Part One
Organising a dark elf wedding was, Eloine decided, just about the worst punishment the goddess of pleasure and pain had ever invented. Oh, there were the whippings and the pincers and the thing with the hot wax in the spider webs, but at least Eloine mostly just had to lay back, relax and enjoy them.
Whereas everyone expected her to do just about everything with this wedding. Specifically, Xantha, the second most powerful noble in the dark city of E’ville, expected her to do everything. And after one meeting with the not exactly blushing bride, Eloine had known why all the other priestesses had suddenly looked so busy when the request had come through.
Yet she’d finally got everything the way it should be. She’d arranged a dress for Xantha and a collection of artfully restrictive straps for Prince Ssethen, her slave-husband to be. She’d gotten all the virgins strapped naked to the altars (and the price of virgins these days!), ensured that all the right people were invited and carefully strip searched for hidden weapons, gotten the fungus cake just right…
She had even found time to get herself new robes for the ceremony. They were slit up the side, cut low in front, had a panel taken out of the back… frankly it was a miracle there was any material left. All woven from the purest rainbow spider silk, achieved by throwing only the brightest pixies into the spider pits. The dress went perfectly with her slender body and short cropped white hair. People would remember this ceremony, and they would remember her standing out in front of it.
Now, she just needed to fetch the groom. Traditionally, the male in a dark elf marriage ceremony was dragged naked to the altar, there to be strapped down and branded as property by his new mistress-wife before being ridden to exhaustion before the assembled guests. Traditional weddings could be so beautiful sometimes. But obviously, that meant keeping the male somewhere out of the way until they were ready for him.
In this case, it was a small ante-chamber, carefully locked in case Prince Ssethen should try to run off. Eloine unlocked it.
“Well then, your highness, it’s time for… oh, sod.”
That last came from one obvious fact. The ante chamber was bare. As bare as the slave husband to be should have been. Prince Ssethen was gone, and in his place, there was only what appeared to be a map.
“Princess? Princess Livia dear? Are you ready?” The royal princess’s official nurse was an impressively rotund woman. One who knew better than to barge in on the royal presence when she was busy being prepared by her maids. Those could be so… thorough with their preparations. Why, often, by the time the nurse got in there, they hadn’t even got as far as getting Livia into her clothes for the day, but were busy massaging and perfuming her at length.
But today, when she was supposed to be travelling to Lord Antram’s estate for their wedding celebrations, there was a certain amount of hurry involved. Reluctantly, the nurse opened the door… and stared at the sight of half a dozen serving maids, each naked and hogtied on the floor of the princess’s chambers. Of the princess herself, there was no sign. Only a map tucked neatly beneath the ropes of the closest maid…
There were, Oriae decided, plenty of downsides to being the assistant and apprentice to a sex obsessed otherworldly entity running a traditional Dungeon of Doom. The required clothing, for example, which mostly consisted of strategically placed leather straps that seemed more like decorations for the curves of her body than actual coverings. The endless negotiations with the Organisation of Reviled Creatures and Scum representatives in the lower caverns about lunch breaks, which always seemed to end with Oriae naked and on her knees, reminding the ORCS of just why they agreed to their presently inhuman working conditions in the first place. The casual violence of life in the tunnels, the artificial light, the monotony of a mostly fungus based diet, the fact that Jarell, her quasi-demonic employer, tended to conduct her performance appraisals with her hands tied well above her and a whip in his hands (and hardly even using it, damn him)…
By far the worst part of it though was that somehow, somehow, in the middle of this dungeon, as the apprentice to an honest to evilness incubus, she was still getting less sex than everybody else. Which was not what Oriae had expected when she signed up for the job, six months before.
Then, it had seemed so obvious (or at least as obvious as anything could seem while she was panting with exhaustion in a bed with Jarell, it had been that sort of night). She was a half demon, half nymph, half human sex sorceress, who while not very good at maths was definitely everything a man could want, with eyes and hair of deepest violet, a body of petite perfection, and an approach to sex that had already seen her thrown out of three villages. Jarell was a semi-retired incubus able to change into any one of a hundred stunningly handsome forms, running a dungeon of his own and willing to teach her the trade. It had seemed like the perfect fit, except in those respects that it had seemed a pleasurably tight fit, thanks to the sheer size of Jarell’s most important attribute.
