I Slept My Way To This Past, Chapter 8
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The closest thing that the dark elven military had to actual training its soldiers were subject to was the patronage system of the officers and the soldiery. It was not, typically, something that a female officer would do herself: she would have some well-honed swordhand already present under her patronage, who could teach the new buck how to handle it. Unfortunately for Shyntae, she had none, and Ylantar was young enough that it seemed implausible he could be much good with a sword without training.

Thus, Shyntae began training with Ylantar... or at least, tried to. He had been quick to grow, and had gotten an exceptional amount of training, two or three times what most boys his age would have received, from his double sessions with Qilanna and his regular sessions with Wehlor. He also towered a full head over Shyntae. The results were quite predictable: in their first duel, he absolutely smashed her.

"Alright, just trying to get a vibe for you," Shyntae said, from where she had wound up on the ground from the duel. She rolled one arm around in a way that suggested it still ached from where her shield had been struck and the blow had vibrated through, and she grit her teeth as she looked at Ylantar. "Guess you got training to go with your size, but don't think it'll be easy from here on out."

Shyntae will likely treat you better if you allow her the pretense that she is better than you, I pointed out to Ylantar, who seemed ready to utterly dominate the other girl once again. He hesitated, then quietly nodded before settling into a combat pose, meeting Shyntae in a quick exchange of blows that saw her eventually whittle her way through his defenses and land a strike on his legs that sent him to the ground.

"There," she said with a thick pant, "you see?" Each word seemed to be punctuated by another breath, her whole body a bit wobbly and off-balance. Ylantar had let her win, but he had still made her work for it. Sweat trailed across ebony skin, giving it a sharp sheen, making her light training clothing begin to stick here and there - Ylantar's eyes, naturally, began to wander her naked body with clear excitement, his tongue flicking across his lips as he saw her breasts curve and press against the cloth.

She noticed his lingering gaze, her own lips curling up in a smile, her scar exaggerating the grin. "Somebody here's... a real pussy-crazed mess... and it's not me..." she got out. She straightened out, reaching her hands beneath her breasts to just heft them. She wasn't the bustiest woman that Ylantar had ever seen, but he had not seen that kind of responsiveness and eagerness before. Qilanna, Vicolene, Aunrae: they had all been willing and enthusiastic sex partners, but they lacked the kind of flagrant, uninhibited sexual aggression of Shyntae. It appeared he had a taste for it, given the way his length throbbed in between his legs.

If you wish me to restrain your orgasms, simply tap your palm with one finger, I told him. He did so, eyeing up his partner even more critically now that he was thinking in terms of sex. She strode towards him, grasping his hand by the wrist, and simply placed it in her groin, slipping it into her trousers. "Feel that?" She asked, as his fingers slid against her lower lips, her clit absently brushing against his palm, inflamed with lust. "I think you're pretty good yourself," she told him. "I'm wet for you. Aren't you thankful? After all, if I wasn't, you wouldn't be about to get to fuck me." He nodded. "Say it. Say you're happy I'm willing to fuck you."

"I'm happy you're willing to fuck as lowly a pervert as me," he told her, and she practically jumped up and down in place at his embellishment. I could feel her sex twitch against him, her clit grinding into his palm, her fingers tightening around his wrist. Her scar made her manic grin seem positively mad, and she all but forced him to the ground a moment later...

But, I couldn't help but note, did not proceed to have sex with him properly. There was no insertion, just grinding her pelvis against his fingers, her eyes wild with lust, her breathing having not yet leveled out from the exertions of their little duel. She had pushed herself to beat him in their fight, and now she was too exhausted. Ylantar seemed to notice as much. "Why don't I eat you out?" He suggested, and her smirk became more smug than manic, the sort of psychological pampering that his words gave her impossible to overstate. In a society where women are expected to be dominant, it creates the fascinating consequence that they are expected to give pleasure rather than receive it - so a man offering up his mouth is quite the erotic thing.

"Hmm... how badly do you want it?" Shyntae had what was probably a regrettable tendency to overplay her hand. By the smile on Ylantar's face and the lack of any emotional negativity I could detect, it seemed that he found it cute or amusing - in any case, not something to get angry about. "I'm just not sure... it's such a big ask, letting you eat my pussy..."

"I really, really want it," he breathed out, doing his best to look suitably desperate for it. I had to commend his acting abilities, because I knew he wasn't actually filled with any great passion for her at the moment.

Still, it had the desired effect: she peeled off her trousers and underwear, shifted her sweaty, half-naked body over his face, then simply sat atop his mouth, rubbing her lower lips and clit and general vaginal region against his features with an angry intensity, her breathing hot as she did so. As his tongue began to flick and rub against her salty lower lips, her sticky thighs beginning to cling to his cheeks, she started to talk, too.

"Mm, fuck, I have a noble boy eating me out. A cute little fifteen year old noble boy, who's already got some betrothed bitch waiting for him, eating me out. This is what you should fucking do, hnn," she groaned out, her fingers gripping the back of his head, dragging him up into her, trying to get his tongue all the deeper. "I'm a commoner and I've got a noble on his back eating my pussy. That make you feel good? Make you feel like a big man, or like the whore you are? No other options, you picked me, so you get me," she said, grunting softly as she wriggled atop him, her movements growing ever more intense and impassioned, as she tried to bring herself off with his mouth.

Despite his seemingly earnest attempts... he didn't. "Fuh, fuck," she panted, after another near-miss of an orgasm, typified by the way her thighs clamped on either side of his head. "Maybe you aren't a good pussy-eater after all," she declared, and there was a certain sinister note to her words, as if really grinding it in. "Well, whatever," she muttered to herself, starting to rise, but Ylantar responded by grabbing her by the hips, dragging her right back down onto his face. "Somebody's eager," she said, languidly smirking and closing her eyes as she just enjoyed the feeling of his tongue furiously licking and lashing at her sex, drinking up seemingly every last drop of her juices he could get.

She talked, more to herself than to him, trying to get herself off by degrading the boy under her. I knew that Ylantar was actually fairly competent at cunnilingus - he'd managed to make Vicolene quite a bit, when they had been experimenting with one another - but he still failed no matter how hard he tried, regardless of what techniques he brought to bear on this particular problem. I could feel his frustration building up and up.

I did notice the irony, of course: he was now being subjected to the very same experience that he had been inflicting on Aunrae, and was getting all the frustration she had no doubt felt inflicted on him, instead. It was almost enough to make one believe that the goddess of the dark elves took as much interest in micromanaging their lives as her followers claimed; but the fact that she hadn't done anything about me proved that idea quite false.

The air was filled with his little growls, his furious laps, his fingers digging deep into her thighs as he worked her over... grunts and gasps as he kept going, frantic pumps of her hips against his face, degrading words that grew more degrading the longer it took him to make her come.

"Too young, to know fuck, about eatin' pussy. Don't worry, plenty of time, to learn, you horny little whore," she told him, her voice dripping with arousal as she said it, every inch of her body trembling atop him. Ylantar just growled in increasing frustration. "Look, I wanna come too, so let me up and just fuck me," she told him, and that was finally sufficient for him to let go of her hips. She laid down on the ground - it had been quite some time since their duel, but apparently the constant cunnilingus hadn't given her the strength to recover the energy she had used up in it.

Ylantar was pent up and frustrated by the experience of failing to make Shyntae come with his mouth, and naturally the moment his cock was out, he simply slammed himself to the hilt inside her, like her pink sex was a practice target and his rod the spear he was meant to penetrate it with. She softly moaned at the sound, closing her eyes, a lazy smile that seemed all the more sinister for her scar that made it broader. "Damn, if I'd known you were this into cunnilingus, I would've got you started on pussy-eating earlier," she said, lazily drawing the words out as her body bounced up and down on Ylantar's hard cock, each forceful thrust earning another quiet noise of pleasure from her, her eyelashes fluttering rapidly.

She appeared to have an easier time coming from regular sex, because it was only a couple minutes after Ylantar had slammed his cock inside her that she first began to come. "Ah, fuck," she panted out, her brown eyes rolling up, her hands clawing at the floor on either side of her. Her legs struggled against his hands where he gripped them round her muscular, tight thighs, but he didn't stop for a second, despite the intensity of the pleasure her body was subjecting him to, as her sex wetly coiled and gripped his cock. Little grunts and pants escaped her throat, growing in volume and regularity the longer the sex went on, and there was one clear benefit to the entire affair: while she was getting fucked, she remained silent.

In the end, Ylantar drove every last drop of remaining physical energy that was in his body into a singular task: making Shyntae come so much that she would never dare mention his "lackluster" cunnilingus skills again. By the time he was finished with her, she was a naked, blissed-out mess, her skin sticky and shiny with sweat, glistening in the low light of the room, perpetual as it curled around on the ceiling. He removed his cock from her as she laid there, staring blankly up at the soft luminescence of the internal lighting. Then he tapped his palm with one finger, silently informing me of his desire: to be allowed to come.

The moment that I let him come, he immediately began to gush, spraying hot white seed all across Shyntae's face, practically caking her features in cum. She was out of it enough that she just sputtered for a moment before closing her eyes and mouth, letting him paint her ebony dark skin the milky white that it had been meant to be.

He then collapsed onto the ground, completely exhausted, and she was the first of the two to recover enough to rise, idly collecting his cum and feeding it into her mouth. "Not bad at fucking, though. That cock of yours even work right?" She absently reached out for his dick, softly stroking it. It seemed that she had not identified her "failure to please" as her own fault, and just smirked lazily as she gave him a gentle handjob and kept stroking away. When he finally got hard again... she let go of his cock, as if to tease him or see what he did.

What he did was nothing, as it turned out. He was just too exhausted to keep going, even with the obvious incentives.

* * *

The boys and girls were sorted into separate barracks, to minimize the amount of fraternization in the ranks that occurred, but any military force obviously has to work together sooner or later. It didn't mean they spent no time together, just enough that it took several days for Vicolene's presence to finally be uncovered by a chance meeting in the mess, stumbling on one another seemingly entirely by coincidence.

"Vicolene?" He asked, as he saw her face, blinking rapidly.

"Ylantar? Wow," she said, smiling, seeming surprised. "I guess the rumors really were true."

"What rumors?" Ylantar asked, narrowing his eyes.

"Oh, you know," Vicolene replied, giving him a playful wink and an exaggerated smirk. "That there's a guy here who's a noble who got pushed into early service because he couldn't keep it in his pants. And by rumors, I mean constant bragging that is pretending to be gossip, by one of the officers."

Ylantar made an unusual sound with his mouth that I had not heard before, this strange mix of a cluck and a wet popping of his lips. "Is this officer named Shyntae?"

"Yeah. I've been sticking pretty close to her," Vicolene explained. "I figured a former commoner is more likely to get what I need to know to really succeed in the army."

"You do realize I don't care in the slightest bit about your career prospects, right?" Ylantar asked, already falling back into old banter.

"I was giving you the opportunity to pretend," she said, with an exaggerated pout, as if deeply harmed by his words.

"Let's find a place to sit," he said, and she obeyed his commands, old social norms still applying even in the army. "What is Shyntae saying about me?"

"Oh, I didn't even know it was you, don't worry," Vicolene said, which for some reason did not seem to reassure Ylantar at all.

"I will repeat the question. What is she saying?"

"Is that really the same question?" Vicolene mused, clearly enjoying tormenting Ylantar a bit.

"Vicolene."

"You're less fun now for some reason," she said, shaking her head. Before Ylantar could lodge another complaint, she kept talking. "She's just saying she's got this noble boy under her patronage, he was so naughty he got kicked out of his home, but now he's naughty for her, if you know what I mean. You get it."

"What kind of things is she saying we do together, specifically?"

"Man, I dunno. Sex stuff. I honestly thought she was making it up."

"Did you think she was making it up because it was exaggerated?"

"No, it's because she couldn't seduce a dead beetle," Vicolene said. There was a brief pause, and Ylantar might have filled it, if Vicolene hadn't continued. "Though, it didn't strike me as that plausible that a guy would be that into cunnilingus anyway."

Ylantar's hand opened then closed beneath the table. He had been eating her out pretty much every time they fucked, out of a sustained desire to correct his "failure" to cause an orgasm from earlier. She had continued to not come. I had concluded that she simply was the sort of woman who didn't come from cunnilingus - he had concluded that he needed to try harder to prove his worth as a man.

I did not mention the irony with his experience with Aunrae to him. The fact that he had not noticed it yet, despite his normally keen intelligence, suggested to me that he was ignoring it on purpose, and I did not want to become the annoying voice in his head trying to humiliate him further.

"Why do you think she couldn't seduce a dead beetle?" He decided on, trying to wander away from the subject of cunnilingus.

"Uhh." Vicolene said it in an exaggerated stretch. "I don't want to fuck things up the officer I'm getting on with. If she's got a sweet romantic side that's cool too."

"She doesn't." Vicolene let out an exhalation of relief. "So?"

"She's talking about making her... about making you," Vicolene corrected, avoiding whatever noun Shyntae normally used to refer to him, "service some of the other officers. She figures it'd be good for her own promotion. It's probably just talk," she added, waving her hand to try to calm him down. "She's a braggart, says things that aren't true, you know."

It could be an opportunity, I pointed out to Ylantar. He let out a quiet hum that suggested he was sincerely thinking about it, his chin setting in place as he took his time to mull it over for a long few seconds. "I see."

"Seriously, you didn't hear that from me, Ylantar. I don't want to get in trouble with her."

"But you betrayed your superior officer's trust," he said, clearly intending to tease her, but Vicolene wasn't primed to appreciate it very much. "Maybe I should tell her anyway."

"You shouldn't. She's a huge bitch."

"I wouldn't call her huge," Ylantar replied mildly, earning a small laugh from Vicolene.

"Still, she's a really good fighter. That's how she earned her way into the officer corps, you know? Killed three enemies and captured a fourth."

"I don't believe it's possible to spend as much time with her as I have and not know that," Ylantar said, earning a gentle laugh from Vicolene, her lips curling up in a smile.

"You said it." She let out a long sigh, then returned to her food.

* * *

Ylantar and Shyntae fell into a rather predictable pattern: he would try to bring her to orgasm by eating her out until his jaw began to ache, then become frustrated and fuck her absolutely senseless with every last bit of energy he had before finally orgasming inside her. The dynamic seemed mutually beneficial - she came plenty, but didn't seem to actually mind flopping around if it had been preceded by that sort of foreplay; Ylantar, on the other hand, was benefiting in that Shyntae was enjoying their sexual relationship. I rather doubt she would be enjoying it so much if he didn't feel a need to prove himself to her: he had been quite short-sighted with Aunrae, and she fit closer to the profile of Aunrae in his mind and emotional state than she did to Vicolene or Qilanna.

Shyntae had gotten done dining with the other officers. It was an important social ritual, but the vast majority of officers were women from the higher social stratum who had not even had to distinguish themselves in battle. That meant that she always came back frustrated, emotional, and she was the sort of person inclined to take out those emotions on Ylantar, so I predicted yet another iteration of the same old exchange.

Rather than opening with something like "Get on your knees and eat me out, I'm angry and horny," however, she did something different. "So, this girl, Vicolene, you know her?"

"I do," Ylantar admitted, a certain stiffness entering his body language. He had spoken to Vicolene again a few times, talking and chatting, but their relationship had not returned to its sexual angle.

"You ever fuck her?" Her expression was unusual: I would not have called it jealous, or angry. It seemed tense, yet excited, as if she had a problem that she thought needed to be solved and wanted to get to the solving.

"I never had coitus with her," he replied honestly.

She quirked an eyebrow at that, then realized his allusion. "You have done sexual stuff together, though, right?"

"Not since joining the military," he said, trying his best to protect Vicolene even as he resorted to honesty.

"Yeah, I'll bet. That dick of yours don't work by the time I'm through with you," she said, her cocky smile once more exaggerated by her scar. Her finger absently traced out the air. "Would you like to fuck her?"

"You are more than enough woman for me, ma'am," he replied.

She rolled her eyes. "I know that. I was asking if you'd like to fuck her, as in, if I called her in here and told you two to do the things you used to do one more time, would you go for it?" Ylantar clearly had no idea where this was going at all. That was obvious to both me and Shyntae. "If you don't want to, you can just get on your knees and eat me out again. Maybe this time you'll finally make me come." Or maybe not, was the implicit threat.

"I would just... like to know why you are asking this question."

"Because I'm thinking about doing exactly that. Having you fuck your old childhood friend right in front of me, the way you used to." The lingering question of what exactly would happen after went unanswered. She's probably keeping what happens next a secret so she can decide afterwards, I told Ylantar, borrowing off what I knew from my experience with her and him both. They were, in some sense, mirror images of one another.

"Why?"

"I didn't give you permission to ask why. Answer or get on your fucking knees," she said, snapping her spine straight, taking on a disciplinarian tone instantly. Ylantar stiffened as well in response.

"I'll... do it," he said at last, and I wasn't entirely sure his recalcitrance wasn't put up, gauging by his emotional state. There was no sense of tension left in him once those words left his lips. Perhaps he was simply playing the role that Shyntae wanted him to.

Shyntae smiled. "There we go. I know just what you are," she said, a hungry smile on her face, stepping towards him and wrapping her arms gently around his neck, fingers lacing together behind him. "You're not even upset." She winked. "You want to fuck ol' Vicky again, but you're concerned I might get pissed if you say it out loud. That's the kind of guy you are. I can tell."

Ylantar simply gulped, maintaining plausible deniability in that situation. She let her hands trail across his chest, briefly tease his cock - then she left to go fetch Vicolene, leaving him alone in her quarters. He simply took a seat on the bed.

* * *

Seeing Vicolene and Shyntae in the same room reinforced just how different the two women were. Shyntae wore a predatory grin, only exaggerated by her scar; Vicolene was more awkward, trying to maintain a pretense of military discipline despite it, back stiff and expression distant. Shyntae was actually shorter than Vicolene, as it turned out, but she seemed to loom artificially large in the room as she looked from Ylantar to Vicolene and back again. "Don't look so stiff, Vicky," she said, slapping the girl harshly on the back. "Didn't I tell you that it was good news?"

"Y-yes ma'am," Vicolene replied, swallowing.

"I heard from Ylantar here that he never fucked you. You are eating your silphium, right?" She added, and Vicolene nodded. "I decided to be nice and let you two get out all those feelings you never could before." As Vicolene seemed to hesitate, Shyntae's expression sharpened. "I mean, unless you don't want to," she said in a tone of voice that left little doubt there would be negative consequences for not doing so.

"I do," Vicolene replied, perhaps a bit too quickly.

Shyntae let out a small bark of laughter at that. Ylantar's cock idly twitched in response to the pair's behavior - this was his first time experiencing anything like a threesome, after all, and he clearly was attracted enough to both women to give them plenty of oral attention. "Right then. Ylantar, why don't you show off that body of yours to Vicky? I'm sure she's missed being able to see such a sexy specimen of manhood."

Ylantar rose from the bed, towering over both women but obediently beginning to strip himself naked. Shyntae's eyes wandered with familiar lust, while Vicolene seemed more shocked by the whole thing going on in front of her, eyes widening subtly as she saw his bare chest exposed, his abs seeming to get the most focus. Her lips parted, soft pink tongue - the same soft pink tongue that had been pleasuring him back during irrumatio and fellatio - just barely visible as she stared with open lust at his naked body. When his cock came out, she got down on her knees more out of old instinct than anything else, earning a bark of laughter from Shyntae.

"Mmm. I guess you can give him a blowjob, if you want. Doesn't seem like he deserves one of those, given he's such a crappy pussy-eater, but hey."

Vicolene swallowed back whatever words she was going to say, glancing up at Ylantar with an expression that could be interpreted as reassuring, something like, You're a great pussy-eater, don't worry. Then she slid her mouth down his length, sighing softly as she did so, her mouth taking each additional inch in a slow, grinding movement, her throat swallowing wetly around his cock as she took him to the base. Her tongue flashed back and forth on the underside of his length, and she looked up at him for approval - approval she got in the form of Ylantar groaning, his hand reaching down for Vicolene's hair, softly running through it.

"I suppose it's appropriate," Shyntae said mildly. "After all, he's a noble boy, you're a commoner. You should be on your knees for him. Plus, he's got an officer patron - that'd be me - while you're still just a common soldier." From the way her body twisted subtly in place, Shyntae's words were quite arousing to the woman in question. Vicolene just closed her eyes as if to ignore her, and that just incited Shyntae further, sadism dripping from every new word she spoke. "That throat of yours must make a pretty good masturbation aid, if it got you thrown in the army and then him sent out here only a little later. That is how it went, right? Your tight, wet throat got wrapped around that cock of his a few too many times..."

Vicolene just diligently bobbed up and down his length, her expression one of grim determination. Her gaze was on Ylantar, seemingly demanding that he come right then and there. Ylantar didn't, however, and I wasn't inclined to let him, either: Shyntae had wanted the two to fuck, not to give and receive oral.

"You know, I've never had a cock in my mouth," Shyntae said. "It just seems gross to me, to be honest. But if you're into that kind of thing, then you're into it." Vicolene was holding herself down on Ylantar's cock at that point, hands having gripped his ass cheeks firmly as she did her best to suck and swallow around his length, to get him to ejaculate directly down her throat. "Anyway," Shyntae said, simply taking hold of a tangle of Vicolene's hair and tugging her up and off his cock by it, making her sputter wetly, spit spilling out of her mouth, eyes wide, as she was peeled off. "I didn't tell you to suck him until he came right down your throat. I told you to fuck him. This'll be how you lose your cherry to your childhood crush, right?"

Vicolene's eyes went down to the ground, her breathing becoming shallow, and Shyntae just laughed, looking up at Ylantar, giving him a jerk of the head that made it clear what he was expected to do.

"Come here, Vicolene," he said, grasping the woman under the arms, hefting her up to her feet unsteadily. He started to strip her a moment later, revealing more and more obsidian black skin to the cool air of Shyntae's office until she was naked in front of him. Then he laid her out on Shyntae's bed, giving his patron one quick look - and earning a grin and a wink from the woman in question.

"Go on. Take your childhood friend's cherry right in front of me," she said, licking her lips hungrily. A moment later, he was teasing his cock at Vicolene's slit, her pink sex dripping on his length. Vicolene herself swallowed, staring up at him uncertainly for a long few seconds.

The brief pause ended when Ylantar leaned down to kiss her forcefully on the lips and simply slammed his whole length inside her in a swift, forceful stroke. She grunted into his mouth, letting out a tiny noise of shock and surprise, then quietly melted beneath him as he began to vigorously fuck her, pumping in and out in a regular, methodical pace, his balls slapping against her thighs from the force of each movement. Her tongue began to dance against his in the space between their mouths, and Ylantar firmly gripped her ass cheek, his other hand grabbing the back of her head to hold her tight in a long kiss. Her own hands reached up, trailing along his bare skin, in the beautiful moment of sexual intimacy.

"He's not really going at you as hard as he does me," Shyntae noted with some curiosity. "Guess he's trying to be gentle with you, since you're a virgin and all." Vicolene let out a soft noise, almost a whimper, but Ylantar's cock simply throbbed and twitched inside her at those words, his own sadistic predilections seemingly not caring one whit whether it was Aunrae or Vicolene on the receiving end of degradation. "With me, he really likes to take his time, too. Ram it in repeatedly, make it last forever - my pleasure's just that important to him. Wonder how long it'll take him with you?"

Do you want me to let you come quickly? I think that Shyntae would prefer it if you did. Ylantar tapped two fingers against the back of Vicolene's head, a silent statement that I should wait for her to come twice before doing anything like that. I noted my assent and let the two get on with it.

