Aelindrach's Embrace

Vionas Mandulak died six demi-cycles into the war he had begun with the Kabal of the Bitter Kiss. Such was not uncommon for an Archon of High Commoragh. Their lives were an eternal cycle of life, death, and rebirth at the hands of the Haemonculi, the lessons learned with each regeneration allowing them to claw their way a little further up the Dark City's murderous social hierarchy. But when Archon Mandulak had been run to ground in the shadowed alleys that surrounded his burning fortress, his end had been something rare and horrific. With his corpse-reliquaries desecrated, his genetic reservoirs cored out and backup clone bodies incinerated in their vile birthing pods, the venerable Archon suffered a true and final death. His soul was sent spinning into the maw of She Who Thirsts, to be devoured and tormented for all eternity.

Besque Selinda felt no guilt or pity for her fallen rival. The Bitter Kiss had been pushed to the edge of annihilation by Mandulak's Viridian Blades, and had it not been for her desperate bargain with Aelindrach, Selinda was quite sure Mandulak would have visited the same fate upon her without a second thought. But triumph, too, had eluded her. Her Kabal had come too close to extinction for that. The conflict had left many of her warriors dead and her coffers all but empty, the precious resources she had carefully gathered during her slow ascent expended in the short and desperate fight for survival.

No, more than anything, Archon Selinda merely felt tired. She stood at the window of her chambers, the panes of frosted crystal pulled back so she might lean over the edge and better gaze upon her cold victory. Mandulak's tower sat on the horizon like a gutted corpse. The fires raging within had finally died, but a massive rent in its armoured flank still belched great torrents of greasy smoke into Commoragh's chill air. Raiders and Venoms full of her warriors swarmed around it like carrion flies, hunting down stragglers and stripping the ruin of any remaining valuables.

It could have been me, Selinda thought, and shivered. Her flimsy nightgown offered little protection from the elements and she turned away from the window, rolling it back into place and drawing the tanned manskin curtains closed.

The Archon's chamber was as luxurious as any Commorite princess might demand, softly lit with glowstones set along the walls and decorated with old battle-trophies, fractal dressing closets and pieces of strange art looted from realspace or gifted by her suitors. She brushed aside the hooked chains that hung from the ceiling and lowered herself onto her bed, a four posted monstrosity of blackened bone overflowing with laced whispersilk sheets and perfumed gossamer pillows.

Here, with Commoragh's jagged skyline hidden from sight, Selinda could almost forget about the crushing weight of responsibility that sat upon her shoulders. Her depleted Kabal had absorbed Mandulak's territory and now found itself stretched too thin to easily defend it. New enemies were stirring - neighboring Archons who had declined to intervene on either side, but now found themselves tempted by the promise of an easy conquest. Selinda ran a hand through her silken black hair and hissed through her teeth. She would have to meet with them, and threaten, or convince, or even beg them to look elsewhere.

Opposite her bed hung the only things in her chambers Selinda truly cared about. An old skyboard, its dull crimson paint cracked and peeling, and a double-bladed hellglaive etched with old kill-notches and wrapped in decorative brass beads. They drew her eye like an old lover, their silent presence a reminder of what she had given up to reach her lofty position.

Not for the first time, the urge to strap on her old wychsuit, mount the skyboard and simply fly away gnawed at the back of Selinda's mind. It was madness, of course, and more to the point utterly suicidal. Surviving among Commoragh's skyborn hellion gangs as long as she did had been a miracle in of itself; Selinda doubted she would be lucky twice over. And even if she was, what would it gain her? The responsibilities of her position were one form of slavery, it was true. So was the false freedom she had experienced in her youth, fighting for every scrap of pain and suffering necessary to keep the dreaded thirst at bay.

And yet, no matter how often she told herself that, the temptation remained. Her friends - or, at least, her peers and allies - informed her they too were struck with rash and self-destructive urges. It was She Who Thirsts, they said, whispering in the back of their minds, hoping to drive them to their final deaths. As if the slow leeching of the Thirst, sapping their lives away a drop at a time, wasn't enough of a curse.

"We are all slaves to something in the end," Selinda muttered bitterly. Then she grunted, shaking her head and driving the morose thoughts away. Wallowing in self-pity was fine for the drug-addled artists and hysterical poets that haunted Commoragh's lower districts. For an Archon, it was simply one more trap waiting to ensnare the weak. Fortunately, she thought, the Eternal City offered no shortage of distracting pleasures, and at least for now the night was still her own.