She had assumed that she would spend half the time in Jarell’s bed and the other half receiving serious instruction in the art of dungeon control. Or at least helpless as his slave having been horribly tricked. Instead, while she had been horribly tricked, it was only really about how much time Jarell would be spending teaching her. He had, it turned out, better things to do with his time.
“Yes, yes, oh gods yes!”
There were three figures on the bed in Jarell’s chambers. Livia, the human princess who was being so noisy, lay on her back, her hands bound to the headboard, her legs in the air while Jarell fucked her. She was a pretty, slender thing with blonde hair and blue eyes, naked except for the leather collar Jarell had had Oriae fix about her throat. The dark elf princeling Ssethen was similarly nude, his stark white hair cut short, his red eyes glowing angrily. Well, they would, given that he was bound on his knees at the foot of the bed, gagged and with his cock bound, his lean muscles and all too obvious excitement making Oriae want to go over and take a turn with him.
Then there was Jarell. Currently he was in one of his favourite forms: that of a muscular, pale skinned, blonde haired human with feathered wings. He rode the princess roughly, but in a way that suggested he could keep going as long as he wanted. He probably could. There were reasons Oriae had gone to him to learn the finer details of the sex sorcerer’s art.
“Ahem,” Oriae tried, but when Jarell didn’t look round, she went to the dark elf instead. She knelt beside him, trailing a hand down his stomach before stroking the length of him. Perhaps there would be time for just a quick-
“Was there something you wanted, Oriae?” Jarell asked, although he didn’t stop what he was doing.
“I just wanted to tell you that everything is in order with the ORCS,” Oriae said, “and that we’ve ordered some more Really Gigantic Boulders for the top level. Until then, it’s just the kobolds, but-”
Jarell waved that away. “What did you really want, Oriae? And stop stroking the elf. I’ll be getting around to him next.”
Oriae pulled her hand away and the dark elf groaned. “It’s just… you’ve kidnapped a human princess and a dark-elf who was on the verge of becoming husband slave to one of their most important females. Is there a reason for all this? I mean, you have a plan, right?”
“Oh, I see.” Jarell stopped, and the human princess slumped contentedly back onto the bed. “Time for a quick question and answer session then.”
“Must we?” Oriae asked.
“There,” Jarell said, nodding to the foot of the bed.
Oriae sighed and bent over there to place her hands on the steel frame of the bed. That it put the dark elf’s head directly between her breasts was just a minor annoyance. Although he didn’t seem to be complaining.
“Now,” Jarell said as he moved behind her, “what is a dungeon for?”
“Well I don’t know,” Oriae snapped back, and then yelped as something struck her bottom. A crop, by the feel of it. “Wait, that was meant to be an actual question?”
“Yes,” Jarell confirmed, swatting her with it again. “Think of this as a… learning experience.”
Oriae shook her head. “Or maybe just a way to get your dark elf nice and hot before you fuck him up his… ow! That one was uncalled for.”
“So answer the question.”
“But I don’t know. It’s not like you ever teach me anything.”
“That’s hardly true. I taught you the thing with the two golf balls and the-”
“Anything about sorcery. Ow! All right. Dungeons are to keep things safe that you don’t want people to get to.”
Another stinging smack of the crop told her that wasn’t the answer.
“Well then, maybe you’re just looking for a place to store a large collection of unquestionably evil traps and minions, and you couldn’t find a nice lockup some… fuck, that one hurt.”
“Not as much as you want it to,” Jarell said. The worst part was that he was right. He was always, annoyingly, right. “Guess again.”
“You got lost in a maze somewhere as a kid and this is all just a psychological displacement thing?”
“Now you’re just being silly.” And that, apparently, meant that the next swat got to come up straight between her legs.
“Look, I don’t know!” Oriae squealed. “I don’t know why you want a whole big dungeon of things to keep people away!”
“But that’s just it.” Jarell was close behind her then, his hands pulling her close to him, the hardness of him behind her almost unbearable since it wasn’t actually in her. It was so unfair. “I don’t want them further away. I want them here.”
“But…” Oriae struggled to think as Jarell kneaded her breasts. “Why?”
“I forget sometimes that while we are both creatures of desire, we approach it differently. You just have the undeniable urge to sleep with everything around you.”
“I am not a slut!” Oriae said, although she still moaned when Jarell pushed aside the bottom strap of her ‘clothes’ and slid his hand between her legs.
“But you are part nymph. Which gives you natural skills in frolicking with woodland creatures, driving humans mad with your beauty, and of course being ready for sex at all times. Whereas as an incubus, I feed on the emotions of those around me. Pleasure, pain, the frustration of a nymph who isn’t going to get any just yet.”