So it was that he made sweet, vigorous love to Vicolene, her hands trailing hungrily across his back. Her fingers would trace out the shapes of his shoulderblades, or run down along the smooth bumps of his spine. When she came for the first time, her nails clawed and raked across his bare skin, her legs snapping around his hips to grind herself tightly against him; when she came for the second, her hands both grasped and held the back of his head, moaning loudly into his mouth as she did so. I let him find release alongside her, spraying his cum into her waiting sex, her breath in his mouth intoxicating and rolling around against seemingly every surface it could find.

When he was spent, he broke off the kiss and pulled out of her, turning to face Shyntae. "Ready for a real woman?" Shyntae asked. At some point she had stripped herself naked, and I could see her wet sex glistening in the light, Ylantar's eyes naturally drawn to it.

"I was born ready," he told her, earning a soft laugh and easy smile as Shyntae moved to straddle his naked body, teasing her wet sex at his cock. She leaned forward, kissing him on the lips, more a brisk thing meant to lay claim to her territory than anything of sincere romantic intensity like what he had been putting into his kiss with Vicolene.

It sufficed for her, though, and she slid herself down his length, swallowing him up with a low moan, her eyes gently closing and lidding as she took him to the base. Once she was there, she wiggled her hips around, opening one eye and glancing over at the supine form of Vicolene, who lay there, still panting after her repeated orgasms. I could feel her pulse around his length, her sex tightening for just a moment as a little thrum of arousal went through her at the sight of the other woman. Shyntae's eyes then turned back to Ylantar, and she kissed him on the lips again, this time more fiercely, her tongue invading his mouth, and his own tongue replying in kind, flapping against hers.

As they made out like that, his hands began to wander her body, sliding up her muscular thighs to her firm ass, groping and squeezing the flesh there with obvious interest. She faintly moaned back against him, wriggling in place, their tongues dancing against one another in their mouths as they kissed. Each firm pump of her hips was accompanied by a squeeze of his hands, their bodies soon falling into a rhythm with one another. Shyntae's gaze was as often on Vicolene as it was on Ylantar, and it was clear she was getting off on being watched, exaggerating her movements and noises each time she looked Vicolene's way, as if to catch the other woman's attention and demonstrate to her exactly what she was doing with Ylantar.

She popped her lips back from Ylantar at last, sucking in a few breaths, her hands resting on Ylantar's shoulders for balance as she smiled at him, that same lazy, lopsided smile as always, her movements slowing for a moment. "Normally you go at me harder. Don't tell me that you're too shy?" There was the flash of a threat in her eyes, and Ylantar's hands slid up from her ass to grip her by the hips. "Just wanted a bit of foreplay, huh?" She asked.

"That's right," Ylantar agreed easily, then began to furiously fuck her up and down his cock, his expression turning into a snarl of intensity as Shyntae began to bounce on his cock. Her white hair flew up and down with the sheer force of his repetitive thrusts, her lips opening wide in a soft moan as she got furiously fucked like that. Wet breaths escaped her throat, filling the air as she was furiously fucked up and down on the bed, which began to ripple and squeak. Vicolene quietly rose from her position, collecting her clothes, and neither Ylantar nor Shyntae moved to stop her.

I do not know if either of them even noticed her movements, as she got dressed and left Shyntae's quarters - there was the faintest twitch from Shyntae when the door to her quarters was closed, her eyes turning over to where Vicolene had been resting, so I had to assume she hadn't noticed, but by the lazy smile on her lips, she didn't much care. Despite being furiously fucked at that point, she managed to tilt herself forward, meeting Ylantar's lips with hers once more, softly moaning into his mouth.

Whatever her insensitivity to cunnilingus was caused by, it did not apply to frantic coitus. She came, over and over, as she was furiously fucked in that position, her juices oozing out over Ylantar's hard cock. Ylantar himself growled and groaned as he took her like that, just pounding away at her body, enjoying as moans escaped her lips, her head casting back, her brown eyes curling up, her mouth falling open. Her tongue flopped unsteadily around in her mouth, until he pulled her forward, letting her head come to rest on his shoulder, her soft breaths gently tickling his bare skin.

After a couple dozen orgasms on her part, he erupted inside her, a low groan escaping his throat as he did so, his hips bucking, her back arching, as hot seed sprayed out inside her waiting sex, practically filling her up.

He collapsed on his back in the afterglow, hands aching, chest rising and falling, Shyntae draped across him in a parody of intimacy, her lips idly caressing his neck. Whatever sly smile curled its way across its lips, whatever cruel thoughts bubbled in her mind, he was far too preoccupied with catching his breath to much care, and just lay there, dead to the world, merrily oblivious.

Next Chapter

I Slept My Way To This Post, Chapter 7
Previous Chapter
Ylantar was seated on Aunrae's bed, while the woman herself knelt before him, hungrily and forcefully bobbing up and down his cock. He maintained a schooled expression, staring down at her impassively as her throat expanded and contracted around his length. Her fingers brushed slowly along his bare thighs, her eyes looking up at him with a pitiful expression, silently pleading that this be the day he finally came in her mouth. By the way his length twitched absently in her mouth, I was beginning to suspect his constant forcing her to work him like this was actually intended purely to satiate his own preferences, not to subtly manipulate her.

When he finally left her there, himself unsatisfied, her with an aching jaw and yet more firmness in her expression as she steeled herself to do better next time, I spoke to him in his mind. Was that necessary? She's now very positively inclined towards you.

"I'd like to keep it that way," he said, as he found a place to speak in seclusion. "Seeing her respond like that is fun. I can barely keep myself from making fun of her."

I would point out that he had made fun of her, when he had occasionally made promises like, "If you can make me come, I'll fuck you again," but there hardly seemed much point. Is this serving a purpose, or getting you off?

"Can't it be both?" He rolled his shoulders. "Can we talk about this later? I'd like to go get rid of this erection with a certain someone."

I inwardly sighed, but allowed him the chance to just go enjoy himself. We could, in fact, talk about it later, and sex was enjoyable to me as well, since I shared in his sensations to a great degree. After all, his body was coated in my essence.

* * *

He seemed to really take his time with Qilanna, which I couldn't decide was out of courtesy or due to a desire to avoid our conversation as long as possible. She would up slack and panting on the ground, skin lightly stained with sweat, a lazy smile on her lips as he recuperated himself, pressed up against the door. Her eyes wandered his naked chest, down to his cock, pink tongue flashing out past dark lips in a way that suggested lustful thoughts on her part, and invited them on Ylantar's. When he recovered enough, he continued to make love to her, furious thrusts as he kissed her on the lips with all the passion and romance he could muster, making the older woman just squirm in pleasure beneath him.

It was all well and good to ensure that his teacher was truly enjoying his company, but it meant he was completely exhausted by the time he returned to his room. Now that you're done with Qilanna, we can talk.

"I'm tired," he said, lazily waving his hand at the air as if I was some pesky flying insect he could swat away.

That is because you intentionally exhausted yourself with Qilanna. Sadistically mistreating Aunrae doesn't serve your purposes. Now that you have her self esteem broken down, you can build it back up around yourself.

"Maybe I want to see how low she can go," he replied, with an absent smile. "Besides, she's tamed now. As long as I keep her in this state, she'll never move against me, because it would be an admission she wasn't a good enough lover."

That is my suspicion in part, but I doubt it can really be maintained indefinitely, I pointed out.

"It doesn't have to be indefinite. In a couple years, I'll be joining the army, and I won't see her for a decade. Maybe I'll let her milk one or two orgasms out of me before then. I'll have to make sure to very thoroughly reward her so she's looking forward to my return..." He smirked at the thought. It was increasingly clear to me that his logic here was entirely hormonal, doing what satisfied him, rather than rational and manipulative, doing what was in his long-term best interest.

Think things through, Ylantar. You can manipulate her. Direct her. Right now she is just trying to deal with the humiliation of being unable to make a teenage boy come. I could feel his body respond to that, the faint twitch of his penis that came from that particular thought. If you take proper action, you can turn those feelings into something more affectionate, and she'll be your ally in this house for as long as you continue to treat her well. This is the most basic element of mortals' social behavior: kindness is control.

He scoffed at that. "Whatever. I have her under control just fine right now," he said, curling up beneath his sheets in a way that made it quite obvious he wasn't going to do a single thing I'd suggested. Silent patience was my only remedy.

* * *

My occasional coaxing and prompting earned only eye rolls, annoyed scoffs, and dismissive gestures. I increasingly began to consider "misusing" my ability to control his orgasm simply to let Aunrae off, but that would only destroy whatever trust existed between myself and Ylantar. It wasn't as if the problem was simply that he didn't come - it was that he didn't have the priority of directing her behavior in a manner that was best for himself, only a manner that was best for his libido.

His annoyance at my subtle insistence that he drag his sex drive back under control and put it to better use had me spending more time silent. I wasn't annoyed - such emotions are beneath me - but pushing wasn't going to help. I would spend much of my time considering exactly how best to convince him to change the dynamics of his relationship with Aunrae, particularly during the sex itself - if I could manage to, in a moment of passion and base need, get him to orgasm, then perhaps all his barriers could be broken down? It had yet to quite work out as I'd hoped, though, and he continued his damnable pattern.

It was, from his perspective, thus completely without warning when his mother summoned him into her office once more, her fingers steepled as she looked at him. "Aunrae claims she rededicated herself to ensuring you learn, after the Nyareda seemed to rule more in your favor than her son's."

"She does seem far more enthusiastic of late, yes. I am happy to hear it has a spiritual cause, rather than a temporal one."

"Mhm. Her newfound piety does seem to be quite sincere. I am happy that my sister has so returned to the fold." There was just the slightest creeping sense of dread and tension that layered over the both of us like a sticky fog that slowly congealed against bare skin. "Tell me. What is said of a young man who sleeps with a strange woman?"

"It depends on the strange woman," Ylantar replied, with a charming smile, earning a reciprocal baring of the teeth from his mother.

"And what if he should sleep not with one woman, but with two? And not in a single incident, but across time and space?"

"That he is..." he trailed off, now fully aware of what particular kind of trap he had been caught in. His body language shifted subtly, his alertness rising from its already quite high baseline.

"In dire need of military discipline," his mother finished, straightening up. "Qilanna is an excellent guard. Her reputation is excellent, and I cannot imagine she has failed to teach you more than the average boy your age. Your aunt is a pious and earnest teacher looking out for your well-being, and again, you have just said she has been firmly teaching you - and you have a second tutor, in the form of Wehlor. Your magical talents are particularly exceptional, a fact that Aunrae noted. I think that you would be best served by joining the military now, rather than idly wasting time with people who cannot teach you."

Ylantar was silent for a moment, and in my position, I could tell his thoughts were running by at mile a minute. He eventually spoke. "Yes, mother. I will get myself prepared." He paused before rising, his jaw setting for a moment. "May I ask...?" He prompted, of some unstated inquiry that his mother knew well enough.

"I was directed to look into your education, and concluded that your sessions with Qilanna drag on far too long. Surely just a matter of your having reached a plateau from which you cannot advance further as yet."

"Yes, you are correct," Ylantar agreed, giving a brisk bow before leaving.

* * *

In my view, the most likely individual was Aunrae - but since I had been telling Ylantar, again and again, that his treatment of Aunrae was inviting doom on him, for weeks and weeks, I decided to let him reach the conclusion on his own. He would be more likely to listen to it that way, after all.

The military of the dark elves is organized in part based on social status. The nobility, such as Ylantar, have actual teachers to inform them how to fight before they arrive, actual reputations that anyone gives a damn about, and actual wealth to spread around to ensure their sons are well cared for in their time in the army. The commoners, if they do not already know, are taught the general principles of fighting, and line up with the other men to do whatever they're told like mindless automatons.

Even where there were not formal differentiations - commoners becoming officers by esteem and a few well-placed bribes, as was the case for Qilanna, or male noble boys who were not generally given commissions, such as Ylantar - they were certainly very clearly treated differently. A boy like Ylantar was a knight, someone with training and experience who would no doubt distinguish himself in the field. A boy who did not have his social status was just a sword and a shield that might find its way transfixed to the end of some deep dwarven pike or caught within the tentacled maw of one of my lingering descendants, and there would be another where that came from.

Theoretically, any boy could manage to achieve the sort of social status that Ylantar was expected to. Practically, they had no chance. Ylantar would more likely kill a dozen similarly poorly trained boys' than fall to their blows. The dark elves knew no army that was clearly their superior, so more likely than not, he would always be well-fed, able to retreat with the main force, and pressing into the weakest part of the enemies' line. The other boys - young men, I should perhaps say, since joining the army was part of becoming a man, in the view of the dark elves, though some were even younger than the already quite young Ylantar - would be the chaff that fell on the enemies' spears, not him.

Of course, the army rarely went on campaign in the first place - from what I had picked up, the dark elves saw at best one campaign in a year, and often not even that. Even when they did campaign, they rarely met the enemy in battle, instead making winding, circuitous routes around them. Ylantar had monitored the military's comings and goings quite intensely when Vicolene had joined, and... there had really been not much of either. He had concluded that she had been given some garrison posting somewhere and simply left to the work.

So, the primary effect of being sent to the military, at least in the short term, was having to sleep in a barracks with dozens of other similarly aged young men, rather than having the opportunity to fuck Aunrae and Qilanna regularly. The other young men did look up to him, of course, given that he was the highest ranking individual in the entire barracks, and only one or two others were even of noble status. But, I rather suspected, given the way that Ylantar uneasily shifted and rolled about on the bed, that his true, primary concern at the moment was the sex that he was not going to be having.

* * *

As there was no training expected of them, there was nothing to do. They were isolated from the city at large, and subjected to military discipline, but that was really all. It was boredom that began pressing down on Ylantar's mind first, not fear. He found little joy in being fawned over by commoner boys desperately trying to cling to him as a life raft if battle ever did come. He made friends, of course, as was expected of him, participated in what team building there was to be done, but it was obvious to me that he would rather be back home with Qilanna and Aunrae, enjoying sex with them both.

I received no apology or admission of fault on his part before one of the officers found an opportunity to speak to him alone. Her name was Shyntae, and she was commoner born, having risen into the officer class by distinguishing herself in some battle, killing three foes and capturing another during the rout. She had a pretty face with bright brown eyes, nicked with a single scar that traced along her upper lip, giving her a slightly-lopsided smile and subtle character. Her body was fit, trim, but she lacked in height, coming up only to Ylantar's shoulders. At a glance, I would have estimated her to be in her mid-twenties: further into her term of service than Ylantar, but probably still in her first decade. More mature than him, but by no means truly mature, even by the standards of the dark elves.

"I was curious if you have any patrons in the army, as yet," she said, in a stern voice. Patronage was common, an officer building up connections among the soldiery. I did not know if Shyntae had skipped to the front of the line by some merit on her part, some idleness on her competition, or if Ylantar was simply not so desirable a bachelor as one might think, but she was the first to bring up the subject with the young soldier nonetheless.

"I do not, ma'am," he responded, his spine straightened up, his hands on either side of him. She looked him up and down, leering in a manner that made it obvious what her interest in him was, her own hands clasped behind her back.

"You imagine you're too good for it, then, I suppose? Men like you always do."

"I'm afraid I don't understand your meaning, ma'am."

She stepped towards him, her expression grim. "You don't understand my meaning?" He shook his head slightly. "I can't hear you."

"I don't understand your meaning, ma'am," he repeated, clearly and loudly.

"My meaning, pretty boy, is that your mother sent you here more than a little prematurely. Why do you think that is? Do you think it's because you're so smart and strong, she figured her lovely little baby could do the most good if he got in the army right now? Is that what you think?"

"No, ma'am," he replied.

"I'll tell you what I think. I think that your mother got embarrassed by you." He did not show it physically, but I could feel the pang of displeasure as it coursed through his system. "Now, everybody's a gossip among the officers, but nobody heard of you doing anything like humping a holy statue of the goddess or slapping some highborn girl in the face. Nobody heard much of you at all. Only person who knew anything, knew you'd been betrothed to some noble girl. That right?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Now, some of my compatriots proposed that maybe you were sent out here so that the marriage could be secured that little bit sooner. But I don't think that. I think..." she pressed one finger into his chest, but it wasn't to push him, or intimidate him: the finger began to rapidly trail along the contours of his body, almost feeling him up as it slid slowly this way and that. "That it was something more private and embarrassing. But what can a boy your age even do? Must have been something private, so either you were beating the servants, or you were fucking them. Were you beating the servants?"

"No, ma'am. I also-"

"I didn't ask for anything other than an answer to my question," she snapped back. "Now, even some libidinous cretin can have value to us officers. I've been watching you. You've got a good sword hand, some decent talent as a sorcerer. The rest haven't been paying you the least bit of mind, figuring they can get better elsewhere, men who aren't completely ruled by their lusts. You won't be finding any other woman who will consider coming your way, on account of your reputation."

It was obviously (to me) a hard sell - she was exaggerating to convince him to go along with her. I told Ylantar as much, and he retained his plastic expression, unable to respond due to the woman in front of him.

"Now, here's the deal: if you accept my patronage, I can make sure you're well taken care of. If you don't, well, I doubt you'll get another offer this good, given your... reputation." She let the word linger in the air for a moment. The implicit threat, I believe, was that she would slander his reputation further if he refused her.

I could feel his length idly throb in his groin - the barracks was not a good place to receive sexual relief, after all. If you're going to do it, you may as well pretend to like her, I pointed out, worried that he might repeat his error with Aunrae.

"I'd been hoping to attract the attention of such a beautiful woman as yourself, ma'am. I consider myself very fortunate."

She smiled at that, and it seemed sincere, guileless - as if she had no suspicions at all that Ylantar might be exaggerating his feelings for her. She reached up for his shoulder, clapping him on it firmly. "Good. Come with me," she ordered him, and soon enough he was drawn into her quarters. As an officer, she had a proper room. The moment they were inside, she locked the door behind them, a certain rapacious glint in her eyes. Her stern, disciplinarian mien vanished in a heartbeat, replaced instead with something far more animalistic, like a hungry wolf about to devour its prey. "Strip."

The order was bare bones, but it lacked the sharp note her words had thus far, lust congealing around it instead. Ylantar began to remove his clothing without much more thought than that, and Shyntae's eyes drank him in with obvious desire, running along his bare chest, his toned stomach, down to his currently hard cock. She smiled particularly sharply as she saw that, stepping forward to him, her fingers wrapping around it. "You're already hard," she whispered into his ear, beginning to gently stroke up and down his length. "You should count yourself lucky that I've been eating my silphium, or you'd be about to become a daddy. How old are you, Ylantar?"

"Fifteen," he breathed out, and she growled in fierce desire, her teeth digging into his neck with a sudden, forceful movement, grinding down against the bare flesh there and making him shudder as he was marked. Her hand on his cock moved more and more swiftly in response to his words as well, clearly excited to have such a young flower as her own. When she finally pulled her lips and teeth away from his bare skin, there was a faint pang from the lingering impression of her forceful movement. His length twitched absently before her.

"Mmm..." she leered up and down at his body. "A boy your age isn't likely to be any good at cunnilingus." Ylantar had acquired quite a bit of experience in it, from Vicolene and then Qilanna, but he did not correct her. "Tell you what. If you tell me what you are, I'll ride you until you come your brains out. I know that's the only thing you really care about, isn't it?"

"What I am?" He asked. She wants you to verbally degrade yourself, I offered, making his expression mildly shift. You should know what she wants. Just imagine the sorts of things you'd want from Aunrae. His lips thinned for a moment, and Shyntae's expression shifted as she began to get irritated, preparing to explain to him what sort of task she'd intended. "I'm a horny idiot who can't control his cock."

She pounced on him, slamming him down against her bed as she sent him in an unbalanced mess backwards. She tore off her own clothes with manic alacrity, her eyes half on his body, and half on the mark she had left on his neck. The moment she was naked, she simply slammed herself down into his pelvis, letting out a shuddering groan. She was tight, intensely so, a mix of powerful lower body muscles and lack of use meaning that when he cunt squeezed, it was a vice, wrapped taut around his whole length and leaving a mind-numbing pleasure in its wake. I naturally acted to prevent him from coming prematurely - if I hadn't, he likely would have orgasmed on that first stroke, if not the second.

"Mmm," she hummed softly, just holding herself there. It gave him a moment to admire her body: fit, lean, petite. The scar on her lip was the only visible one, giving her face character, while the rest of her was that of a muscular pixie, her hands soon finding their way to his bare chest, dark skin against dark skin, before she started to ride him properly, pumping her whole body up and down his length with ever-increasing intensity, panting softly as she did so, pink sex just faintly visible from the right angle, a glimmer of color on an otherwise dark body.

She couldn't be described as anything other than frantic. Her eyes were wide, brown irises surrounded in a sea of white as she rode him with force that was intense and exaggerated. "Ah, that's, that's it," she panted out. "Fuck, fuck, yes, this is, fuck," she growled, her fingers suddenly digging into his shoulders, her eyes leering down at him as her lips curled up, her tongue briefly flashing out. "You're mine now, you got it? I don't, I don't give a fuck if you're, if you're a noble, I-" was as far as she got before Ylantar reached out with a hand, brushing his thumb gently against her clit and sending her spiking the rest of the way over into an orgasm.

"You feel so good," he breathed out, a long ago agreed upon signal to me that he wanted to come. His hands shifted up to her hips, grinding her down against his pelvis, as he came in torrential waves, simply splashing his cum deep inside her as she shuddered and smiled, wearing a face of dopey triumph, the sort that can only come from someone who believes they have gotten one over on their "superior." "So very, nn, good," he groaned out, as the last few droplets of cum were wrung out of him by her tight sex.

She licked her lips, leering down at him with naked lust, her fingers trailing across his naked body with obvious interest. Every inch was a target for inspection as she felt him up, smiling all the while. "Yes... yeah, I think I can use you, if you can behave yourself, I can make your life in the army much, much easier." There was a certain sinister glint in her eyes, some sadistic fantasy bubbling behind the surface, but Ylantar didn't take too much note of it. He thought, no doubt, it would be a problem to solve later, when he hadn't just come.

Given that his cock was still hard inside her, and Shyntae began to slowly ride him once more, I can't even honestly say he was wrong.

Next Chapter

I Slept My Way To This Post, Chapter 6:
Previous Chapter
I do not truly feel emotions in the same way that mortals do, but there are analogies. In this case, I felt tense - Ylantar had managed to figure out my presence. It wasn't a bluff, I knew that much. I had actively applied the same essence that allowed him to use magic without any volition on his part. I had been more prioritizing his personal safety than my own continued anonymity. If someone had stumbled upon him fucking his aunt, or if he had lost his hunter's duel, it would have seriously and negatively impacted his position - and by extension, mine.

I am, I admitted to him. He paused, taking in a deep breath through his nose as he seemed to consider my presence. His eyes closed, and I was left blind for a long few seconds before they opened again.

"Who are you?" He asked. One finger tapped against his thigh, clearly somewhat impatient to get the answers he wanted.

I considered a deflection for the briefest of moments, but I doubted it would work in the long term. I am Ephaliat. He made a spiralling gesture with his hand, egging me to continue on. By his expression, I could guess that he had no idea who I was - at least, not by name. I am the one whose body you were dipped into in your thirteenth year.

He paused at that, seeming to seriously consider what I'd just said. He was utterly silent besides - I'd grown accustomed to him speaking out loud to himself as he planned and plotted, as he worked out the various peculiar contours of dark elven society and who in particular was trying to ruin his life and why. He was the sort to carefully think through problems, and speaking seemed to help him do so, so it was unusual to see him struggling with some intellectual task in both privacy and silence. His finger tapped against his knee as his mouth moved one way, then the other. "What can you actually do?" He asked, at last.

I am responsible for your magical talents; and I can whisper thoughts such as these into your mind. I decided to leave out my ability to manipulate his various biological systems to direct his behavior this way and that. His jaw set, and he leaned forward, steepling his fingers as he considered my words.

"What do you want?"

