Party time

	Lumira raised her pipes to her lips and played, played, played, and the impromptu party she had assembled in one of the many abandoned buildings in Conyberry rang with music.  Her revelers cavorted to the tune, sloshing the wine in the bottles one of them had brought.  The elf was three sheets to the wind, which surprised Lumira a bit, since they were supposed to be a little more resistant to fey magic.  The humans were feeling it, now.  This was a nice, small revel, not ten people, more her speed.  Her two would-be paramours were sitting on either side of her, now, caressing her at her own instruction, feeding her magic with their animal lust.  It was a little annoying, actually.  Older satyrs, and gifted ones like Xuriis, didn’t need the power boost to get the desired effect.  It was getting her madly horny, though.  Perhaps the lads would have what they wanted that night after all.

	Three of the human women were doling out the wine and singing throaty tavern songs to go with her piping, and one of the men was playing along with a simple drum.  Not poorly, either.  He had actual talent.  Lumira nodded as he pulled off a flawless seven-to-rattle into a seven-beat roll.  She amended her estimation: significant talent.  Perhaps he was a bard?

	The elf, a bowyer from the tools hanging from her discarded clothing, had the floor now, dancing beautifully.  Lumira felt her distasteful opinion of Primes melting away by the moment now.  The elf was moving perfectly, spinning on one heel over the dusty stone, arcing her back without losing an instant’s balance.  Her eyes were shut, Lumira noticed, and she had thrown her hair back where it could catch the breezes.  Lumira had settled her tuneless playing into a simple rhythm the singers could match, now, and the elf had the eye of every man and woman as she sprang and spun, lost to the primal moment.  She wasn’t the only one naked, now, either, beside Lumira who never wore clothes.

	Apparently Primes did know how to have a good time, Lumira thought mirthfully.  Why had she though this would be a drudgerous assignment?  She felt a pang of sudden guilt as she remembered Viri, sitting beaten and miserable in their inn chambers, alone and morose, and her playing faltered, but she resolutely picked it back up.  Maybe she could go get Viri once this song was over.  The poor thing needed a pick-me-up.

	The elf concluded her dance and threw her hands to the sky, posing dramatically.  The revelers cheered and tipped back their drinks.  Lumira gestured at the panting dancer for the benefit of her two would-be partners.  “Oh, at her, lads, make her evening perfect,” she chuckled.  They stood and walked over to the dancer, who watched them approach with dulled eyes and a heaving chest.  Both had unclothed by the time they had reached her, and she all but melted into their magic-fuelled haze of Dionysian desire.  They lowered her to the floor and set to their pleasure, fucking her madly to the cheers of the growing crowd of revelers.

	Lumira stretched as she rose, feeling the music pound in her mind.  Oh, Viri did need this, didn’t she, poor dear?  She strung her pipes around her neck and took off towards the inn as the other revelers resumed their party.  The faun needed a good time.

	Viri watched in jaw-hanging shock as she saw Lumira approach through the window of the inn.  She had started a revel?  In the middle of town?  Unguarded?  Viri reeled back from the window, dazed.  When Lumira came into the room, panting and beaming from ear to ear, Viri rounded on her.

	Lumira beamed at her acquaintance.  “Viri, my lamb, come to the party with… Viri?”  Her good cheer melted away when she saw the look of shock and hurt on Viri’s face.

	“Lumira… what in the black hells of Asmodeus are you doing?” Viri demanded.  Lumira staggered back from the emotional force in Viri’s voice.

	“V-Viri?  What’s wrong, little one?” Lumira managed.  Viri was seething.  Her face was a mask of shock and anger and yes, even fear.

	“LITTLE ONE?” Viri snapped.  “Have you taken all leave of your senses?”  She stomped past the door and slammed it shut, then turned on the bewildered satyress.  “You came here to protect me from monsters, I screwed it up by going outside alone… and then you started an orgy?”  Viri grabbed Lumira’s shoulders.  “What is wrong with you?  The village is under attack by demons and you started an orgy in the streets?”

	Lumira flushed in defensive anger.  “Viri, control yourself!  It’s just a bit of fun!”

	“We are guests in this place, Lumira!” Viri practically shouted.  “One of their guards is in a coma because of us, and you decide to lure them into a satyr’s revel?  Do you think even one of those people has been in one before?  When they wake up stinking of sex and wine, not even sure with whom they laid the night before, they’ll hang you for this in the morning!”

