Part Two
Crystal tried to creep through the darkness of the dungeon, hugging the shadows, keeping out of sight. Now, if only her companions were doing the same. Lord Antram strode along as though it were a parade. Urik was complaining about what the dank conditions were going to do to his hair. The hobbits were trading riddles, although at least they had agreed to carry some of the gear.
The party came out into an open cavern. Crystal looked around, searching for danger. There was a door at the far end, and at Lord Antram’s pointed gesture, she set to work on it with lock picks and crowbar. Somewhere behind her, she heard a sound.
“What’s that?” Crystal asked.
“Focus on the door,” Lady N’ventual said.
“I am focusing,” Crystal insisted.
Lady N’ventual didn’t seem convinced. She made a gesture, and a glowing hand appeared out of nowhere.
“What’s… ow!” Crystal said, as the hand came down on her bottom.
“A little something to keep you focussed. Every time you look away from the door, it will-”
“Ow!”
“Exactly.”
Crystal was pretty sure that the whole point of her deal had been to get away from all this. Cursing, and occasionally yelping, she set to work.
“She’s right,” Brunhilde said. “There is something here with us.”
“Oh look!” Tara the druidess added. “Pretty woodland creatures!”
Crystal looked round, enduring the latest slap by biting her lip. Small shapes came out of the darkness. Somewhere halfway between lizard and dog in their features, with boggling eyes, and each holding what looked like a stick. A stick on which was mounted a feather.
“Those aren’t… ow!, woodland creatures. Those are… ow! Kobolds!”
“Well, what are they going to do to us?” Lord Antram said. “They’re tiny.”
Which might not have mattered, if there hadn’t been quite so many of them. They surged forward, and the halflings must still have been riddling, because they went down shrieking almost at once.
“Those aren’t just feathers!” Lady N’ventual said. “Those are plus one feathers of tickling! Thief, open the door!”
Thankfully, the spanking hand turned from Crystal to the kobolds, slapping one so hard it went flying. Lord Antram waded forward with his sword, and in his full armour he was effectively immune to the touches of the feathers. Brunhilde’s sensible furs seemed to achieve the same effect. Tara and Urik weren’t so lucky. Both fell, screaming with giggles.
“The door, thief!”
Crystal put her mind to the task of opening the door, working as fast as she ever had. She heard the lock click even as a kobold rushed forward, lashing out with its feather spear. It barely, barely brushed her skin.
It felt like a thousand feathers all at once. Tickling her underarms, tickling her toes, tickling every intimate part of her all at once, so that even as she screamed with forced laughter, she could feel herself starting to burn with more than that. She could-
Lady N’ventual’s magic hand slapped the kobold away, and then came down sharply on Crystal’s bottom once more. Crystal gasped as the pain brought her back to herself, just in time for the older woman to bundle her through the door. Lord Antram was helping Tara, while Brunhilde had picked up Urik, throwing him over her shoulder in the traditional fashion to carry him. The kobolds seemed to be caught up in tormenting the halflings with their feathers, only noticing the fleeing big people as they reached the door. Lord Antram slammed it shut, barring it, just as the sound of small bodies hitting it came to them.
“Well,” Crystal said. “That’s our equipment gone.”
She looked around the group. Most of them were looking back. Glaring, at least.
“What? I couldn’t carry everything.”
Eloine followed Xantha through the semi dark tunnels, lit only by the kind of glowing fungi that always seemed to show up in these places. Eventually, it lit up a watery cavern, where limpid pools glowed with reflected light.
“We should be careful,” she suggested. “There are probably creatures in those.”
“You’re right. It could be lethal,” Xantha said. “Males, you go first.”
The two male dark elves moved forward with obvious trepidation. Yet as they kept going without being immediately killed by something, they seemed to gain in confidence. Then the singing started.
“My Bonny lies over the ocean. My Bonny lies-”
It wasn’t very good singing, to Eloine’s ears. Somewhere between a karaoke night at the average dwarven tavern and the shrieks of the tormented in the pain pits of the temple back home. Yet the two males didn’t seem to see things that way. They stood there like it was the most beautiful sound in the world, looking over towards the rocks in one of the pools where a trio of luscious creatures had surfaced. Only their upper bodies were visible there, but those were female, and abundantly so, with liquid blue skin, clear blue eyes, and hair that… well, generally kept with the colour scheme. Although since they were naked Eloine seriously doubted that the males’ eyes had climbed that high. Hers barely had.
“Sirens!” Illia the witch yelled, as if they needed the clue. K’ana and Xantha immediately stopped their ears.
