Slaad Gifts

The sound of hard flesh striking softer flesh was loud enough to induce laughter from across the room.  Mercurial fell, wincing as she slammed her elbow into the floor, the further pain not detracting from the head jarring slap she had received from the Grondy.  He walked over and grabbed her by the back of her neck, his hand large enough to force her chin to her chest as he hauled her to her hands.

"I tell ye t' go down t' th' deeps, man-bait, and ye'd best do as told."  He pulled her head back, and she gasped, eyes watering from the ache of muscles pulled taut.  "Go down t' th' deeps, an' get prophesied by th' damned frogman.  Ask as t' how fares th' old 'un in her fetchin' of warbringers."  He hot breath oozed into her ear unpleasantly, much as it had only a short time before he'd gone to see the Maw.

A couple of urgent grunts was all she could manage with her neck strained to near breaking; it was apparently enough for the Grondy, for he immediately dropped her to the stone floor.  There was more laughter, though mostly from those who enjoyed the Grondy's appreciation.  Those who were not in his good favor knew Mercurial could be a source of the blackest luck, and she did have his unwanted affections.

Their one sided affair seemed to amuse the deadly eye tyrant that ruled the guild.

Picking herself up, the delicate half-elf carefully dusted herself off.  There was no blood this time, so she permitted herself the Least Word of Succor to ease the pain and mend the bruising that could have colored her face.  Would have, rather; she was certain that the half-orc held a hefty portion of ogre blood in his veins.

Straightening her tunic and breeches, the apparently human girl walked slowly to the doorway that led to the stairwell.  It was marked with an old traveling rune that meant 'poison water'; it was partly ruse in that it did lead deeper into the sewer system, but it was also the name of the keeper of prisoners.  She paused at the door, looking through it.  The chuckles and soft whippoorwill calls of the other thieves and beggars made her grit her teeth and quickly open the door and step through.

It was not fear that made her hesitate, though the birdcalls - the call of a thief in trouble - suggested otherwise.  She walked down the spiral stairs, her heart fluttering unhappily in her breast as she considered her goal.  No, it was not fear, at least not fear of the Prophet.

The scent of molasses and oats wafted up from the depths, and she smiled faintly.  While not particularly hungry, for the Grondy was as free with his food as with his abuse, the smell brought back good memories.  Her great-thrice-over grandmother and the hell-bent warrior Savatiri had been generous and molasses had been a new experience in the hands of the warrior.

A soft tap at the wrought iron grate that stood at the foot of the stairs brought an unhappy grunt from Poison Water, who stumped his way to the heavy grate as Mercurial leaned against it, looking at his unhappy demense.  The cells were occupied by a strange motley of prisoners.  There were those guilders who had displeased the Grondy or his lieutenants, those who had infringed on the guild's work and territory, those the guild were planning to ransom, and one or two who were under protective custody of certain influential nobles.  The Prophet was not here, however.

"You treat your charges better than you treat any of your fellows, Mhenirri," Mercurial murmured to the old crippled priest.  He grunted and drew out the heavy ring of keys as she waited patiently.  Her eyes traveled along his twisted, gnarled hands and swollen, red knuckles.  The tattered robes the old man wore his much of his twisted, wrecked body.  The eyes that gazed from his weathered face burned hot, and lively.  "Someone might think you have a heart in that tortured mess you call a body, Mhen."

"Keep calling me that and I'll show you how black the heart in this dry twist of a frame is, songbird," he rasped.  He finally managed to fit key to lock, and the grate swung wide to admit the delicate girl into his domain.  "I'm as sweet as a viper trod on too often, you liar."  He turned to the large pot of sweetened gruel, however, and wrestled a large scoop of cinnamon into the slowly bubbling paste.

"Ah, if I desired the love of a man, you alone here of all would I seek a taste of, Mhenirri!  None other who walks these shadowed halls could be half the man you are, save the women who are more men than the Grondy is."  the old man grunted, though he seemed mollified by her outrageous flattery.

"Sending you to talk to our special one, then, is he?" the old man asked shrewdly, his bright eyes flicking to her face as she flushed.  "Aye, I see that he is.  Dark the day he discovered your talent for tongues and voices, songbird."  He clucked disapprovingly and shook his head, taking the small clay jug from his old rope belt and working the cork free with some effort.  He murmured a word of thanks to his god, and took a swallow.  His eyes shifted to her and he lifted the jug.  "Partake in the name of friendship, if not in the name of freedom from your torments, songbird," he suggested.