That... was a rather more difficult question to answer. After all, he was a fairly devout follower of Nyareda, the very same goddess who in a past age had cut me down and buried my body. For whatever reason, she nowadays had only female priestesses, but he certainly didn't consider this some dire hateful misandry that I could use as a wedge between him and her. To live again, even if not in the same form I once did. To continue as things are, more or less. To keep you alive, by extension.

I certainly wanted him to achieve a socially dominant position, because it would make it easier for me to gather power and strength to influence the world, but it was better to leave it gentler. I wanted what was best for him, since we were in the same boat. I let him ponder my words in silence. "I see." He stretched his body in a manner that I'm sure would have excited any of the women he'd had sex with thus far, standing up and dusting himself off. "Let me think about this."

Very well. I could wait. I had been waiting for a very long time, after all.

* * *

He didn't speak to me further on the subject, instead throwing himself back into training with Qilanna, and even with Aunrae and Wehlor. His aunt seemed modestly more capable of actually teaching him, perhaps due to her pride having been broken down by his defeating her in a fight. As a teacher, she was of only moderate use - Ylantar's talents had far surpassed hers in terms of raw strength due to my presence within him, so she could only work at the edges, helping him with fine detailed magical work, formulating spells that did things very precisely.

I started to think he had simply put my existence out of his mind, given the amount of time he spent focusing on training and developing his skills, and the utter absence of any further attempts at conversation. Perhaps he simply didn't feel that there was anything else to say. Perhaps he was gauging my intentions by using silence to do it.

After a practice session of swordplay with Qilanna, the pair settled down in the room, drinking water, their bodies slick with sweat. Ylantar's eyes were naturally drawn to, and wandered, the buxom and muscular Qilanna, but she gave only an exhausted look back, as if she had been so completely enervated, even sex no longer interested her. It was strange; sometimes she would be tired, of course, but she would express that more by being lazy in her lovemaking than in avoiding it altogether.

"Is something the matter, Qilanna?" Ylantar asked.

"Always, something is in trouble and strife," Qilanna deflected, then sighed. "Your aunt is attempting to insist I instill martial values in her son as well. To teach two such enthusiastic youths is perhaps beyond my abilities." There was a faint hint of something dark in Ylantar's expression, and I could feel the knot in his chest at her words. "I do not draw him into my bedroom, Ylantar," she said, waving her hand dismissively at the very idea. "I am no suicidal fool who bewitches noble boys. It was you who seduced me, recall."

"Right," Ylantar agreed, his shoulders seeming to lighten at that fact. "Does that mean you are too exhausted for us to make love?"

The way she looked at him - appraising, considering, weighing the benefits and detriments - made it clear enough that she was. If she were to be fully energized, she would not have hesitated even for a moment. "I confess I would not make a good bed partner, but if you wish relief, I can lie beneath you and let you do as you please."

He smiled at her, warm and friendly, shaking his head. "I can hardly consider it a pleasant sexual experience to make love to a woman too tired to do anything besides lie there. At least, not if I like the woman," he added, earning a faint laugh from Qilanna.

"You speak with real wisdom, for one so young. I too would much despise lovemaking while you lay beneath me, inert as a corpse save for the throbbing of your manhood." She turned her gaze to his groin, as if fantasizing about fucking him, but again concluded that she truly lacked the energy to do anything. "Perhaps tomorrow."

* * *

Naturally, it was not tomorrow. Or the day after. She had three training sessions now, sometimes even four, when Aunrae and Kyorlan could manage to twist her arm into it. She managed well enough at actually teaching Ylantar, but her energy at the end of each session was an absolute nadir. Sometimes she would simply collapse to the ground and lie there for the better part of an hour, idly discussing household gossip or swordplay as she recovered.

With his primary source of sexual relief no longer available to him, Ylantar began masturbating again. Perhaps it would be better to avail yourself of Aunrae, I suggested to him, and he grunted at that, furiously thrusting his length between his fingers, as if to deny the claim altogether. "She is doing this on purpose," he hissed. "Trying to deny me Qilanna. She fantasizes about fucking her nephew."

I did not point out the hypocrisy of that statement, for the simple reason that I did not care.


"I know that you can control my orgasms," he said, his voice cold as ice. I did feel some sense of tension at having been seen through like that, but it was a minor thing."You're going to make it so I cannot come when I'm fucking Aunrae."

Very well. He rose from where he had been seated on his bed, heading immediately for his aunt's quarters.

She gladly welcomed him in, smiling as she saw him. "Ylantar. You are looking well. I trust that you have been doing well in your 'training' with Qilanna?" The way she said the word training left no ambiguity - she knew that he and Qilanna were lovers.

"Are you that desperate for me, that you're sabotaging my relationship with my teacher?" Ylantar asked, his hand grasping her by the shoulder as he pressed her up against the wall. His gaze was hungry.

Her eyes smoldered with lust right back, as much overconfident as she was needy. "You really are just ruled by your need for sex," she said, in this haughty, self-confident tone of voice, licking her lips as her fingers trailed along his flank. "Such a promiscuous young man... don't worry, I can take care of you much better than Qilanna can."

"If you think you're so worthy of my time, then make me come with your mouth. If you can't do that, find some other tutor for Kyorlan."

She smirked at that. She obviously imagined herself far too skilled to fail such a simple task, but she would find it utterly impossible anyway. "My late husband was always very delighted to see me slink to my knees... men are so easy to control if you know how to use your mouth," she explained, in a placid, self-confident manner, slipping down to her knees in front of Ylantar as if she were entirely confident and cocksure about the situation.

She peeled down his trousers, revealing his hard cock, which bobbed and danced before her face. She drank in the scent - it was still thick with the smell of sweat from when he had been masturbating, his precum staining the air faintly as she leaned forward to gingerly kiss the very tip. She smiled up at him with her eyes, her white hair drawn back to reveal her features as she planted her lips against his tip again, and again, his length bobbing in front of her in response, occasionally seeming to slap against her lips and smear his precum across her dark features.

When it did, she would simply collect it with her fingers, feeding it into her mouth, making a show of it. She was clearly intent on teasing him, pointless as it was. He didn't respond with any obvious show of lust. He didn't plead with her to suck his cock properly. He just stared down at her with a withering expression, sizing her up as though her teasing him, drawing it out, was just an unwanted annoyance.

It produced what I can only assume was the intended result - her eyes narrowed with determination, her mouth falling open. She swallowed his whole cock into her mouth in a single neat motion, Ylantar's hips absently bucking at the sudden, sharp sensation. His hand reached down for her head, grasping a bunch of her ivory white hair, simply grinding her in place. Saliva dribbled freely out of her mouth, as his balls slapped against her chin, but she didn't complain. Just the opposite: her hands reached up for his ass cheeks, firmly gripping them, as she wetly swallowed around his cock, her tongue flapping against the underside.

Naturally, I kept him from coming. Given his clear goal of convincing Aunrae she wasn't woman enough to properly satisfy him, I even went so far as to prevent him from having the autonomic responses associated with a near-miss orgasm, the frantic pumpings of his hips, the wild gasps and grinds. I didn't want her to become confused and believed he had simply ejaculated directly into her stomach, after all.

For a minute or so, Aunrae was perfectly content in her position, gently massaging the length of the rod in her mouth with swallows intended to coax an orgasm out of him, her fingers trailing along his bare skin in a tantalizing manner. Even her eyes smoldered with lust and desire, clearly communicating her desire to make him come, to feel his throbbing length just start spraying deep inside her throat.

He responded with intensifying lust, his hips bucking against her face, wet noises escaping her throat as she glugged around his cock. She went cross-eyed, even, as his fingers simply dug into the back of her scalp and he roughly used and abused her face. There were no words on his part, no declarations of how that was good. Only these quiet, masculine noises as she jerked his cock off with her throat.

At last, he peeled his spit-slathered cock out, and Aunrae began to stroke it expectantly, pointing it directly to her wide open mouth. Her pink tongue sharply contrasted with her ebony skin, and the look of incredible confidence that she was about to get a thick creamy load of cum all over her face and mouth...

Only to find, after nearly a minute of frantically pumping her hand up and down his length, that she was not getting any cum. She wisely did not complain, instead simply slurping his cock back into her throat, bobbing up and down with frantic force. Her breasts seemed to jiggle and bounce from the sheer intensity she put into it in terms of raw physical force. That wasn't the only talent being brought to bear, though - she also kept her tongue wiggling about inside her mouth, and occasionally would shift her body to show off her ass in a way that left no doubt that she was attempting to arouse tantalize him with the possibility of sex proper in order to get him to come more quickly in her mouth.

The longer it went on, the more tense Ylantar became. Each thrust of his hips against her face, each grind of his fingers along her scalp, represented an increasingly intense desperation to ejaculate, a simple yet intense physiological response to his inability to orgasm.

Aunrae had begun to notice that her fellatio appeared not to be provoking the full response. Her expression became more intense, eyes narrowing as she all but glared up at him. Her fingers dug into his ass cheeks, and she just slammed her face up and down his cock, her own movements matching his to intensify each thrust, each withdrawal. Saliva dribbled freely out of her mouth, and yet, despite how hard she was going at it, no tears were produced by her eyes, no choking gags by her throat. She was completely, utterly calm as she worked him over like that, not the faintest sign of distress at being treated so roughly.

Still - she was only a mortal woman, and Ylantar was completely incapable of coming. Even his frantic groans of "come on, come on," didn't dissuade me from continuing my restraint of his orgasm, so eventually Aunrae seemed to realize he wasn't coming, and peeled herself off his cock.

By that point, she was a bit of a mess. The spittle she'd ejected from her mouth on this or that occasion now coated her chin, as well as having created a sort of spray pattern near her mouth. Some of her hair had been tangled up from his fingers, rather than remaining in her braid. Her sclera were pink with exertion, her whole body lightly stained with sweat, some drool having splattered down onto her tits, making her dress cling to them tightly, revealing every contour of her bosom.

Ylantar's cock was slick with her saliva, shiny and dripping with the sheer quantity of drool that it had been drenched in. Her hand reached up for it, beginning to stroke his length in regular, smooth movements, as she let out faint sighs and stared up at him with a mixture of exhaustion and a still-intense desire to please. "Is something the matter?" She reached for her breast with her free hand, crumpling the supple flesh beneath her fingers, clearly just wanting to make a show rather than doing it for her own pleasure. "Is there something more you want from me?"

I could practically feel the trembling of Ylantar's body as he resisted the urge to keep going. Instead, he grasped her by the hair, tangling it up around his fingers and yanking it back, his hard cock twitching right in front of Aunrae's face. If it hadn't been for me, he almost certainly would have ejaculated then, coating Aunrae with a coat of white paint. He used the grip to force her to look him in the eyes, even as he leered down at her with some cruelty in his gaze. "I want to be able to fuck Qilanna. You're making that hard, and it's clear you aren't nearly as good at giving blowjobs as her."

"I can- I can keep going," she said, clearly taking offense at the idea, and Ylantar simply slapped her cheek with his length, making her jerk in surprise.

"Stop having your son fuck up my training. One woman isn't enough to satisfy me anyway," he said, though it was honestly a lie. He was quite satisfied with just Vicolene or Qilanna - I imagine his problem was more the specific reality of being asked to satisfy himself purely with a woman whose company he didn't enjoy.

"I'll-" she cut herself off, her neck tightening... then she slammed herself back down his cock again, glugging loudly as she facefucked herself with unbridled intensity. Her fingers clawed and scraped along his ass as she did her best to make him come by replacing technique with force. While he groaned and twitched in pleasure at her work, he did not come. I'm certain he would have blown his load at least a dozen times if I hadn't been preventing him from doing so, but he maintained the pretense that it was purely due to Aunrae's inadequacies.

So when, a few minutes later, Aunrae was gasping and panting, leaning up against the wall, her face messed up once more... Ylantar simply began using her face without her active participation, pinning her against the wall and slamming his length all the way down her throat, holding her in place to simultaneously choke her and to satisfy himself. Her throat intermittently swallowed and gagged around his length, and her tongue meekly and weakly slapped against his length. Her eyes rolled up, and tears began to form for the first time since she'd begun, as her body twitched and jerked in that position, as she slowly but surely asphyxiated.

She maintained her determination until the very end. She didn't slap him to try to get him off of her, didn't use her magic to do so - instead, she simply passed out. It was only then that Ylantar peeled back, staring down at her as her unconscious body fell to one side, sputtering and coughing as she began to recover her senses. He stared down at her harshly. "I'll fuck you if your son stops bothering Qilanna."

"O-okay," she panted out. He just put his cock away and left her there with a promptness and speed that made it obvious where he wanted to be.

When the two of us were back in his bedroom, he groaned, pulling out his length and beginning to stroke rapidly. "Let me come," he hissed, needily, and I did so - almost immediately, he started to ejaculate, a great torrent of cum that had been built up by nearly an hour of intense, orgasm-denying sex. His entire body trembled, and the pleasure overwhelmed us both for a long few seconds, no real thoughts or communication passing between us.

Once his orgasm was finished, and he'd simply collapsed on his bed in exhaustion for a long couple minutes, he spoke up. "If you keep helping me, then I'll keep your presence a secret from others."

I accept your offer. It was more or less what I'd wanted from him even when he hadn't known about my presence, after all.

"That means that if I need 'assistance' like that, you'll do it, and the same goes for the use of magic at critical points," he explained.

I understand.

"Good. Good." He laid down and just let out a long sigh. "I can't wait to fuck Qilanna again."

* * *

He didn't have to wait long. Their very next training session, the two made long and rather tender love, their bodies intertwining with one another, Qilanna giving giddy praise to his talents as a lover as she was thrust into again and again. "Your sweet length penetrates my depths so delightfully, I had so missed it." "Ah, that is it, spread your seed in my fallow fields, Ylantar." "I hope that my body offers you one tenth the ecstasies your own body offers me."

He fucked her for the better part of an hour, doing his best to bring her pleasure even as he relieved himself with her body. By the end of it, she had come over a dozen times, and he had come five of his own, her sex dripping with her juices and his both, staining the ground beneath them. He at last peeled his length out of her, tucking his cock away, and taking a moment to breathe, balancing his body against the door to the shed where they had been training - as much to block somebody else from entering as to catch his own breath.

"You are... perhaps the most talented lover I have ever been blessed enough to enjoy," Qilanna explained, her fingers idly running through her hair. "It is a wonder, that such a young man is so... flexible, eager, insightful. Few boys your age are capable of doing much besides lie there." She wore, for a brief moment, a lopsided smirk. "Not that I mind too much when the boys just lie there," she added. "There's a certain primal pleasure to it."

"I can imagine. I do enjoy it when you lose your senses and become inert."

She let out a laugh all her own. "I'll try to take that in the spirit it was intended," she said, "rather than as the insult another less charitable woman might find it to be."

"I'm glad to hear that I can be lazy in my phrasing with you, Qilanna," he said, as much friendly flirtation as a genuine statement of his feelings. I could tell his internal emotions, more or less, so I knew that the more oblique and complex parts of dark elven social life were more often an irritant than some intriguing puzzle to solve or lovely dance to learn.

"I only care that you do not let that sloth extend to your training," she replied, closing her eyes and simply lying back as she recovered from their sex.

* * *

One might have expected any future rendezvous with Aunrae to be simply ordinary lovemaking, or perhaps some selfish extraction of an orgasm from her body. They were not - each time, Ylantar would tell me to prevent him from coming, then avail himself of Aunrae's throat until she simply gave up in exhaustion and desperation. It was clearly having what I could only assume was the intended effect, Aunrae silently growing less and less confident in her sexual talents. She tried new things quite regularly, starting to swivel her tongue around his tip and flicking at it in her mouth, removing her dress entirely to reveal her naked body, then proceeding to add in wrapping his cock in her pillowy large breasts.

(I could tell that he quite enjoyed that, because the next day, he did something similar with Qilanna.)

Each new technique was something that she was clearly pouring her heart and soul into, trying to overcome the virtually insurmountable goal of making him come. She would work hard, only occasionally offering a question or comment that was really an excuse: "Did you just get done with Qilanna?" "You shouldn't use that woman and then come back to me."

Any bile or contempt she once felt for him had vanished in the wake of the inferiority he was making her feel. Now he was the source of a potential "salvation," a reaffirmation that she was a talented lover, so she was desperate to make him happy and pleased with her. It was a more extreme version of the basic principle I had guided him towards when he first made love to Qilanna.

His magic lessons greatly improved in quality over the following month. I could also feel as his negative emotions towards Aunrae slowly waned, the woman in question working hard to pleasure him and forgetting any spiteful jockeying for position she or her son might have engaged in. She would just quietly bob on his cock, often seeming even to have given up entirely on making him come, viewing her position almost as that of a mere fluffer, a prelude to sex with (presumably, in her mind) Qilanna, useful for getting him hard and lubricated but nothing more.

He was definitely enjoying the thrill of power this change in their dynamic brought him. I could hardly blame him, though I did wonder if he planned to keep her indefinitely in this state of piteous denial, unable to make him come, or if one day he would actually ejaculate down her throat. I didn't particularly care either way - he seemed to have a better sense than me of how best to manage her feelings to keep her silently pleading with her eyes for him to come.

Next Chapter

I Slept My Way To This Post, Chapter 5
Previous Chapter
The prelude of the hunter's duel was officiated by the matriarch, who here took up the role of a sacred priestess, endowed by their goddess with certain blessings and so on and so forth. I didn't much care for the woman in question - the mother or the goddess - so I was hardly paying that much attention as the twin ribbons were handed down to the pair. Each had a fairly unique, complex design - not the sort of thing you could duplicate easily. My awareness was more focused on carefully thinking over ideas of what could be done to raise Ylantar's odds of success.

The hunter's duel wasn't conducted the moment that all parties had agreed, but it was less than a day afterwards, the arrangements having been made quite briskly. It was not some widely publicized affair, for the simple reason that the more publicized it was, the more certain it was that servants and the like would listen in and watch the competitors and start piecing together things about where the ribbon was being hidden, which one or the other competitor could use if they so wished. My impression was that this sort of relatively "private" hunter's duel was something that was done when the matriarch didn't particularly want one side or the other to win, or else thought that her preferred victor had no chance. It was by no means a perfect measure, but it did ameliorate the risks to a degree.

The best way for Ylantar to win would be if he could somehow mark the ribbon in question, but the ceremony left him with no opportunity to mark it in any way, as the two boys were quite cleanly divided. Qilanna wound up playing the ceremonial role that would have been played by his mother, if she wasn't officiating the entire affair. Could her knowledge somehow be put to use? My mind then began to turn to the question of Ylantar's own ribbon. I had left the question of what to do with it up to him, nudging him that he only needed to ensure that Kyorlan didn't win - he didn't need to win himself. The boy was bright, but I did worry if he would actually manage to keep the ribbon secreted away.

The ceremony, with all its pomp, ended, and I was ultimately no closer to an answer than I had been. I tried to spit a splotch of inky darkness at Kyorlan's ribbon as a last ditch effort, but it was noticed and effortlessly dispelled by Aunrae.

It didn't garner any actual commentary from her, though. She merely gave Ylantar a withering look, grabbed her son's hand, and walked off.

Ylantar himself soon took off, bringing Qilanna along with him to reduce the likelihood of a sudden, violent attack of some kind. It was rare, but mostly because the hunter's duel was intended to reduce bloodshed, so there was an aura of mutual compliance with that premise as the will of the Huntress. But, such an aura can only last until such time as someone stops complying.

* * *

Ylantar's plan for the ribbon had already begun the day before, something that I had even seen in action, though his actions now took place in near-perfect silence and made me wonder if he was actually planning what I had initially thought he was planning. He was wearing the boots he had prepared, a rough pair of combat boots in which he had cut an extremely thin hole near the base. Instead of going to the privacy of his room, he was making his way with Qilanna through a somewhat circuitous route, stopping in several different locations on the Jehalaora estates, Qilanna trusting his decisions even as they stopped in a shed to collect some shovels.

"We should wait here for a while," he said, the ribbon currently unceremoniously tucked in the inside of his boot, still very tangible as its tangled mass there pressed against bare flesh. "To make it look like we're hiding it here."

"Mmm. I can think of something we can do while we wait," Qilanna said, but it was playful flirtation, not sincerity - a quickie would be highly ill-advised, given that it was possible that Aunrae or Kyorlan or an agent of theirs might be monitoring the two of them. Still, she reached for his body, stroking gingerly at his chest with the sort of plaintive touch of a woman possessed of very basic, carnal desires, and not much else.

"I would love to, but some other time," he informed her. She continued to touch and rub at his abs, fingers absently groping and squeezing his increasingly muscular and toned form, her lips curled in a half-smile, her eyebrow raised. He let out a long-suffering sigh. "Take a shovel and go to the northeast corner of the estates where nothing grows, I'll be with you shortly," he said, pulling her hands away. She pouted faintly, but didn't object, collecting a shovel and heading that way.

For his part, Ylantar counted out ten breaths, fingers absently tapping out the number, then knelt down, pulling the ribbon out of the inside of his boot and placing it in the small hole he'd made in the sole. He grabbed a bottle of black tar from one of the shed's shelves and traced a bit along the hole in question, before carefully wiping it and putting it exactly back where it came from. Then, for effect, he disrupted the positions of several other objects to a greater or lesser degree, and only then emerged from the shed, shovel in hand.

The two began to upturn soil until they were ragged and tired, making hole after hole, some deeper than others, some wider than others, arranged in a random and nonsensical pattern. Qilanna worked patiently, diligently, alongside him, while he took care to make sure that his boots got quite dirty, occasionally stepping in mud, to better disguise the hole he had made in them.

The simple problem of the hunter's duel is that one simultaneously needs to hide the object, and yet also sleep. If it's hidden on your person, you have to hide it each night; if it's hidden in your room, it's available to be searched when you aren't there, and searching the opponent's room while they're out is basically the first move of any hunter's duel, to the point it's more perfunctory than anything else. It would be humiliating to fail to find the ribbon because one had not even bothered searching every last nook and cranny of the other's room. It was so self-evident and normal a move that it was considered gauche to even try to prevent it, and certainly wouldn't turn out to be effective.

By putting it in his boot, he ensured that he would take it with him whenever he left his room, and by taking this awkward route and moving around the way he had, he precipitously reduced the likelihood that anybody would wonder where exactly he had taken the ribbon. It was somewhere on his winding path that he had hidden it. There was even a decent chance Kyorlan was already beginning to check through that route, and that he would interrupt their digging.

In point of fact, he actually did. They had spent a good three hours digging holes and then filling them back in, and upturned so much earth it was genuinely exhausting. I could feel the ache in Ylantar's muscles as he turned to face Kyorlan, who was practically sneering as he watched. "Do you honestly think you can hide your ribbon under some upturned soil?"

"Nah," Ylantar replied. His exhaustion had robbed him of any niceties, so he kept speaking. "But, I do honestly think you'll have to dig up at least as much as I did, to know that I didn't." He stretched, cracked his shoulders, and smiled at Kyorlan. "Well, since you're here, I guess I'm done. I'm going to go back to my bedroom to take a nice, long sleep. Good luck finding my ribbon."

Kyorlan let out a huff and left the upturned area of soil behind, turning back around to start looking anywhere that didn't require hours of backbreaking labor to discern the location of.

Naturally, Ylantar made sure to wander around in various suspicious ways, stopping for a minute or two every time he got the chance, before - once exhaustion had pretty much entirely overtaken him - going back to his bedroom and simply falling asleep immediately. He even kept his boots on as he slept, arms crossed atop him. I had to admire the idea: by sleeping that way, it would be impossible for anybody to check his boots if indeed they thought to, and by waiting until he was so exhausted that he just flopped unconscious onto the bed, one could believe that it was mere coincidence.

