievalist, but I haven’t gotten an answer, so either he doesn’t know or tumblr ate my ask.

[8] Almond milk was used extensively in medieval cooking, because most people could not easily obtain fresh, unadulterated milk, unless they kept cows themselves. Urban people mostly didn’t. Source: http://www.godecookery.com/goderec/grec31.htm Kudos to the wonderful penbrydd for giving me links to medieval recipes. I hope he forgives me for using them for this.

[9] Psalm 143:10 (142 in Septuagint and apparently also Vulgate numbering). This psalm is the last of 6 that are read at the start of Matins, and this verse is the one that is repeated at the end of the psalm by the cantor, before the “Alleluia.” It is unlikely that a medieval European would have heard it in the vernacular, but Ewain, who knows enough Latin to get through services, is likely translating. In Latin, the text is “spiritus tuus bonus deducet me in terra recta.”

[10] The word “sodomy” in medieval and renaissance Christianity covered a number of acts. If you’re interested in this topic, you will want to read Mark Jordan’s The Invention of Sodomy in Christian Theology, and probably the rest of his body of work as well.

[11] I’ve probably got the timeline wrong, but ritual anilingus actually was an accusation against the Knights Templar. At least according to a book I read 10 years ago, which also thought the Knights Templar turned into the freemasons, but I don’t see too much reason to doubt its assertion of what the Inquisition or whatever accused them of.

[12] Black henbane, hyoscyamus niger. Also known as stinking nightshade. It used to be a common herbal remedy, and can be useful for pain relief, but in high doses can also cause nausea, seizures, and hallucinations. Interestingly, one of its active components is scopolamine. It is specifically known to have been used in medieval Scotland at a “healing waters” monastery on the Isle of May, and that it was referred to as “henbane” definitely by the late 13^th century CE. Sources: Wikipedia (Hyoscamus_niger); Marlo Willow’s “Prayers and Poultices: Medieval Healthcare at the Isle of May, Scotland, c. 430-1580 AD,” from the book Care in the Past: Archeological and Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Oxbow Books, 2017, via JSTOR.

[13] This is a sizeable prayer regimen. It is doable (I had a similar-length daily prayer ritual as a child, as a result of severe OCD), but it takes a certain amount of effort. When sung all prettily, it’s about an hour long; spoken, I’d guess it’s about half that. (I used to listen to it, in Latin, sung by a monastic choir, while I worked on my undergraduate thesis, because it was grounding and soothing. It’s amazing how much better Latin sounds when it’s sung by people who know it, rather than just the average high school or university choir. Youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gPan_INmjE.) I will not reproduce the full text of the Prayer of St. Ephraim here (Wikipedia: Prayer_of_Saint_Ephrem), but it involves “prostrations” where one goes from standing down to a hands-and-knees kneeling position and then back up, rather quickly. Obviously, that is a risk for a head rush! Thus the priest’s warning. It is rather unlikely that it would be used in the Roman Catholic church in this period, but it seems appropriate. I admit to blending Byzantine practice into this fic, out of laziness.

[14] It’s all fucking spider pheromones. Which might actually work, to repel other bugs, because the bugs are like “fuck no there’s spiders,” but it’s a fucking bad idea to go traipsing into a giant spider nest with that on your face. Though it might’ve saved him from simply being eaten; I think dog-sized spiders would go for like pheasant-sized prey normally, though. Also, I have no idea what accent I’m writing, here. Probably some horrific combination of Yorkshire and Appalachian.

[15] Sex nightmares. They’re a thing. They’re usually worse than what actually happened to you. If you’ve been through shit or definitely-thought-there-was-imminent-shit and that happens to you, it’s normal. Like, it mega sucks, but it’s normal.

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The Fucking Easter Bunny

Sat, 19 May 2018 00:32:08 GMT

Originally posted to AO3 on 4/17/2017

“Do you want an easter egg?”

It seemed like an innocent enough question. Sure, the kid’s face seemed a bit off, but that was cheap costumes for you. Under the horribly missewn padding, the child seemed to be about five. Actually, a bit short for five, but they were speaking too well to be any younger. He wasn’t much for holidays, but best case, he got free candy, and worst case, he’d pretend to eat the play-doh or weird rock or whatever and then throw it out when the kid looked the other way.

“Sure,” he said, holding out his hand.

The world glitched.

He was tied to something…orange, he could see out of the corner of his eyes if he turned his head, bound head to foot like Gulliver among the Lilliputians, with…was that silly string? It looked like silly string. Silly string was breakable, though, easily breakable, like spiderwebs (and about as gross). This had absolutely zero give as he pulled on it, like plastic baling twine, but it was pink and green and yellow and purple like Easter silly string, and it was still repulsively sticky-soft, where it wound about his bare arms and wrists—it was warm for April, and he had worn short sleeves.

Laughter came from somewhere near him, and the child from earlier came into view. Only, that really wasn’t a child. He had assumed that all that was a mask and a spandex suit with horrible padding, but no, that was the creature’s fur and skin. He did not know what this was—surely not an actual rabbit—but it must have been what was responsible for his current predicament, why he was bound and tied to…oh Lord, was it actually a carrot? He managed to turn his head a little further than before, enough to see the smooth yet slightly dulled skin of what was definitely a carrot. At least it had been cleaned—if it had ever grown in the dirt at all, and not simply been magicked out of thin air. If this creature could tie him up in an instant with magically unbreakable silly string, surely it was capable of that.

The creature stopped laughing just long enough to address him. “So you wanted an easter egg,” it said. “Aren’t you in luck! You don’t just get one easter egg, you get all of them! It’s been so long since I had a willing recipient.”

Willing? He supposed he had agreed to take an “easter egg,” and in fairytales that would certainly count as magically valid, but this was real life, and agreeing to receive one piece of Easter candy of dubious provenance didn’t count as agreeing to whatever the fuck this was. Maybe the candy had been drugged, and this was a hallucination, and that would honestly be the best outcome, at this point, even if he woke up missing a kidney (because why else would you have a kid handing out drugged Easter candy?). But the silly string and the vegetable beneath him felt very real. His leg was starting to go dead. That never happened in dreams, even the ones where you woke up and your leg actually had gone dead. He struggled against the “silly string” some more and tried to yell, but found himself unable to speak above a low, moaning sound.

“Of course, you can’t take my real eggs right away. We’ll have to start small.” The thing grinned, holding up what looked like a string threaded with easter-egg shaped beads, about the size of Cadbury cream eggs, but bright and glistening instead of purple foil. “And really, we should clean you out first. Strawberry soda should do it.”

Clean him out? Huh?

Putting the string of easter egg beads down, the creature—the Easter Bunny, he was calling him, for lack a better term—fumbled around out of sight for a few moments, and then popped back into view holding a giant syringe full of clear pinkish-red liquid. Really, a truly giant syringe, it looked like about half a gallon. He didn’t know syringes came that big. For some reason, it seemed to be absent a needle, though the place where one should attach looked oddly elongated. That seemed good, at least? But if it wasn’t being injected, what the fuck was the syringe for?

He didn’t have time to think about it more after that, because the “Easter Bunny” ripped open his pants.

“Tsk, tsk, can’t do anything with those in the way,” it said, ripping open his underpants as well. It was not using scissors; it was simply that strong, pulling his tighty-whities until they ripped at the seams. He had only just time to be alarmed at this, before the Easter Bunny took its syringe and jammed the blunt tip into his ass.

He had never thought of his ass as something things went into, instead of out of. The only time he had ever explored it at all was to put antibiotic ointment on it, that time it had started bleeding after a particularly bad case of food poisoning. But now, not only was the tip of a syringe jammed into his asshole, but then a second later the Easter Bunny depressed the plunger, filling his large intestine with two liters of strawberry soda.