Mercurial took the jug by the neck, careful not to let her fingers brush the arthritic and broken joints of the old man's fingers.  "With thanks, dear Mhen," she replied, still blushing from his mild assessment of her purpose.  She took several swallows of the mulled wine, spicy and dry.  She offered the jar back to him, and he took it carefully, corking it and setting it once more in his belt.  "That is a vintage far beyond any price I could afford on the pittances the Grondy gives me," she murmured appreciatively as he haltingly walked her to the only actual door in the room.

"Aye, but it is all I take in payment, aside from food and shelter.  Well, there is the dark sugar and the meat, but it is a small enough price to pay for the work I manage."  His efforts on behalf of the prisoners seemed to confuse the Grondy, but he allowed the broken old guildsman to feed and treat the prisoners as kindly as he would.  Poison Water would not protect the prisoners from torture or rape by the guild's black hands, but he protected those the guild wanted safe with power and strength belied by this tortured body.

The door they approached had a single arrow set on it, stylized and wrought of warm gold; the old man turned to t he delicate woman-child, and tapped the small table next to the door.  "All the blades, little liar."  With an over dramatic and unmeant sigh of disgust, Mercurial divested herself of the variety of weapons she carried.  Many of them were little more than glorified darts and slender knives easily hidden.  Others were garrotes and strangely weighted lines of heavy cord.

"Now, you wouldn't be thinking of becoming a black hand, would you, little songbird?"  His disapproval was tinged with worry and she shook her head with a tiny smile.

"No, I am far more money as a doxy and a plunderer of the arcanist's homes, Mhen."  She pulled the last blade, a wicked piece of work that she'd taken from one of the black hands.  She flipped it end over end, catching it by the handle again rather than risk a painful cut and subsequent poisoning.  "They have pretty toys and expensive tastes, but it is a road I have no liking for.  Their gods are greedy."  She considered suggesting to the chaos worshipping warrior Savatiri that she might like the work, but decided she didn't hate the black hands that much.

The relief in the old jailer's voice was much more obvious than in his expression, which was as sour as ever.  "That's all right then.  Be careful as ever in there, girl.  That beast is a thing not easily managed even by the great casters of magic.  I'd not like to see you undone by such a thing as that."  Mercurial smiled, though it took some effort not to laugh at the old man's admonition.

"No, Mhenirri, I will not let it get the better of me.  Aside from which, this is as much anathema to me as to...."   She hesitated, her mind scrambling over the words that wanted to slip out, before she culled the word she needed out of the mess of syllables and words that bulged against her tongue.  "...as to the dwellers in the gulfs of madness."  Her cheeks were pink and the old man gave her a look that was more unnerving than the Maw's many gazes when she'd been forced to speak to it.

"As well as may be then," he said, and carefully struggled to lift the heavy icon of the gods of order from from the door.  Mercurial made no move to help him; the object was holy in the way of such things and would blast her as readily as it would blast the thing that it contained.  She would probably survive it, mortal as she was, but the thing on the other side of the door would not.  "Give seven at the spaces of a beating heart and I'll let you out."

He held it as best he could, his hands unable to grip the heavy object.  Poison Water held it with the reverence it deserved, since his god was one of those who stood on that side of the walls of creation.  Mercurial opened the door slowly and slipped through, giving the aged man a final quick smile.  She closed the door and drew back, watching the edges of the door.  A moment later the edges glowed with a soft golden glow and she shuddered.  A final deep breath and she turned to face the Prophet, her heart speeding its pace within her warm breast.

The room was dully lit by a light that was formed of the shifting colors of a rainbow blurred into pearlescent silvery-white.  The weird glow stemmed from a large gemstone that rested upon nothing more than air above a pit of sludge-laden black water - not sewage, but something which looked less pleasant yet carried no scent.  She walked around the hovering gemstone to approach the prison containing the Prophet, where she stopped a good foot from its edge.