* * *

Ylantar did not seem overly concerned about finding Kyorlan's ribbon, though Kyorlan himself was becoming increasingly desperate to find Ylantar's. It made sense to me: Ylantar had no real reason to want to see Kyorlan shipped off, other than the convenience, and the inconvenience of ticking Aunrae off made it not worth it. He seemed happy to simply casually go about his day. When Kyorlan would approach him, he simply demurred and avoided violence - given that any anger on Kyorlan's fault would be due to anger (rather than having to do it to get at the ribbon) it wasn't too surprising.

Despite that, Ylantar did meander. At first, I thought it was merely a consequence of his strategy - wander around to create suspicion, make it harder for Kyorlan to locate where you hid the item because he's looking through all the places he's already looked, on the chance it may have been moved there since he started looking. Then I noticed the way his gaze wandered, picking up things here and there, watching closely, listening to the serving staff. Despite the relative quiet with which the sacred hunt began, it was impossible to keep it a secret for too long, after all. One woman, in a moment of loose lips, mentioned that Aunrae seemed quite confident that her son was the one who would ultimately win the contest - that she seemed to have no concern whatsoever that Ylantar would win instead.

Ylantar returned to his room, idly humming. He tapped his thigh. Normally, he spoke when he was alone and thinking, but given the circumstances, he understandably did not, leaving me to wonder at precisely what he was thinking.

At last, he left, going to the baths. The estate had mixed baths that were meant for men and women to use - the dark elves were not so prudish as to care about showing off their naked bodies. One might be inclined to note they were not, in fact, truly naked - at least, not the ones who had been dipped in that baptismal rite of theirs. Those individuals were coated in my ichor every day for the rest of their lives. But, I know the dark elves did not see it that way.

He took up a position as a sentry, monitoring who entered and left with care. He didn't enter himself, just silently watching the movements, as if mentally calculating. The process lasted hours of dull drudgery and boredom. Kyorlan came there, looking sweaty and lightly mud-caked, and seemed completely at ease as he crashed into the water with a heavy splash. As if there was no risk whatsoever that Ylantar would find his ribbon while he was indisposed, or rifle through his things.

Two days more of watching the baths, Ylantar made his move, having performed some mental calculations I was not privy to. Not everyone visited the baths, of course - it was possible to simply use some water and a moist towel to brush across bare skin, which was how Ylantar was maintaining himself since he had hidden the item in his boot. The chance of his clothing being stolen while he was away was much too high a risk, after all. Even if they didn't know that it was in this or that clothing item, taking them was no real crime, and if he could not produce the ribbon, it didn't matter if they didn't know which particular thing they'd stolen contained it.

Perhaps Aunrae and Kyorlan had noticed as much, but given that Kyorlan had used the bath again, having apparently gone out to dig up the place he had to worry the ribbon was taken, he had not fit the particular pieces together.

He arrived at the suite his aunt stayed in, and simply entered without much care, a wooden training sword at his side. She rose from where she had been writing a letter, clearly quite enraged. "You shouldn't enter a woman's room alone," she told him, her voice sharp. "Begone, boy."

"I'm afraid I can't. I couldn't help but notice that you haven't been going to the baths."

"You want to look at your own aunt naked so badly? During this, a sacred hunt?" She scoffed, but I did detect the faintest trail of tension to her movements as she tried to pretend his presence - and given reason - didn't matter to her. She did have a lovely, curvy, tall body - large breasts, full, round buttocks, a height that was just an inch shorter than Ylantar's zooming upwards physique - but that was not why Ylantar was here.

"I do." He cracked his neck from one side to the other, putting his hand on his sword. "You can simply remove your clothes and I can check to put my concerns to rest. If not, I'll have to do it by force, or involve my mother."

"Involve your mother?"

"I wouldn't want anyone to get the wrong idea about why I am stripping you, after-" was as far as he got before she attempted to blind him with an overwhelming burst of light. If it hadn't been for my brisk and instinctive response, shading that light and swallowing it up, he likely would have been sent careening to the ground. Instead, he rushed her, tackling her to the bed, grasping her by the wrists and holding them tight as he stared down at her. Her hands tried to work the air, but I helped him, darkness coiling around fingers and palms, smothering any light she could possibly have made in the cradle, congealing around any darkness when she tried that instead. "So you are hiding it," he said.

He used his weight and a single hand to pin both arms above her head, then began to slide his fingers along her bare skin. What was exposed in her elegant dress was clearly not carrying it - and what wasn't, tended towards the unmentionables. He valiantly began with the regions least sensual: the upper arms, the calves and ankles and feet, and only then the stomach and neck, and from there... the thighs were first, and that was where he found it, tugging it out unceremoniously.

The whole time she had been fighting, of course. I had to use my darkness to smother her voice, planting it in her mouth and letting the black sticky darkness swallow up any sound, so even her screams scarcely carried to her captor's lips. He dangled the ribbon in front of her face, and her expression fell in defeat. "I don't think Kyorlan is ready to go into the army," she told him, as I loosened the darkness wrapped inside her mouth - at this point, screaming rape would only hurt her, since everyone would know exactly what had happened. Including the rather humiliating note that she was bested by a fourteen year old boy. "He needs months more of training to be safe."

"Then you shouldn't have agreed to this bet," he told her, his voice sharp. "The goddess has seen that you weren't teaching me properly, and arranged for you to lose; or, for Kyorlan to lose, for defending your unjust cause."

Aunrae bit her lip at that, some genuine guilt appearing on her features far more sharply now. She appeared to genuinely take this whole affair as an act of divine chastisement for her bad behavior, as absurd as it seemed to me. I was rather sure that if Nyareda had been paying any attention to us, it would have been me losing, since she had killed me all those millennia ago. I suppose it's possible that she'd forgotten her grudge, but I certainly hadn't forgotten mine. "I... apologize," she said, her voice soft. "Please, don't punish my son - he only did what he thought was right."

"It isn't me who would be punishing your son," Ylantar chided. "But, I think I can see a way the two of us can make things up between us. You tell him to yield, naturally - it'd be more honorable than losing outright, after all, and I would accept the concession. It would basically just save us all some time." Aunrae nodded quietly, seeming enthused.

It is worth noting here that Ylantar's penis had become tumescent during the time he had been checking his aunt for any sign of Kyorlan's ribbon. I had assumed it was merely a matter of physical arousal born of the anxious circumstances in which he found himself - I had certainly grown used to the thing rising and falling according to whatever vague whims his body's hormones had at that particular moment.

"There is one other thing I want out of you," he said, and his hand slid along her body, then, up her dress, towards her breast, which he promptly groped through the thin fabric. She let out a soft note of surprise, eyes widening at his touch as his fingers sank into the soft flesh, making her dark skin balloon around his hand. "Sex. It won't just be today, either."

"You..." She let out a scoffing noise. "What? You think I'm that beautiful?"

"No, I just want to come more." I did idly worry that perhaps I had done something a little overactive to his body at some point that needed to be compensated for, but I could try to work that out later.

"You... you just want... to come more?" She asked, sounding the words out in the lethargic way one does when they make no sense. "Oh. Vicolene is no longer satisfying those needs." She let out a snort. "I guess an idiot pervert like you would be inclined to such a thing."

"Are you taking silphium?" He asked, and Aunrae simply nodded. "It sounds like you're the real pervert, then, not me."

"My husband is dead and your mother hasn't arranged another for me yet. What do you expect to happen, really?" She asked, with a meaningful tilt of her head.

It is difficult to quite describe the sensation of his penis at that point, the way it surged and ground against its confinement. He took the ribbon in his teeth, pulled down her panties, holding her in place all the while. She just watched it all with droll boredom, as if the entire situation was quite absurd to her. His fingers sank into her sex, the only visible part of her that hadn't been dyed in my black or still carried the ivory white of the dark elves' natural albinism besides the eyes. A sharp pink contrast to the surrounding flesh.

He took out his length, pausing as he stroked it, pressing the tip against her pink sex. "Thank me for letting you fuck me," he told her. His voice wasn't harsh or cruel - it was simply attempting to extract something arousing from the other party for his own satisfaction. "After all, if I didn't have any interest in your body, then your son would be being shipped off to war right now."

She rolled her eyes, but spoke the words: "Thank you for letting me fu-huck!" She gasped as he simply buried himself to the base inside her in a single forceful stroke, one hand still keeping her arms pinned, the other going to her breast, all but mauling the soft flesh. He seemed absolutely fascinated with it, no doubt contrasting its soft, plush nature, the way it contorted and reshaped itself around his fingers with each progressive grope. She ground her teeth at the sensation, but she didn't resist him - I made sure she wasn't going to wind up making too much voice with another ejection of my own inky black into her mouth.

"I'm going to fuck you for a long, long time," he told her, his voice sounding a bit rough as he said it. He was, after all, still just a boy despite the fact that he'd grown so much in the year that I had been inside him. He was affecting a confidence that was less than certain. Still, I made sure to give his words their appropriate weight, quietly toying with all the necessary systems to make sure that he wouldn't be coming for quite a while. "I'm going to fuck you until you love it."

"Good luck," was Aunrae's only reply. She made it clear with her expression that she found the odds of him defeating her in that manner dismal - but she also found the odds of losing in a magical fight to such a young boy dismal, and she had lost that one too.

It was at that point that Ylantar let go of her hands. They just disentangled themselves from over her head, instead idly lying on either side of her as she tried to do her best impression of a dead fish. Ylantar was, however, no virgin - he had learned all sorts of things with Vicolene, and refined out what generally worked versus what was her specifically with Qilanna. He peeled up her dress, revealing more of her obsidian black skin, revealing her white bush, and soon enough, her hard nipples too, as he peeled it up and past her head. He drank in her naked body with obvious relish, his length throbbing inside her...

And, having the aunt who had been teaching him improperly, who had tried to steal away his marriage arrangement on loose and vague grounds, naked and willing before him, he began to do what he did best: fuck her brains out. He leaned over her, kissing at her neck first, then suckling at the bare flesh there, my dark skin meaning any bruises would be invisible no matter how much his teeth or suction went to work on her body like that.

Despite her feigned disinterest, she began to feel it, gently wiggling her hips beneath him in an idle movement side-to-side, something so small I'm not sure she even noticed it herself. As his lips trailed down to her breasts and he began to suckle on her nipples, to tease them with his thumb and forefinger, pinching and pulling and twisting to the tiniest degree, his other hand reached down for her sex, beginning to tease her lower lips up and down, his phalanges brushing against her clitoris with only the tenderest of caresses.

She groaned softly, a quiet noise that was mostly swallowed up by my magic, but I could feel the response from Ylantar, the way his lips immediately curled up in a wicked grin. He had been applying a tiny amount of pressure to her clit, subtly pushing it in - now he repeated the process again and again, as if he had found a button that, when pushed, provoked all the things he desperately wanted out of the woman. His pressing became more insistent, more regular, more forceful. Each time made her squirm that bit more visibly, made her let out a quiet little whimper-gasp of pleasure, her eye twitching faintly as she was subjected to the assault.

Part of her, no doubt, saw it as embarrassing to be being brought off so quickly by a boy so young - but increasingly it was being overwhelmed by the part of her that just wanted to come, to enjoy herself. So less than five minutes after inserting his length into her, without any foreplay whatsoever, she came. Her white teeth became visible as they dug into her lower lip, her whole body undulating beneath him as she struggled. Hands bunched up into fists and then vaguely pressed against the bed beneath her in this strange, erratic way that a woman who wants to do something but feels unable to do it might express that frustration.

For his part, when she came, Ylantar simply bottomed out inside her, closing his eyes and sighing softly as he felt her inner walls caress and grip his length. His toes curled, his hips bucked faintly - but he didn't come, of course. I didn't let him. If it had been him purely in control of his own body, he probably would have. Instead, he could put everything into going at it again, taking advantage of Aunrae's weak points, relishing in her body as he pumped away. She increasingly lost control, lost the facade of dignity, started moaning hard. My darkness swallowed up the sounds she made, and soon enough, I wound up having to start doing much the same to their pelvis, the wet noises of collision otherwise seeming threateningly loud as he thrust inside her again and again.

Her orgasms became more and more rapid in sequence with one another, the longer the sex went on. First they were separated by four minutes or so; then by three; then, towards the end of things, as Ylantar's body began to sweat profusely from the sheer exertion of fucking a woman like a maniac for over an hour, his clothes tossed aside for the way they felt sweltering and tight, they were coming every two minutes, with her scarcely having the time to recover from one before the next hit.

It was at that point - Aunrae herself sticky with sweat, her mouth slightly ajar, a crooked smile on her lips as she stared dumbly up towards the ceiling, some drool having trailed down her cheek at some point - that I finally allowed Ylantar release. He groaned at the feeling, his hands clawing down on both of Aunrae's tits. Despite the fact that I well knew the action was unpleasant based on her previous reactions to similar, her only reaction was the tiniest shift of her hips. So tiny I doubted either of them actually recognized it was happening.

When he finished, Ylantar pulled out of her, sagging from the exertion, wiping at his hair with the back of his hand. "Here's your son's ribbon," he said at last. "Cancel the duel," he added, as he rose, getting dressed once more. He reached out with darkness beyond the portal to her room, then slipped out, abandoning the fucked senseless woman and going back to his bedroom.

Once there, he sat down on the edge of the bed, letting out a long groan of exertion, closing his eyes. There was still a smile on his lips, one of pride, glorying in his victory. For a man of his society, that was quite the odd perspective; male sexuality was vaguely shameful, but somehow or other he was clearly feeling exultant. I don't know whether to attribute it to my action, his own internal nature, or perhaps some combination thereof - perhaps my control of his orgasms and sexual sensations at such a key point in development led to him coming to see sexuality as a method of establishing power over women, rather than relieving basal needs. That would be my best guess, but mortals' minds are complicated, awkward things even when they aren't subject to external influences.

I didn't have much time to muse, anyway. "So. Who's here?" He asked, glancing around the room. "An invisible sorcerer, I doubt. You're in my head, aren't you?"

Next Chapter

I Slept My Way To This Post, Chapter 3
Previous Chapter
There are two senses in which sexual desire is produced in the intelligent races that rule this world. The first is libido, a biological drive that compels the body to have sex just as it might be compelled to eat or drink or sleep. The second is lust, the condition of desire that can be provoked by any number of things. Just as a mortal might seek food because he is hungry, or because it tastes good and he enjoys eating, so too might a mortal seek sex because it has been a long time, or because it is pleasurable and he enjoys it. Gluttons are defined by their eating purely for the pleasure of it; so too are lechers.

I had raised Ylantar's libido at key moments to ensure his relationship with Vicolene became sexual. I could - and did - just as easily lower it, but that did not affect his lusts. He had found that sex was enjoyable and desirable. He had used it to burn off stress, to handle negative emotions, and simply as habit. Now, with Vicolene's absence, sex was unavailable to him.

He was ornery, emotional, and it was clear that it was primarily due to the absence of sexual activity. After considering the females he knew, my mind went to Qilanna - she was a former military officer and a highly-ranked member of household staff. A sexual relationship with her would be beneficial to him in terms of his position in the family, and also fairly easy to maintain, since their training sessions were purely between the two of them and they had yet to be interrupted.

I did the simple thing of raising his libido when they were alone together, but he did not take the chance despite several repetitions. I determined that, just as lowering libido could not prevent him from having sex, raising it also could not force him to. He was certainly more than aware of the effect his teacher was having on her - his eyes would occasionally wander her toned body, and when once he chanced upon her in a relative state of undress (wearing a light top and leggings as she had been preparing for bed), he went back to his room to masturbate and spoke her name in a hushed voice. He simply did not actually do anything with her.

I should try to seduce Qilanna, I thought to him, one night after a particularly intensive bout of arousal. His ability to fight had suffered due to the mix of the physical obstacle of his erection, and the mental obstacle of his distraction. He seemed to consider it. "I don't want to get her in trouble. They would think she was taking advantage of me." He rolled over on one side, letting out a soft breath. I need sex. Ever since Vicolene left, I can't stand it. Qilanna is beautiful and available. I should seduce her. He bit his lip at the thought, clearly still hesitant, but considering. How can I make Qilanna mine?

That provoked his quiet way of talking to himself, muttering and considering. "I would have to seduce her, but it would have to be in a way that wouldn't be noticed. I could do it during our training sessions, but we couldn't have sex during them, not without costing me the martial skills I'll need to succeed." I could ask for more training sessions with her, and choose odd hours and isolated locations. "Is there any reason that wouldn't work? Maybe Mother wouldn't let me. Could I contrive a situation with Aunrae to give me an excuse? No, she's kept it subtle, I don't know how I'd manage that..."

Eventually, he settled on using implication when he asked his mother for a new room. Suggest that Aunrae was the problem, but let his actual words be factually correct: he wanted to have a more private, secluded location to train, and a second session to work on it. Aunrae might actually try to cause problems for him, if her sabotage wasn't a matter of personal pride but was instead some kind of political gambit.

Of course, that was only to come after he had actually seduced Qilanna. For now, he simply lay in bed and satisfied himself with his hand.

* * *

They had spent two hours training, on and off. Qilanna sat across from him, rolling her shoulders, her skin ebony with my ichor and glistening with sweat. She sipped her water, clearing away her throat and exhaustion as she gulped down a copious quantity of the stuff. Ylantar's eyes were drawn to the bob of her neck, and I was certain that his mental focus was on the similarity of the movement to the way that, say, Vicolene would gulp down his cum after fellating him.

"Do you have any lovers, Qilanna?" Ylantar asked her, making the older women turn his way and let out a small laugh.

"It is a rare thing, to find a lover of appropriate social status, for one such as myself. I will likely marry as the fly to the bot." That is a turn of phrase meaning 'below one's rank.' "I still quest for a lover, but, more like than not, that mission shall fail and I shall marry some good specimen of farmer or house servant."

Ylantar nodded, listening along to her words - then he placed his hand on her thigh. The movement was an unmistakable one, combined with the context, but so subtle that it could be dismissed without either of them losing face. All she would have to do is shift her leg away from him, and, if she had, then Ylantar would have given up on her immediately.

Instead, she simply shifted her body to push her leg towards him, making his fingers slide down towards her inner thigh. She looked at him, a gentle smile on her lips, a certain quirk of her eyebrows that dared him to do more. I should keep touching her. Ylantar's fingers slid up her thigh, towards her sex. He began to gently rub at it through the fabric of her trousers, teasing it subtly, and earned a broad smile from Qilanna, who seemed almost predatory as her own hand went directly for his cock. I made absolutely certain that it was hard by the time she arrived there, and she smiled even more broadly at that.

"Have your eyes truly turned my way?" She breathed the words with unambiguous lust, staring directly into his eyes. His cock twitched. "You do me as great an honor as I can imagine," she told me.

"I- we can't get married," he said, quickly, his chivalry an idiotic move. If he was going to say that, he should at least wait until the sex itself was over, make it fait accompli.

"I am no blind and deaf dullard," Qilanna said. "I know." Her fingers squeezed around his cock, making his hips briefly shift, and she let out a melodious laugh. "You like it, hmm?" She started to stroke him off in his trousers. "If I make you come like this, we won't even need to get undressed, to risk being caught..." She teased the words at his ear, so close to him now that her breath tickled at his bare skin. He shook his head, trembling subtly, her fingers very skilled in bringing on rather intense pleasure. It was only the fact that I was helping him that kept him from orgasming as she spoke, her fingertip trailing along his cockhead, giving it a subtle squeeze and top. "No? You want to let your pleasure flow into me? To father a bastard? I suppose I shall marry down regardless, so my husband-to-be would be forced to accept any youngling."

"There are ways that don't, require coitus. Or, silphium," he managed to sputter out.

She giggles at that. "Oh, someone has been learning. Dirty, dirty boy." She squeezed his cock anew, then pulled her hand back. "I cannot suffer being caught with the Lady's son's bare manhood in my mouth, or betwixt my breasts. I would certainly be flogged for such an impropriety, and perhaps worse, depending on the Lady's mood when she discovered."

"I can arrange for us to have privacy," Ylantar said, his voice in a rush.

Qilanna just smiled, no doubt imagining that this had all been her idea.

* * *

The premise of their current training was fairly simple: they would use one of the sheds further out in the fields to practice their fighting in. It would provide them with privacy, and not disturb others, because these practice sessions would take place late at night, forcing Ylantar to fight "while groggy." Such was the justification.

And, such was the fact. Qilanna battered away at Ylantar's defenses as he struggled to wake up quickly enough, a certain sluggishness to his movements that may have been hidden to him, but wasn't to me, or to Qilanna. "I cannot have you sluggish when awoken for battle; I must be able to make fair accounting of my time with you. We can make love when our practice is done. If you can beat me..." she challenged, with a lopsided, cocky smirk.

For most dark elven boys, the presumptuousness would have been offensive. Perhaps even with Ylantar himself. However, a bit of toying with his libido at the key moments kept that from becoming the case. His problem became having to fight with an erection, which soon solved itself, his eagerness sending blood rushing through his body. He tried to bring in some of his magic, but Qilanna was an experienced, dextrous spellweaver, and managed to defeat it - at least, until I let him use a far more boosted light spell, which managed to blind her even through her defenses of darkness for a second. More than long enough for Ylantar to send her tumbling to the ground.

She let out a gasp of surprise as she fell, but she managed to get a hand beneath her before she actually hit it. "Call," she said, the signal to stop the fight. She rose and shook herself clear. "Aunrae must be teaching you thoroughly. I've never seen such an intense light spell."

I knew it was no thanks to Aunrae, but Ylantar was keeping her failures as a teacher under wraps. "She is a competent spellweaver," he said, demurring on the actual specifics of the reason for his own successes. Natural (or "natural," as it was all down to me) talent.

"You impressed me. Perhaps I should have banned your use of that particular magic in our fight, since it isn't like you can use it on ceiling lurkers or tangle pillars." Two of the (many, many) forms of largely inert predators common to the lands down here; they carried a line of descent from the world of my day, when it was dark and black and cold, and their ilk dominated this far down. The dark elves who spoke without experience claimed the surface was incredibly dangerous; the dark elves who spoke with experience, claimed it was far more pleasant than this underworld, save perhaps the scalding brilliance of the sun, which even my ichor couldn't protect them from. "But. You won," she told him, and stepped towards him.

To help you fix Qilanna's image in your mind: imagine a muscular, tall, handsome woman; make her breasts just so large you cannot quite wrap your hands around them; age her into her late thirties; and braid her hair into a curl that goes in a circle round the back of her head. As with all the dark elves, of course, her skin had an ebony luster, and her hair was a silvery-white.

She began by simply removing Ylantar's pants, revealing his hard cock to the open air. She smiled as she saw it, fingers gently stroking up and down his length as she smiled sweetly up at him. "Look at this thing," she breathed. "So hard. So eager. Let's get you to come quick," she said, her free hand placed against the front of his cock, "so I don't have to worry about you simply spurting when we actually begin sex proper."

"If, you prefer it, that way," Ylantar replied, as her fingers' pace increased, until she was pumping her hand rapidly up and down. His cock made the occasional wet squelch, as her hands pressed the sweat this way and that. She teased the tip with her fingers, gripping around the very uppermost part, wrapping round the cockhead and making him groan in pleasure. If it hadn't been for my presence, my influence, he definitely would have come already - but he didn't.

She didn't realize that I was keeping him from orgasming, and just got more intense and insistent in the way she touched him. "I beg of you, Ylantar. Let loose your love upon me. Spray your hot seed across my fingers and palm." He just panted and tried his very best to do so, but I didn't let him. "You are more than welcome to, at the moment it pleases you. I'll use my tongue to clean it off. You'll see your white marks sprayed all along my dark skin," she told him, her voice practically dripping with lust. "Go ahead, I wish to see it, to feel it. This will be our first time together, do not resist the rush of pleasure early so that it comes upon you later."

"I really can't," he breathed out, shuddering. "I can come, but- not right now," he managed to explain. Maybe it's because it's just her hand? I prompted. "M-maybe if you use more than your hand?"