Selinda rose from the bed and opened one of her closets. The door unfolded like a piece of compressed paper, the fractal sub-space it led into showing rack after rack of elegant gowns, barbed suits of battle-gear and ornate headdresses. The Archon paid them no mind, disrobing and stepping back as the entryway inverted to reveal a full-size mirror. A thin crust of hoarfrost clung to its edges despite the comfortable temperature she maintained in her chambers, and she took a moment to ensure she looked presentable before commencing her ritual.

Like all her kin Selinda was tall and slender, finely toned from hundreds of cycles worth of conflict, her skin smooth and ivory-pale. Fine black hair, dyed with streaks the deep crimson of her Kabal, fell around a lean and wolfish face. Her pointed ears were pierced with polished rings of bone and jet, and a narrow spike decorated each of her small, pink nipples. The Haemonculi had scoured away the scars and gang tattoos of her youth, but she still had the look of a caged animal to her; wary, savage, ready to pounce at the slightest provocation. Let those soft-bodied Trueborn fops sneer, she thought, smiling humourlessly. Given the chance, she could strangle the best of them with their own entrails.

Deep within the depths of the mirror, something moved. Selinda felt a flicker of excitement build in her stomach. She had many suitors, and though he was he favorite, his whims were difficult to predict. Usually he would come to her like a trained hound, loyal and eager to serve. On other occasions her call would fall on deaf ears, and she would be left alone, tormented by her unfulfilled desires. Very rarely he would approach of his own accord, worming his way past her defenses and taking her whether she wished it or not, until she shuddered in fury and pleasure and humiliation all alike. But tonight, it seemed, he was feeling amenable.

She didn't dress. She decorated herself. A segmented leather gorget, hooked with silver chains which wound their way down her arms and fastened to the ornate rings on her fingers. Bands of black silk hugged her thighs and calves, suspending elegant webs of gleaming micropearls. Her hair was left loose, flowing down her back like a blood-slick ebony cape, and Selinda's smile grew as she saw a dark shadow flickering around the edge of the mirror. The Archon's bare skin tingled with anticipation. Soon, she told herself, soon.

There was a moment of pain as she slashed her palm and pressed it against the mirror. The Archon drew her hand sideways, watching in morbid fascination as the surface began to shimmer like liquid silver. Her reflection dimmed and the trail of blood began to spiral inwards, drawn into the darkness which reached up hungrily in reply. Then it rippled, shuddered like a beast beneath a Haemonculus' knife, and Selinda's hand broke the surface.

It was like plunging herself into icewater. She gasped and gritted her teeth against the sudden cold. Writhing things the texture of flayed muscle groped along her skin as she stepped forwards, plunging her arm deeper into the fully-manifested portal. The ritual was an act of trespass, forbidden by the great tyrant Vect along with other, stranger powers. She had learned it from her paramour,  and he had been very clear that to enter more than a single limb would be to invite disaster.

"Come forth, Dheradruk," Selinda hissed. "Come and celebrate the pact we have made. Hear my call. Taste the blood I have spilled in your name. Come from your cold realm and into the warmth of my arms."

Strong fingers brushed her hand and squeezed tight.

Selinda grinned in triumph and pulled. Her arm emerged, dripping with ichorous black material which dripped from her skin and scurried off to find refuge in the shadows cast around the corners of her room. When her hand breached the surface once more it came holding a duplicate, slim but masculine, wrought from creeping black shadows and silvery nails. That hand became an arm, then a shoulder, and then a head and a sinewy torso as Selinda's alien lover stepped forth from its home realm.

"Archon," he whispered. "You call and I come. Aelindrach's cold passions stir, a hunger for warmth and supple skin."

"Dheradruk," Selinda's breath caught in her throat. The Mandrake was a vision. He had the wiry form of a young Commorite male, but one wrought from flowing shadows and tarry black liquid that shifted and squirmed under her gaze. Dirty hair the colour of powdered bone spilled across a mask-like face almost devoid of features and trailed over shoulders carved with lesions that writhed like living things, glowing with a sickly inner light. Selinda had once heard rumour they were the offspring of desperate proto-Commorites who, seeking an escape from the Thirst, had bred with daemons. In that moment, she could believe it. It made the knowledge of what she was about to do even more exciting.