A large double circle of runes crafted in gold and silver lay at the feet of the harbinger.  Between the circles lay gemstones set into the floor, seven of them in the seven colors of power, each separated by a single golden arrow pointing into the center of the circles.  Inside the inner circle a series of polygons were carved into the polished white marble of set into the floor, a square slab exactly fifteen feet across.  Nearly bisecting the inner circle - undoubtedly calculated to perfection by its crafter - a thick wall of black marble stood eleven feet high.  Four thick spikes of steel were set into the stone wall, in a perfect square.

The Prophet was nailed to the large slab of black marble by the iron spikes, each one piercing a limb.  There was no blood streaming from the arms and legs of the trapped seer, but that was largely because the creature had long since healed.  Mercurial swallowed her heart as it thrummed heavily, her unnatural desire for the creature that was imprisoned here a heady drug.  And why shouldn't she be attracted to such a thing?

The beast's head was large and wide, a mouth that could swallow a small child with ease that opened to allow a thick tongue of vibrant pink to slide over tiny teeth as sharp as arrowheads and thin lips.  The shimmering eyes of peacock copper blinked, the translucent, patterned membrane sliding over them and back, never quite obscuring the huge pupils of asymmetric black ink droplets massed together - mostly - that rested on Mercurial.  The barrel-chested beast's shoulders and hips were pronounced, while its limbs were long, a strange mixture of heavy, obvious bones and thick, wiry muscle.  Huge talons of butter yellow horn extended from its padded fingers - three massive ones the one hand, and five on the other, smaller and finer than its opposite's.  Its hide was loose on its body, wide dew-flaps extending from its elbows to its knees and slightly tapered, as though some mischievous sugar glider had been in on the thing's conception.  The pebbled, reptilian hide seemed to be made up of countless tiny emeralds of blue-green on deep green leather, gemstone scales nearly ocean colored on its back fading to a near chartreuse on its belly, while shading to aqua along its limbs and mouth.

Mercurial doubted others would see it as she did.

The huge eyes twitched independently of one another, though one or the other was always focused on the tiny humanoid figure standing on the edge of its prison.  After a silence that was long enough noise emerged from its throat, boiling up over lips that parted only slowly.  The noise could have been a soft tintinnabulation of hisses and guttural noises, like the stirring of a dozen or more frogs and snakes in a large pot.  Mercurial heard the noise as a voice, and the voice said, "Dream...."

In atonal notes of varied registers, she sang to the creature, a song that would have caused a heart attack in any bard who had ever composed.  "You will give sight and sound afar for I ask it of you or not."  The Lingua Anarchic came to her as easily as all of the other tongues her mother and her kin had spoken.  Less a language and more an expression of desires and wishes, the tongue was alien and broken, an ever-changing morass of thoughts and emotions.

The harbinger spoke it beautifully.

Eyes of blue, green, and violent hued metal gazed down at the young elfling, and the slaad spoke in the violent tongue of its kind.  "Of what should my wandering dream-eyes drown in visions far and away in time and place seek to enfold dream?"  The harbinger was torn, unsure of the full meaning of the words.  She could speak with the slaad, but that did not mean she understood what it said consistently.

It interrupted her with the hissing, boiling, croaking noise.  "Of two things your mind wishes it dreamed and knows.  One for those nightmares who keep me which you desire because it is meant for you to suffer for failing to return with hands full of sand and air.  One for the dream that is you of hope and wishes not meant for others to sip out of dying hands decaying and growing spitting wildflowers and scorpions."  The hair stood up on the back of the slight faux-human's neck as the monstrous, beautiful creature gazed down at her.  "The one not second I give for the sake of the cold bloodless gods who tie this place in fear and pain duress commanded it be so done."

Faint relief eased the thrumming fear that  Mercurial felt; the creature was bound by the powers and forces that had been crafted around it to prophecy or scry when commanded.  For a moment she had been afraid that for some perverse reason it would withhold one prophecy in return for telling her future.

"The dream which is you must provide for me some surcease in torment and agonies of dreams not you dream and world this and other hard surfaces and jagged tearing edges.  Speaking of wishes that dreaming you think of seeking out of eyes mine for not now not been but will be dream that is you will give generously or not."  Trying to wrap her mind around the jumbled meanings of the slaad language, Mercurial was surprised when it spoke in common.  "You dream give me pay for words of far see."