She let out another gentle, almost maternal laugh at that. "Very well. Sit down," she said, pulling her hand back. His cock twitched wildly, and he sat. Among dark elves, a male managing to last for quite some time produced a sense of competition and insistence on the part of the women. Sex that didn't end in the man's ejaculation hardly even counted as sex; a woman who didn't manage to bring her lover off was a failure of a woman. But, mortals' minds are quite simple, and the more effort they spend on something, the more valuable it seems to them.

Though, of course, I had also come to enjoy the physical sensations of sex. Qilanna was soon kneeling before him, stroking him at her own face, tempting me to release my control simply to stain her features with his cum. I resisted, though, and in short order she leaned forward, wrapping her lips around the very tip of his cock. Her cheeks hollowed as she simply sucked, her hand upon his cock frantically pounding up and down. The powerful sensation of suction would surely have driven him over the edge - if it hadn't been for me.

Ylantar was by this point trembling with exertion, his fingers clawing at the seat beneath him as he strained to come but was prevented to by me. Qilanna, seeing that her suction strategy (however pleasant it may have been) was not working, began to dive down his cock, taking it inch by inch into her mouth and throat. Her throat swelled, her tongue flattening out to really invite his cock deep inside, and soon enough, she was pressed into his pelvis. He was hairless down there, as her nostril smushed into his pelvic bone, her face contorting in lewd ways as she did so. The suckling motion of her mouth around his cock, her throat swallowing around his length, it felt so very extremely good.

I didn't let him come. He was gasping desperately. "Come, want to, n, aah," he was muttering with raw desperation. I was enjoying the physical sensation of the inside of Qilanna's throat, and the longer this went on, the more desperate she would feel to ensure that he came.

Qilanna behaved as I expected: when choking herself on his cock, swallowing wetly and flapping her tongue against the underside, failed to manage to produce an orgasm, she slid off his length, letting out a wet gasp. "You seem to have true difficulty orgasming," she said, with a faint frown. "Let's try this," she said, starting to lick along his length, running her tongue from his base to his tip, smearing spit across it and half-occluding her face in the movement, while her hands moved to remove her top, quickly stripping it bare, tossing it aside. Her breasts were perky, full, round, seeming to utterly defy gravity, and she popped back to let his dick flop back down to where her face had been. She smiled vividly up at him, hands grasping her own breasts, and smushing them around his cock.

"Wh-what?" He sputtered, having never seen this particular position before.

"It's called a titfuck, among the soldiery," she told him, leaning forward to lick and suckle at the very tip of his cock. Her breasts felt absolutely delightful, all her earlier licking and sucking meaning that his cock was thoroughly lathered up in spit for this very moment. Her hands clasped tight around her breasts, fingertips lacing together near the tip, and she looked up at him as she suckled fiercely on the very tip of his cock, her lips stretching out obscenely, her cheeks turning hollow from the movement.

I let him come, then. He erupted in a continuous geyser. Qilanna's eyes widened at the sheer quantity of his seed, as it sprayed all through the inside of her mouth, clinging to her palate, smearing across the back of her mouth, clogging up her throat, leaving its tang upon her tongue. I felt as she hungrily swallowed down every last drop, and Ylantar shivered and fell lax and slack suddenly, hands falling to his sides, open and palms up.

When he was completely spent, she finished swallowing up the last few droplets of cum and popped off his cock. "You certainly managed to show your desire to the utmost," she said, staring down at the hard cock that now simply bobbed in the air, pointed at her face half the time, the other half at her chest.

She admired it for a long few seconds, then reached for the base of Ylantar's shirt. I felt the stick of sweat as it was peeled away, as it tried to cling to his body; when his bare chest was revealed, she leered down at it with naked lust, her breath shallow as she shifted removed her own bottoms, soon straddling Ylantar with her naked body. "Do not agonize; I have consumed sweet silphium, gift of the goddess to we dark elves," she reassured him, fingers softly running across his chest. "There is no need to fear that you shall make a mother of me. It would ruin my life far more than yours, were that to happen."

She slid down upon him, then, letting out a soft sigh as his length entirely disappeared inside her pink folds. Her breath through her nostrils was heavy, her head shaking from side to side as she took him to the base. There was the faintest hint of a groan, her full breasts seeming to press outwards, and his hands reached up for them, softly pawing at them, noticing where they had become wet from his spit, sticky from her sweat. She shivered gently as he caressed them - he had learned a bit from Vicolene's body, but there was a difference between the two's breasts, not only in size but in the particular spots of sensitivity.

She began to bounce, her whole body rising and falling, her breasts moving with it. His fingers squeezed into her tits. "You're so sexy," he breathed out. "I've been fantasizing about you for weeks," he told her, making her smile.

"You have, hmm? I thought I caught the twinkle of desire in your eye; I am glad to know I have not merely gone mad." She started to lean forward, pressing her breasts against his palms in the process - the crushing movement appeared to be the most delightful to her, judging by the way she sputtered and groaned atop him, her sex clamping down briefly on his cock. Her eyelashes fluttered, her whole body twisting atop him. "Come now. Come within me at your whim," she said, her voice milky and vibrating as she twitched atop him. "Nnn, I'm, quite satisfied, oh, yes," she ground out before coming atop him, her cunt squeezing down like a vice on his length.

It was intense, the sensation of that orgasm - the way her cunt groped and squeezed hard on his dick. It was almost malicious, in the way her inner muscles coiled and squeezed around his cock, but the pleasure was so incredible I almost wanted to let Ylantar come. I did not, however. Again, to make her work for it, would make her appreciate it all the more when it did come, would make her think of herself as a capable lover for bringing him off, rather than him as an incompetent one for coming so quick.

When her orgasm finished, there was a sagging of both their bodies. Qilanna's as she trembled, fingers pressed down against Ylantar's bare chest, pushing against his pectorals; Ylantar as he shuddered and panted at his own near miss, his body having bucked wildly and instinctively but now calming down with that panting enervation that came after such brief bouts of wild-eyed desire.

She began to ride him again not even a minute later, panting and breathing through her nose heavily as she rode him. "I am your teacher, and now your lover too. I'll teach you all the ways of love, my dear Ylantar, so simply let go. Let yourself enjoy it. Let that impassioned seed slip free from inside you and greet me; there is nothing to fear." He grunted, fingers practically mauling her tits as his hips started to slam up against her, but it wasn't his own self-control that was keeping him from coming - it was my control of such things.

"I need, to come," he whispered, "why can't I come."

She let out the softest noise of sympathy, fingers reaching down to gently caress his cheek, trailing along his features with loving care as she slowed down. "The toiling laborer knows that haste makes waste," she told him, beginning to move more slowly, her pace measured and careful. Each inch was swallowed up in her wet sex, and then all but the very tip was let out, as though she was kissing his cock with her pussy. Then she would slither back down. "You will find your pleasure in time. Until then, simply lie back and enjoy it. Forget chasing your pleasure, and relax. Trust me."

She certainly wasn't forgetting about chasing his pleasure herself. He was out of his wits from the sensations he'd been battered around by; I, on the other hand, was fully capable of noticing the way that Qilanna rolled her hips round on his cock. The way she would occasionally squeeze it. The way she would press down against him, grinding his dick against her inner walls this direction and that. At some point, she leaned forward, her breasts pressing against his bare chest, her lips finding his shoulder, softly kissing and licking the skin there, making her way up to his neck, licking his lips, nibbling his earlobe, breathing directly against his face as she leered down over him.

I made her work for it. She did. She spent an hour working away, increasingly exhausted, increasingly tired. Her own orgasms came and went, one after the other, minutes stretching out into an unbearable infinity for her. Her skin shone with sweat; her eyes glistened with tears; and her pupils were wild with lust. When I did let him go off inside her, it provoked such a wild moan from her, her thighs trembling softly as she twitched beneath him, yet it was as much from relief as from pleasure. Her head lolled forward, and at last, she removed herself from him.

"That was... incredible..." he breathed.

"I will learn to bring you off more swiftly, Ylantar," she said, as she collected a towel, wetting it and patting away her sweat before getting herself dressed. "That was... quite enervating. I am afraid we cannot train further; when next we fight, spellweaving shall not be permitted."

"Yes, ma'am," he panted from where he lay. She smiled gently, leaned over him, and kissed his forehead.

Next Chapter

I Slept My Way To This Post, Chapter 2:
Previous Chapter
To meet with his own mother required Ylantar to arrange it. It was scheduled three days in advance, a short, brisk meeting in a rather palatial office. His mother was tall and slender, with dark skin that edged into a purple hue, long white hair that was done in a trio of braids that trailed down her back. "What is it that is so important you could not speak through servants?" His mother asked, her tone sharp but calm. She wished to know because it mattered to her, not because she was annoyed.

"Vicolene plans to join the army."

"Who is Vicolene?"

"The daughter of Narcelia," he offered. "One of your servants, the one with the large-" he made a hand sign, and his mother nodded in recognition.

"I see. And what interest is it of mine?"

"I would like to request she be given some tutoring in magic."

"For a commoner girl?" His mother asked, her expression sharpening, now seeming truly annoyed with him. "We are still looking into marriage matches, and while a boy on campaign can be forgiven for indiscretion, one beneath his mother's skirts cannot."

"I can assure you, mother, I have no interest in Vicolene from that perspective. I was planning to sit in on her lessons, to ensure they are of the highest quality possible."

His mother leaned back in her seat, gently raising one hand to her lips to cover her mouth as she considered his words. What he was not saying, as much as what he was. "And, I presume, you would not like Aunrae to be this tutor, since she is so busy with your education?"

"Yes, Mother."

She moved her hand so that she was lacing her fingers together, staring forward as her mouth was covered up by them. "I will arrange it. Is that all?"

"Yes, Mother," he said, rising with a deep bow.

As he turned to leave, his mother spoke. "One thing I would note," she stated, clearly and purposefully. "If there should be an egregious incident during Vicolene's education, or for that matter your own, you should speak to me as quickly as possible."

"I understand, Mother."

Family politics among dark elves was really far too much, in my view.

* * *

Vicolene's teacher was not nearly as prestigious as Aunrae, but an older commoner man named Wehlor with military experience and a certain dull, workmanlike quality to him. He would proceed through each part of the process with a bloody-minded focus, declaring that one had to do this, then that, then this, then that. There was no particular subtlety or nuance, but it was functional, minimalist, with all the sorts of little tips and tricks one obtained by practical applications and minor corrections on the basis of noting some fault or other.

It was honestly a better fit for Ylantar's developing level of skill. He watched for the first few sessions, quiet in the corner, Wehlor somewhat stiff-necked from the presence of a noble boy seeming to be evaluating his every teaching. On the fifth session, he spoke up. "May I participate as well?"

"Hm?" Wehlor seemed genuinely surprised, glancing around the room for a moment as if looking for what might have set Ylantar off. "You sure about that?"

"Quite certain, thank you," he said, with a gentle smile. "Your style is very different from my own teacher-" namely in the sense that it was competent "-and I would like to diversify my learning as much as possible."

"I'm not sure what I can teach a noble boy, but I'll do my best, sir," he said, adding the last bit in as if he'd just remembered the boy's social status.

"Great, now I'm not gonna just have you watching, but I'm going to be getting destroyed in a competition, too," Vicolene said, with a long-suffering sigh. Her own magical skills were genuinely abysmal, despite the age difference. It was as if she'd started a month or two ago, without the assistance of a being such as myself, rather than having had the chance to practice for several years. "Puhh," she sighed, leaning forward.

"Let's do the basics of a night light again. You want it pure red," Wehlor explained, raising one hand, a faint, luminous red glow emerging from it. A puttering little pink thing emerged from Vicolene's hand. "Let's see yours, sir," he said, glancing at Ylantar.

Ylantar raised his hand, and a gentle red glow stretched out from it, rushing across the barren floor like a tide sweeping out.

"That's good. I guess you are already being taught by somebody else. Sir." Wehlor seemed to consider for the moment, glancing at Vicolene, wondering if he should maintain the current level of training, or adjust upward for Ylantar's sake.

"Just teach Vicolene. I'm not here to interrupt her education, but to assist in it."

"Alright then," Wehlor said, shaking his head to clear his thoughts. "Back to it."

* * *

Vicolene was not nearly so talented as Ylantar, naturally, but now that she was being properly taught, she was quickly developing her magical abilities. From time to time, Wehlor would even teach her some combat basics. It was more the sort of easy pickings that come at the start of one's learning than the deep knowledge of a true veteran or master, but she was building a firm foundation for army life.

That was one thing I had come to learn, in my time observing the dark elves up close: it was expected that one would be trained before entering the military. By a single master, no less, the master/apprentice relationship helping to pass down the military distinctions that often formed in the army. Untrained commoners could enter the army, of course, but they would not be likely to ever receive any special distinctions. Even women - thought of by the dark elves as particularly level headed and the only ones suited to command - could only succeed if they showed at least a modest degree of physical and magical talent, and for any serious position they would need to show their abilities at various games of strategy. (The less prominent positions only required literacy, something that Vicolene also lagged on.)

In any case, my conclusion - seemingly shared by my host - was that Vicolene had actually proven to have quite the good foundation for a soldier, and would probably manage some decent position. Given her rather lazy personality, it was unlikely for her to rise too high, but it was always good to have friends in the military before you joined. Any members of House Jehalaora would be supportive of Ylantar.

Elves are like all the modern things that walk upon this world: in need of sex to propagate themselves. As such, like so many others, they have instincts to reproduce. The women lead and decided upon the sex lives of the men in their society, but the men were hardly without desires. Stories were told of bold romances and strange couplings, with both tragic ends and happy ones. They were, in short, obsessed with sex - and by extension, obsessed with those who gave it to them.

Vicolene was not some sexless girl. On one occasion when she snuck into Ylantar's room and discovered him shirtless, she clearly showed quite a response - despite his still-growing body, he was quite handsome and muscular due to all the exercise he was getting with his martial practice.

I understood well that Vicolene would hardly be the most useful political ally in the years to come, but, she could at least be a little useful - and it would be a useful for Ylantar to learn how to seduce and make love to a woman now, rather than later. As such, I began to quietly stoke the fires of lust in my host's body, when he would see Vicolene twist or stretch or leap or do any of a dozen other things. Up until then, his lusts had been quite confined due to his youth, the occasional tumescence of his length at some woman's body pressing against his.

Now? Now he was for the first time masturbating. It was an exquisitely pleasant sensation, one that instantly made me understand why mortals became so utterly obsessed with it. Even the gods were said to have lovers and affairs, and if it felt half as good for them as this did for me, it would be incredibly worth it. As he masturbated, he faintly muttered the name of Vicolene, appearing to be developing a degree of sexual obsession with her...

Which unfortunately did not filter into action on its own. Certainly, he looked at her body quite regularly, as if committing its every curve and contour to memory for future use. But he did not touch her, did not ask her for intimacy, simply admired her body from afar. It was frustrating, but it did demonstrate that I had made the right choice in experimenting in such a low-risk environment: if he had been so recalcitrant with an important target, that would have been very problematic. For a time, I was content simply to arouse him whenever he laid eyes upon Vicolene, but it clearly wasn't working in the least bit.

So, after one more session of frantic, lonely masturbation, the occasional hiss of Vicolene's name escaping his lips, I quietly whispered something into his mind: I should actually do something to sleep with her. He was inclined to talk through his thoughts when he was alone, so as he settled down on the bed, I waited for him to start talking. "It would be improper if we were found out." It would be improper if it was found out Vicolene was sneaking into my room. "Well... yes, I suppose I am already in trouble if anyone discovered us, and this is getting quite crazy. Next time she comes in, I'll bring it up."

* * *

The next time she snuck in through the window, I kicked Ylantar's sex drive into maximum, getting him immediately hard as he greeted her. "Vicolene. You know, you shouldn't keep breaking into a young boy's room. You could leave people with the wrong impression."

"It's just me," she replied with an idle wave of her hand. "Anyway, I make sure to never get caught, don't I?" He stepped towards her. He was an inch or two shorter than her even now, but he had bulk and muscle and a certain intimidation factor that made her take a step back, until she was practically pressed against the wall. "Whoa, what's the matter?"

"I'm the one who could have the wrong impression," he told her, reaching for her wrist. His grasp was gentle, almost loose, as he drew it towards his erection. She blinked rapidly, staring down at the hard thing in her hand through the layers of fabric. With her skin painted black from my ichor, I couldn't see any sign of the flush so common in an aroused female, but her response was obviously one of a woman who was at least somewhat interested.

"You're- it wouldn't be appropriate."

"Would it be any less appropriate if you were to be found lounging on my bed, or resting on my head, than if we were found in carnal acts?"

She bit her lip at that, seeming to consider it carefully, her breath through her nostrils soft and gentle. Her response was clearly that of a woman sincerely considering doing it. "What brought this on?"

"I can't stop thinking about you," Ylantar explained simply. It was more that he couldn't stop getting horny every time he saw her than that, but such niceties were part of courtship. "You're so beautiful..."

"It's just I'm the only girl near your age you get to see that isn't a relative," Vicolene tried to argue - but she did not remove her hand from his groin, her fingers gently, tenderly wrapped around his shape through the fabric of his trousers.

"It isn't that," he said with a firmness that left no room to argue. In fairness, it wasn't that - it was that I thought she would make a good ally to cultivate, and a good woman to practice awakening Ylantar's lusts upon. "I like you for you."

I could see the slightly-shy way that Vicolene responded to those words, the wilting of her resistance in the face of such unbridled affection. I wondered if she had feelings for Ylantar in the past. "It could create an enormous scandal for you if I got pregnant..." she said, but it wasn't in the way of an argument. Rather, she descended to her knees right in front of Ylantar, quietly pulling down his trousers, making his hard cock pop out. "If it gets like this again, I can handle it like this..." She gave a soft kiss to the tip of his dick, glancing up at him as if searching for approval.

"I don't want you to just 'handle it'," he said. "I want you to do it because you like me too."

She let out a soft laugh. "You must think really low of me if you think I would do this for any man who asked."

"Or maybe any noble boy whose room you'd stolen into," he corrected. "If you don't want to-"

He couldn't finish the thought, the act of little pride to try to assure Vicolene's consent, because Vicolene wrapped her lips around his tip and began to swallow him up, a slow movement of wet flapping tongue and heavy spit and saliva. Her mouth slid down his length inch by inch, and her eyes gazed up at him, blue eyes full of love and affection and earnest desire. Yes, she definitely had feelings for Ylantar before this point. By the pleasant hum of her mouth around his length, she was clearly enjoying herself, softly breathing through her nose as she twisted her head back and forth.

She was almost pressed up against the wall from when Ylantar had first approached her. I sat back and quietly let whatever would happen, happen; I needed to see exactly what Ylantar would do, when given the chance at sexual intimacy, so I could guide him to use it for his own advantage rather than simply to brutishly and brusquely take what he needed or wanted.

Fortunately, he did seem to have quite a bit of self control. While his fingers ran through Vicolene's ivory white hair, occasionally clenching up, he did not move to drive her face down his cock, letting her content herself with the upper half of his length. One of her dark, feminine hands came up, softly stroking him where his length wasn't drawn into her mouth. All the while, she stared up at him, their eyes locked, a silent exchange of feelings that was made all the clearer by the way that she licked and played with his cock in her mouth.

"This only feels good for me," Ylantar panted softly, his voice almost a whine. It was good he had such concern for his partner's feelings. It would only serve him well in the future. "Can I do anything, to make you feel good?"

She hummed around his cock, giving it a playful few laps against the underside, before popping back. "This feels good for me too, Ylantar," she told him, before playfully wrapping her lips back around his cock, wiggling her eyebrows. She was astoundingly eager at this point - I definitely had made the right choice when I had decided to use sexuality to gain the leverage I wanted Ylantar to hold. If he could produce such feelings by sexual intimacy with other women, there was no doubt that soon enough, he would be standing astride the whole of dark elven society, with me offering a bit of assistance.

The pleasure reached me as well, of course. It felt fantastic, absolutely wonderful, a wet warm place to snugly fit his length. Given how astounding this felt compared to masturbation, I could understand how mortals became so attached to it, and to those who gave them it. Ylantar reached up with one hand, biting on a bit of his palm to quiet his voice. Perhaps you should turn out the light, I whispered into his mind, and a moment later he reached out with one hand, the light inside the room turning instantly dark as an inky black part of my essence congealed around the faintly flickering candle.

The room was now pitch black. There was only sensation and sound to go by, the sight of Vicolene completely denied to Ylantar. She seemed to like it, even, by the way her pace on his cock got more intense, wet sloshing noises coming up from between his legs as she noisily slurped and drooled upon his cock. His length thrust deep into her mouth, starting to ram into the back of her throat, making her sputter and gag, speckles of saliva hitting his thighs as she worked. Despite that, she continued to push forward, trying her best to collect his whole length in her throat, gagging wetly as she did so.

I believe part of the reason she became particularly intense in the dark is that there was no risk that, were there to be a mess, she would wind up being seen in some embarrassing new light. As such, she could gag and sputter as many times as it took. Ylantar's hands were soon pressed against the wall, as he was rendered increasingly unable to control himself; even that measure lost its efficacy as he drove Vicolene backward, until her head pressed against the wall as well, his hips bucking back and forth, making her choke and sputter wetly on his cock, groaning and gasping.

It was unfortunate, since it was hardly the most loving method of fucking, but Vicolene would not be politically valuable - it was best he got this sort of energy out on her, than some woman he actually wanted to control and manipulate towards his own ends. Each wet thud of his cock against the back of her throat was accompanied by a gag from the girl beneath him, but she didn't resist. In fact, her fingers began to gently brush along his thighs, as if to reassure him that she wasn't angry at all.

All well and good for this situation, but I would definitely have to break him out of these habits.

That was something that could be handled later, though. It felt absolutely amazing, particularly when he finally managed to slam his cock past her gag reflex and just bury his entire length inside her throat. Then, her gags became not a thing representing resistance and struggle, but something wet and wondrous around his length, a repetitive gripping and squeezing of his length. The muffled noises she let out around his length, too, were delicious, sweet music to the ears. It took hardly any time at all for him to begin coming, groaning and letting out a sweet sigh of "Vicolene..." as he found release inside her throat.

When he was completely spent, he pulled back, letting her suck in deep heaving breaths, and tucking his cock back in his pants and letting light flood the room again. Vicolene's beautiful blue eyes widened as she was exposed to light, her dark skin now stained with spit and tears from choking on his cock - and one hand caught in her groin. She did her best to make herself presentable, only a muttered complaint escaping her lips at being caught like that.

"That was really great," he told her. "It was... amazing. Just... so good. So much better than my hand. I'm sorry for losing control near the end there," he added, and I could feel the pang of regret, knew he wasn't just saying it.

"It's fine," Vicolene said. "It was kind of hot, the way you just totally lost it. I hardly had to do anything, too, since at that point you were doing all the work."

He let out a laugh at that, patting her head. "There's lazy, and then there's you, Vicolene," he told her.

"Terrible way to talk to a girl you just choked on your cock."

He just laughed at that, flicking her head with a single finger. "Sorry. There's lazy, there's really lazy, and then there's Vicolene."

She let out a small noise of faux offense.

* * *

Wehlor's drilling of Vicolene focused on magic, but it was inevitable it would cross over into the martial elements of things as well. After all, he was a soldier, and Vicolene had no combat training whatsoever. He focused on the simple fundamentals, whereas Qilanna's tutoring involved more elegant footwork and clever swordplay, reading one's opponent and seeking out opportunities.

"It is a dance move," Qilanna explained, with a gentle flourish of her blade in the air. "An elegant interception of the opponent's blade, pressing it to one side to leave them exposed. Each movement is a delicate act, no excess or defect, perfect in each curve. It must be repeated until it is second nature."