It was cold. It was carbonated. It was 68 ounces of bulky, heavy, space-taking-up fluid. He attempted to scream as the cramps hit him, but the Easter Bunny’s magic (or whatever it was) turned it into a moan. He could only writhe against the horrid silly string as he attempted to expel the fluid, but the syringe was still there, held firmly by deceptively tiny paws, forcing the entire volume of the liquid to stay inside him. Eventually, after several long minutes, the bunny finally withdrew the syringe. He let out a long, resounding, strawberry-scented fart, followed immediately by an explosion of disgusting, sticky fluid.

“There, that’s better! But you’ve messed up this lovely carrot. Got to wash that off now.” The Easter bunny rinsed down his victim and the carrot with more soda, and then dried them with parti-colored easter grass.

“Now to get you ready for the practice eggs!” The Easter Bunny showed him a package of lamb-shaped butter. “This should ease the way.” It dug its paws into the package, turning the lamb’s head into a glop, and smeared the stuff over and into his asshole.

To his horror, he began to feel pleasure at the stimulus. Why was he liking this? It must be magic or drugs or something. Yes, the stimulation was most of it, but shouldn’t disgust cancel that out? He was getting fingered by the fucking Easter Bunny. That should be something that killed all boners for the rest of his life. And yet, here he was, getting harder and harder with each passing second.

It had to be something in that injected soda. It had to.

The Easter Bunny, noticing his state, gave his cock a quick lick, and he shuddered and yet got even harder at the feeling of that rough tongue on his genitals.

“Mmm, I do like the taste of strawberry on a man,” the bunny chuckled. “Makes it like a stick of candy. And, as you know, I’m all about candy.” It held up the egg beads. “These? Candy. And they’re going up your ass.”

He was crying, now, at the thought of having solid foreign objects in him, and somehow without deflating his accursed erection at all. He was not enjoying this. He did not want to enjoy this. And yet, he could not deny the waves of abhorrent pleasure coursing through him at the creature’s words. Soda. Bunny spit. It had to be.

The creature held the first egg-bead to his stretched, buttered asshole and pressed. Slowly, it slid in till it passed the zenith of its width, and then it was sucked in with a pop. He bucked his hips as much as he could within his restraints, taken by surprise at the unexpected and taboo pleasure. The bunny repeated it with the second bead, and the third, and with each one he writhed and panted at the stimulation as the egg-shaped beads slid past his sensitive rim. He counted forty of the unbearable, unwanted bursts of pleasure, and then they stopped. Funny, the string of beads had not looked that long.

He was left gasping, on the verge of orgasm. The bunny pulled away from his ass, and did—nothing.

“Let’s just sit here for a while, shall we? Got to let those do their thing.”

Their thing? For a few minutes, as he sat there and worried, the eggs did nothing. Then, the sense of fullness decreased slightly, and he felt a thin trickle of something running out of his asshole.

“Ah, the chocolate’s finally melting.” The Easter Bunny leaned over and lapped at his asshole, and he scream-moaned and thrashed in his bonds. “Tastes much better than what usually comes out of there. It won’t all come out, of course. It’s the perfect lubricant and nutritional solution for my real eggs!” It now pulled the string out of his clenched ass, and, now free of the candy-coated chocolate eggs, it came loose, making him moan in earnest at the sensation of the string passing through his asshole.

Reaching down again, the Easter Bunny brought up a brightly-colored tapered plastic funnel-like thing of gigantic proportions. It was shiny and lavender-purple, textured in imitation of a woven basket save for the first few inches at the bottom, with whimsical pictures of eggs, chicks, and bunnies painted brightly and crudely on the sides. The inside, what he could see of it as the creature waved it about, was smooth. Then, it picked up a wire egg basket of brightly colored, slimy eggs, and set it on his stomach. It stuck fast to the sticky string there.

“Don’t try to buck it off,” warned the Easter Bunny. “It won’t work, I'll be able to tell the difference from natural reactions, and I’ll be so very sad about you trying to break our deal.” It took three eggs, and stuffed them into the funnel. Then, it inserted its rounded tip into his ass.

Having been neglected for so long, he could not help but voice his pleasure as his ass was stimulated once more. The restrictions of the enchantment or whatever that was on his voice allowed him to make whatever erotic sounds he wanted, he discovered, as long as they were not outright screams and were not displeasure. And then the Easter Bunny started to push its eggs into his colon, and he tried to scream in ecstasy, even knowing the limits of the enchantment.

Dozens of eggs were pushed through his abused rim, the whole basketful, all brightly colored and faintly sticky. Each one’s passage brought him slightly closer to orgasm, as did the licks the Easter Bunny gave to his cock, every few eggs. He no longer cared about the indignity or the perversity or the implausibility of his situation; he just wanted to cum. And then finally the Easter Bunny pushed in the last egg, removed the funnel, pushed in some brightly-colored marshmallows “as a buffer” and plugged him with an even larger spice-jellybean egg on a hard candy base; and cum he did, untouched, spraying semen all over the remnants of his clothes and the silly string.

A cup was pressed to his lips; it was more strawberry soda. He drank, not caring about any consequences, whether it was drugged or if it would cause him to need to relieve himself while still tied up.

“The string will dissolve when the process is through, and then you may leave. The soda and chocolate should keep you from needing any nourishment until then. You have already noticed the geas to prevent you from screaming; it will also prevent you from telling anyone of what has occurred. Thank you, human, for agreeing to carry my eggs.”

Agreeing. Sure. Totally. He was still tied up, covered in cum and chocolate and dried soda, with a candy plug in his ass, and still reeling from the most humiliating orgasm of his life. He was never going to be nice to costumed five-year-olds again.

He drowsed in the warm April sun, having nothing else he could do, feeling uncomfortably constipated and slightly itchy from the soda and from the spice candy touching his most intimate parts. Then, suddenly, he awoke. Something was moving within him, and it was about to come out….

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Sacrifice

Sat, 19 May 2018 00:29:17 GMT

Originally posted to AO3 on 1/21/2017

You come to me, my worshipper. This is your ultimate supplication. You stand and do not kneel; what need to make yourself smaller, when I am so vast? I am the infinite, the singularity; I am the collapsing point of the universe. I am the Lord of Patterned Madness, and you are my priest. Chant unto me, burn the twelve-dimensioned incense, but know that the true offering is yourself, your life, your being. Your body; it is nothing compared to what I can manifest, my tentacles and cloaca more solid than mass itself and more nebulous than light, but even its weakness and doubt and struggle is a gift, and you give it. You give it freely, because you must; no mortal can look upon me and dream otherwise.

First I will fuck you in as much of my true form as your mortal mind can comprehend without going mad. I will start with three tentacles, that is a good and rightful number. Where? In your ass—where else, my foolish one? Do not worry, they will fit. I command space and time; a body that barely touches the fourth dimension is no constraint for me. But for your sake, O worshipper, I will take on solidity, and acknowledge that fleshy sphincter as if it alone is the fines ultima of width. I start by making the tentacles thin, so they go in all three at once, but I will expand them once I am in your ass. How much they expand, after that, is up to you.

Do you want a slow, gentle fuck from a horror? Or do you want a creature from beyond the ken of this world to rip you open and subsume you into the cosmic pattern of silence that will reign when all things have shuddered into entropy? There is yet time to turn back, even now. Do you wish this annihilation? Do you wish to take in my awful climax, contain the uncontainable? But I touch your mind, without altering it in the slightest, and I see your “Yes, yes!”, and know that this is truly what you wish, insofar as you can comprehend it—divine eros, apotheosis. Death that is not death, rebirth beyond the human.