It took no time at all for her to decide.  She knelt at the circle and studied it carefully, looking at each rune and considering the positions and values of the stones.  The young harbinger bard was considering something very dangerous, and it would not do to make her masters suspicious.  It was a simple, yet potent design; a Circle of Protection from Chaos, centered, and a Dimensional Barrier, also centered.  The Dimensional Barrier was beyond her capability, but the circle was only as strong as its base components.  The secondary bindings on the slab and the nails would keep the slaad trapped, even if she damaged the Circle.

Glancing at the door, unnecessarily, the elfin girl slipped the butterfly shaped buckle she wore from her belt, keeping the paste gem in the center pressed firmly.  The belt buckle pulled partly free, revealing a small wide-bladed knife.  The slaad looked on with interest as she knelt next to the diamond that was off to one side.

Diamonds were one of the hardest gemstones, it was true.  But a knowledgeable gem-cutter - or one who simply knew their way about a gem - knew that such stones were often brittle in certain ways.  The reason such gems could only be cut into certain shapes was because cutting along certain lines fractured the gem, and could even shatter it.  So with great care she took the edge of her knife and held it against the stone in a very specific spot.  Then she gave it one quick, sharp tap.

Because she was close, she could see the line that appeared through the stone, a short, distinct black fracture line in the myriad of reflections within the diamond.  Because it was set into the floor itself, the stone could not be removed, but the damage was done: a perfectly designed circle, orderly and controlled, now had a single minute flaw in it.  The slaad did not struggle to free itself; it knew better than to try given the other spells and enchantments.  Its eyes watched Mercurial with new respect as she rose, however.

In her bright, beautiful voice thick with discord and seemingly random rhythm Mercurial demanded, "To this dream speak of eyes which see of far and away and not now but not then where the undying life spark gathers to it warriors deadly and fierce to bring to this hard jagged place trapped you are in."  She let her breath peter out, though she hadn't much left after the speech she'd made.  The slaad's eyes fully left her as it cast about with mind and spirit into the strange universe it dwelled within.

It took some time for the creature to send its eyes or mind afar; Mercurial spent it considering the second prophecy the strange slaad had said she was thinking of.  It bothered her a little to know the creature had seen into her thoughts that deeply; she did not exactly fear it as it was helpless and saw in her some kind of distant kinship.  Not of flesh and blood, certainly, but in her penchant for chaos and disruption of the natural order of things, her talent for causing fortune to go awry.  And there was her attraction to it as well.  It was alien, and beautiful, and dangerous.  Much like her sword-slinging lover or the strange red-headed girl who had taken her by force.

The harbinger bard carefully stepped over the double circle, even thought she had already destroyed the spell's potency.  It was never really meant to hedge out mortal souls in any case or trap them within.  She had never moved close to the beast before, and while it was distracted she took advantage of it.

The scales were even more like tiny jewels than she had seen from a distance; milky translucence in many shades and tints of green, on a thick leather hide a deeper green than any tree she had ever seen.  Looking up at the quiescent slaad she ran a small, careful hand along the pebbled hide.  It was cool and slick, not snakelike or slimy but more like polished pebbles of glass.  Mercurial glanced up at the creature who still gazed into nowhere, and then placed both her hands along the cool surface of the monster's skin.  Fascinated, she ran both her hands up the thick, muscular body, tracing the edged of its lower ribs, then down, along its hips.

Giving into a perverse and strangely exciting urge, Mercurial Whim-of-Glory leaned close and ran her small pink tongue against the smooth, cool hide of the terrifying, incredible creature of passion and destruction and creation.  It tasted strange: buttermilk, and sweet cane, and sour wine.  When she drew back she was startled to see the great beast looking down at her, its alien expression impossible to read.

Stepping back, the blushing but stalwart harbinger looked fearlessly up into the strange eyes of the slaad.  The pupils in those huge eyes had changed, ink dripped from above and swallowed into the cool metal of those beautiful orbs.  The Prophet spoke in the thick, weird noise of its kind, still staring at her.  "The spark of life runs thick and endless in the crystal mind of the ancient one who gathers to her hands and swords many and varied while she torments those whom thwart her purposes even as she brings discontent and ill use about her in thick rivers of discord and lust.  Yet to be will her desire for control which rivals even that of the many eyed dream who rules this hard world of sharp and dull colorless tasteless shapes set her against the many eyed dream.  Less than many but more than one will the battling forces converge in a single here and now but then and not here but there."