Ylantar nodded in understanding, attempting the move himself. Qilanna began to stab at him, and he diverted her blade this way and that. He had developed some skill at it over their training, and my puissance had raised his strength and speed to a limited degree as well, letting him manage to parry her quite well. After only two minutes, she paused in her offensive, stepping back.

"We will take a moment to recuperate; the body is not a rock that can roll downhill until it finds its level. We must pace ourselves appropriately, lest we waste our time overmuch. Do you have any more intellectual inquiries?" She asked, as she collected a cup of water and began to drink it quite heavily.

"You teach fighting very differently from Wehlor."

"Wehlor?" She asked, with a faint frown, putting down her cup.

"He's teaching Vicolene, at my request to mother."

"Ah." She tilted her head to one side. "Wehlor is a common soldier, the brick and mortar on which all armies are based. He teaches conservative, regular movements, like the workings of a clock. You, on the other hand, are a noble," she said, gathering up her training blade again and pointing it at Ylantar . "It is not enough to be the cog that twists the hours' hand. You must be exceptional, and distinguish yourself, or else find yourself having failed your family. He only needs to come back to his. Now, let us begin again," she said, sword striking out towards Ylantar, at first with relatively light thrusts, then forcing a more thorough, aggressive style against Ylantar, eventually overpowering his defenses and sending him tumbling to the ground.

"Get up, and pay closer attention to my footwork this time. Don't watch my blade, that twitches in a heartbeat from hip to shoulder; watch my eyes, my arms, my legs, for they necessarily precede each action the blade takes." As if to demonstrate, she made a few quick back and forth movements of her wrist that sent her training blade slashing from side to side.

"Yes, Qilanna," he said. "I appreciate your efforts." Qilanna gave the slimmest smile at that, just a momentary thing, before resuming her aggressive series of attacks.

* * *

With a different teacher to give him solid basics in magic, Ylantar could begin to appear meek and incompetent with Aunrae. She, thus, became quite encouraging, assuring him that it was not too surprising he could not manage this or that on his first try, and that he needed simply to try again. In some ways, he learned faster this way, since she seemed less inclined to give him outright bad advice. She was still certainly not trying very hard to teach him, though.

Vicolene became the subject of numerous sexual experiments on the part of young Ylantar, though they avoided coitus proper. Fellatio, cunnilingus, intercrural, all the common debaucheries were experimented with as children playing. Ylantar grew stronger and taller with each passing month, until, a full year after my entrance into his body, he stood a full head taller than Vicolene. Their affections were intense, and, unfortunately, sometimes dipped into the world outside the walls of his room.

"I'm glad to hear you'll be entering the service of our great city," Wehlor said, as Vicolene and Ylantar approached him for training. "Otherwise I might have worried that I'd be training you for nothing. That doesn't apply to you, of course, sir; my services are entirely at your discretion."

Vicolene simply blinked in confusion at the statement Wehlor had made. "I... do plan on serving in the army, yes, but not soon."

"Oh? The Lady Llezina seemed to suggest it was close to time for you to go, and that I ought to ensure that any 'holes are plugged up,' though she didn't quite put it that way."

"Ah." Vicolene's statement left little doubt as to what was happening - Ylantar's mother was making good on her promise, likely in part to preserve the chastity of her son. I did quiet his sex drive as best I could when occasionally it seemed as if he were considering coitus, but his mother surely didn't know as much. "I understand. Let's continue with training, then?"

"Naturally. You've done well - Ylantar's a prodigy or somesuch, don't compare yourself to him," he said, with a lazy smile, raising one hand into the air, a thin trail of light beginning to emanate from his fingertips.

Neither Ylantar nor Vicolene were particularly productive students that day.

* * *

Ylantar did ask to speak to his mother about the matter of Vicolene's military service, but it was an entirely vain enterprise, hardly worth mentioning. It went precisely as you expect: he politely suggested that perhaps Vicolene could continue to stay in the household a while longer, and his mother politely stated that perhaps she could, but that was not what was going to happen.

The pair got much more regularly intimate with one another in the two weeks they had together than they had before, and likely would have violated chastity were it not for my intervention. If they noticed that Ylantar had a tendency to feel enervated whenever they approach the act of sex proper, they did not comment upon it.

Soon enough, though, Vicolene was headed out to join the army, unable to disobey her mother's employer, particularly after she had received genuine and valuable training. His mother permitted him to continue to train with Wehlor to "ensure continued grasp of the fundamentals"; Aunrae took little offense, perhaps considering it impossible that a commoner could truly improve on Ylantar's sorcery, or perhaps considering it impossible a male could.

Of course, Ylantar did not handle having his source of sexual relief and intimacy taken away from him particularly well.
Next Chapter

My name is Ephaliat, and I have been dead for twenty thousand years, ever since the light was cleaved from the darkness, the water from the land.

My body, a titanic mass of tendrils and tentacles emanating from my single brilliant eye, was buried beneath the earth by my killers, where it laid forlorn for millennia. One of those killers turned on her kin, and for it was maimed and forced into exile; she scurried beneath the surface alongside her worshipers to find my body, and baptized them in my thick black blood, that they might grow strong.

Thus came to be the civilization of the dark elves. During an annual ceremony, every child of thirteen years was engulfed in my ichor, staining their waxy pale skin an obsidian black, gifting them with some element of my former powers over light and darkness.

Yet, also, they gifted me some tiny fragment of their own power. Their blood flowed into me occasionally, by minor wounds that were ignored, by accidents and deaths that happened in my waters on occasion, and I supped at the chance for life. I drank greedily at every opportunity, leaving them gasping and sick after their submergence, but they never ceased their baptismal rites, even as they gave me the chance for consciousness once more.

Do not be confused. After thousands of years of this, I was still but a fraction of my old self. I could not raise the least part of my wounded, ripped-open body, could not stop a single babe from wandering into the thick molasses of my essence that had spilled throughout the cavern I was buried in.

So I prepared to leave. I waited for my opportunity, seeking a host of the best physique, breeding, and magical potential, and I found him after years of searching. A young boy named Ylantar, of the house Jehalaora. When he drew breath beneath my blood, a gasping surprised jerk, I thrust my consciousness in through his mouth, dug myself deep into the bowels of his being, and waited quietly. I stared out through his eyes as he was drawn from my body, listened through his ears to the words spoken by the people who treated my body as a thing killed in a sacred hunt by their goddess and given as fodder to them.

“Ylantar, why did you breathe?” The voice was stern and female. “You can get sick if you do a thing like that.”

“I’m sorry, mother,” he said, bowing his head almost obsequiously low. “It was colder than I was expecting.”

Of course it’s cold. The whole world was cold when I yet lived.

The boy jerked his head at that, glancing around as he sought out the voice in question. I quieted myself, hid in the recesses of his mind. I might reveal myself to him, but not just yet. He eventually seemed to decide that he’d heard nothing, and quietly walked along with his mother back towards the home.

When they arrived at their home, his mother sending him off to his room, to be minded by one of the servants, I paid quiet attention to his behavior. Each scrape of his chair as he read through one of his family's codices, each hum as he put down the book to simply think over what he had read. Occasionally, he would take notes, making white marks on a black surface that was replaceable, as he sorted through things in his mind.

With each passing day, I insinuated myself ever deeper into his body, that I might not be removed were some magic to be used. I could not simply devour the boy from within - I was too weak even for that. Nor would I have - an animated corpse would have less magical power than a still-thriving Ylantar, less capacity to feign life and humanity.

It also gave me the chance to get an idea of these dark elves' civilization, their culture, their despicable religion about worshiping the woman who had killed me. One thing I couldn't help but notice was the matriarchy. Women made the decisions, men merely executed them. It made the decision to possess the boy… seem a little less wise, but I was unable to reverse course, and had to see it through to the end.

Besides - there were ways to work within this context that only a male host could. In societies dominated by men, women often seduced their way into high positions, did they not?

* * *

I saw and heard the boy's daily routine, and it quickly became clear that I had selected a good host, even if perhaps I should have selected a female one. He was clearly doted on by his mother, Llezina. Not in the sense that she spent much time with him - she surely did not - but in the sense that she clearly saw him as among her most capable children, and cultivated his talents appropriately. He had virtually free access to the family codices, as well as two separate tutors. One was Qilanna, a former military officer who was employed as the head of the family guard, with tightly-braided white hair, and a muscular, tall, yet buxom physique, whose job was to teach him swordplay.

The other, his magic teacher, was as new to him as she was to me. All the dark elves - or at least, the baptized among them - had a native talent for two spells, both of them derived from my essence. On the one hand, light, the luminous nature of my being which allowed me to see in the primordial darkness to which I was born. On the other, darkness, as the inky black of night, something I could spread at my will to hide myself from the sight of others. Neither had sufficed to stop their goddess from slaying me.

As such, while Ylantar had been working on his footwork and martial techniques for years now, he had not been so diligent practicing magic until my presence entered him. And, given that his magic - the magic of all the dark elves - came from me? It should only be self-evident that he proved to be a true prodigy in the control and manifestation of light and darkness.

He was taught the basics of magic by his aunt, Aunrae va Jehalaora. She was a rather curvaceous and tall woman, quite beautiful, with her hair done back in a long, single braid. "You are doing very well," she would say, when he would accomplish what I was quite certain was well beyond the capacity of any normal boy his age. "Now, again, but more targeted this time," she declared, and together our wills drew light into a razor-thin cord that slipped through the air and poked at the wall. There was no mess, no spread of the light: it was an utterly perfect shot. "Hmm." She stepped towards the wall, brushing her finger through the space the light went as if to experiment and ensure he hadn't cheated. "It is decent."

It was absurd, is what it was. Aunrae had been quite taciturn and tight-fisted with her praise for Ylantar for all the time he had been training under her. I had worried and wondered if perhaps our combined efforts did not result in the level of apparent talent that I thought - if, perhaps, this world had moved on without me - but I had rather quickly seen what his sister, two years his elder, managed. He was, within thirty days or so of being immersed with me, doing much better than her after two full years.

Then I worried that perhaps she was suspicious of him, that she had some intuition that there was something unusual in how powerful and controlled his magic was. I tried to withdraw subtly, to lower his talents without making it obvious what I was doing, but that, too, didn't change her treatment of him. If anything, she became nicer, if only in the backhanded way one reserves for one's lessers: "That's perfectly good, don't worry." "It isn't like you've done anything wrong, people are just good at different things."

She was lowering him, intentionally avoiding offering him any praise for his successes. It irritated me, primarily because I'd spent a good deal of time, effort, and mental energy seeing if there had been some flaw of technique on my part, only to discover it was nothing more than some internal family squabble. I hadn't seen any conflict between Llezina and Aunrae, but the mortal beings that had grown up in my wake were inclined towards family rivalries.

She's talking down to you, I told him, when she next offered her vaguely-critical attack, something just mute enough that he could have claimed innocence were it pointed out, yet undeniably meant to suggest he was anything less than the most talented young sorcerer of his generation.

His lips twisted on his face for a moment, but otherwise his expression was subdued. This time, he didn't seem to wonder at where my voice had come from, confusing it with his own. Given his placid response, I concluded that he knew what Aunrae was doing. I should practice on my own, I whispered, hoping that he would confuse that with his own thoughts. A teacher so wildly incompetently smothering as Aunrae was going to be a net negative on both of our ability to improve.

By the way he shifted his body weight, as if steeling himself to receive a blow, it appeared he had indeed resolved to practice on his own.

* * *

The first such practice session took place in his room, at night. He had a codex on the subject of the luminous magics, and a bit of light emanated from his palm. He would consult the codex, quietly change the light in its color, brightness, angle, heat, or other features, and hold it in whatever its new state was for a time, before carrying on to the next one.

The entire situation was quite opaque to me - what possible reason could his mother have to give him to a woman she had some rivalry with? Elves, no matter their breed, deeply loved their children. Even the mild cough and fatigue that had come with my entrance into Ylantar's body got her attention and care. After considering it, my focus half on aiding Ylantar in the development of his magic, I simply gave up. I had no idea.

Ylantar created a flicker like a candle, gently swaying to and fro in the room, and managed to affix it to the air before returning to reading. His focus was half on the text before him, half on the magic maintaining the candle light.

The text itself was focused on how, precisely, to twist and reshape the light my essence produced. Some, I must admit, were novel to me, but most were not, the simple change in hue or brightness born of modulations that I had performed a countless number of times in the past. Each time Ylantar occasioned to try a new variation, my will was with him, making it simpler, easier, a movement smooth and simple. He seemed pleased to manage them, and started to play with raising the brightness higher and higher.

Ylantar's room was on the second floor, a single window with a thick curtain occluding the outside world. The dark elves lived within excavated and preexisting caverns; oftentimes, the walls were themselves mere rock bed earth, cool to the touch most of the time. Ylantar had the privilege of a window, his view being that of a grand garden of fungus that grew on the Jehalaora estates. I say all this to establish the scene, as there was the meaty smack of meat against the rim of the window. What's that? I asked, nudging him as subtly as I could manage to the possible intruder. I should go get my mother. It would be centuries at the least before I could gather the strength to take on a host again; I did not want to risk this one.

Instead of going to his mother, though, Ylantar immediately started to walk towards the window, shifting the curtain aside to reveal a young woman, maybe a few years his senior, with white hair cut short and vivid blue eyes, an easy smile on her lips as she clambered up inside the room with him. She had a fit physique, a modest bust, and an easy, boyish smile. She moved without hesitation, her legs swinging over the edge of the window sill, slipping it shut behind her. "How are things going with you, huh?"

"Don't you have work to be doing?" Ylantar asked, giving her a cold look. He knew her. That explained it.

She just chuckled. "Not really." It sounded almost like a shared joke, from the way she said it. "I'll be joining the army soon, I think. Become an officer."

"Didn't know they were letting lazy commoners become officers," Ylantar replied, absently opening and closing his fingers. "It's been over a month since you came by."

"It's so hard to get in here." She actually whined as she said it, rolling her shoulders. "Sorry I couldn't be there for your baptism, but, y'know."

"I know. It's very hard to do things when you're the biggest flake in the world."

"That's right!" She practically rushed forward to him, squeezing him in a tight hug, pinning his arms to his side. He just let out a long sigh, as if this was the most arduous experience of his life. "But I know you love me anyway, right, Illy?"

"Only in the sense one grows to love a three-legged puppy; out of a mix of pity and exasperation."

"I'll take it," she said, continuing to smush her body into his. I felt as much as he did the way his body naturally responded to her closeness, his erection absently pressing against her thigh. With his youth, she still had a few inches on him, but she held him like he was her baby brother, the same casual boredom that one expects of it. Still, she was provoking a base physical reaction in him, and in turn I felt the warmth of her own body rise, spotted out of the corner of Ylantar's eyes the way her eyebrows raised in surprise. "You're getting so big," she said, as she broke off the hug, smiling brilliantly at him.

"Maybe you're shrinking," he said, in a total deadpan, earning a giggle from her. It was obvious to me that she was attracted to him, and she'd spoken of going into the military. I knew even from my brief time with him that Ylantar would be entering the military in a few years; it was simply expected of young men of his social status, and he would be staying there for a decade before getting married off. It was part of the local custom. If he could make such a connection now... I should make sure she'll help me in the military, I attempted. He just snorted.

That was enough to break off the hug. "Something funny?" She asked, almost pouting at him.

"Yeah. I just had the idea that you could be useful to me at some point, which is ridiculous."

"Yeah, probably," she agreed easily, flopping down onto the bed. "I really am thinking of joining the army, though. What else is there to do?"

"Start a household."

"Yeah, with all my fat stacks of coin," she said, kicking her legs. "Maybe with an officer's pension I could manage that."

"Better aim for a soldier's pension, I doubt you'll ever be seeing an officer's pension except from a distance."

"Probably not," she agreed amicably. I had the impression of their relationship that the girl was unerringly lazy, and the boy wished she wasn't, but cared for her anyway. Not in a romantic sense, though. "What are you doing in here anyway? Reading books?" She glanced at the still-open codex on his desk, and he went over to it, letting her look over her shoulder at the pages as she did so. "Studying magic? Don't you have a tutor  to teach you it?"

"Aunt Aunrae is not a very efficacious teacher," he replied blandly.

"Whaaat? Isn't she like this amazing sorceress or something?"

He shrugged. "She's dragging my progress down. I'll continue attending lessons for Mother's sake, but I'm not wasting my time."

"You're my total opposite," the girl replied, shifting her position so she crossed her arms and rested them atop her head. "Vicolene the Lazy and Ylantar the Hard-Working."

"Diligent," he offered mildly.

"Vicolene the Diligent and Ylantar the Hard-Working."

"No, you-" he let out a sigh as he cut himself off. "Diligent means hard-working."

"But I already called you hard-working."

"Different word choices matter for this sort of thing, Vicolene. Some words sound more erudite than others."

"What's erudite mean?"

"Do you intend to become an officer with the vocabulary of a six year old?" He asked, shifting his head to glance halfway up at her.

"I didn't realize that we were gonna be tested on vocabulary instead of, like, tactics and stuff."

"I'm sure your talent with that is just as miserable," was his succinct reply, turning his attention back to the book in front of him.

"Yep!" She agreed easily.

She hummed pleasantly as she read the book from atop his head - he was quickly so engrossed that he paid no mind to the way she was balancing her weight atop him, until, after over an hour, he yawned and stretched, his fist clipping her chin in the process. She let out a hiss of pain. "Ow!"

"You're still here?" Ylantar asked, bewildered.

"Wow... first you get mad at me for not trying, then you get mad at me for trying too hard? Is that fair, you think?"

"I'll get mad at you for whatever I want. I spoil you anyway."

She flopped down onto his bed then, lying on one side. "You're right. Where are my grapes?" She demanded from where she lay.

"They're right up your ass," he countered. "Grapes are way too expensive to waste even a single one on you. Even I don't get to eat them unless we have guests."

"Aren't I a guest?"

"Guests that anybody cares about impressing," he corrected, a slight smirk appearing on his lips. She let out a feigned noise of pain from the bed.

"I'm being bullied by a boy who's barely a month past his baptism... if my mother were here today, she'd be so ashamed."

"Your mother is a servant in this very home."

"Yes, but she's not here," Vicolene countered with an intense gesture to the room as a whole.

He let out a long sigh. "How am I supposed to work with you here?"

"You were working with me here for a whole hour while I was left to just stare down at the book," she declared, stretching her body and letting out a faint groan. "Just forget my presence."

"How can I forget it when you won't shut up?" He said mildly, but turned his gaze back to his book soon enough, the candle light beginning to shift slowly through each hue, moving at a sedate, regular, carefully formed pace as he made sure to make it every color in the rainbow and then start again from the beginning, keeping his pace steady and consistent all the while. He had some help from me, of course, but if he didn't have a clear and focused mind, I doubt I could have managed to get the magic working as well as it was.

At some point, she came over to rest her forearms atop his head again. He let out only the briskest of sighs before becoming absorbed in his studies again, carefully making little calculations on the small tablet to his side.

She left us alone for the night, at the least.

* * *

Aunrae was inspecting his work again. In this case, it was a light that was meant to blind, providing him with a decent chance of taking advantage of his enemies' sudden weakness. The disabling elements of light and dark were among the first ones that young dark elves were taught, for the obvious reason: more elaborate techniques had the risk of not being grasped quickly enough, or not being efficacious in a fight if they weren't entirely made instinctual. Further, something meant to blind rather than to harm carried less risk of some child inadvertently causing permanent damage.

Naturally, with my assistance, Ylantar had mastered it almost instantly, simply drawing up his hand and releasing the burst of blinding light. Over Aunrae's eyes lay a thin film of darkness, as if she were in shadows but only there; a simple method of ensuring one's eyes were protected from the potential damage that an overly-bright burst might create.

She didn't betray any particular feelings, as the light rapidly faded away. "That was much too bright. You could easily do permanent damage, with that luminosity."

Ridiculous. That was perfectly safe. My host, however, simply gave a mute nod. "Let me try it again, then." Aunrae nodded, and he let out another, significantly lighter burst of luminous energy - one slight enough that I doubted it would produce any blinding at all. Perhaps they wouldn't like to look at it, but I could hardly imagine it would actually blind anyone.

"Better. Keep at that level, perhaps even a bit smaller," she said. "Remember, anyone who hasn't specifically protected their eyes is in danger - not just your target. Be sure to use it in such a way that it only blinds your enemy, whether that be by warning your allies or positioning yourself carefully." Her lessons were an odd mix of useful advice and obvious attempts to get Ylantar to underperform. It was increasingly obvious that she was intentionally sabotaging Ylantar's education; for what specific vagary of dark elf internal politics, I could hardly guess. She didn't seem to have some other student she favored over Ylantar.

When we finished with the day's lessons, Ylantar having been taught to do everything that Aunrae could justify in such a manner by half-measures, he returned to his bedroom to continue his studying in private. She was lying about your magic being too dangerous. He just let out a quiet sigh, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "I know," he mumbled, likely to himself, given that he showed no other sign of realizing my presence as a distinct entity. "She is teaching me the basics of it in a practical manner... Mother wouldn't want me to come complaining to her at the first sign of trouble." He rubbed the side of his head, talking to himself as he ran through the entire situation. Rather helpful for me, since I was still missing much of the context.

"Ideally she would start to teach me properly, but I don't know how I can make her do that. I am a man, after all." Why can't a man do it? Since he was already talking to himself, he didn't even seem concerned. "Men are generally not expected to learn much more than the rudiments of sorcery. Aunt Aunrae was a prodigy when she was younger, and is still well-known today. If my natural talent provoked only a negative response - and my brief failing a positive one - then she has to be doing it on purpose."

I listened to him carefully as he paced in his room, speaking in careful, precise language. "The most likely reason I can think of is simply that she doesn't like the idea of a man performing so well. Particularly if I wind up going on to exceed her. That means I'd have to convince her it wasn't shameful to be beaten by a man in sorcery, which... isn't true."

Isn't true? I had as yet remained ignorant to the particulars of the dark elves' culture.

He paused at that, as if some fresh new thought was occurring to him. "If I can convince her men can be excellent sorcerers, that there's no shame in being outdone by one... if I can convince her. Yet if I could, somebody else could. And they didn't." He sighed at that point, sitting down on the edge of the bed as he massaged his temples. "I don't know what to do. I can't simply complain to Mother, she arranged this."

Can't you?

He paused again, seeming to weigh that thought in his mind carefully. "Hmm... no, no. It wouldn't work. Aunt Aunrae hasn't done anything explicit in her teaching; I would just be considered an ungrateful child. Perhaps I could have another tutor arranged, in a way that saves Aunt Aunrae face?"

There was the sound of flesh against the window sill. Ylantar stiffened, sitting up straight and glancing at the curtains as Vicolene once more dragged herself up and over the edge. "Ah, good, it's just you," she said, smiling as she saw him.

Could she be useful for this somehow? I didn't know the specifics of the situation, but Vicolene seemed quite personally loyal to Ylantar, so...

"Do you still plan on joining the army or have you given it up already?"

"I've said that I'm going to join the army many times," Vicolene replied with faux offense, touching her hand to her chest. "I'm not going to just give it up like that.

"Then I would like to offer you my support in achieving your goals." Ylantar wore a broad, probably fake smile; Vicolene certainly did not seem overly pleased to see it.

Next Chapter

World's Worst Sith Master, Chapter 4
Previous Chapter
I was mostly running on autopilot when I went back to the training arena. I hadn't gone looking for Errai, and she didn't approach me again in the immediate aftermath. Whether that was to manipulate me by letting me stir in guilt or get thirsty, or simply to get away, I couldn't really know. I'd occasionally remember the feeling of her throat in my hands, and get an erection as a consequence. I didn't go find her to relieve it, I'd just handle it in my bunk back on the Solace and Refuge. Part of me was really glad I no longer had to sleep in the recruits' barracks.