I am not sure if my true form will exactly lose control (or can, with a mere mortal), but order and chaos are the same thing at the ultimate end of the universe. Yes, at first I will have a care for your puny mortal form, but my incomprehensible climax cannot be denied, and my own form must resolve into some of its true shape. My tentacles expand into their full girth within you, straining your body to almost the limit of corporeal endurance, before I release infernal geysers of godly ichor inside your ravished entrails, and it leaks out a little around my tentacles still inside you, mingling with the traces of blood from your cruelly stretched entrance.

Hmmm, maybe I will make you suck one of my tentacles. Would you like that? To kiss and take in the unknowable? To receive the deity at both ends, os and fundament?

I slip just one tentacle into your mouth--one, a number so small it is not even a prime, the ultimate and most open mystery--and caress your tongue, then snake it down to your throat, testing your gag reflex.

You choke around my invasion; I am not offended, for you are mortal, and as mortal will resist the touch of the sublime—merely as the unwitting, instinctive desire of the body to preserve itself, even as the soul longs for mysterion and annihilation. I feel the flutter of your palate, as it contracts around my girth, swallowing and upheaving at once, as flesh fights with the soul. Carbon et aqua, it is weak, solid as tissue paper, compared to what I have manifested, within and around it.

I receive your adoration as my due; it is only right and ordered that a mere creature such as you submit to my dreadful presence. Thus is the order of things: eons and dimensions dance in threes and fours intertwined, and mortals serve eldritch, divine masters.

Do you want to be utterly filled? Do you want to be pushed beyond the limits of mortal endurance? Do you want the tentacles in your mouth and ass to meet in the middle, filling you utterly? Do you accept the ultimate penetration?

(Yes, O Lord of Patterned Madness; yes, O Paradox of Ordered Chaos; yes, O Ineffable Id, yes!)

I force my tentacle down your throat, through your sphincters, until I reach your stomach. It, too, is a line of defense (ah, brave and foolish instinct of mortality!), but mere hydrochloric acid cannot hurt me. I conquer it, twisting my tentacle in coils until your stomach is stretched with it, and you moan voicelessly around my tentacle from the eros and pain. Your stomach is stretched full with my super-substantial mass until bursting, and the port of your lungs is dammed with my thickness, yet you do not die. And now I push through your stomach’s lower sphincter, into the serpentine of your small intestine, as my triune tentacles still working from below breach up from the large one, and three and one I tie a knot in your bowels.

The sacrifice and I are complete. I, Ouroboros, am manifested in the feeble mimic that is the body of my worshipper. You are pushed beyond what mortal flesh can bear—I have pushed you—but I will not let you die. I will keep you alive as a half-living shell. I am a godlike being; I need a worshipper. It would be rather inconsiderate if I killed mine.

But do not worry. Even now, three tentacles thrusting around one, I approach my unspeakable climax. I will fill you with the ichor of the unknowable, and though undying by my power, you will experience it as would a true mortal, and you will be broken by the agony and the ecstasy of it. It will fill your guts, burst your innards, and burn every part of your internal organs. You will cry out and weep, and you will smile, knowing yourself filled with my unbearable divinity. Wrapped around me, you will die and live, and live and die again, eternal, in the orgasm of the cosmic mystery.

I will find new ways to play with you and accept your reverence, with each new life I give you. I will narrow all my tentacles and slip them into you one by one, until you can hold no more, filling your until flesh tears and you scream in terminal agony, even as your cock spurts and spews white, mortal seed onto your belly. I will take all of them from you and leave you aching, as you scream and pray and torment yourself, pleading for a glimpse even, once again, to see what I once granted you of my ecstasies. I will spend a century stretched into an eon with one tiny tentacle stroking your cock and another clamped around its base, denying you release until you have broken a thousand times and one, because the mosaic I will make of the shards of your brain requires that for its beauty.

It is all what you wish. I am your Lord, and I grant my worshippers their desires. I do not require you, but oh, I crave your worship, your pain, and your tears, freely given. I will push you past the boundaries of mortality and knowledge, and you will offer thanks in screaming songs. For you have given yourself as sacrifice and dedication, and I will take, I will take all of you—and with me, you, too, are infinite.

Receive me, worshipper. Shudder beneath my touch. Know and shatter under my desire. Release your mortal energy; spray white in mere contemplation of me. I am Alpha et Omega; accipe. Accipio. Ah!

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Manuscript Tradition

Sat, 19 May 2018 00:25:49 GMT

Originally posted to AO3 on 10/14/2016; may accumulate further chapters.

Chapter Text

“He’s a smart boy. Perhaps now he will learn that the dangers of blood magic are not ‘just’ infected cuts or possession? I’m not entirely sure what he actually did, since he passed out and started seizing halfway through explaining it, but I think he tried to amplify a blood magic spell with blight magic, using the link between darkspawn and all Grey Wardens as a sympathetic magic catalyst, if I had to guess. It backfired in some way, seemingly. Using one’s self as an active part of the spell itself is likely to.

“Blight magic! I knew we should not have hushed up what happened to Remille, but the Chantry and Irving insisted. People will do it if they know about it, they said. I thought it was ridiculous, as one needed access to the Taint to use it, and better to at least know it should never be tried. Not that that would stop Alim, but perhaps he would have at least known how not to injure himself. Not that that would be a deterrent to him either, but I do think he wants to live long enough to stop Loghain and the Blight. Anyway, I gave him a sedative, and he is definitely getting a lecture if he wakes up.”

—From the “Blight Journal” of Senior Enchanter Wynne, recovered from her belongings in Kinloch Hold after the events at the White Spire in 9:40 Dragon.

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(Blood) Ghost of the Past

Sat, 19 May 2018 00:23:03 GMT

Originally posted to AO3 on 10/14/2016

Fenris had been unusually irritable during the flight from Kirkwall, but not really much more so than he usually was when wounded. It wasn’t even a bad wound, just a clip on the shoulder, but that Maker-dratted idol sword was apparently “like some kind of entropy weapon,” from what Varric had overheard, so Anders couldn’t heal it properly. And approximately half a second after Anders repeated that official medical opinion, on the third day out from Kirkwall, Varric’s knowledge of events ceased to be strictly “overheard,” because Fenris was yelling loud enough to be heard in Orlais.

“Well, if you can’t heal it, maybe you should have thought before blowing up a chantry and getting us into a battle with a madwoman with a cursed sword!”

“Meredith was going to call an Annulment before the year was out, the whole underground knew it. This way, we got to choose when. So we could get people out.”

“Well, I’m not a mage, but I still got a sword in my fucking shoulder because of it and yOU CAN’T EVEN FUCKING FIX IT! I’m going to find myself a competent herbalist.”

With that, Fenris grabbed his pack and sword and turned back towards Kirkwall; and despite all his Carta and Coterie contacts, that was the last Varric heard or saw of Fenris for four years.

*************

For several months now the Inquisition had been tracking one of Corypheus’ generals, a horrific being who left its victims as unrecognizable shreds of flesh. The few who had seen this thing and survived (apparently by escaping its notice) called it “The Blood Ghost.”

Cassandra and Cullen thought it was probably a possessed Red Templar, and had worked with Dagna to make a rune that ought to weaken it. So as Cassandra, Solas, Morrigan, the Inquisitor, and Varric walked down the stairs toward the Well of Sorrows, they thought they were ready.

What they found was a feral but entirely non-demonic creature, seemingly powered by red lyrium. It hissed; it threw chunks of searing red lyrium like grenades; it plowed through walls like butter; it teleported around the ruined courtyard; and it pulsed red, corrupted energy for twenty feet around it. The carefully-crafted rune was entirely useless.