It was certainly less difficult than simple conversation, but the prophecy held a great deal of supposition as well as hints that more than one group would be involved.  Mercurial licked her lips, tasting strangeness still upon them.  "Your words and thoughts bring disquiet and wonders to the mind of this dream which is and the hope of fear and upset to those nightmare not kind to what is you."  The monsters vast mouth opened a little and a deep hissing sound of amusement left its parted lips.  "Dream desires unreal potent are yet would have of the sight of reality seen from the views of you that is strange and terrible and beauteous."

The beast opened its mouth further, even more amused.  "Dream greedy and wanton for thick wash of hope and crumbled wishes despite hands of scorpions and tongues of fire and ice shattering falling rain growing trees and woodsy smells of potent earthly things.  For gifts granted in strange dream yet desires not now given true form despite wanted wishes and broken rules of flat unforgiving tasteless worlds seeing in far and away here not now not past but then given."  Once more the strange beast closed its vast maw and the huge eyes unfocused, seeing things distant in space and time.

Or so Mercurial hoped as she moved closer to the huge creature, hands sliding along the strange, slick surface of its cool skin.  Pressing her cheek against its belly, she closed her eyes, listening to the strange gurgle of substances moving inside the weird beast's alien body.  She knew it did not eat for Poison Water had told her as long as he'd been here the creature had never been fed.  Nor did she discern a heartbeat, unless the arrhythmic pulses deep inside were some strange chaos tainted heartbeat.  A wicked thought crossed her mind and she licked her lips, pulling away and looking up at the slaad.

Moving to the inner edge of the circle she slowly stripped off the plain tunic she'd taken to wearing when she was not sent out to do the Grondy's works.  Her nipples were hard as she exposed herself to the currently unseeing creature's view.  Looking at the slaad she unlaced her breeches and slipped out of them, stepping free of the old leather.  Mercurial did not bother stepping out of the soft, warm slippers; marble was cold.  For a moment she hesitated, then she untied the soft, folded silk of her loincloth, baring her supple young body entirely to the creature.  She suspected it would not entirely understand what it was seeing, but the idea of it was a heady thing.

With clothing piled outside the circles, she walked to the insensible slaad's form and pressed against it, feeling slick, cool pebbles of glass along the length of her upper body.  They rubbed pleasantly along her stiff nubs; she shivered in delight at the sensation and crushed her small breasts to the beast in xenophiliac abandon.  Her body responded to her excitement and she felt herself becoming slippery within.

A vast, intense hiss of amusement erupted from the beast's huge maw, and she flushed, her body becoming hot with embarrassment.  She rubbed herself along the slick, cool scales once more and stepped back, self-conscious about her nudity before the alien beast, and enjoying the idea that it might find her appealing.

"Dream wish desires strange and beautiful unfulfilled yet gathered in drippings and sips from reality garnered in tender touchings and vague whispers of life yet lived unmade and unbound.  But in here now then there disaster and glorious destruction rains in shadow and silver fire from minds sparkling with great wellsprings of reality yet not of real made but dream born with shadow and swift steel dreams of fierce lusts depraved unliving yet loved.  The undying ancient sown seed of anger and hate yet brings followers fierce loyal and bloodless stultifying loyalties to ideals even matched by desperation fear hate and greed.  Blood covered and near death yet live and grow and decay as all dream will has does."

Mercurial stared at the slaad, her skin prickling with the sheer intensity of the ideas the croaking, hissing, boiling noise produced.  As she slowly unravelled the threads of prophetic vision from the verbose ramblings, she painted a picture of a near disaster involving not one group of assailants, but two.  the first part still did not make sense at first....until she applied it to here and now, rather than the future.

The idea was terribly exciting and yet fearsome.  It liked her attention.  It liked that she desired it, and in fact encouraged it.  She committed the prophecies to memory - though she decided only one half of one prophecy would be given to her hateful masters no matter how cruelly they tormented her this time - and then abandoned rational thought for unnatural passions.

The slaad opened its mouth and let another boiler-hiss of amusement erupt from its gaping lips as she slid her arms about the creature's hips.  She ran her tongue along the Prophet's gem-scaled belly, tasting the flesh of primal creative forces given solid form.  Sweet and sour and musky and tangy: memories of tastes pleasant and homey.  Her mouth pressed, kissed, licked the strange, smooth scales; then she became aware of a wetness not her own staining her spare cleavage.