He stepped back from her and Oriae whirled. “I hate you some days!”
Jarell smirked. “And I know exactly which ones.”
“So the whole dungeon is here… what, so that you can have people here in strange situations, getting into fights and having too much sex? The whole thing is just one big tourist trap?”
“With emphasis on the ‘trap’,” Jarell agreed. “Now, what do you think the humans and the dark elves will do when they find their rulers’ favourites stolen?”
Oriae thought while she adjusted the strap Jarell had moved. “Probably send a couple of nice big parties of adventurers to snatch them straight… oh.”
“Exactly. Now, be a good girl and go watch the crystal balls for them, would you? I would hate to miss their arrivals.”
“Couldn’t I just…” Oriae gestured to the dark elf and the princess. She didn’t mind which she got, or even if she just got Jarell. He wasn’t exactly a consolation prize.
“No. You have work to do.”
That was the thing about working for demons. Selfish, the lot of them.
“Did I mention that I hate you?”
Crystal had two main regrets as she trudged along the mountain path leading to the dungeon’s purported entrance. Well, three, if you counted the sheer weight of all the gear she was carrying for everyone else. Of the others, one was the perennial disappointment that came from all the good animal and colour combination names having been taken when she applied to the Guild of Buxom Adventuresses. In her opinion, a red haired adventuress with a penchant for thievery and besting men at swordplay should not have to put up with being called the Beige Weasel. Apparently though, another guild member merely being stripped and thrown in a seraglio didn’t officially count as retirement in the guild statutes, regardless of the fact that it seemed to be the way that all their careers ended, and you couldn’t use their name until they did retire. Frankly, she’d been lucky to get beige.
Her slightly more significant regret involved the pressure plate she’d stepped on at the crucial moment in her last burglary, leaving her dangling in a net for the guard. If it hadn’t been for that, she wouldn’t have found herself caged in the public jail, in just the boots, halter top and loincloth that formed the guild’s official uniform, waiting for her turn on the wheel of punishment. And since the dwarves had put in steam power for it, the paddles on the wheel had been moving at a speed that suggested Crystal wouldn’t have been able to sit down for a week. Certainly, the young man they’d been using it on had been screaming loud enough. It was just luck that Lord Antram started putting together his expedition and decided that any expedition of this importance had to have the full complement of heroic types. Including her.
The full complement in this case consisted of quite a motley crew as far as Crystal could see. There was Lord Antram, striding along in bright armour at the front of the party, looking quite handsome if you went for the floppy hair and lack of significant chins look. There was Lady N’ventual, the foremost magus of the kingdom, dark haired and lovely for a woman in her forties, in brightly coloured robes that hugged her body in ways that suggested more than mundane support for significant portions of her. There was a barbarian named Urik, whose oiled muscles and penchant for wearing nothing but furry underwear had been quite distracting until he started going on about how all women really wanted to be his slaves. Combined with the massive two handed sword he toted, Crystal suspected he was probably overcompensating for something.
“I think it’s so forward thinking of you, insisting on carrying everyone’s gear rather than expecting the men to do it for you.”
Not that Urik’s female counterpart was much better. Brunhilde had her blonde hair in pigtails, carried a battle axe in either hand, wore only the more sensible sorts of furry armour, and had quietly passed Crystal a pamphlet about how they’d all be much better off in a world without men. She’d also given her a frankly bone crushing shoulder massage by the campfire that night that had probably been meant to be slowly sensuous before suggesting that Crystal might like to share her sleeping bag. In the end, Crystal had ended up sharing a tent with their elven druidess, Tara, on the basis that while the dark haired young elf wore tie-dye clothing and insisted on talking to the birds as they passed, at least she hadn’t actually made any moves on Crystal so far.
“I’m carrying it because the rest of you won’t,” Crystal snapped back. “The nobles are too up themselves. You and Urik just argued about defined gender roles. Tara’s been nibbling some interesting mushrooms she found and now she’s talking to the rocks as well as the birds, so it’s me.”
“You could always give the stuff to the half-pints.”
Oh yes, and they’d acquired halflings. No one knew quite why. Apparently they just showed up for things like this, although one of them had said something about being on his way to a riddling contest.
“I suppose so,” Crystal said. “Although would you trust them to carry anything of importance through a remotely dangerous landscape?”