In battle, and when she had first encountered the half-real denizens of Aelindrach, Selinda had seen Dheradruk and his kin wear crude kilts and flowing robes stitched together from the flayed skins of their old victims. But the Mandrake knew his Archon well; like her he stood naked aside from a scattering of pearlescent bands around his slender neck and long limbs, his face melting into a wide slash of a smile as Selinda drank in the sight of his body. He seemed to be growing more real by the moment, and a pleasurable shudder ran down the Archon's spine as his shadow-skin pulled tight over lithe muscles, drawing her eye on down past his rigid abdomen to the smooth, rune-etched shaft hanging between his legs.

She reached out and trailed her wounded palm down his chest, feeling the oily texture of his skin and the tense bunching of his muscles as he forced himself into coherence. Aelindrach was half-real place which blurred the lines between one's body and mind, but here, abroad in Commoragh, its children were forced to take a form bound by physical law. Nothing could conceal the unearthly chill that radiated from his body, however. Selinda gasped softly as it washed over her, her skin pimpling and nipples stiffening into sharp, sensitive peaks as he drew closer.

"You are ill at ease," Dheradruk hissed. His voice came in a ghostly rasp, one that seemed to hang in the air like an old cobweb for several seconds before finally fading. He ran a hand through her hair, teasing the silky locks with long, silvered claws. The Mandrake's face shifted into an expression almost like concern. "Something preys on your mind, beautiful one. You are afraid. Did our slaying of Mandulak not please you?"

"It did. But I find that I have traded one enemy for three rivals." Selinda allowed Dheradruk to embrace her, shivering as his icy limbs wrapped around her narrow body. "Tomorrow I will meet with them and see if they can be made into allies, or at least persuaded to look elsewhere for their sport. But until then I desire a distraction." She looked up and slipped her thigh between the Mandrake's legs, letting out a muted hiss of anticipation as their bodies slid together. "Can you do that for me, Dheradruk?"

"This I can do." The Mandrake's grin widened. Razored teeth glistened amidst his shadowy maw. "This and more." He bowed his face towards hers and they kissed, their tongues dancing hungrily. Selinda could feel Dheradruk's eagerness; not a second into their embrace and he had tipped her head back, as bold as his peers had once been, his tongue growing longer and thicker as their explorations grew more passionate. A pang of conflict twisted in her gut at the thought, like a single sour note haunting an otherwise perfect symphony. Selinda pushed it away, stroking his muscled back and squeezing his buttocks until she felt something stiff poke eagerly against her bare flesh.

Strange and protean as her paramour was, Selinda needed no explanation for what it might be. Still she took an indulgent glance at the Mandrake's prick; it seemed to pulse with a life of its own, shifting and swelling in time with the creature's heavy heartbeats. Selinda fought down a smirk, sinking her fingers deeper into Dheradruk's hindquarters. Oh yes, eerie and insubstantial as the Mandrake so often was, he could be hard enough when he needed to be.

"Warm," Dheradruk slurred. His tongue withdrew back into his mouth, spilling trails of glistening saliva down Selinda's neck. "I will do this, beautiful one. I need it." His voice came thinner now, and something deep in the Archon's core shifted and smiled at the desperation she heard there. "Will you let me? Will you give me your warmth?"

She could have made him beg, Selinda thought; Dheradruk was surprisingly pliable tonight, and had she been in a livelier mood, she would have found no shortage of cruel delight in making the creature work for every mote of pleasure she bestowed upon him. Perhaps if she had been more confident in her position she would have done so, regardless of her unhappiness; in Commoragh, piling misery atop misery until one's own suffering seemed easier to bear was all so often the rule. But instead she broke their embrace, favouring the Mandrake with a coy smile and a small bow of obeisance as she led him wordlessly towards her bed.

It was here that Selinda had made her pact with Dheradruk's kin. They had compelled her to lie with them in return for their aid, and had reveled first in her anger and her helplessness, then in the pleasure of her submission as the entire band took her in twos and threes. Only Dheradruk had returned afterwards. He had been their go-between, their ambassador, delivering reports and taking instructions as the conflict progressed, and often the conflicted feelings she harboured for his kin had fallen upon his wiry shoulders. She had loved and hated him in equal measure, and perhaps that had sparked something within the creature; certainly now he seemed infatuated with her, and despite his mercurial passions they had grown close.