Varric had run out of crossbow quarrels fifteen minutes ago, not to mention caltrops, throwing knives, and knockout powder, but it hardly mattered, because nothing he hit the creature with seemed to stick. Solas and Morrigan were on the ground, unconscious or dead, and the Inquisitor, who’d been more toward the edge of the red energy blast, was staffless and being violently sick. Cassandra stood leaning on her sword, barely holding up her shield, trying to catch her breath before another futile dash at the thing.

“Surrender now,” boomed the Blood Ghost–apparently it could talk–“give us the Well of Sorrows, and my master Danarius will be merciful to you.”

Danarius? In dawning horror, Varric realized that the creature’s ears were pointed, and that the spikes of red lyrium covering its body did not in fact grow in the random patterns found on Red Templars.

“…Fenris?”

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Heatwave

Sat, 19 May 2018 00:20:09 GMT

Originally posted to AO3 on 8/22/2016

It had seemed like a good idea at the time. A weekend's vacation at the Battle Resort, in the cottage his family owned. What Wallace hadn't expected was that the weather would soar to 40 Centigrade--and the cottage, of course, had no air conditioning.

There were, however, several (very old, very noisy) plug-in fans. And so Wallace was sitting, naked, on a queen-sized air mattress with a beach towel over it, with all the fans pointing towards him. It helped. Sort of.

The mattress dipped; Steven had plopped down beside him.

"That's my t-shirt," said Wallace.

"You dropped your wet swim trunks on mine. Besides, it's not like you've ever particularly minded." This was true. And also, Wallace's t-shirts were long enough on Steven that he didn't need pants. Or, more pointedly, Wallace thought, as Steven kept trying to nuzzle him, underpants.

"You know, if you want to make out, you can ask," said Wallace.

"Okay, you mean with words. Though it's more like 'if something or someone doesn't distract me from the sound of these fans, I will go absolutely nuts.' "

"And I suppose it's my fault for being the one here who doesn't prefer their immediate environment to feel like the inside of an active volcano. Come here, then."

They didn't touch as much as they normally would have--even Steven agreed that it was much too warm for full-body contact--but that just let Wallace tease him more, holding him to the mattress by his wrists while kissing his eyelids, his ears; nipping at the pulse point under his jaw, licking his nipples and blowing air across them until Steven squirmed and complained that it was too cold and also not fair. Wallace laughed at this, and kissed Steven on the lips until he laughed too and forgave him.

They had lube. In fact, they had both packed lube, just to make sure that they had some and wouldn't have to buy any and possibly not be able to get their usual brand and risk repeating--they do not talk about the time Wallace accidentally bought the kind with artificial charti berry flavor. So Wallace grabbed the very definitely hypoallergenic lube--"Do you want me to top or you?", "You, please"--and began to tease Steven a bit more intensely, running circles around his hole with one finger but not quite letting it slip inside. Steven put up with this for nearly two minutes (longer than Wallace had expected him to; he just got curious about how long it would take to make him beg this time), squirming increasingly until his control finally broke.

"For the love of Arceus, are you actually going to do anything or just tickle me all day?"

"You only had to ask," said Wallace, laughing softly, and added a bit more lube and then slipped one finger into Steven, quickly followed by a second. He twisted his wrist, stretching him a bit (Steven made a frustrated noise), and then curved his fingers up a little and there—

It sent a bolt of pleasure through Wallace to hear Steven gasp, to see him so overtaken by sensation that his vocal cords forgot to connect. He added a third finger, slowly rocking his hand into Steven, seeing Steven’s cock already leaking even though Wallace hadn’t touched him there yet. Felt Steven thrust back against his fingers, saw the sweat gleaming on his light skin, how it made him look like metal turned to flesh; a slim body that seemed half ribs and with pale nipples and almost no visible muscles (though the invisible ones were quite strong, Wallace knew), that oughtn’t to be beautiful with any of its parts, and yet somehow all together was—and in that moment, Wallace knew that this was all he wanted, just to make Steven come, on his fingers like this.

“Steven,” asked Wallace, and then when Steven didn’t quite seem to hear him, “Steven,” again.

“Why are you stopping?” asked Steven breathlessly, canting his hips to try to get more stimulation—he was already at the point where it was decidedly unpleasant not to.

“I want to know if you’d be okay with me just getting you off just like this.”

“What about you? Or did a Remoraid bite your dick?”

“Trust me, I’ll make up for it once I have some climate control. And…you’re just so pretty like this.”

“Keep saying things like that,” Steven groaned. “Or, you know, actually move your fingers. The ones in my ass.”

“As you wish,” said Wallace, smiling, and did just that.

With a practiced motion, Wallace used three fingers to knead that little lump of flesh inside Steven, and then touched it from the outside, too, that place behind the sac. A hiss of breath and sudden tension under his other hand (on Steven’s hipbones) and the twitching of Steven’s cock told him he’d done it right. Wallace thought, not for the first time, that Steven had a really pretty cock. Right now, it was taut and flushed, bringing out that slight upward curve to it that always helped it feel so good whenever their current positions were reversed, and Wallace really wanted to put his mouth on it—but, he reminded himself, that was for another day. So instead, he put his mouth somewhere else, and licked a stripe up Steven’s inner thigh.

Steven could come just from this, Wallace knew, given enough time, but his wrist was starting to hurt, and it occurred to him that, despite Steven’s uncanny heat tolerance, it was probably best not to prolong things this time. So he ghosted the fingers of his left hand over Steven’s dick, once, twice, and then under the head and over the slit, and then Steven was coming, sweating, gasping. Wallace lightly stroked him through it.

Wallace thought, then, of taking his hand to himself, but the mental urgency had passed with Steven’s climax, and it really was much too hot out. So instead, he grabbed his now-discarded t-shirt that Steven had been wearing, and proceeded to clean them off.

“A shower would probably be better,” observed Steven, sleepily.

“I’m not moving out of range of these fans until it’s below body heat in here.”

“The fucking fans. You had to remind me.” But Steven was laughing softly, and they fell asleep.

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The Erotic Watermelon One (a joke on sexy halloween costumes)

Sat, 19 May 2018 00:17:37 GMT

Originally posted to Tumblr in 2015 and to AO3 on 8/21/2016

Rapturously, he caressed the watermelon’s smooth curves as he bored a hole into its juicy center, shaping it for his pleasure. Barely pausing to roll a condom over his engorged member, he plunged himself into the melon’s wet, aromatic depths. Its cool, moist hole was so tight against his cock that he nearly lost himself in it then and there, and only after a few minutes did he dare to gingerly begin thrusting inside the fruit. He could feel every facet of its firm, dripping flesh against his cockhead. The sensation was indescribable: every cell in his body screamed in ecstasy, the sweet smell of summer fruit hung in the air, and the watermelon’s hole made juicy, gasping noises as he plunged in and out of its tight channel. Faster and faster he thrust, until all at once he exploded with the most resounding orgasm of his life. Waves and waves of cum erupted from his urethra, so much that the tip of the condom was entirely filled and his cum was forced all the way up along his shaft. Panting, he released the melon and slid himself out of its cavern of wonders, then lowered his mouth to its hole and lapped at its sweet, divine nectar.