“How dangerous are they?” Eloine asked.
“They lure men down into the water with their singing and promises of pleasure, and then the men quickly regret it.”
“Why?”
Eloine got her answer a second later. As the sirens continued their unearthly song, the two males threw themselves into the pool. The three sirens closed on them, taking away their swords, and apparently the rest of their clothing, because when they threw them up onto the rock face down, they were nude. When the sirens joined them, Eloine saw the part that had been hidden under the water. Three monstrous cocks, glistening and hard. One of the males cried out as a siren shoved her way into him.
“Hey!” Eloine yelled. “I paid good money for those strippers!”
One of the sirens turned to her and smiled. “Two of them, three of us. Want to join in, beautiful?”
She started to sing then. An incredible, beautiful tune that sounded like it might originally have been a version of Oh Danny Boy. Eloine didn’t care. All that she knew was that in that moment she was as aroused as she had ever been, totally wet and ready. She wanted one of those thick shafts in her. Wanted to lick it, to caress it. To feel it pounding between her legs until she-
“Oh no you don’t,” Gnasha said, and the lamia’s tail coil wrapped bruisingly around Eloine, pinning her arms to her sides and lifting her off the floor. “Xantha, do you want me to go get those others back for you? It’s your wedding, after all.”
“Oh, leave them,” Xantha said as the second male’s moans of protesting pleasure joined the first’s. “They’re only males.”
Pulling the lever hadn’t had quite the effect that Oriae had hoped for. She had gripped it and hauled on it, only to find the chair she sat in moving beneath her. When it started, Oriae had assumed that it was perfectly normal; the chair moving into a better position to watch the action, or tell people to make things so, or something. So of course she’d sat back.
That had been when the metal bands had sprung from its framework. One had clamped tightly around her throat, not quite tight enough to choke her, but definitely tight enough that Oriae wasn’t able to pull away from the back of the chair. Two more had pinned her wrists to the chair arms, while a final pair had clamped her legs, pulling them wide apart.
“Jarell. Jarell!” Thankfully, Oriae knew enough about magic to get him on one of the magic mirrors. He wasn’t in bed, for once, although Oriae could definitely see a couple of legs poking into the shot that looked like they might belong to captured and exhausted royalty.
“Did you want something, Oriae?”
“Your stupid control room has attacked me. It’s got me locked in the control chair.”
“You must have pulled the emergency lever.”
“You knew this would happen?” Oriae shot back.
“Well, the idea is to make sure that you keep your eyes on what’s happening and don’t run off. It’s vital to monitor these things closely, you know.”
“Jarell, just get me out of all this.” Oriae tried to make it clear just how horrible her revenge would be if he didn’t, without ever quite drawing attention to the fact that she wasn’t currently in a position for any sort of revenge.
“I’ll be right over.”
In fact, the incubus was another ten minutes, during which Oriae squirmed futilely against her bonds. All she could do was stare up at the crystals and mirrors, watching as halflings found themselves tickled and dark elf males got what was coming to them. And in them. And on them. Actually, Oriae might pay a visit to the sirens once all this was-
“So, are you paying attention?” Jarell asked, showing up.
“Jarell, get me out of this!”
“Mmm, it’s a thought.” The incubus set to work, and it was only as the first leather straps started to come free that Oriae understood what he was doing.
“I didn’t mean out of my clothes! I meant out of the chair!”
Since incubi had a lot of practise, they were generally quite good at undressing people. In just seconds, Oriae was entirely naked. Which shouldn’t have made a difference considering how little she’d been wearing, but somehow it did.
“Jarell, the chair…”
“Sorry, sweetheart, but that won’t disengage until the emergency is over. It’s an automated system I had some imps who owed me a favour put in. You know what it’s like when all your minions run for the hills at the first sign of trouble.”
And, fair enough, a glance at the screens suggested most of the ORCS members were doing just that, having just voted for extra time off.
“The best I can do,” Jarell said, trailing a finger along the flesh of Oriae’s stomach, “is make things a bit more pleasant for you.”
“Oh, yes,” Oriae murmured, mostly because she was thinking of all the other places that finger could go. She pushed her hips forward to welcome it.
“Oh, not me,” Jarell said. “I’ve got royalty to fuck, an incursion to thwart, and so on. But I can do this.” He pulled a few more levers. There was a whirring from somewhere in the chair. “Think of it as a fully… integrated experience. Enjoy. Although not so much you can’t concentrate, of course.”
He left, and it was only when the feather appeared from a slot in the chair arm that Oriae started to wonder what he’d meant by a ‘fully integrated experience’.