Or at least close enough for this, Selinda thought. She lowered herself onto the sheets, relishing the gentle creak as Dheradruk settled atop her. Flickering runes ghosted across his black body, haloing her pale form with ghostly light. They kissed again, nipping at each other's lips, content to spend a few moments basking in their mutual desire. Dheradruk was something outside Commoragh's murderous hierarchy, Selinda thought; monstrous and alien he might be, untrustworthy and corrupt as his kin were, their relations were free from the tyrannical hierarchy which defined the Eternal City. A little piece of freedom, locked away in her closet, as safely and securely as anything in Commoragh could be.

The Archon moaned softly, the jittery mess of tension and anxiety in her core already fading into something warm, throbbing and eager. There was awe and desperation alike in the Mandrake's touch; every chill stroke along her body was devoted and worshipful, but Selinda could feel his need in the way his claws nipped at her skin and his fangs brushed over her throat, feathering her body with tiny pinpricks of bright blood and stinging motes of pleasure. She arched her back and pushed herself deeper into Dheradruk's embrace, returning the guesture with her own finely-manicured nails until he was left panting and growling in her pointed ear.

"I want your mouth, Dheradruk," Selinda murmured. Her fingers tangled through his lank hair and pushed it away from his shifting features. For a moment she saw nothing, just a blank wedge split in two by the Mandrake's fanged maw, before his face rippled and squirmed into something with burning eye-sockets, arched, handsome cheekbones and the impression of a proud nose. "Let me feel that much, and I shall give you all the warmth you could ever desire."

Dheradruk's grin spread until it split his, dripping like a bloody wound. His tongue coiled and slithered against his needle-fangs, thick and lambent in the shadows. He vanished vanished like smoke in her arms, slipping free of Selinda's embrace and sliding down her body in less than a heartbeat. Fingers ghosted under the chains which decorated her hips and dimpled her pale thighs, gently easing the Archon's toned thighs apart. Her sex was flushed and ready, glimmering with wetness, her hood proudly pierced to match her nipples.

"Beautiful," he hissed. "Savage, cruel beauty. For me?"

"A relic from the Hellion days," Selinda said, her voice low and husky. "For any I deem fit to share it with." She glanced down her toned body and felt a spike of arousal at the sight of Dheradruk hunched between her legs, his icy breath washing over her hot, aching flesh. It pleased her to make him serve; to see one of the creatures that had so thoroughly dominated her upon the same bed now leashed and desperate to please. "But tonight, that is you."

Her only reply was a low croon of joy and the gentle pressure of Dheradruk's lips pressing against her inner thigh. He worked her around and around, alternating between kisses, bites and teasing licks with his tongue, each little mote of pleasure slowly working its way towards the Archon's burning lips. Her skin prickled with the presence of him; like ice and fire, the cold never penetrating deep enough to quench the creeping flame spreading through her body, and before long Selinda found herself panting with need.

The first brush along her lips struck her like lightning; smooth fingers caressed and parted her labia, leaving her spread open and vulnerable. A chorus of delicious fear coursed through Selinda's mind at the thought, only to be washed away in a moment as Dheradruk pressed his tongue into her. She jerked in his grasp, grinding herself into his face and splitting the air with a long wail of ecstasy. The Mandrake only pushed deeper as a result, his tongue lashing, flicking, growing inside her, stretching out to taste every inch of her trembling passage. Selinda cried out again, rocking her hips back and forth until Dheradruk's enthusiasm had quelled long enough for him to settle into her rhythm.

"More," Selinda gasped. Her voice was hoarse, ragged, and she had to fight to keep herself from panting like an animal. Memories swam through her mind, of a dozen or more flowing bodies converging on her at once, of night-black shadows watching from the corners as she was bent over and fucked by their kin. Her heart raced. Hot blood pounded through her veins. Dheradruk's tongue was replaced by a finger, then a second, cruelly bent to strike at her weakest point. She moaned and writhed like a slave on the hook, her breathless cries escalating into shrill screams as Dheradruk's mouth fastened over her clit.

She grasped the sheets, trembling and helpless, desperate for an anchor as white fire bloomed behind her eyes. Hands grasped her thighs and traced along her ribs, each stroke flaying away her last reserves of self-restraint. They stroked the underside of her small bust and pinched her nipples, caressed her face and cradled her rear. It was impossible, and yet the Mandrake was everywhere at once - he surrounded her, embraced her, and as his teeth caught around the silver spike decorating her sex and pulled, devoured her.