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Long Road Ahead

Sat, 19 May 2018 00:09:35 GMT

Originally posted to AO3 on 8/8/2016

“So, not surprisingly, in these tables you see a slight increase in mode average miasma indicator levels correlated strongly with years since the Joining--for about the first twenty years,” said Alim. “After that, the correlation gets a bit fuzzy, and around twenty-four years it just goes all over the place. Some Wardens had massively high levels, similar to the phylacteries we took from the ones who turned out to be hearing the real Calling after Nightmare was defeated, while others followed the normal steady increase seen in the younger Wardens. Of course, I requested to be informed if any of the senior Wardens started hearing the Calling, but Maker knows if they’ll actually tell me, or how long it takes, or if there’s even actually any causal effect between miasma levels and the Calling, or if it’s primarily or secondarily influenced by the magical binding to the darkspawn horde inherent in the Joining. Or, for that matter, if the indicators we’ve been testing for actually reliably indicate the quantity of miasmatic particles per measure, at that point or if they’re actually something else.”

“I doubt it is primarily the magic binding,” mused Zevran. “It could be just that it takes a while for increased miasma level to trigger the Calling. It appears to me that the resistance gained in the Joining eventually partially breaks down.”

“Well, obviously. The Calling eventually causes a form of ghoulification. Fiona even described it in her original debriefing about the Architect. Whom I keep having nightmares about running into again, since we found out the whole ‘Corypheus can take over people’s bodies and live indefinitely’ thing. No way he’s dead. I wish I’d just brought him in.”

“Well, one usually expects dead things to stay dead, no? Especially if you burn the body? Besides, Fiona’s report and what she’s actually said to us suggest that the Architect had some level of control over the actual progress of the Blight in others. Corypheus did not, or he would not have used the Nightmare demon, or at least not in Orlais, where he actually was. Perhaps his body-stealing was unique to him.”

“Or perhaps it wasn’t. We don’t know. Yeah, none of the people I had with me suddenly turned into a misshapen horror, but we know Seranni was there, and she ran off after talking with Velanna and we never saw her again. We looked, afterwards, but didn’t find anything. And the demon? Probably just for the scale of the thing. Fiona’s group was only a few Wardens.”

“In any case, we need to do more studies of older Wardens, to see how the resistance fails, and why. I have heard of similar things, with poison resistance--eventually the liver or kidneys fail, from overwork--but I am not sure it is the liver or kidneys affected here. By all accounts, the Calling does not cause symptoms of that.”

“No, it doesn’t. I’ve seen people hear the real Calling, I would’ve noticed. Still, might be worth doing a study on alcohol or drug consumption vs. Joining age at Calling. Or just studying more wardens. There were only 348 Wardens left in Orlais, and most of the ones who survived Adamant were younger mages. We only had phylacteries from 57 who were Joined for twenty years or more.”

“Still, if it does turn out that it is the miasma levels, we also isolated the resistance factor. Perhaps administering it would delay the Calling, no?”

“And again, we’d need more subjects, and I don’t want ones who are there because I pulled rank and ordered them. Phylacteries for testing are one thing. This is another. I can’t--” A knock on the door interrupted him.

“Letter for you, Messere Surana!”

Alim got up and opened the door. “That’s ‘Warden-Commander,’ for the sixth time” he said, taking the letter. “Wait, Weisshaupt? They never answer this quickly.”

“Is it good news or bad news?”

“I have to open it first,” grumbled Alim.

“‘To Warden-Commander Surana, of Vigil’s Keep, et cetera et cetera, the First Warden, Greetings’” he read. “‘In light of your recent--’ Oh. Are you shitting me?”

“What?” asked Zevran, brow furrowed.

“‘In light of your recent success in isolating the Blight miasma and the resistance factor to it, you are, effective immediately, transferred to Weisshaupt Fortress, and granted the title of Senior Warden-Enchanter. As this is a research position, your research leave is terminated upon receipt of this letter, and you are to report to Weisshaupt Fortress at the earliest possibility. You are directly ordered to bring your colleague, Messere Arainai, with you, by Right of Conscription if necessary. Additionally, Mage Warden-Retired Fiona is restored to active duty and assigned under you. Transportation costs for you, Messere Arainai, Private Fiona, your (plural) personal effects, and any equipment necessary to your research are to be paid for by the Wardens; a letter of credit is enclosed.’

“The rest is salary, responsibilities, people under my command who are already at Weisshaupt, oh apparently I report directly to the Chamberlain of the Grey, that’s interesting, I need to send ahead my measurements for a new set of uniforms; anyway, stuff I can read later, because I don’t have a choice about any of it. Damn it, I asked for a letter of command to the University of Orlais, under the Blight Treaties, and an extension of research leave, so I could study there! I doubt the University would have let me use the front gate, but with a Warden letter at least they’d have to give me lab access.”

“Also, they can’t conscript me. I am a Crow. That means I am not, technically, an Antivan citizen, and also not subject to the Right of Conscription under the Treaties.”

“I’m not so sure the Crows don’t want an excuse to have you out of their hair for good. If you were a Warden, that would be either close enough to legally dead, or just actually dead, for them to stop getting themselves killed by you without losing their honor.”

“That is a disturbingly good point.”

“Anyway, now I have to go find Leliana and Fiona. And this day was going so well, too.”

“I mean, I get why they’d want you back, given the role you played, but I thought you were out for good.”

“Well, technically,” said Fiona, “I wasn’t entirely out, just--”

“Permanent disability, of course, I’m an idiot,” finished Alim, running his hands through his hair. “Usually that’s ‘got your legs chopped off’ or ‘took an acid spell to the eyes and the healer wasn’t fast enough,’ but I suppose ‘inability to sense darkspawn’ would also work, especially if both you and the Wardens wanted an excuse to let you go.”

“But ‘if a suitable position opens up in which duties can be performed despite the disability, the Wardens may reinstate qualified individuals.’”

“Do you know anything about the First Warden? Or Weisshaupt?”

“I was debriefed at Weisshaupt, after the Architect incident. It was...odd. It felt half-empty, compared to the numbers in must have had, during the first few Blights. I’d say it was larger than Skyhold, really. Half the Wardens there were high-ranking officers. It was definitely an active fortress, with plenty of field troops, but also an entire wing of bureaucracy, and enough mages for a small circle. They were even set up to do harrowings, for mage recruits. A really advanced infirmary, though; I got to see several dissections. I already knew I was going to be leaving the Wardens, by that point, but I thought I should learn what I could, since the Circles didn’t allow it.”

“When I got to Vigil’s Keep at the start of my command there, I found a box marked with my name that the Orlesian Wardens had brought there. Books on anatomy and ‘somatic magic’, printed at Weisshaupt. Also, a pamphlet arguing in favor of considering the Blight a miasma like common illnesses. The Chantry finally unbanned that one two years later.”

“They were trying to find the cause of the Blight even then, over thirty years ago, and it wasn’t a new effort, as I gathered. There’s a reason the First Warden wants you close.”

“They just didn’t have the proper equipment. I didn’t invent the automatic laboratory centrifuge. Some fellow at the University of Orlais did, just a few years ago. I’m not sure the Anderfels had heard of it until I mentioned it in one of my reports a while back.”

“But anyway, that was Weisshaupt, thirty-odd years ago. I don’t know what it’s like now. As for the First Warden, he wasn’t First Warden yet, in fact he couldn’t have been Joined at all. You know more about him than I do.”