Crystal ducked down behind the big rock that was serving as cover for the party, although since it was quite a big party and only a moderately big rock, that meant getting a lot closer to Urik than she really wanted.
“Mmm, I knew you would come around,” the barbarian said.
“Shut up Urik,” Lord Antram snapped. He didn’t sound happy. Maybe it was the fact that he was currently bare chested, his breastplate gone. Or maybe it was the fact that he’d just lost the party’s mage. Either way, Crystal wouldn’t have wanted to cross him in that moment.
“You, thief. Get out there and deal with this trap.”
Oh, great.
It hadn’t seemed like anything at the start. A long tunnel strewn with boulders, something shining at the other end. As they had filed closer, it had become obvious that it was a staff sticking up out of the ground, a crystal shining on the top. So of course, Lady N’ventual had taken the lead. Possibly magical staves were her department, after all. Which was why the first blast of light from the staff had hit her.
Her robes had vanished in a flash, revealing some surprisingly racy undergarments for a woman her age. For a moment, they had all stood there uncomprehending, until another flash had come, this one baring quite voluptuous breasts to the world.
“Teleporter trap!” Lady N’ventual had called out. “Run!”
She had no sooner got out the last word than another blast hit her, and in an instant she was naked, so that Crystal had to remind herself not to stare but to run. More flashes of light came from the crystal, and she ducked, hoping that none would hit her.
She had seen the moment when the last ray had struck Lady N’ventual. The magus had been running with her formidable carriage bouncing up and down quite alarmingly when it struck her, briefly outlining her total nudity against a backdrop of the light. Then she’d vanished, and it was only the fact that the magus had identified it as a teleporter ray that made Crystal think she hadn’t been disintegrated. Then she’d been too busy dodging to worry.
Which was how they’d all ended up crammed behind a rock in various states of undress. Lord Antram had lost his breastplate and various other parts of his armour, making him look like something out of the Knight Fanciers’ Monthly calendar. Not that Crystal ever looked at such things. Brunhilde had lost her sensible leather jerkin, leaving her look slightly more the way Crystal imagined a barbarian woman looking, while Tara’s robe was gone to reveal some surprisingly pretty pink underwear, complete with small bows and a few hand woven tie dye shawls. Thankfully, all Urik seemed to have lost were his furry boots.
“Why me?” Crystal asked Lord Antram. “It’s not like I actually know anything about magic.”
“But you do know about traps, and this is definitely a trap. Now get on with it, or you’ll be going on the punishment wheel for not helping when we get back.”
“Oh, all right. Can I at least borrow a few extra layers?”
Not that there were that many extra layers to go around. Even with everyone else standing in just their underwear, Crystal still found herself wearing just her own traditional equipment, a couple of pairs of tough leather trousers donated by Brunhilde and Lord Antram, a few shawls, and some leather straps donated by Urik solely because everyone had stared until he’d contributed something. It barely felt like enough. Still, with the others huddling together behind the rock, and Brunhilde complaining quite loudly about which parts were huddling against which, Crystal knew she had to set off.
“Here goes nothing.”
She flung herself up from behind the boulder, sprinting for the next patch of cover. Or at least moving as fast as she could in all the extra layers of clothes. It was the one downside to the plan, really. A beam of light flashed out, and in an instant, Crystal found herself a pair of trousers lighter.
“Hey!” Brunhilde yelled. “Do you know how much trouble I had persuading the leather merchant that a female barbarian would want more than a loincloth?”
Crystal kept running, throwing herself into another patch of cover just ahead of the next beam of light. She took a breath, got into a sprinter’s crouch, and eyed the next rock. She came out in a roll, so that the first beam of light flashed over her head. The next one caught her cleanly though.
“That shawl was hand woven!” Tara complained, ducking down just in time to avoid her own blast of light.
Crystal was already sprinting for the next rock, moving closer to the staff step by step. The trouble was, however fast she moved, the magical beam of light seemed to be faster, teleporting away her coverings piece by embarrassing piece. She just had to hope that she would get to the thing before she ran out of clothes. She really didn’t want to find out what had happened to Lady N’ventual.
Flash! Her second pair of trousers was gone. Flash! There went the last of the armour Lord Antram had loaned her. Crystal’s boots went next, then the elaborate straps from Urik. She was starting to worry now. She just had her underwear, and while that might be suitable for any meeting of the Buxom Adventuresses Guild, it wasn’t much when she still had a good fifteen feet to cover.