Sensation crashed over the Archon in waves. The world collapsed, and as the moment stretched on into infinity, nothing mattered - not the Eternal City, not the waiting negotiations to come, not even the awful, thirsting hole in her heart. Selinda bucked, jerked, and came hard, shuddering and wailing as the tide of pleasure ebbed and flowed in time with Dheradruk's savage caresses.

Gradually, a measure of sanity returned. Selinda lay tangled in a ruin of sheets, the chains and pearls adorning her flushed, sweat-slick body hopelessly askew, one leg hanging nervelessly off the side of the bed. She opened her eyes to find Dheradruk perched by her feet, watching over her like a selfish onyx gargoyle protecting its prize. His body glistened softly as breathed, his hollow eyes locked on her, glowing and possessive. As she stirred and murmured his name, the Mandrake's head snapped up, the scars and lesions cut into his oily skin flaring back into life.

It occured to her, dimly, that Dheradruk could have torn out her throat or snapped her neck in a moment while she lay supine. Such would not have been out of character for his kind, nor even for many Commorites stupid and brutish enough to think they could simply murder their way to the top of a Kabal. Yet there he was, haunting her protectively, his long claws curled safely between his legs.

Selinda would have preferred them somewhere rather more stimulating.

She grinned, knowing not what she had done to earn the Mandrake's favour, but silently thanking Lhilitu that she had. Perhaps in time, she thought, Dheradruk might be induced to serve as her consort, wedding the Bitter Kiss' military power with Aelindrach's mastery of the occult. The Archon's smile grew at the idea. How many of her rivals would dare challenge the Bitter Kiss then, she wondered? And how many could be induced to come to pay tribute, fearful of meeting the same end as poor, doomed Mandulak?

And perhaps more of Dheradruk's kin might come to her, and she might recreate the night they forced themselves upon her, but orchestrated more to her liking.

Selinda's heart surged with excitement. Her head swam drunkenly, bloated and overflowing with orgiastic visions of power. She pulled herself up the bed, propping herself up against a pillow and beckoning Dheradruk forwards with a crooked finger.

"You please me greatly, beloved," she hissed, spreading her legs and running a hand over her throbbing sex. Arousal shone on Selinda's thighs and her fingers. It dripped onto the sheets that cradled her in long strings, shimmering like the chaotic riot of pearls tangled around her slender form. Her body sang with the need to be filled, to be fucked, to savour every drop of sensation her finely-tuned body could take. "Come, take your reward. Sate yourself upon me, that you might never forget my warmth in that cold place you call home."

There was no delay, no teasing, no more games. Dheradruk's patience had reached its end. He was on her in moments, flowing insubstantially over the bed before coalescing atop the Archon once more in a sudden rush of weight. He was strong and smooth and cool, and Selinda's breath caught in her throat as his organ brushed against her lips, the brief flicker of contact almost unbearable. The Mandrake tensed, lithe muscles rigid beneath oily skin. The moment stretched. For a moment Selinda thought he expected her to beg. But then he pushed, and she was so wet, so desperate, that he thrust himself to the hilt in one smooth motion.

They cried out together, Selinda's lustful cry mixing with Dheradruk's ragged, feral snarl. She shuddered and clenched around him, hard and cold and wholly alien, each twitch and throb of his cock echoing deep into her core. The Mandrake slipped his strong arms under her own, holding the Archon tight and bearing her down into an ocean of silk as he began to thrust. Each savage motion of his hips speared her, impaled her, until they met with the soft slap of flesh against flesh and another twined exhalation of pleasure. Each collision of their bodies stoked the flame of her arousal higher. She moaned, the sound thick and throaty with need.

It was possessive. Dominant. Selinda would have accepted it from no other living being, but she yielded to Dheradruk's rutting like a slave before the lash. He was a thing of ice and shadows and endless hunger, taking her every cry and moan as encouragement to fuck her harder and faster. Her legs drew up and tightened around the Mandrake's flanks, clutching him and holding him close as they bucked and writhed against one another, her skin tingling, stiff, sensitive nipples singing as they dragged across her monstrous lover's tight chest. Dheradruk's face writhed and split open like a rotten gourd, spilling his tongue fourth to lap eagerly along the Archon's slender neck, feeling the fluttering pulse of her heartbeat pounding just beneath the skin.