“He doesn’t like me, no surprise there, that whole ‘killed the Archdemon as a barely Joined adolescent and somehow survived doing it’ thing, but he couldn’t just put me in the rank and file somewhere in Orlais, after that, which made him hate me more, so he stuck me in a minor outpost in Ferelden and gave Soldier’s Peak, the fort everyone wanted now that the Drydens had cleaned it up, to someone with proper experience; and then Amaranthine and the Architect went down, and I shook things up again. So the First Warden’s only been the First Warden since 9:30 Dragon, and I am seriously messing with his ability to look competent, over here. Commander Clarel over in Orlais also thinks I make her look bad, especially after someone tells her that one of my men is actually a possessed corpse, and to her I’m all but spitting in her hard work to get her post as a mage, which to be honest is kind of fair, so the two of them decide to send me a bunch of Warden Templars, theoretically because I’ve got too many mage Wardens in one place, but really a message to keep my head down. And then the Anders Incident happens, because Anders managed to get into Orlais on one of his escapes from the tower and apparently kicked the shit out of one of these particular Templars, during a failed capture. At least, Hawke says that Anders says that’s why, and I have no idea where Anders is and those Templars are dead. So, at least this is a thing they can blame on me, to keep me at Nowhere’s Keep, Ferelden. And then the peace Zevran brokered with the Crows breaks down in ‘38, most of his guild of Ravens gets killed, he has to run, so I applied for research leave so I could be with him. Fortunately, the First Warden is considerably happier to leave Howe in charge, and he realizes I might actually do something useful this way, so he lets me go, but isn’t nice enough to actually make sure the University of Orlais will work with me. You know what I mean. So I end up here, eventually. And then we make a breakthrough that was really only a matter of time and equipment development, and then...this. I’m honestly not sure he doesn’t mean to lock me in a tower or kill me.”

“Lock you in a tower, probably. Senior Warden-Enchanter is a left-handed promotion; outside of emergencies, you can’t command non-mage wardens. I mean, it’s probably the command ladder you should have been on in the first place, no offense intended, but the usual step up from Warden-Commander is Senior Warden-Commander.”

“None taken. All I ever wanted to do was alchemical research--and not go to Aeonar, which was why I joined the Wardens in the first place. From what I’ve read of the Anderfels, my priorities might have been misplaced.”

“It’s not that bad. Sand everywhere, from the Blights, and the Volca and Colean seas make the weather very odd, but Weisshaupt is actually away from most of that, and just a few days’ hard riding from Hossberg, and Kal-Sharok too now, I’m told. I actually stayed at Hossberg Circle, for a few weeks after leaving the Wardens, before I transferred back to Montsimmard. There was exactly one other elf there, who’d been transferred in because they needed him to teach something, and it’s like that for most of the country, but being a curiosity is a little easier to deal with than, well, Orlais. Or different, at least.”

“Won’t turn me away from an inn because they want to brag they saw a real live elf? I mean, at least then I do get a room. But it’s going to get old pretty quick.”

“Leli, do your people know anything about the First Warden?”

“Not much. Why, is he sending you Templars again?”

Alim explained.

“The real problem is that three elves have to travel across either Nevarra or Orlais. You remember how we always had to send Alistair and Morrigan to shops, during the Blight? It’ll be like that, only we might well have to book passage on a ship. Zevran and I could handle what we’d get, ourselves, but Fiona’s old enough to be my mother, and shouldn’t be in a ship’s hold. So, have you got any humans you were planning on sending to the Anderfels?”

Leliana sighed. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Three days later, they set off for Weisshaupt--Alim, Zevran, Fiona, and one of Leli’s people, a woman who was actually a legitimate merchant making a trade run to Kal-Sharok. The phylacteries and optic lenses and herb jars were in padded boxes, the research notes and litmus strips were in waxed leather envelopes, and the centrifuge was disassembled and carried on a packhorse of its own. Alim looked back at Skyhold, where he had lived and worked for nearly three years, at those who lived there he was leaving behind, and then away again, in front of him. It was a long road ahead.

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Crossing Daggers

Sat, 19 May 2018 00:05:15 GMT

Originally posted to AO3 on 8/7/2016

“Can you teach others to be an assassin?” blurted out Alim.

“Why? Do you wish to become an assassin? That hardly seems like you.”

“Actually, Leliana asked. But I also wish I could fight better, without magic. I had another nightmare last night, about darkspawn Templars.”

Zevran thought about it, for a long moment. He remembered his training--Alim did not know, would never really know if he could help it, just what Crow training was. Eleven years now, nearly twelve, since he’d passed his initiation, and he still had nightmares, the really nasty kind where you also wake up humping the mattress. And the nightmares about the times he’d been ordered to train recruits the same way, later, were even worse. But bladework, at least the basics of it, that he could probably teach without atrocities. So, too, stealth and poisons. Pits full of scorpions or having to eat potions considered not lethal enough were effective motivators, but probably unnecessary.

“I suppose the Crows are already furious, yes?” he said at long last. “What harm is another tweak to their nose? You and Leliana would both be better snipers than shadowed blades, you with magic and she with a bow, but I can teach you some basic knifework, and improve hers. And poisons can be taught to anyone with quick fingers and a careful mind. It shall be fun! I will make it fun, I promise.”

The last words were really for himself, of course.

“Can we do it after breakfast? That’s when the others usually spar,” asked Alim.

“I don’t see why not? Now go, eat. I must choose some blades that will be good for training.”

Zevran kept his own favorite daggers in his belt, of course, but he kept extras in his pack. Daggers could easily be lost, stuck in an enemy who then fled or was carried out, or bent against armor (he had taken one look at the golems in the Deep Roads, and started throwing ice grenades and clay pots of grease instead), or even, if one was fighting mages or rage demons, melted. And darkspawn blood was simply nasty on the metal. Even if he cleaned them the moment the fight was over, the blade would be pitted after a few battles. Simply better to keep half a dozen spare blades than risk having to fight bare-handed until the next town with a smith.

His favorite was his original Crow dagger, that he’d brought from Antiva, and a thin blade called “The Rose’s Thorn” that Alim had bought for him in Orzammar. It had cost a truly obscene sum, and it pierced chainmail like butter. He was willing to use neither for training. Eventually, he decided on a Dalish dagger he’d picked up from Varathorn in the Brecilian Forest, and a stiletto with a thick, finger-gripped handle. Both were veridium: cheaper and less springy or durable than dragonbone steel, which was why he ordinarily preferred not to use them, but more than good enough for learning, and the shapes and handles were perfect for a beginner.

He found a spare belt, the kind that could take holding up daggers, and carried everything out of the tent. By now, everyone else was half done with their breakfast.

“Leftover stew, in the pot,” Alim mumbled at him, and Zevran got a bowl and tried to force the stuff down. Not Crow training, not training at all, just practicing with an extremely inexperienced person, he told himself. It didn’t really help.

Alim finished his stew and put down his bowl. “Ready?”

“For anything.” They walked to the edge of the camp.

“You already know how to use knives a bit. For surgery, and then that little knife you use for blood spells. I do not really have time to observe you in battle, but I am pretty sure you know how to get it out quickly, and would be able to use it, if needed, in battle. Show me.”

Alim got out his staff, got in standard two-handed position, and nodded that he was ready. Then, he switched his staff to a single-handed blocking hold in his left hand, drew his spell knife from the sheath in his breast pocket with his right, and brought it down to his left arm, stopping just short of actually drawing blood. Then, still holding the knife handle, he went through the motions for casting first Blood Wound and then Chain Lightning, and the rest of his main battle set, changing grips and occasionally making further mock-cuts.

“Should I do that again, with the other hand?”

“No, I have an idea what to do now.”

Zevran showed Alim the daggers he’d chosen, and the belt.

“Real blades, already?”

“My third-best ones. It is the best way to learn, if the Crows are right. They gave me a sharp blade when I was eight years old, and told me I was going to learn to use it to kill people, and I would be beaten if I did not. Beatings were a rather more tangible threat than death at that age, you see. You already know you want to learn how to kill anything that tries to hurt you, so you are therefore considerably more experienced than I was. Besides, I am not the sort of man to carry around fake weapons, no?” There are no fake weapons. Stop thinking about what Crows mean by Training.

“I suppose you’re not, no.”