	Lumira felt her anger deflate as the coin dropped.  “Er…”

	Viri threw her hands up in the air.  “Linus was ready to cut Gillint in half when the Dance Lord drew him into a totally normal revel in the flock!  Amongst our family!  And he’s a knight and a Paladin, trained in resisting magic and finding solutions to problems!  And you just did it to a whole town!”  She wanted to tear her horns out in frustration.  “Arvandor preserve us, they call fauns single-minded,” she groaned through her palms.  “We might wake up in the noose!”

	Lumira felt a bead of sweat work its way down her neck.  “…I admit, I had not thought of that,” she muttered.  “What… should we do?”

	Viri glared at Lumira.  “Oh, I don’t know… leave?  Find a safe place out of town and hope none of the village women wake up unknowingly carrying a strange man’s children?  Leave a note for Linus that we had to abandon the town in the dead of night because my bodyguard was too bored to think straight?”

	Lumira scowled.  “Says the girl who got her tooth punched out because she was bored and hungry!”


	Slicce felt the heavy sweat of her running exertions fall away as she pumped cold water from the well over herself.  The little water tap was outside the village wall, but it was enough to wash her smell away as she infiltrated the human berg.  Gillint’s orders had been clear: recruit the runaways and come back home to see to their induction into the tempt.  Lumira first.  She was the vulnerable one, Gillint had said.  Slicce didn’t know what that meant, but whatever, the Dance Lord was always right.

	As she crept away from the pump and let her body drip dry, she slowed her approach.  She frowned as she heard a piping and trilling of skillful music.  The beat of a drum and the roaring of laughter and drunken song caught her ears too.

	A party?  A grand one, a downright satyric one.

	No way.  They couldn’t have been that stupid.

	Slicce placed a branch against the wall and sidled up it, awkwardly climbing with her hands and hooves.  There was simply no way that Lumira and Viridian had been dumb enough…

	She mounted the wall and looked around carefully.  Sure enough, in the burned-out shell of an abandoned building with its roof open to the sky, a pack of locals was throwing caution, sobriety, clothing, and hygiene to the winds in what could only have been a proper satyr revel.  Lumira stared in disbelief and growing glee as she watched.  A drummer, a powerful human man built like a bear, was walking around the party in a circle, singing his brawny throat out, with three naked human lasses behind him in a chorus.  Over a dozen humans and an elf were busily entangling themselves on the floor, looks of mad ecstasy on their faces.  A few more humans and a pair of half-elves stood at the edge of the building, drawn by the noise, pulling distantly at clothing strings, torn between instincts to move away and to join.

	There were no fey present.  Slicce stared at the crowd, but no, Lumira and Viri weren’t there.  Had Lumira actually left her magic spell in place and left?  She intended to return?

	What in the worlds had she been thinking?  This was almost too easy.  Slicce hurriedly climbed down the construction ladder on the inside of the wall and snuck up to the party, her flute in hand.


	Viri and Lumira glared daggers at each other.  The tension in the little inn room was so heavy that Viri could all but taste it.  “Did you… leave your magic in place?” she finally asked.

	Lumira looked away.  “Yes.  I thought you needed cheering up,” she said defensively.

	Viri forced herself to take a calming breath.  “Go.  Stop it.  Let these people go home.”

	“They can stop any time they want,” Lumira said, pointing accusatorily out the window.  “They can just get up and leave.”

	“Can they?” Viri asked.  Every single doubt, every single question, every single crisis of faith Linus’ words and accusations had ever inspired in her came crashing back to her at once, so intense she reeled inside.  “Or is our magic just too much?”

	“The elf… she liked it,” Lumira said lamely.

	“An elf fell for it too?” Viri asked.  “And so what hope do humans have?  Can they ever withstand something like you if they don’t know how?”

	Lumira bared her fangs, but Viri glared her down.  “Stop the spell, Lumira,” Viri said sharply.  “Before somebody gets hurt or pregnant or something.  Do it.”

	Slowly, resentfully, hating the world and the weak Primes she never liked at all, Lumira took her pipes back to her lips and played a few flat notes, the final bar of her magic song.

	Viri sighed.  “Thank you, Lumira.  That was… the right…” She trailed off as she looked out the window and saw the party continue unabated across the street.  “Er… did it work?”

	“Huh?” Lumira followed her sight.  The partygoers were still merrily singing, dancing, fucking, and generally cavorting.  “I stopped the spell,” she said uncertainly.  She quirked up a smile.  “I guess they really don’t get out much in this town.”

	Viri stared, confused.  “But…”

	“See?  Nothing to get up about!” Lumira said.  Relief colored her voice.  “Oh, they just needed a good time!  I stopped my spell and they kept right on going of their own accord!”

	Viri was dumbfounded.  “I… I don’t understand,” she said.  Her eyes widened as she saw a glint of silver in the crowd.  “Wait, what was…”  She turned, but Lumira was gone.