For one beautiful, terrifying moment, Selinda imagined him biting down, tearing through her soft flesh and gorging hungrily upon her terror and pain. She gasped sharply and jerked beneath him, finely-honed survival instincts warring briefly with the mad, hysterical urge to ride such a fatal embrace down into She Who Thirst's terrible gullet. But nothing came; Dheradruk's tongue lapped hungrily over her face and lips, ending in a cruel kiss that left her bottom lip bloody and stinging. If the Mandrake noticed her moment of panic he gave no sign, and soon the notion was lost beneath the surging tides of ecstasy surging through her slender body. Selinda drank it hungrily, feeling her climax dancing on the edge of perception.

And then he began to swell.

It was a small thing, barely noticeable at first; a little more pressure against her walls, a deeper kick whenever he bottomed out inside her, easily overlooked compared to the roiling tempest building within. But soon it was unmistakable. Selinda opened her eyes, shock passing over her narrow face.

"Dheradruk, what are you - "

"Aelindrach is old and I am young, but there are things I have recently learned," the Mandrake whispered, each word a cool breath tickling across the Archon's sensitive ear. "We are given shape by our thoughts and so I shape myself for you."

Selinda groaned in pleasure, a wordless noise that was nevertheless all the encouragement Dheradruk needed to continue. His thrusts slowed so she might better savour the feeling of him pouring into her, growing, stretching her passage until the Mandrake's prick filled every inch, from her delicate lips to her dark, hungry core. It was only when she was sure she could take no more that the sensation abated and Dheradruk drew to a halt and pushed himself up, his corded, muscular body looming over Selinda's prone form like a storm cloud so he could admire his work.

The Archon glanced down. She half expected to see her toned stomach bulging outwards, but Dheradruk had done nothing so extreme. The last inch or so of the Mandrake's cock was visible, dimly illuminated by the glowing runes etched deep into his flesh, jutting lewdly from between her spread thighs. The size of it made her head spin. It made her mouth water. Her entrance stung, but the pain was slight, a frisson that danced along her nerves and served only to make the deep swell of pleasure in her core more intense.

"Tell me, then," she said, idly stroking a hand over the Mandrake's chest. "If your dimensions are this malleable, what else might you change? When you come for me, how much could there be?"

Dheradruk grinned. His tongue lolled out, long enough the circle one of Selinda's breasts before curling back into his glowing maw.

"I will give you all I have, beautiful one. I will paint you and mark you and all of Aelindrach's children will know your warmth belongs to me and me alone." The Mandrake shuddered as Selinda clenched tight around him, his words alone enough to send a ripple of anticipation down her spine.

"Yessss," she hissed. Selinda's eyes flashed. Her own grin rivaled the Mandrake's, wide and savage and mad with all the mad passions of the Eternal City. "Give me everything, then. All you have and more." She dug her fingers into Dheradruk's chest, feeling his body yield and flow around them. "I demand it."

The Mandrake began to thrust again, slowly at first, but gradually increasing in pace. Each motion was dizzying; the withdrawal left her feeling hollow, empty, aching and desperate for more, but the sensation of her body greedily devouring Dheradruk's greedy prick, and the heavy thump of pleasure that came as he finally slid home once more, was beyond compare. Selinda wrapped her slender fingers around his arms and stared down the length of her body, watching in rapture as the smooth length of Dheradruk's cock pounded rhythmically away at her entrance. She could feel him straining against her with each motion. His arms were tense, the ghostly fires burning across his chest flaring brighter as he reached his peak.

She wanted it. To feel him. To control him. To own him. Selinda knew the slave races drew a line between love and obsession, but in Commoragh no such distinction existed. They were one and the same, a force as terrible and potent as anything in the galaxy. She would leash Dheradruk to her service, bind him with chains of lust and adoration, make him hers in body and mind and soul - and at night, yield to him, so that for a few blissful hours of each cycle she might be taken away from the pain and horror of life in the Eternal City.

Her climax was building once more. The shock of Dheradruk's new talents had stolen it from her, but each stroke of his swollen prick brought it closer to release. Selinda felt stretched, pulled as taught as her aching, stinging lips around the Mandrake's shaft, full of heat and hunger and desperate for release. For a moment some spiteful part of her whispered how amusing it would be for the Mandrake to come first, how satisfying it would be to let him crawl away spent while she called for another lover to sate her desires, but the urge was little more than a spasm of instinctive cruelty. It vanished as quickly as it came, smothered by a tide of ecstacy.