“First, before you use the weapons, you should learn how to draw them. Position the sheaths on the belt, like this. You are accustomed to use your right hand for precise moves, and your left for larger blocking motions, so you should use the stiletto on your right, and the Dalish dar’misu on your left. In fact, if you do well at this, you might consider using a dual-blade dagger on the left. Daggers are drawn from the same side on which they are used.

“Now, there are several ways to grip a dagger,” continued Zevran, sinking into the familiarity of weaponry, “and they start on the draw. The fastest to draw is the reverse grip, where the hilt is towards your thumb.” Zevran drew his own left dagger to explain. “It is a good slashing grip, and can be quite powerful. However, since the wrist cannot bend back very far, this grip must be used at close range, and from above. You cannot stab upwards or sideways. And if an enemy has a great amount of brute strength, they may easily be able to pin your weapon, or even force a blocking arm down so that you stab yourself. Even so, I recommend this grip for your own left dagger, since it is similar to your main left staff grip. You will notice that I helped you sling the sheath so that when you draw the dar’misu, the edge is out. Put your left hand on the dar’misu, the same way that I am holding this. No, closer to the blade.” Zevran sheathed his dagger and went to arrange Alim’s hand on the grip, finger by finger.

“Now practice drawing it.” He watched Alim draw and resheath the blade several times, making the typical beginner’s mistakes and leaving himself wide open. “Here, like this.” Zevran stood behind Alim, placing his hand over Alim’s, and directed his arm slowly through the arc of the draw, and then a few times faster.

“You do not draw first and then attack. From the moment you touch the knife, that is an attack. If you do this right, and your opponent wears no armor, your draw should take blood. If your opponent is armored, your left draw should block them, and then the second motion of your right-hand stabbing weapon should take blood.”

Zevran was suddenly aware of how close he stood to Alim, how close his lips were to the man’s ear. He felt Alim shiver under his hand, and knew he felt it too.

“Ah, is this entirely about correcting my draw anymore?”

“Only if you want it to be. I did say I would make it fun, no?” He had to admit, he was all too glad to have an excuse to stop thinking about his own early training.

“Mm, I do think I am a little too distracted to be using sharp objects at the moment.” Alim sheathed the dar’misu, and turned around towards Zevran for a kiss.

They kissed, tongues teasing each other, hands skimming over each other’s bodies, until the need for air broke them apart. They were down a small hill from the camp, so it was a pretty safe bet that no one could see them if they were lying down.

“Maybe you should practice some stabbing with your manly blade,” suggested Zevran, pulling Alim on top of him by his ass.

Alim groaned. “That was terrible, and I’ll have you know that’s in comparison to the Starkhaven translations of Nevarran romance novels.”

“Still, a grease spell, mi espadachín?”

“Is that a word that has anything to do with swords?”

“Yes, it means ‘swordsman.’ I thought you knew ‘espada’?”

“I do, but I was in denial. Here’s your grease spell.” Alim pressed his hand to Zevran’s stomach, and Zevran felt a most curious sensation in his ass.

“What did you just do?”

“Cast a grease spell inside of you. Less messy. Don’t worry, I did it right, it’s at most a couple of tablespoons. You do not want to know what happens to people who accidentally summon quarts.”

Zevran did actually have a pretty good idea of what would happen, and was rather turned on by the mental image. But he liked this pair of pants, which was still half on him, so he’d just ask Alim about it later. “Then please, fill the remaining room in my ass with your fleshy weapon.”

“That was an extremely disturbing turn of phrase, and I am going to ignore it.”

Internal grease spells, as it turned out, were the perfect balance between the sublimities of proper stretching and the burn of taking a cock by sheer muscle relaxation. Alim had found a position that just perfectly hit his prostate (it was amazing, how after several months of sleeping with someone, all of a sudden you both knew so well how each other’s bodies worked), and the pleasure contrasting with the pain in his too-tight rim felt better with every thrust. Alim was already making those little noises that meant plateau, and then his hand was on Zevran’s cock, pumping him, and once again Zevran closed his hand around Alim’s over his...weapon.

Alim’s thrusts changed into the two-one rhythm of approaching orgasm, and then moments later Zevran felt him spend hot inside him. Perhaps two minutes more of the both of them tugging at Zevran’s cock, with Alim still inside him, and Zevran was gasping out his own release. Feeling Zevran’s spasms around his softening prick, Alim shuddered blissfully at the overstimulation.

Alim pulled out of Zevran and rolled over next to him, not even bothering to cover himself up yet. “You know, I could get to like this kind of sparring,” he said.

“It is considerably more enjoyable than the usual Crow methods, I admit.” So strange, a form of training he would want to dream about.

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Chains of our own Forging

Sat, 19 May 2018 00:02:38 GMT

Originally posted to AO3 on 8/6/2016

Returning to Arl Eamon’s Denerim estate covered in blood was starting to become an alarming habit. Really, why had the Crows decided to strike now? They hadn’t even told anyone they were going that way. Alim was deciding whom to delegate for asking Eamon if he’d hired any new servants lately.

Zevran, not surprisingly, had locked himself in their room as soon as Alim had finished changing, and probably was crying. Alim decided to wander down to the library and read something.

He was scribbling heated corrections in an alarmingly inaccurate pamphlet called “100 Salutary and Effective Herbs for Home Use” when someone tapped his shoulder. It was Zevran, looking a bit shaky but composed.

“Here. It seems an appropriate moment to give you this.” Zevran took his hand and placed a small object in it.

“Is that an earring?”

“A trophy, really. I obtained it on my very first job for the Crows. A Rivaini merchant prince was wearing a single jeweled earring when I killed him. In fact, that was about all he was wearing. I thought it was beautiful, and I took it to mark the occasion. I have kept it since...and I’d like you to have it.”

“But why give it to me?”

“Well, you have just helped me rid myself of a little problem. It’s really the least I could give you in return.”

“You don’t need to pay me for that! We are friends! Besides, Taliesen wanted to kill me, too.”

“It is not payment. It is just...I want you to have it. But if you do not want it…”

“I just want to know what this is about, first.”

“It just has meant a lot to me, what you have done. Please, take it.”

“Um...all right. If you’re sure.”

Alim stared at the earring in his hand. He had not been surprised that Zevran kept such a thing, that was not it. No, in the Tower nearly all mages kept little trinkets, things brought by traveling merchants or smuggled in or left by rare visitors or picked from Templars’ pockets, just to have something of their own, when even their clothes did not really belong to them. He’d once had an Orlesian coin, a crudely-carved animal figure he pretended was a halla, and an empty tiny glass perfume bottle. Of course, he’d lost them at Ostagar; left his things at Duncan’s tent, before the Joining, and the next time he was there, he couldn’t find them under the snow and the wreckage.

No, the problem was how Zevran had felt he was obligated to give it to him. They’d been over this! Zevran was not required to do anything, not sleep with him or give him things or bring in money, just to stay with them until they had some kind of upper hand over this Blight, and not kill him or Alistair. Did he worry he would be sent away, now that the Crows gone, if the Landsmeet succeeded? Did he think that little of himself? That he was not really a friend, or a frighteningly competent herbalist and alchemist that any apothecary would be honored to do research with, or, for that matter, the most sexually inventive person Alim had ever slept with? That he had to apologize for having to deal with a past he hadn’t even chosen?

Perhaps he should give Zevran something back, to show him that he was important. He’d seen mages do that, sometimes. A couple of the times Anders had run away, he’d given that little embroidered pillow he had to Karl Thekla, for safekeeping. Alim knew, because he’d seen it in Enchanter Thekla’s office when he’d gone in for help with papers or later his culminating project sometimes. But what to give? He didn’t have anything he’d kept long enough, or that Zevran hadn’t been there for.