“One last rush,” Crystal told herself, and sprinted from her final piece of cover, straight at the staff. The first flash of light came immediately, and Crystal tried to resist the urge to cross her arms over her chest as her halter top disappeared. She just had to focus on the crystal. Ten feet, five. Another flash, and she was as naked as after the last time she’d gone out drinking with the girls following an adventure.
Her hand smacked into the staff, knocking it from its mount and sending it spinning to the floor. Crystal cowered back then, because it occurred to her that knocking it over wouldn’t necessarily stop anything. The next flash might come any moment, send her who knew where…
The crystal sputtered, and then went dark.
“I think it’s safe to come out now,” she called back to the others.
“We can see that,” Lord Antram said, walking over. He didn’t look happy. “That was my best armour.”
“But it was worth it, wasn’t it? To get past the trap?”
Brunhilde looked her up and down. She at least did seem happy. “Mmm. Definitely worth it.”
Urik seemed to concur. “To find out that you’re a natural redhead? Definitely.”
Oriae moaned as the feather kept up its diabolical work, bucking against the bonds that held her. They wouldn’t give, keeping her pinned in place while before her the mirrors and crystals showed everything that was going on in the dungeon. As her eyes flicked over to the spot where the sirens were still having fun with their captives, something pushed at her rear, slowly but insistently forcing its way inside her as the feather withdrew and then pulsing with what was probably arcane power. Although it felt better than any wizard Oriae had ever met.
“Oh, gods, please…”
Her attention flicked to the next screen, where the full form of the wizard who had gotten herself zapped by the teleporter had appeared in one of Jarell’s play rooms, spread eagled between two pillars while small jolts of lightning jumped through her.
“Arrgh!” Oriae cried as her own jolt jumped across her skin. Actually, it didn’t feel quite as bad as she’d thought it might. Oh, it hurt, but it seemed surprisingly well directed, jumping first to her breasts, then across the skin of her belly, then down…
“Oh! Jarell, you bastard!”
The worst part was that no one sensation ever lasted quite long enough. Maybe it was an inbuilt option to keep the watcher’s attention on what he or she was meant to be doing, or maybe it was just a coincidence, but it seemed like whenever Oriae started to relax into the sensations, whenever it seemed like she might finally be able to just cum, the sensations changed again. It really wasn’t fair, but the only thing she could do was sit there and hope that whatever happened next would get her off…
“This is stupid,” Xantha said, and Eoline had to stop herself from flinching back. Xantha had a tendency to take her bad moods out on whoever was close. “We are not playing your game.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Gnaasha said. She was standing behind Eoline. It had taken most of the last few corridors to persuade her to let go of the hold she had around Eoline’s body. Even tickling hadn’t worked. “I like games.”
“No,” Xantha insisted.
“Then you don’t go through the door,” the small, gnomish figure before them said. He was gnomish primarily because he was a gnome. Approximately two feet tall, with a beard almost as long as he was, and a robe that trailed on the floor. He was carrying a long scroll.
The door he guarded was an unusual one, seeming to consist of a large tube of glass occupying the space of the doorway. There was just enough space inside for one person to enter it at a time.
“So let me get this straight,” Eoline said, trying to defuse the situation. “We each have to go into your tube thing, and we only get to pass through once we answer one of your questions correctly?”
“That is correct. And for each incorrect answer, there are penalties, of course.”
“And we can’t get out again once we’re in?” Illia the witch asked.
“Oh, you can get out if you only ask,” the gnome said, although there was something about his smile that Eoline didn’t like.
Apparently, K’ana didn’t like it much either. The dark elf noblewoman drew a whip with either hand, letting them snake out along the floor.
“Enough of this nonsense. Let us through or suffer. Or better yet, give me the answers to those questions.”
“I must warn you, that attempting to cheat like that will not go-”
“Oh, be quiet.” K’ana’s first whip lashed out, wrapping around the gnome to pin his arms to his side. Her second whipped out in the direction of the scroll, snapping it back into her hand…
…and as she touched it, she yelped, dropping both the scroll and her weapons. The glass tube opened, and for a moment there was a sucking sound. K’ana fought to keep her feet, but it didn’t last for more than a moment before she was pulled inside it.
“None but I may touch the scroll,” the gnome said, “and only answering the question master’s question may open the door… unless you request the alternative exit. Now, for your first question-”
“Let me out!” K’ana said, banging on the glass with her fists.
“Are you certain, contestant?”
“Let me out, you horrible little-”
“Very well,” the gnome said with a smile. “You asked for it.”
He waved a hand, and K’ana had an instant to look horrified as the floor slid away beneath her.
“Wait! This wasn’t what we-”
She slid down the glass, then quickly disappeared from sight with a scream. The floor of the tube slid back into place.