I had just gotten done throwing myself against one of the training droids when Xig saw me. He started to chitter excitedly at the sight of me, and all I caught was frantic statements of "Soleil! Soleil!" mixed in with somewhat panicked giddiness. Presumably he was happy to see me and had thought something had happened to me.

"I still can't understand you that well, Xig," I told him, and he clicked his mouth-parts in acknowledgement, hurriedly taking out a datapad and starting to type.

{You are alive! I was worried after hearing that you had been carried off by Darth Rakali!}

Being so variant from a human, Xig's emotions came through my empathic sense lightly and slightly warped, like seeing something lurking under the surface of water, but it was easy to tell that he was glad to see me again. That, combined with his words, made it impossible not to laugh. It was more out of a sense of relief than anything funny. The alien chittered in confusion, but I just waved him off. "It's fine. Thank you for your concern. I'm happy to have a fr- ally of convenience," I said. I wanted to hug him, honestly, but xinderan aren't really huggers.

{What happened? There are all sorts of rumors going around, such as that Darth Rakali came to kill you for claiming to be her apprentice!}

Just hearing that gave me a bit of a headache. Did nobody believe literally anything I said? "No, she came to pick me up, since I was her apprentice," I explained. "I still am, in fact."

Xig gave me a long, silent look, his mouth parts quietly working as he thought about what I had said. I could hear his clicking - more a mutter than anything else - but I couldn't make out a single recognizable sound. After ten, fifteen seconds, he tapped out again. {You're really Darth Rakali's apprentice?}

"Yeah."

{Are you alright?} I snorted at that, and he hurriedly typed. {I mean in general! You seem off, I think, but human emotions are hard to read. Your mouth parts don't move much.}

I didn't know if he meant human mouth parts in general, or mine in particular, but my hand went to my mouth on automatic to check it. My expression, I'm sure, was empty and dull. Xig had noticed that and tried to check on me; Errai had noticed and tried to start manipulating me. Even through the thick fog that interspecies empathy created, I could tell that he was genuinely concerned my health and well being, one carapaced hand reaching out gently for my head, patting my cheek with a rather doting gentility. "I'm… alive."

{So is everyone else here.} He countered. {Are you well? Emotionally?}

On instinct, I said, "I'm fine," in the most easy, stupid way possible. Zeltrons don't even repress our emotions nearly so much as humans do - we just express them freely, come what may. At least, that was the way I was raised, yet here I was, reflexively covering them up. "No. I… I watched Darth Rakali kill a woman. One who had been nothing but nice to me. It wasn't because of anything I had done, but… it feels like it was."

He nodded, mouth parts clacking and shifting as he considered in a muttering tone of voice. {Tell me about it.}

I took him into one of the unused training arenas before I just went into it, telling him the entire story. Going to another planet, meeting Inessa. I kind of skimmed over the sex because the way his mandibles moved suggested he was barely avoiding puking in response to hearing about the fact that it had happened, much less the actual specifics. I told him about what had happened at Inessa's office, and he nodded along, seeming completely understanding, hand going to my shoulder, then pulling back so he could type.

{What happened was not your fault. Darth Rakali kills whoever she feels like. That is her job. Do not feel guilty.}

I sagged slightly, nodding dumbly. I knew it was true even before he'd said anything, but I couldn't quite manage to get myself to accept it. It had to be my fault, somehow, that these things kept happening, that I kept losing the people who got close to me. But Xig was still here, wasn't he? I hadn't known him very long at all, but his presence did help to ground me. "Thanks. You're probably right. Want to practice?"

I reached for my practice saber, and his mouth parts clattered - I knew enough of his language to know it was an affirmative response, if the fact that he was grabbing his own training saber wasn't enough to tell me that. I lost myself in the moment, the perfect whirlwind of violence, the dance of sabers.

I tried to ignore the fact that that was the way that Darth Rakali taught me to think about it.

* * *

Four days later, I was in the training arena, practicing against one of the combat droids, when the door to my particular cell opened up. Alhenas stood there, with a combat droid of his own. I expected him to realize the room was occupied and leave us be. Instead, there was barely a fraction of a second of mental calculation, and then - "Droid. My compatriot here wishes to practice two on one."

"What? No I don't," I said quickly, but the droid seemed to completely ignore me, its own beatstick coming out. I could barely manage to dodge and weave the one droid - when a second came into things, I started having to properly block and parry, each such strike making me ache and step another foot backwards, and another, my body twisting in response to the sheer force they both brought to bear. Even with my training, I could barely manage to keep up a defense, and that defense hurt, an aching agony with each progressive swipe of their weapons against my training saber.

"I heard about what you did with Errai," he said, his hand on his own training saber, just coldly watching me desperately defend myself. I did feel a rather sharp pang of remorse, now that I was reminded that he actually did have a very understandable reason to want to see the shit kicked out of me - not that it reduced the ache and pains that came with each strike the combat droids brought down. "This is why near humans shouldn't be allowed to become Sith. They start to get ideas about what they can do to us."

Obviously, in retrospect, it was absolutely idiotic to argue that Sith shouldn't hurt other Sith, given that the entire religion amounts to "do whatever you want." At the time, though, I was so focused on defending myself from the frantic, unending attacks of the combat droids that I didn't have much ability to talk. When I did talk, it was to plead with the droids to stop attacking me. "Stop! Please!"

"You are not done. You must complete the program," one of them said, earning a cruel laugh from Alhenas. I remembered how my fight had ended last time I'd been unable to end it prematurely, and decided to try that way - putting my body in the way of one of its more haphazard and weak blows, intentionally falling away from the strike so I hit the ground. It hurt, but not as bad as it had the first time. "Training program complete. You are free to go. I can provide training information in the unlikely event that your future Master wishes to have it."

I wasn't even sure if it was the same one for both lines - the damn things all sounded the same, and the arena chamber seemed to echo. Of course, once I was done with the fight, Alhenas spoke. "That will be all, leave us," he said, before I could come up with the idea of ordering the droid to attack him instead. He loomed over me as I lay on the ground. I got myself halfway to my feet - I was seated, but my soles were against the ground as well as my ass - while pretending to be in pain even doing that. Even if he had understandable reasons to beat the crap out of me, I wanted every advantage I could get. "I cannot imagine you're enjoying yourself right now."

I looked up at him, feeling exhausted. I could feel his emotions, and at this distance, and in this situation, they hit me like a wave. Indignation blotted over with rage. Jealousy mixed into that dangerous soup. Sympathetic pain, the sort that one gets from seeing someone one cares for suffer. Loathing. It was all negative, potent, furious. The highest emotion present was probably the desire for vengeance - everything else was lower, more brutal or cruel or selfish in one way or another.

"So. You're a Zeltron, apparently. Is that how you seduced her? With your pheromones?" He sneered the words out.

I just stared up at him in silence, holding my side where I'd been hit, exaggerating the pain of the injury as best I could. Despite what some might suggest, Zeltron's pheromones just make us 'pop', give us that little extra something that made us more attractive. It's no different from the results of careful makeup use, well-cared for skin, or similar things. As he started to raise his saber in response to my silence, I spoke, buying just that little bit more time for the ache to subside. "I didn't seduce her. She seduced me."

It was the truth. It produced only a snarl, his emotions blooming, not with indignation that I was lying to him, but with jealousy that I had somehow gotten Errai to come after me. I drew up my training saber with a practiced speed and alacrity, blocking his wild strike. He put so much force in it that I was shoved several feet to one side, my body almost thudding to the ground. I just barely managed to force myself to my feet, pushing away the pain, focusing on the fight. He kept himself between me and the door, keeping me from escaping. "Errai would never try to seduce you. You're just a little boy."

His words didn't have the bite of someone who believed firmly they were telling the truth, which was lucky for me, since he wasn't. In a fight, with an injury, against someone bigger than me - I hadn't really seen Alhenas fight, before. Not properly. He seemed more together than Errai, so he might also be a better duelist. I drew my saber, ready to defend myself, but I wanted to convince him to back down instead, my thoughts roaming through his motives, his own feelings. He wanted to humiliate me, to punish me, for what I'd done to Errai. Could I talk him down? Convince him that she would be angry about this when she found out? Probably not. Sith loved infighting. He brought another wild swing down on me, and I narrowly forced it off to the side. He gave a kick of his own at that point, but I dodged backwards out of his way, the wall getting closer to me, increasingly denying me room to maneuver.

Yeah, he knew the basics of combat, even if his anger was currently overpowering his sense. I doubted I could win a war of attrition like this. "I'll help you seduce Errai yourself," I said, desperately grasping for anything I could use to get him to back down. He paused momentarily, squinting down at me, considering the question. Curiosity bubbled up from inside him, and the grasping feeling of ambition. That meant he did have romantic interest in her, not that I really doubted that. "I can-"

"I don't believe you," he said, whipping his sword out in a lightning fast move that managed to get under my guard. It sent me to one side as I gasped in pain. He was focusing on the spot where I'd previously been injured. "Not about your capacity to help me seduce Errai, nor about your intent. You only want to scurry away and hide. I am here to punish you for your grotesque behavior towards h-"

I managed to get an attack in as he monologued, slipping under his guard to slam into his sternum. He went wobbling backwards, barely staying upright, and I took the chance, bolting for the door. He wanted the fight; I didn't, so there was no reason to stick around and keep it going. As I passed him, he swung his saber at my feet, but I leapt over the weapon and got out of the room, rushing out, headed directly for the Solace and Refuge. He gave chase for a bit, but only a bit - maybe ten seconds into the halls before he gave up. I kept running anyway, just in case he changed his mind.

* * *

I avoided being alone after that point. I'd find Xig before I did anything else, practice with him rather than the combat droids. I needed to learn to fight, and Alhenas's behavior had reinforced that the combat droids were unreliable tin cans with programming from some stupid Sith sadist. I didn't see Errai for the remainder of that stay at the Sith temple. Sometimes Darth Rakali would come back to the ship, simply dragging me into a room to train with brutal intensity.

She offered only the quiet comment that she was glad I was staying at the ship again, because it made training me easier. She didn't sleep there, so I didn't get the chance to kill her in said sleep. I might have done it, at that point, all the weird feelings that came from her killing Inessa and everything that followed after it serving to mess with my head. I didn't get the chance, though. Not until weeks after we'd returned to Korriban, after long enough for me to thoroughly digest the feelings and start controlling them rather than acting out.

"We are going on another mission," she told me, succinctly, as she boarded the Solace and Refuge one day. That was all the warning I got before she closed the hatch and started up the sequence to fly the vessel. "My target isn't a woman, so there won't be a repeat of the previous incident," she explained, as our ship gently rose from the surface of Korriban.

Was that some kind of trick? Some bizarre show of maternal affection? "I don't plan on wandering around the planet again," I told her. It was the truth, anyway.

She simply hummed in response, as if quietly considering that statement. She didn't say anything else on the subject for the rest of the journey.

* * *

"Come with me," Darth Rakali said, when we finally arrived on the planet. She didn't bother to glance my way, to ensure I would follow her - I just did it on automatic, knowing the price of disobedience.

The planet we were on was another grotesque cityscape - I first took it in after I was drawn out of the ship itself, seeing the glittering neon colors of its spiraling, multifaceted towers, looking almost crystalline in its architecture. We took a speeder to our destination in silence - other than the hiss of the wind - the colors of the skyline mixing and twisting together from the speed we moved at. When we arrived at our destination, Darth Rakali spoke. "Since you don't wish to explore the planet, you will be staying with the woman here."

"The woman here?" I asked. The question made my brain briefly stutter in confusion, as she simply clicked some buttons, an elevator arriving in front of us. I was going to have a babysitter? No, wait - "You aren't going to kill her, are you?"

"I have no intention of doing so. I suppose if she does something to impede my mission, I might, but I doubt she would." She stepped into the elevator, and I followed after her.

* * *

We were welcomed into an apartment not by a person, but simply by a mechanical hiss as the doors jutted open. Darth Rakali strode inside with confidence, despite the fact that the only sound coming from within was the electric hum of holoscreens and computers.

"You too, kid," came a female voice from inside, and I automatically stepped inside. Wiring crossed across the floor like a tangled mess, vines stretching across an urban terrarium. Various screens showed various things - raw data, text documents, photographs, videos, and more besides. Towering computer blocks with exposed guts sat freely against walls; chairs floated above the unsteady ground that seemed to try to trip you as you walked inside. Darth Rakali stomped forward with confidence, soon finding her destination. I followed shortly after her.

It was the woman we were presumably here to meet - a cyborg, with her left arm replaced by a prosthetic from shortly below the shoulder, her right leg from above the knee, and a visible star-shaped scar on her chest. She wore a sports bra and sweat pants, her dark hair done up in a pigtail, and wore a casual smile as she spun in her seat. For all the mess that her home may have been in, her body itself was well-taken care of, clearly regularly exercising by the tone of her stomach. "Darth Rakali," she said, with a small bow. "The kid's your apprentice, yeah?"

"You will be watching over him as I do my mission. If you fail to keep him safe, I will hunt you down and kill you."

"Got it. Kid, don't leave the apartment, alright?" She reached for a bar on her desk, chomping down on it, before just tossing a small device - smaller than the joint of my thumb - to Darth Rakali. "I can keep you informed with that." She grabbed up a belt that was clearly one great single electronic device. "This'll let you get through their defenses. And this," another small device, this one about the size and general dimensions of my pinky, a blocky grey thing, "well, you can guess." She tossed it underhand, and Darth Rakali caught it and placed it in her baggage.

"Do whatever you want while you are here, Soleil," Darth Rakali said to me, as she collected the belt. "But do not leave, or I will treat you as if you were trying to escape." I swallowed and nodded silently - that was the last thing Darth Rakali said before leaving me there.

The woman watched Darth Rakali leave with a certain placid exhaustion, as if she did this every day. Then she swiveled her chair around, her gaze falling directly on me. "Hi, kid, I'm Linea. What's your name?"

"Soleil."

"Nice to meet you, Soleil." She glanced at her computer for just a moment, then back at me. "So… gonna take a while before she needs me for anything. Honestly it's pretty much all automatic even when she will," she added, fingers gliding across her keyboard to click a couple buttons. "Want to play some video games? It'll ping me if your Master needs me."

I hesitated, and she just patted her lap, inviting me up into it. My gaze fell on her mechanical leg.

"It's a prosthetic," she explained. "It's pretty cool, want to see how it works?" She stretched it out. "I can take it on and off - well, most of it, anyway. I've got a few other bits I use for other occasions." I was getting nothing but a warm, maternal vibe from her, trying her best to give me something to do, and having a surprisingly decent amount of talent with children, given she clearly had none of her own. Eventually, she wound up helping me play a simple puzzle game on her computer, letting me sit in her lap as I enjoyed myself. I lost myself playing it, and she'd just occasionally offer a bit of advice, or tousle my hair, or otherwise show these tiny little acts of human affection.

I expected Darth Rakali to return before too long - instead, she still wasn't back by the time night fell. It wasn't easy to tell it had fallen, either, given the way that the lights radiated into the room, like a half-dozen electric suns that never went out. Only my physical exhaustion clued me into how late it was getting. When I yawned for the second time, she reached out to pause the game. "Gettin' tired, kid? I'm afraid I've only got the one bed, but you can sleep in it. I'll join you in a bit."

"Thank you," I said, more an automatic response to being given something rather than an expression of some heartfelt gratitude.

She hefted me up out of her lap, showing me to her bedroom. It was a tiny space, barely larger than the bed, which was at least a queen sized one. When she closed the door behind me, the room turned pitch black almost instantly, and I curled up under the sheets, closed my eyes, and pretty much immediately went to sleep. I was only woken up some hours later by the gentle trickle in of electronic lighting as she came into the bedroom herself, crawling into bed with me and gently draping her biological arm over my body, her warm body pressing against me as she pulled me close. I was lying towards the center of the bed, so I wound up with my face all but buried in her breasts. It wasn't sexual, just the intimate touch of two people sleeping in the same bed.

My body was less certain that it counted as nonsexual, and I wound up rubbing my hard-on against her thigh as I settled back in to sleep. I could feel her emotional response to that sensation; more an "awww, how cute" than any kind of positive response like what I might have gotten from Errai or Inessa.

It was nice. I just slipped right back into sleep within a few minutes.

* * *

I spent much the next day, and the next, much the same way. Linea set a computer up for me to play games of my own on, freeing her up to work; she stayed in the home at all times, so if I needed anything, she was always there to help. It wasn't as if I was interrupting something: if Darth Rakali was getting any help from her, I didn't see any sign from her. She didn't even give off the ping of anxiety I'd have expected from her helping Darth Rakali over a long distance. She just quietly, diligently worked, her only emotions being intellectual interest, excitement, or (more rarely) boredom. Well, there was also the occasional time when she'd pop her head out of her office specifically, tell me to knock if I needed anything, and close the door; on those occasions, her lust would start to build before she closed the door and spike afterwards, for obvious reasons.

For a Zeltron, there is a certain natural sympathy when we feel someone else's emotions, especially if we like that person. It's like how laughter is contagious. Feeling those pulses of erotic desire brought something inside me up as well, and on the fourth day, I had been long enough without masturbating that the stimulus pushed me to get started doing something. I grabbed a couple paper towels, closed my eyes, and started to fantasize about Inessa, the way we'd fucked, the thrill of making her come again and again. I tried my best to not think about what happened to her afterwards as I masturbated.

It wasn't easy, or entirely effective, either. The occasional flash of her death, or her corpse, served not to entirely dissuade, but always to break off and interrupt my stream of fantasies, forcing me to take a while to get myself fully back in the mood. It was frustrating enough that I barely even noticed as Linea reached her peak, the few long sagging moments of exhaustion of exhaustion that came afterwards. I only consciously realized she was done when she opened the door to her office, and in the process stumbled on me masturbating.

"A-ah, crap, didn't realize you were old enough to be doing that kind of thing," she said, glancing away with a faint blush. Given her normally completely chaste expressions of affection towards me, I was surprised to feel the burbling resumption of lust at the sight of my bare cock. "You know, you'll make less of a mess if you do it in the toilet," she said, staring pointedly at the wall. Her own lust just kept ascending as she stood there, not even looking at me. I had frozen when she'd come out, my hand gripping my cock in a sort of quiet shock. I started to stroke myself off again, as I realized she was physically attracted to me, my hand getting more rapid, my eyes exploring her body freely.

My experience with women thus far had seen me as the seduced party both times. I was young. I had no experience whatsoever with actually drawing a woman into bed. "You're really pretty," I said, just going for complimentary words since I had no idea of what to say beyond them.

"Thanks. Ah. Could you… stop?" She asked it, in this uncertain manner, her actual feelings clearly contradicting any desire to stop. One thing that I find people don't understand about the ability to sense emotions, is that it's the ability to sense emotions, not thoughts. She was experiencing lust, not thinking I want to fuck him. Those are two different things.

"I'd really like to keep doing it." I paused, hesitating before adding, "Would you help me?"

She blushed at that, her cheeks turning genuinely scarlet. She let out an awkward laugh, the sort one lets out when one doesn't have any idea what to say. She felt embarrassed at being asked such a question, but she was still feeling lust. "Help you how?" She asked.

"Help me come," I breathed out, my hand moving rapidly up and down my cock. She bit her lip, her gaze finally turning back to my body again, staring at my erect cock, this time openly taking in its size. I could feel the sort of impressed admiration she felt for my length. I kept jerking off, unable really to stop myself.

"Is Darth Rakali going to mind?"

I shook my head. Even if she did, I wouldn't tell her under any circumstances, so it didn't matter.

Rather than just hopping atop me, she grabbed the back of my chair, quietly moving me into the bedroom. She hefted me easily up out of said chair and laid me down on the bed, my jerking off getting interrupted for just a moment as she did so. She stared down at my cock, throbbing as it was in the open air. Her gaze was soft, affectionate, and then her warm hand wrapped around my length, jerking me off as she stared up at me like that.

There wasn't anything more to it than that. The gentle feeling of her hand wrapping around my length, the sharp contrast of my red skin and her pale pink coloration as her fingers slid up and down my length. I groaned, my cock twitching in her grasp, energetically pleading with her for more, to be allowed to ejaculate. She just kept jerking me off, a soft glow to her cheeks. She stared at my cock rather than my eyes, as if trying to avoid the embarrassment. It only served to arouse me further, to make that gentle up-down movement of her hand on my cock all the more intense and pleasurable.

I squirted before long, spurting out a copious amount of semen, some of it splashing on her face, staining her features lewdly with my white goop. Most of it fell on the bed, as I jerked and came, and she let out a gentle sigh at the mess I'd made, some part of her already anticipating work down the line, but she didn't complain. She just scooped my cum off her face, feeding it into her mouth. "Is that better?" She asked, when she was finished, her face more or less clean of my cum, my length hard and twitching in the air.

It was better. But, I wanted more. I had no idea how far I could take it, so I finally settled on just saying, "please, suck my cock," in this breathless, youthful voice of a young boy who desperately wanted someone to please, suck his cock. Linea popped her lips, considering the thing before her. Hesitating. I liked her, she was nice, so if she had said no, rejected the suggestion… instead she leaned forward, planting a kiss on the tip of my cock.

"How do you know what sucking cock means?" She asked, her eyebrow quirked up. It was curiosity that motivated her, this wasn't just dirty talk.

"I've had sex before," I explained, my length twitching right in front of her face, threatening to blow up at any moment. I felt the pity in her emotions, saw the grimace as she appeared to reconsider sucking me off, no doubt mentally determining that I had been the victim of something terrible. "I liked it." I encouraged it, I sought it out. Those thoughts didn't leave my mouth before Linea leaned forward and simply engulfed my cock in her mouth.

She hummed the moment she had taken me inside her, letting out a soft noise around my length, her glittering eyes lewdly staring up at me, her throat wetly swallowing around my cock. Her fingers dug into the bed sheets on either side of her, her brown eyes vivid and alive with lust as she stared up at me. All the while, my length throbbed inside her throat, as she simply quietly hummed, her hands - both biological and prosthetic - softly and reassuringly rubbing up and down my thighs.

It felt incredible, just that much. Inessa was also clearly sexually experienced, but her blowjobs had nothing on Linea's. There was a passion in her gaze, a quiet twisting back and forth of her tongue on the underside of my cock, her eyes keeping their focus completely on my own, seeming to stare into my very soul, to proclaim, proudly, that she was doing all this for my sake. She held herself down on my length for quite some time, simply choking herself on my cock, my length throbbing in her throat as she did so. Those cool fingers of her prosthetic, the warm ones of her biological hand, both were dripping with affection as they caressed my bare skin, completely guileless, completely giving.

I groaned, panted, twitched. My hips bucked up into her face, my balls slapping at her chin. I could feel the way she was feeling, the constant stream of lust that radiated from her, dripping around thoughts of sexual generosity, wrapping around them so tightly that it could her lust could be felt pulsing in time with each throb of my cock. She held herself down for quite some time, simply choking on my cock - then she peeled back, a wet pop accompanying the exit of my length from her throat, a certain wry smirk to her lips joining it as well. Each thick twitch of my length in front of her was a silent taunt, a dare, but she caught her breath as she stared at it, breasts heaving, one hand stroking my length.

"You can talk, Soleil," she said, her voice sweet as silk, friendly and giving. "Say whatever comes to mind. Even if it's dirty, or mean, I'll understand." That was all she said before slurping my dick back down to the base, her throat squeezing around my dick as she simply swallowed around my length in that position, making me spasm wildly in pleasure, thrashing beneath her.

I was worried that I could come at any moment. My mouth flapped pointlessly for a second or two before I managed to force the air through to speak. "Your throat feels so good, Linea," I gasped out, eyes staring up at the ceiling in impassioned lust, my cock throbbing wildly inside her mouth. My hands went down for her scalp, grasping her ponytail, holding her by it as I ground my hips fruitlessly against her face, my body declaring that I should come any time now, that I should spray out hot cum all over the inside of her mouth.