It was a real pity that he had lost his things at Ostagar. That perfume bottle had been great.

Alim was not particularly surprised when Zevran didn’t want sex that night. He knew Zevran and Taliesen had had the kind of history that made one killing the other particularly emotionally painful. But when he claimed he was “too tired” the next night, after they had done nothing but wander around the house all day, Alim started to worry. When he started a conversation about the possible benefits of adding cinnamon oil to their lubricating tincture the next morning, after breakfast, and Zevran immediately changed the subject, he knew something was up.

“Are you okay?” he asked, when he’d got Zevran alone. “Did one of the Crows drug or poison you the other day? Are you injured? You seem...not like you.”

“I’m not sure I want to talk about this. I really do not know what to say. I am not slowly dying of Crow poisons, if that will put you at ease.”

“I’m still worried about you. I want to know what’s changed.”

“Agh...very well. An assassin must learn to forget about sentiment. It is dangerous. You take your pleasures where you can, when life is good. To expect anything more would be reckless. I thought it was the same between us, something to enjoy, a pleasant diversion, and little more. And yet…”

“Are you saying you’re in love with me? Like, romance novels sort of love?”

“I don’t know! How would you know such a thing? I grew up amongst those who sold the...illusion of love, and then I was trained to make my heart cold in favor of the kill. Everything I have been taught says what I feel is wrong. Yet, I cannot help it. Since…”

“Since when?”

“Since you asked me into your tent. Well, really, since you walked into my suicide attempt of a ‘trap’ and brought me out alive, I was intrigued then, but when you asked me into your tent and I thought I knew at last why you had spared me, and then you panicked that you were forcing me and told me I was under no obligation to sleep with you. You held my life debt, but did not want to even think about using it, for sex or anything else. No one I had ever known would do that. I was confused. I have been confused ever since. Do you understand me at all?”

“I don’t know if that’s love. Mages aren’t supposed to love either. If it happens, you get transferred, usually somewhere pretty awful, from what I heard. If children come of it, they are taken away and raised by the Chantry. There are friends, and there are people you fuck, and sometimes the two overlap. That’s all I really know. There aren’t ever romance novels about mages, except for cruel, rapacious magisters. They don’t get to love.”

“All I need to know is if there might be some future for us, some possibility of...I do not know what.”

“I hope so. I hope there is a future at all. I’m not sure I know what love is, but I can try. I don’t want to be away from you. I want to talk to you, I want to let you know everything about me--well, almost everything,” he amended hastily, “I want to hold you, I want to make you laugh, I want to make you come screaming loud enough to wake people in Orlais. And for you to make me scream like that too, obviously. And I want that to keep happening for a very long time.” Between twenty and thirty years was all he had, he knew, but that still seemed very long, on this end of it. He’d tell Zevran about that part later. “Is that what you want?”

“Something like that, I think.” Zevran paused. “The earring--do you still want it? You seemed almost hurt, when I gave it to you.”

“I did not understand why you were giving it to me. I do, now. I wish I had something like that to give you. I had things like that once, but the Blight took them.”

“Darkspawn steal jewelry?”

“Not jewelry. Cherished trinkets. Things that how you got them have meaning. Like Alistair has Duncan’s shield, may it protect his sadly unavailable ass. The only thing I’ve got like that anymore is the marks on my face, and that’s my face, so it’s not a thing. I can’t give you it.”

“Do not be so sure of that. I wager I could find a use for your face.”

“...I brought that upon myself, didn’t I.”

“You could bring something else upon yourself, no?”

“There’s the Zevran I know.”

Still laughing, Alim and Zevran elfhandled each other into the nearest empty room. Not even stopping to properly lock the door, Zevran pushed Alim against the wall. He undid the lower catch of Alim’s robes, and began rubbing him through his leggings.

“Ah!--going to make a mess of me, are you,” gasped Alim, squirming into the touch and trying to hook a leg around Zevran’s waist.

“Where is the fun, if there is no mess? Maybe I should make you make a mess, and make you walk around like that all day, in your mess.”

Alim could only whimper. It was filthy, absolutely filthy; just the thought of going to all those meetings with Arl Eamon and Anora and the Banns in cum-soaked smallclothes, feeling the obscene dampness on him every moment and trying not to squirm--oh, Maker, would they smell it on him? Surely they would. They wouldn’t say anything, but they would know exactly how sick and depraved Alim Surana was. They’d still give him aid against the Blight, but the songs afterwards would say he had fucked the Archdemon to death.

He bucked forward harder, against Zevran’s cunning fingers, clutching his hands in the fabric of Zevran’s tunic. The clothing between them muted the sensation maddeningly; at the same time, the pressure and friction of tight cloth against his swollen erection was ecstasy. He tried to pull Zevran closer to him, and realized with a thrill of arousal that Zevran was thrusting his hips against the back of the hand he was rubbing Alim with. Zevran then curled his hand into a fist, using his knuckles on both of them for more pressure. Alim could do nothing other than thrust his clothed cock against the delicious sensation, until his balls drew up and he shuddered his release against Zevran’s hand.

Only half-sated, but spent, he slumped down against the wall. Zevran caught him, and helped him to his knees.

Zevran lifted his tunic, revealing the hardness in his leggings and already a small wet spot on them. Alim shivered, knowing there must be a much larger spot on himself. He watched hungrily as Zevran got himself out. The head of his cock flushed purple with arousal, and another bead of precum was already dripping out to replace what had been smeared inside his smallclothes.

“Close your eyes and open your mouth,” ground out Zevran, almost too close to the brink to speak. Seconds later, Alim felt hot liquid striping his face, and tasted the pungent drops that landed in his mouth.

He opened his eyes. Zevran began rubbing his cum into Alim’s face, chuckling as Alim whined at the filthiness of it.

“We should finish this in our own room, no?”

Alim thought of walking back across the entire mansion in this state, with cum smeared on his face and sticky, wet cum in his smalls, passing servants, his companions, even the Arl himself, and the thought alone was enough to make him moan as an aftershock ripped through him.

A few hours later, after they had fucked again, bathed, and changed (walking around with dried cum in your smalls is considerably hotter in theory than in actuality), Zevran asked, “So, are you going to wear the earring?”

“Maybe. I’d have to pierce my ear. I’m a bit scared to; in the Circle, that’s as good as admitting you’re a blood mage. At least, if you’re an elf, anyway.”

“But you are a warden now. The Divine herself could not make you do anything.”

“True, I suppose. But you’re going to have to help me; I can’t see my own ear.”

“Which ear, right or left?”

“Right. Can you get the elfroot spirits and a cloth scrap out of my medical kit, and find a large pin or needle? I’ll be over here applying an ice spell to my ear.”

Zevran retrieved the items and handed them to Alim; Alim opened the elfroot spirits, poured a bit on the cloth, and began wiping down his ear.

“You do the same to your hands, the pin, and the earring,” he instructed.

Zevran did. “Ready?” he asked.

“Yes.”

Zevran drove the needle through, then pulled it out and replaced it with the earring. He bent the wire closed, and then Alim reached up, cupping his ear with green light.

“That is so not fair. Do you have any idea how much bother healing piercings are for anyone else?”

“Oh yes, I’ll just risk bleeding my tainted Warden blood on all the nobles of Ferelden. Actually, I don’t think it’s possible to catch the Blight from my blood, at least not yet, but you might want to wash your hands and use the elfroot spirits again.”

Zevran just laughed, and poked the earring. “This shall forever be a symbol of our probable love, and how much of an ass you are.”

“Yes, yes. Go wash your hands.”

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