“So,” the gnome said, rubbing his small hands with glee, “who’s next?”
No one stepped forward.
“Come on, come on. You don’t get through the door unless you go in.”
Gnaasha slid forward. “I’ll do it. I’ve always liked quizzes.”
Xantha shook her head. “No, Gnaasha. You’re a highly respected diplomat from one of our key allies. We can’t possibly have you doing something so obviously dangerous. Eoline, get in the tube.”
Eoline swallowed. “Xantha, are you… ow!”
Trust K’ana to have left her whips behind.
“Oh, all right,” Eoline said. She walked over to the tube, which opened to let her in.
“Remember,” the gnome said, “you can ask to leave by the alternative exit at any time.”
And disappear to who knew what fate. Eoline shook her head.
“Very well, your first question: if there are two dwarves digging a hole at a rate of x squared…”
Eoline did her best to follow it. Unfortunately, she’d never been much good at any mathematics more complex than those needed to ensure every priestess on an altar got a good number of worshippers at the holy orgies.
“Um… seven?”
“Wrong! Penalty!”
Fine dust came down from the ceiling. For a moment, Eoline thought that it might be some kind of acid, or poison, or magically pain inducing drug, but it was worse than that… far worse.
“I paid a fortune for these robes!” she screamed as the cloth eating powder did its job, dissolving not just her formal robes, but every scrap of cloth beneath. In seconds, she was standing there, doing her best to cover herself with her arms and not really succeeding. After all, dark elves who could cover themselves with one hand didn’t generally get selected as priestesses.
“Question two,” the gnome said, “in 134 Before Last Battle, King Redmond…”
“History now?” Eoline demanded. “And not even dark elf history. Actually, that’s it! This question is culturally insensitive, because it’s not about anyone exactly the same as me in every way and therefore I don’t care about them. So there.”
“Wrong answer,” the gnome said. “Penalty.”
Where the cords came from, Eoline didn’t know, only that they did come, wrapping around her wrists and ankles, pulling her up into a straight line within the tube.
“Next question…”
Eoline didn’t get that one right either. Or the next. The first one set a short switch spinning around the inside of the tube, just long enough that it caught her sharply across the buttocks with every spin. The second one brought a spray of water, directed with surprising accuracy and force up between her legs.
“Oh, goddess! This isn’t…”
“Do you wish to exit the tube?” the gnome asked.
Eoline almost said yes, but she was a priestess, damn it, and she wasn’t going to let a little discomfort, or even quite a lot of discomfort, stop her.
“Ow! No, that’s… ow!”
Outside, she could see the others looking on. Xantha seemed to be enjoying the spectacle, although it might just have been the fact that she’d forced Illia the mage down somewhere beneath her wedding dress on her knees. It was nice to know that the sight of Eoline in pain was turning her on so much. Gnaasha, surprisingly, seemed a little more worried.
“Are all the questions going to be like this?” she asked.
“The question standards are determined by an independent assessor,” the gnome assured her.
“Really? Who?”
“Well, me, obviously.”
“Ah, I see. Well then, before you ask the next one, there’s one thing I feel we should try…”
Gnaasha leaned down and kissed him. It seemed like a strange thing for the lamia to do. Was she turned on by beards, or something? And if so, could Eoline buy a false one somewhere? Although by that point Eoline was a little too distracted by her own predicament to think about that.
“Oh fuck! Oh…”
It was only as she came down from the sudden orgasm that she remembered what the kisses of lamias did to men. Presumably even short, bearded ones.
“So,” Gnaasha said. “Next question?”
“Question?” the gnome said, looking a little dazed. “Oh, duh… what’s this?”
“It’s your hand!” Eoline squeaked out as the cane came around for another pass.
The tube lit up with green light, and in an instant the bonds fell away, letting Eoline collapse to the floor. She scrambled for the door that had opened up in the far side of the tube and lay panting on the far side of it.
The others were making their way through. Illia came out from under Xantha’s dress long enough to correctly identify a rock. Xantha got a question about whether there were any butterflies in the cavern. Gnaasha reluctantly parted from her new pet by explaining that yes, it was a door, slithering almost straight through.
“You could have done that before I got naked and took a beating,” Eoline pointed out.
Gnaasha smiled down at her. “Well, I suppose I could. Xantha dear, are you sure you don’t want me to hold her? She seems to be determined to get herself into trouble.”
“No,” Xantha said. “It’s all right. I still have the arm binder.”
You can also leave feedback & comments for this story on the Plaza Forum
16.06.14
story continues in The Pit of Pleasure 3
o0o