“I’m sure it will be fine.”
“Well, when you put it like that… It’s not like they’re going to drop it all in a volcano or something.”
“I should drop you in a volcano,” Xantha said, and not for the first time. “I should stake you out on one of the goddesses altars and offer you up as a sacrifice, I should-”
“Yes, Xantha, I know,” Eoline said with a sigh. “Your wedding went horribly wrong, as the priestess in charge of organising it, it’s all my fault, and now you want to kill me. Only save it until after we’ve got your slave-husband back, okay? And maybe… you could take the arm-binder off?”
As a priestess of the dark elves’ goddess of pleasure and pain, Eoline was pretty used to being tied up. The number of nights she’d spent with her slim, dark skinned form stuck to a web while worshippers… worshiped, was practically uncountable. Even so, approaching a dungeon without the use of her hands and her elbows pressed tight together didn’t seem entirely sensible.
“Oh, very well,” Xantha said, unbuckling it. “But if you say one word about the dress…”
“I wouldn’t dare, Xantha,” Eoline assured her. And she wouldn’t. Xantha was first among the under-city’s nobles, so if she wanted to delve into the tunnels of the underneath wearing a daringly cut wedding dress with all her weapons strung over it, that was her business.
They weren’t alone, of course. There were a couple of males, dressed in leather trousers and boots, bare chested, with short swords in either hand. Eoline wasn’t entirely sure if they were warriors or just the strippers from the wedding party. Probably the second one.
K’ana, Xantha’s matron of dishonour, was there too. She was only a step below Xantha in the realms of the dark elf nobility, and had come dressed appropriately, in tiers of leather that showed just enough of her exquisite flesh, and provided plenty of points from which to hang the many whips she carried. Illia, a slender witch from the tower of evil magics, stood beside her.
And finally…
“Gnasha, why are you here, exactly?” Eloine asked the Lamia ambassador. The half woman, half snake, slithered along behind them. Rumour had it that her kind could steal away a man’s wisdom with a touch. Eloine suspected it had more to do with the fact that her kind never bothered with clothing. Her hair matched the iridescence of her scales, although Eloine found it hard to look much beyond the frankly unnatural perkiness of her breasts. Well, she was a sex-priestess in a society entirely dominated by its females.
The lamia looked around. “I thought all this was just some elaborate dark-elf wedding ritual.” She produced a sign with the human letter L emblazoned on it. “I brought this for Xantha. I have heard of these ‘hen nights’.”
“Gnasha, we’re invading the dungeon of a madman who has kidnapped Xantha’s slave husband to be, in the hopes of getting him back in time to horribly torture and brand for life at the wedding. It’s probably going to be dangerous, deadly, and filled with the worst traps imaginable.”
Gnasha smiled. “Yes, it sounds like fun, doesn’t it? And here I was thinking that dark elf weddings would be boring.”
Oriae had considered ignoring Jarell completely, sloping off to her bedroom and masturbating herself into a stupor, but probably the demon would only choose this moment to start paying attention to things such as whether people obeyed his instructions.
So instead, she popped along to the control room, pausing only to go into the dungeon’s library and grab an improving book. Or at least a book of vile magic bound in something that was either the skin of virgins or Teflon. She wasn’t sure which. If she was going to have to sit there watching the crystal balls while nothing happened, she might as well get some reading in. It was probably the only way she was actually likely to learn some magic around here.
Idly, she flipped through the pages, pausing at one that promised a spell to dismiss demons. Oriae could all too easily imagine herself casting it at her so called employer.
“Zbthl, Conxst, Ith!”
Not that anything happened. A spell like this would require far more power than Oriae actually had. So instead she went into the control room and sat down in the great steel and silver throne that sat in the middle of the banks of crystal balls and magic mirrors, each tuned to the activities of the various parts of the dungeon. The ORCS down in their pit, the things twisting in their tunnels, the depressingly empty expanse of the torture chambers. Boring. Idly, Oriae found herself considering whether they could be retuned to see events in the brothel of a thousand pleasures in the Great City. A bank of levers sat in front of her, but Oriae ignored them for now, concentrating on her book.
She stopped as something flickered on one of the glasses. Something that shouldn’t have been there. Oriae gasped as she spotted the party of intruders, complete with hobbits. Thankfully, one of the levers was helpfully labelled in case of emergencies. Oriae pulled it.
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11.05.14
story continues in The Pit of Pleasure 2
o0o