Pulling back she found herself looking at shocking pink lines, an inverted Y of soft, slick flesh.  The tips were as far apart as her outstretched hands thumb to thumb.  She ran a gentle, careful finger along the splits of weird, rubbery flesh, feeling it give easily under that curious fingertip.

Heart pounding, she pushed her finger deeper and it slipped easily into the crux of the triune.  pulsing heat lived inside that strange flesh, and she carefully pushed her flattened hand into the opening gap.  the creature gave a weird, undulating noise of near human voices, but there were too many for a single human throat.  The moist cavity within was full of hot, pulsing flesh and she gently wrapped her fingers about a heavy, thick cylinder of oily flesh and gently pulled.

The coil of heavy flesh that she pulled from the pouch was as long and as thick as her forearm, glistening with a iridescent oil that smelled a bit like a summer thunderstorm, dusty and lightning kissed.  She was not, however, expecting a second such organ to spill from the bright pink folds of the creature's pouch.  It was shorter and thicker than the first with a long, slender tube topped by a flowerlike opening.  The first was more similar to something both equine and catlike; a thick tube with a tapered tip, with many strange little nubs that rippled every now and again.

Her fingers slipped along the glistening pink flesh of the slaad's organs and the creature arched into her touch.  The idea of her touch bringing pleasure to the terrible monster that any creature more sane or less adventurous would consider something to be feared and destroyed gave her a flash of pleasure that was enough to make her glisten.  The huge eyes looked down at her and the creature's lips were parted in that inflexible smile as she slowly stroked the thicker organ into throbbing, pulsing firmness; the other was already stiff and the petals at the tip of the thin tube writhed, closed and opened in a strange kissing manner.

Closing her eyes she ran her warm tongue along the thicker organ, tasting the oily arousal of primordial life.  Strange, weird noises erupted from the creature's throat, nonsensical even in its own tongue.  The taste was indescribable, and she continued to lick and caress, slowly pressing her body into the warm, heavy organ until her lips traced the junction between it and its strange companion.

The larger of the two pulsed and pressed against her warm skin, her nipples as she wrapped her hand about its length and began to stroke it.  Mercurial's other hand wrapped firmly about the smaller organ and drew it down, until she could take the flower-tip into her mouth, her tongue playing among the alien petals as they traced strange patters along her tongue.  A dollop of weird oil spilled onto her tongue and she sucked on it, rolling her tongue through the strange tastes with her eyes still closed.  When her eyes opened she gasped softly, and looked at the slaad in awe.

The creature's hide was slowly pulsing with light; the gems that made up its scales lit from within, and slowly waxing and waning as she pleasured the beast.  The thick organ pulsed and a thick, slick gout of the oil spilled across her breast.  She laughed softly, and ran her hand through it, oiling herself with the iridescent liquid.  She then lifted the thick organ, forcing it to curl, and the slaad responded with a bellowing hiss.  It did not protest or resist - as far as she could tell - and she put the thick, blunt tip in her mouth, suckling on the end of it as best she could.

The smaller organ began to twitch and the creature arched and strained against the iron spikes that held it to the marble wall.  Mercurial;'s hands pulled away from the creature and she let the throbbing meat pop from her mouth.  She looked at the beast, wanting more of the alien pleasures she was discovering.  With a bright laugh that garnered her an odd look from the mad beast, she rolled back and forth from her heels to her toes.  Her hands stroked and pleasured the beast, who writhed helplessly as she had many times before.

When the magic of her slippers bloomed, she grinned, and started crawling on hands and knees up the slab of dark marble, the power of the slippers making what was a wall into something like a floor.  She moved over the great beast's hips, sliding her breasts, her chest, her belly against its oily maleness - malenesses?  Impossible perhaps for anyone to say.  Mercurial laughed softly and lowered her hips, pressing her slick, tender nether lips along the larger of the two organs.

A slick, heavy weight caressed her face and breasts, licking the iridescent oil from her body and leaving a trail of sweet-smelling tingles along her body.  She opened her own mouth and placed her lips and tongue upon the huge pink pillar of flesh that was thicker than her leg.  The slaad's tongue stroked her chest as well, and she cooed lovingly in her native tongue as the sensation of her whole breast - each one in turn - being stroked by a tongue so large she could ride it like a greater python.