Selinda gasped - once, twice, three times, her breath coming in shrill pants. Her back arched, her fingers clenched, and she came magnificently. It rose up inside like an inferno, danced for one agonising moment upon the edge of consciousness, before crashing down and setting her body aflame with pleasure. It was not the lunatic revel Dheradruk's kin had forced upon her, but something deeper, selfish and intimate in equal measure, and Selinda reached out for it with all the hedonistic joy of her people.

Her legs kicked and toes clenched. Her nails dug bloody furrows in Dheradruk's forearms. Selinda's eyes rolled back in her head and she screamed out her release as the Mandrake let out a final ragged hiss and began to unload. The Archon jerked and cried out again - she felt it, every drop, lapping along the fluttering silk of her passage, dripping out over her sensitive lips, pouring into her very core. And still there was more. Dheradruk pulled free of the Archon's embrace with a wet, slick sound. His cock throbbed in his first, its crown pulsing, the flickering runes etched across his squirming body dancing as he came and came, splattering long ropes of thick, glutinous seed across Selinda's slender body and sculpted face.

She loved it. Guiltily, hatefully, but she loved it.To feel a man's seed on her skin, to see how desperate he had been for her, to feel it burn and sizzle on her flushed alabaster skin. A relic of her first days perhaps, her gutter days, where she had sold herself for the brief gulps of pain needed to keep the Thirst at bay, and had sought whatever depraved pleasure she could from her sordid activities. But it haunted her still, and with Dheradruk's sculpted onyx form looming over her, every sleek, straining muscle so beautifully displayed, Selinda saw no reason to halt her indulgence.

Come slathered her belly and tingled on her breasts. It dripped from her narrow chin and ran in streaks from her cheekbones. It lay in shining streaks through her hair. She tasted it on her lips. She felt it trickle from her entrance. Its scent filled her nostrils, faint compared to a normal Commorite, but unmistakably sweet and male all the same. Selinda writhed and moaned, tugging her nipple with one hand and slipping a pair of fingers into her sex as the Mandrake's essence rained down upon her, desperately caressing her tender flesh and calling for more until the last throes of their climaxes had faded.

Selinda crashed back onto the bed. For several heartbeats she lay still, her head spinning, her chest heaving with exertion. She was aware of Dheradruk crawling off the bed and perching next to her on the floor, but it seemed of little import. She allowed herself to drift, savouring the warm exhaustion creeping into her bones and idly trailing her fingers through the glistening streaks of seed the Mandrake had gifted her with.

Finally, she allowed one of her hands to droop off the bed. Dheradruk took it gently, his long tongue winding affectionately around her fingers and dancing in her palm.

"You performed exquisitely," Selinda murmured. "As you always do."

"Warm. So warm." Dheradruk crooned softly in reply. She glanced down at him, unsurprised to see the Mandrake's form already beginning to blur at the edges. It was difficult to tell where his body ended and the shadows beneath her bed began. "Aelindrach calls, beautiful one. But your warmth is with me now. Will you call again?" A pleading note hung in the air. "Will you give of yourself once more?"

Selinda laughed, the sound little more than a slurred chuckle. "I give nothing, Dheradruk, but I will take, and I will take all you can give me, again and again until you are spent."

There was a sibilant hiss of satisfaction and he was gone.

---

They were calling her Yvraeldrach now; Shadow-claimed. Never to her face, of course, but word reached her nonetheless.

Selinda's three rivals, Variak of the Thousand Horrors, Kaelis of the Beloved Blade, and Xaria of the Endless Misery, all came to the meeting in a state of disarray. They did their best to conceal it, of course - displaying one's weaknesses openly was all but a death sentence in the Eternal City - but the signs were there. They postured openly instead of hiding their threats behind veiled language, filling the air with bluster so any listening spies would know they had played the necessary parts. But they were tense. Selinda could see it. They were afraid. She offered them insultingly minor parcels of land from Mandulak's estates in tribute and they accepted without complaint, sweeping from her grand halls with carefully-practiced disdain and fleeing back to their Raiders as soon as was polite.

It appeared, Selinda would later learn, all three had suffered hauntings. Signs that Aelindrach's children had gone among them, disabling their defenses and rearranging their possessions, in each case leaving little trinkets and fetishes so their presence would not go overlooked.

The message was clear. Aelindrach was watching. It could reach out no matter where they hid themselves. And it had embraced a new child.

Selinda sat upon her throne, feeling the shadows build around her, and smiled. There would be a price, of course. There was always a price in the Eternal City. But for now, it was one she was willing to pay.