Mercurial rubbed her nethers along the heavy, throbbing organs, wetting herself and making herself ready.  she knew she could at least take the first part of the larger organ; the evil mind-mage Pillory had demonstrated that with her hand.  This time, however, there was mutual adoration, in as much as the functionally insane slaad could be said to adore.  The organ writhed, twisted and found her nether lips, pressing against them like some kind of eager snake.  She moaned and then yelped as the smaller organ pressed its flower-tipped end into her tiny petals, exploring her intimately with the rippling, swollen petal-tips.

With surprising gentleness the huge organ pushed, and she pushed back, until the end of it pushed her open, spread her wide.  She moaned, a high pitched warble of pleasure as it slowly opened her further, slipping into the liquid heat of her body.  The slaad responded with a bass hiss that rocked her along its body, the massive tongue wrapped about her upper chest and squeezing gently, plastering itself along her sensitive breasts, her hard nipples pushing into the wet, warm pinkness.

A momentary jolt of fear took her as she realized she was being tasted and held by a tongue larger than her own body, but she abandoned fear for the delirious excitement of the potential for death.  She began to push and pull her body against the larger member as the bound monster tasted of her.  Her tongue slipped along the rubbery, slick flesh of its tongue, and then she gasped, eyes widening as the smaller organ found her apex.   The strange flower grasped, caressed, pulled, slipped along the hardened pearl of her clitoris as she used the slaad for her pleasure.

Her body squeezed about the intruding member and she dragged her nails along the hard, thick hide of the glowing creature; slowly the pleasure built within her, the huge organ slippery and stretching her tight, though it did not push deeper than she wished it to.  The flower-tipped thing moved, and played along the tight, warm skin stretched taut about the huge maleness in her slick body.  She cried out as it found another opening to explore, teasing and probing at the tightness below her clit in an obscene manner.

The slaad spoke to her, not with words, but in images and action.  Her head was spinning, and she no longer knew up from down or felt cold marble and hot and cool flesh.  She was surrounded by life, squirming, eager and maddening in all its riotous glory.  Her body opened and she felt more of the slaad enter her, strange caressing nubs moving along the edges and in the opening of her sweet burning center.  The other organ began to spurt hot oil along her belly, which spilled along her groin, her moist, burning thighs, the aching opening of her body.

Then Mercurial was crying, laughing, waves of mind and body wracking pleasure erupting from deep within her.  The huge beast stroked her with tongue, its organs caressing, kissing, anointing her in iridescent oils alien and beautiful.  Then it too was hissing in its boiling, guttural speech, praising her in words that made no sense, and meant everything.  She arched as the slaad's organ erupted in her, searing cold and boiling heat and shocking liquid filling her, making her pleasure rip through her body.

Mercurial barely recalled what happened after.  She knew she must have somehow cleaned herself, for she did not glisten or shine with any fluids save a touch of sweat upon her brow.  Feverish and delirious, she discovered herself dressed, and swaying before the ancient being.  She looked up at the creature, and it whispered in her head, speaking ancient, powerful names, names of creatures the slaad considered gods, or great forces.  Her knife was tucked away, and she recalled the prophecy it had spoken of, but her mind did not clear quickly.

As she staggered in a daze to the door, she managed enough presence of mind to knock at the required regular intervals, something the chaos-beast could not have managed.  Mercurial collapsed into the arms of the aged guildsman as he opened the door.  He dropped the golden sigil to the floor, his concern for the dazed bard overcoming his reverence for the device.  Poison Water half-dragged, half carried the raving girl to his cot, where she fell into a wild, mad dream of alien love and where the epithet batrachian was not so foul a word.

The next day, the Grondy nodded sagely as she spoke the words of prophecy to him and the Maw; she warned them of the red-headed mind-mage's summoning warriors of great skill and fanaticism to her side, and that there would be battle, but that she would also make great enemies.  Mercurial, on her knees, shaking and still not recovered from the fever dreams and strange madness, did not recall immediately the second prophecy, nor would she.

Nor did she remember the tiny dent in the golden sigil of the Gods of Order, placed there when the man she called Sweet Hearted caught her as she fell into dreams of alien love and beautiful, glorious destruction....

~End~