I managed to avoid giving into that urge, instead peeling her off my cock. It left her mouth with a wet pop, the expression on her face unsure - had she failed to do something? Messed it up somehow? Those were the concerns that were obviously running through her mind as my length twitched in the air. There was no thought of her own pleasure, her own pride. She just wanted to make me feel good. It was intensely erotic, seeing her like that, looking up at me, almost pouting.

"It felt too good," I told her, breathless. My cock twitched, threatening to explode right on her face as she gently smiled. Then she dove down my length again, taking me to the base in her mouth, humming softly around my length as she swiveled her head around, nose pressed into my pubes, mouth wetly smacking. Saliva dribbled out of her mouth, gently staining and coating my length, my cock throbbing with desperate energy as she worked me over. I lost control at that point, grasping her ponytail and holding her down as I simply ejaculated directly down her throat, closing my eyes and gasping in pleasure.

When I was completely spent in her throat, she popped off, gently smiling, wiping her mouth as she reached down and tousled my hair. "Don't tell your master about this," she told me.

My cock was still erect in that moment, ready and willing to go another round, but I nodded. "I won't," I reassured her. She gave me a quick peck on the head, rising from the bed, still completely clothed. There was a warmth to her expression, an unselfish happiness that she had made me feel good, that made it impossible to ask for more, even for a young me. I tucked my cock away and let sleep overtake me as I lay there on the bed.

* * *

That was not the last time that Linea would fellate me. She was always generous and sweet with each loving blowjob, her only thought being to make me feel good. Sometimes, she would masturbate afterwards, entirely separate from me, some amount of shame tinging the feeling.

We became closer too. Not because of the sex itself - that took place in near silence, the only words exchanged being my statement that I was hard again, her direction that I lie down, and then countless new ways to rephrase the sentence, "You sucking my cock feels incredible." Afterwards, she would tuck me into bed with a sweetness and maternal gentility that made it impossible to ask for anything more, to suggest I was unsatisfied.

No, we became closer because she - perhaps out of some tingling sense of guilt that she was taking advantage of me - would start talking to me more, chatting about things, suggesting we play games together, her on her computer, me on "mine". From time to time, she'd have to stop the game, quitting out and going into business mode, saying various quick, clipped sentences describing how to apply certain devices, or asking for more specifics on whatever was going on. I caught some of it, but she was really focused at the software end of things, so she understood things I had absolutely no comprehension of.

It was nice. It was homey. Just having something nice felt like it was going to get ruined, that at any moment Darth Rakali was going to show up and cut off her head. There was nothing I could do to stop that from happening if it was going to.

One thing I came to notice was that she never left her home. Never. It was clear that it wasn't a consequence of my presence in particular - she had trash chutes directly in one of the walls, regular deliveries of food, everything one needs to remain ensconced in a few rooms indefinitely. She exercised right there, doing sit ups and squats and more to keep herself limber. It gave an almost otherworldly feeling to the entire space, as if we were separated from the galaxy itself. Just the two of us, together. Cuddling. Talking. Playing games. Enjoying one another's company. I didn't even miss outside, really, during the time we spent together.

Linea seemed lively and friendly, happy to have someone to share her space with. It became increasingly clear to me, the longer I stayed there, that she had no other friends, no one else she spent time with, not even via her computers. Every conversation she had was one clipped and businesslike; every time I would glance over her shoulder, she would be coding, or playing some puzzle game. My presence was a welcomed change from whatever isolated life she had been living before then.

Then Darth Rakali came back. It had been weeks of the two of us sharing a space, Linea sweetly blowing me day in and day out. Rakali simply arrived, tossed a credit chip at Linea, and grabbed my wrist. I could feel Linea's own unhappiness, as I started to be pulled along, that we were going to be separated, and I blurted out the first words that came to mind. "Can Linea come with us?" I asked, in a desperate voice.

Rakali looked up at Linea, her eyes clearly trying to determine if the woman had put me up to this. The silence that followed was thick enough it would take a lightsaber several minutes to cut through.

"If she wants to," Darth Rakali said, turning to go, not even staying to talk to her, to offer some explanation of where we would be, simply dragging me out alongside her.

Linea stared blankly at the door as we went, not quite rising from her seat, yet seeming dearly to want to. When we were halfway down by the elevator, it displayed that it had been called from her floor, and I let out a small sigh of relief. Rakali pursed her lips and clicked the button to clear the elevator's orders, causing it to go right back up to collect Linea.

Next Chapter

World's Worst Sith Master, Chapter 3
Previous Chapter
Inessa and I both lost track of time in that hotel room, as I rutted inside her, playing with her breasts. She would pant and twist beneath me, hot breaths escaping her throat, her dark skin made sleek and shiny with her sweat. Her eyes looked up at me, this loose, limp expression on her face, her dark hair a tangle around her features. At some point I started to fuck her tits, pressing the firm round orbs tight around my dick, all her sweat serving to lubricate my cock's passage. Occasionally she'd drag her head up for a second or two, licking at the very tip of my cock, before falling back down, exhausted by such a simple action.

Then her comms went off. I paused in my stroking between her breasts, and she gave me a silent look, as if to say she didn't like it, but she probably should answer that. I had to get it for her, and she had just enough strength to hold the comm to her ear. "What is it?" Her voice was a stern bark, completely unlike the consistently saccharine nature of our conversation earlier. "It has? Fu-dge. He's there? Okay. Tell him another meeting ran long," she said, glancing at my groin with an almost mournful expression. "I'll be there shortly."

She rose, unsteadily, from her position lying on her back, looking me up and down. "That was a lot of fun, Soleil. Do you have anywhere I can drop you off?"

"No, not really," I said, and she looked at me with genuine pity. "I'm just waiting for Darth Rakali to come pick me up."

She frowned at that, clearly not believing me. "I'll take you to my office - you can wait there. First, let's get showered and dressed - we can take one together, but you have to behave," she said, in the sweetest voice. "I'd be happy to meet this 'Darth Rakali' of yours."

She really wouldn't, but I could probably find an opportunity to get out before Darth Rakali came looking for me. Plus, she didn't look inclined to take no for an answer on the 'come with me' plan. "Okay, fine." She giggled at that, tossling my hair, and we showered together - we didn't do any more than that, no matter how many times my hard cock smacked against her thighs. When somebody's busy, they're busy, sadly.

* * *

Darth Rakali felt a small group of presences enter the home office of Inessa. One, she recognized as the quiet profile of her apprentice. The other three were two trandoshan men, one human woman. The female left a rot-stained impression, like a carcass left out to rot too long, only lightly tinted with fresh citrus to try to disguise the scent, nothing effective against her. The males were more stained in that staid, drab black that was most commonly found on Imperial officers and martinets, the placid well-worn sign of an obedient lackey.

Inessa, most likely, but Darth Rakali waited patiently. Her gaze was on a mirror she could just barely see from this position, which in turn would catch sight of anyone to enter the bedroom she stood outside at the moment. The reason for her apprentice's presence was unclear to her - he did not seem to have any idea about what was about to happen. He was taken to the bedroom and deposited with the pair of trandoshans; she could see in the mirror as one of them produced a deck of pazaak cards, clearly intending to play with him.

He never had the chance. She moved, the gusts of wind cutting out as the windowed door closed behind her. The sound of howling noise between buildings was loud enough to attract the attention of the pair, but she simply slid forward, carving freely through their flesh before they could draw their own blasters. Inside the space between heartbeats, their bodies were toppling, dead, to the ground. She looked down at her trembling apprentice, who stared up at her, utterly stupefied by her appearance. His lips worked, trying to produce sound, and she could see the raw fear in his eyes, just as much as she could feel it. It wasn't tempered by courage at the moment, cold reason overpowering any remainder of bravery he may have felt.

"I, I wasn't trying to escape," he managed to say at last, his hands raised up defensively. He hadn't even bothered to draw his training saber to defend himself should she try to kill him - not that there would be much point.

She stepped forward towards him, leaned down so they were eye to eye. She had only injected pure fear into his mind the once, but the aftermath was clear, the way he trembled such an absolute delight of a thing. She smiled and pulled back a moment later. "Why are you here, then?"

"I- I said that I didn't have a mother, or any place to be, and she tried to…"

Rakali put her finger to his lips, silencing him instantly. There were seventeen other presences in the building. One of them was Inessa. "I see. The Force has simply drawn us together again." She drew her saber, closing her eyes to reach out with the force, paying special attention to the rest of the building. "This is convenient. Wait here, quietly. I will be back shortly, and then we'll leave."

* * *

She left the room, then, abandoning me to stand next to the dead bodies of the fairly nice trandoshans, one of whom had suggested we play pazaak to pass the time while Inessa handled her business. Their carved up forms didn't bleed - Darth Rakali's lightsaber had simply cauterized whatever wounds she left.

My instinct in such confrontations was silence and stealth, so I remained quiet as I leaned down over one of the dead men's bodies, but my fingers paused over the blaster. I'd been taught - over and over - by Darth Rakali that I didn't have a dream of killing her, even by surprise. She was always aware of my presence before I could get off that critical shot or stab her or do whatever else. As I tried to come up with some sort of plan - my hands still trembling around the blaster - I could feel the rush of fear and pain that came from each person in turn, the silent statement that I was failing them, letting them die. Darth Rakali was quick and quiet and stealthy enough not to let them do anything but let out a shattered gasp.

My legs wobbled as I made my way to the door. I had to do this, didn't I? It was the right thing, wasn't it? She was evil, wasn't she? I tried to tamp down on those kinds of thoughts. Thinking about it would only make me hesitate, decide this was a bad idea, that maybe I should do the smart thing and put the gun away. But it wasn't me who was in trouble, now, it wasn't even strangers, it was a woman who had been quite genuinely kind to me, even if she perhaps had behaved in a way that wouldn't be appropriate to do with a human eleven year old - I didn't really know how baseline humans developed sexually.

It didn't matter. By the time I emerged from the bedroom, the next room up was emptied of life; when I made my way through that, there was another dead room. Only if I ran could I get there in time, and I had to stay quiet, or it would all be for nothing.

It happened… I don't know how long it took, exactly. Probably not even two minutes. One of them managed to scream before Rakali could kill them, and there wasn't just panicked agony, now, in the bubbles of emotions roiling off the various people here. There was also readiness, a steeling of the will, confusion, curiosity, all the other emotions that emerged when a fight started. I stopped in my tracks, then, staring blankly forward. What could I hope to do that ten - nine, now, trained men, all armed by the sounds of it, couldn't? The obvious answer was nothing.

I kept walking anyway. Following the path of carnage Rakali had left. I didn't even bother keeping quiet as I walked, looking at the dead bodies. Was this my fault? Had I brought her here somehow? I swallowed the saliva that had built up in my mouth as I approached the room where, one by one, the consciousnesses were being winked out. The door had been left to hang open, so I simply had to step out and-

Watch as Rakali neatly decapitated Inessa. The last living person here. She let out a sigh of relief that was almost sexual, her whole body gently trembling with the afterglow of the intense physical exertion. She turned her gaze to me a moment later, and I immediately dropped the blaster from my hands in a silent show of submission. She just smiled, approaching me, and gave my hair a tossle. "You know that wouldn't have done anything, don't you? I was sent to this planet to kill these people. There was never anything that you could have done."

I could only mutely nod.

"If you see anything you like, you can take it as a souvenir." She gave the room a quick once-over, as if checking to see if there was anything that caught her eye. I couldn't bring myself to give it a second look, just turning away from the door. It was the same as the last time. She had just killed them all, neatly and cleanly, like the monster in some old holovid. Left corpses scattered around in her wake. She placed one hand on my head as she approached, silently guiding me out of the building, back to the Solace and Refuge, and I hated her even more because she just maintained a solemn silence.

When we were back on the ship, she forced me to practice against her for hours every day until we arrived back on Korriban. It left me aching, my whole body sore. Any ability to try to keep my head together had vanished in the aftermath - what happened to Inessa gave it all an air of inevitability. It wasn't that she was a better person, or that I loved her more, than my parents. It was that my parents and everyone else had been horrible, but it had been a one-off. I had something to cling to, the idea that one day Darth Rakali would fall before me, my parents avenged, and it let me move onward towards a goal.

Now, it felt as though no matter what I did, everything around me would be destroyed by Darth Rakali. That she was like a curse hanging around me, afflicting anyone who was unlucky to get too close. I collapsed into bed each night like a dead man, a corpse whose wiry arms simply tangled against the bed beneath me, a limp and dead thing, enervated by what I'd been through, both that day in general.

* * *

When we arrived back on Korriban, I was once again abandoned. For a brief time, I just stood there, almost slack-jawed. Then, robotically, almost more of habit than anything else, I made my way towards the training rooms, grabbing a combat droid so I could get my ass brutally kicked by somebody who wouldn't stop even when I wanted to. All the training droids had the same psycho pressure that never gave in until you destroyed them or they had beaten you into submission, after all.

I was bringing it towards one of the training rooms when a voice I recognized spoke up. "Soleil?" It was female - a glance back at it showed it was Errai. I could feel her emotions. Predation. Opportunity. Ambition. There was no sadism, though, which put her one step above Darth Rakali. "You feeling okay?" Her concern was completely fake. There wasn't the slightest trace of it under the surface. Even without my empathic abilities, I doubt I would have fallen for it. But I didn't need to. "I'm sorry about kickin' up a fuss for you and the bug-"

"Xig. His name is Xig."

"Right. The bug Xig," she said. I had to restrain a laugh at how ridiculous she sounded. "I've got some credits to burn - could treat you to something nice. Some frost-coated chocolate treats." You could say it was the same act that Inessa had put on, except hers was far less competent, and there wasn't the tiniest hint of affection beneath the surface. "What do you say? Want to try it out?"

For a long moment of silence. I simply stared at her dully, my emotions rather constrained in the moment, the melancholy of powerlessness seizing up my senses. Finally, I managed to force my lips to work, to say something: "Sure."

* * *

The date itself was as pleasant as any date with an unpleasant person could be. She bought me treats, talked about how smart I was, and occasionally idly circled around the actual reason she was here: Darth Rakali. What was she like? How did I get picked to be her apprentice? I gave her the honest truth, in all its blunt uselessness: sadistic and purposeful; and she'd simply picked me out of the blue, without me having said anything to her at all.

"You must have done something to prove yourself, right?" She asked, almost desperate for anything useful.

Only point a blaster at her - and then, accomplished nothing. "Not really, no."

"Not really?" She prompted, eyes a little desperate. I could only guess at how long she had been languishing as an unattached Sith trainee, but given her poor form and general lack of any clear discipline, it was probably quite some time. "But maybe a little?"

I frowned faintly, staring her down.  Would Darth Rakali respond well, if she tried to kill the woman? "I don't think she'd be interested in you, and I don't think there's anything I could tell you to do that would make her start if you did it." I sipped the syrupy, thick drink that I'd been served. It had a cloying taste, clinging to my palate like superglue even after I had gulped it all down.

"I wasn't asking for advice," Errai snapped, sounding overly defensive, anger boiling beneath the surface that I'd so easily stepped around her layers of deception. I just gave her a grimace and took another drink, and she sidled up next to me at the table, until her thigh pressed against mine.

Despite her sometimes crude speaking pattern, she dressed in a fairly smart uniform, the imperial emblem on the collar. It had a relatively short skirt, one with long, thin cuts on either side, providing her with the full range of flexibility. The other consequence was that, this close up, her thigh brushed against mine, as she stared at me with a look of ravenous curiosity on her face. Her hair was done back in a tight bun, and it was easy to see her suddenly as an attractive young woman, as she peered into my eyes.

My eyes dipped a little down her body, to her substantial bust, and she mimicked me, eyes sliding down my body to find me erect, a smile on her lips. "Oh wow. Do you… want some help with that?" Her hand reached down for my groin, and she smiled as she saw - and felt - my reaction. "Let me make it up to you by taking care of this. It must ache a lot, right?" She teased with a gentle smile.

"Sure," I said. Sex, for Zeltrons, is very normal. It's not some sacred deep thing. Agreeing to sex with someone you don't particularly like is more like choosing to pig out with someone you don't particularly like. Admittedly, I doubt that Errai would have done it if she'd known that was the emotional weight I was putting on the act, but I certainly didn't care. "I know a place we can have some privacy."

* * *

"Is this really safe?" Errai asked, as we got aboard the Solace and Refuge. The ship was, of course, completely empty and devoid of life. Thus Darth Rakali not noticing my absence from it until she came to fetch me. "It's Darth Rakali's own ship, isn't it?"

"It's safe. She said I could use it as long as I didn't try to leave the planet." Errai seemed to accept that, glancing through the corridors. I was absently reminded with each room that we passed, how it had been used when the ship had been full of life, populated by my family. There, the kitchen Mr. Gevlasho had used. There, my parents old bedroom. The library that Inien had kept carefully maintained on the ship, covered with datapads. All the people I'd lost getting put in my face… I had to wonder if perhaps the reason I hadn't come back wasn't fear of Darth Rakali, but fear of this. Of being reminded of everywhere I'd been through.

Still, I steeled myself, leading her to the room that was mine, closing and locking my door. I ignored the last few keepsakes of my parents - the old plush squid they'd given me, the globe that contained a false miniature city, the datapad on animals from the Outer Rim that could only be described as monsters - and instead let Errai easily push me down into my bed, pressing me into the mattress as she moved to straddle me. With her scar, the triumphant smirk she wore, her belief of her own victory over me, seemed even more exaggerated and cruel.

"I'll take goo~ood care of you," she said, her voice soothingly sweet, even though her heart was pounding more with the ecstasy of victory over a vanquished foe than anything like care or sexual desire. Her fingers gently brushed against my cheek. "Such good care of you." There was no malice in it. This was a plan to manipulate me, not to kill me. If it had been the latter… I don't think I would have fallen into the trap so readily.

Her hands grasped the base of my pants, pulling them down, and her eyebrows shot up as she saw my hard cock pop up into the open air. There was genuine surprise in her. Her fingers gingerly reached for my length, starting to softly stroke it, a sort of expression of sheer surprise on her face. It was obvious that she hadn't expected me to be so large, as her fingers slid up and down my length. She swallowed a bit, perhaps even seeming… enticed, by the possibilities of what she was seeing, her lips curling up as some lust entered into her emotions. That she'd be able to enjoy this too, rather than a perfunctory… whatever she'd been planning.

For a few seconds, she simply stroked my length, as if to mentally assure herself that it had reached its full height, and she had the right of it. Then she hiked up her skirt, peeled off her panties and tossed them aside, moving herself to straddle me, teasing her slick sex at the tip of my cock. She took in one quick, sharp breath, then began to gingerly slide down my length, taking me inside her.

I could feel the way her lust began to rise with the movements; women's libidos generally were slower than men's to rise to their full crescendo in my experience, and that was what I was seeing here. There had been piqued interest, a sort of, "I wonder," when she'd first seen my full girth. As she gingerly moved her body up and down my length, it rapidly rose to be more along the lines of, "This is going to be great," the more it went on. At first, her movements were slow, almost agonizingly so, my length vanishing into her wet sex inch by inch as she descended down my hard cock. Her breath was a little ragged, her eyes wild with lust. They seemed not so much interested in me, as the sensations she was experiencing, unfocused, looking past me as though I weren't there.

I just lay there, looking at her body as she bounced atop me. Her full breasts were scarcely disguised within her top, bouncing faintly with each pump of her hips. Her hands pressed down against the mattress for support as she leaned forward over me, exaggerating their size as she neared me with them.

"Mmm, does this feel, guh, good for you?" It was lamely sputtered out, more a perfunctory thing. She had functionally forgotten why she'd even dragged herself into my bed, why she was riding me in the first place. All those attempts to manipulate me had soaked right out of her wet sex onto my cock. My best guess at the time was that she hadn't had much in the way of sex since she'd become a Sith, or maybe just my natural Zeltron sexiness having its effect on her. In either case, I started to fuck up into her, pumping my hips into her sex, making her sputter in surprise. After a few seconds of that, she managed to gather enough of herself to start talking. "Yeah, you like it, right, you're enjoying yourself, it feels good, huh? We can do this again, in the future," she added, clearly trying to manipulate me despite the fact that she was obviously enjoying herself much more than I was.

I let her ride me like that for a while. Her ragged breaths filled the air in my room, the wet squelches of each bounce seeming to echo in my ears. I was content to just lose myself in the moment and let her lose herself too - for Zeltrons, it's deeply pleasant to be surrounded by good feelings, and right now, there was only her sexual ecstasy as far as I could sense. I closed my eyes and just enjoyed, both the feeling of her tight sex around my cock, and her own intense pleasure at the experience, the way she completely surrendered herself to passion in the moment.

As she rode me like that, though, some faint part of me recalled Inessa, despite their sharp differences. It then recalled Darth Rakali killing her, and I felt not disgust or fear, but anger. My eyes snapped open, seeing the stupid look on Errai's face. Even with her mouth open and her eyes hazy, her scar gave her this vicious look. She idolized the Sith, chewed up every last bit of their ideology and spat it out on demand, was desperate to get in the good graces of a Master like Darth Rakali… and at that moment, there was no one I hated more than Darth Rakali. I grabbed her by the hips and started to twist, using my body and hers to send her tumbling onto her back, hitting the mattress with a heavy thump.

"H-huh?" She sputtered, confused by why she was on her back. I spread her legs wide, my fingers digging into her thighs, my own red coloration sharply contrasting with her pale skin as I fucked her absolutely senseless. I used my senses to identify what made her feel good, to tease her body in just the right way, and just as with Inessa, my sexual stamina was far greater than hers. Here, the difference was even sharper, more intense. I could pound away at her, balls slapping her ass as my cock dove deep into her, and she could only sputter, her mouth opening and closing in a sort of senselessness to it.

"You want to get in good with Darth Rakali, huh?" At some point, one of my hands had moved from her thigh to her throat, a purely threatening movement in the moment. "If you want to get in good with her, be a good girl for me and just stay there." There was a relief that came with the sadistic moment, a kind of sick clarity that wiped away the sense of doom and gloom that had rained over me ever since Inessa's death, and the broader malaise that predated it. I felt her orgasm approach, and just as it hit her, I clenched my fingers around her throat. She jerked beneath me wildly, going cross-eyed, mouth hanging open, wet splatters of saliva escaping her lips. Her hands didn't even reach up to stop me, they were too busy being balled into fists at her side and pounded against the mattress.

When she came down from that orgasm, I just kept going. I was relentless with her pussy, and I irregularly choked her. It gave such a thrill of power to me, someone who had felt powerless. There was the occasional unpleasant wave of displeasure on Errai, when I choked her for too long, but as long as I let up when it hit, I got to instead enjoy the gentle, constant ecstasy she was experienced as I fucked her brains out.

I spoke, but in retrospect, I'm not sure it was intelligible. I meant to say things like, "This is what a Sith gets," "I'm the Master now," and "My pleasure's most important," but they may have come out as meaningless growls of animal emotion, thick with phlegm.

I don't think she was really in the mood to listen, anyway. She'd stopped talking at some point, and not just due to my irregular choking, but also just her own pleasure. All the noises she could make were squeals and moans of pleasure, her head casting about, her juices thickly slobbering all over my cock as I enjoyed her body with relentless, selfish force.

Unlike with Inessa, I didn't switch it up. I took few breaks. When I came inside Errai for the first time, I simply held myself down inside her, groping her thighs or ass and occasionally gripping her throat, as my half-erect cock remained inside her. She tried to gather herself, to take advantage of the lull in my pumps to start trying to take control again, but all she managed to do was wetly flap her gums a few times before I was hard inside her again and silencing her with a mix of choking and pumping away. I fucked her in the cunt right up until the end, having unloaded inside her sex a dozen times while she'd come probably a hundred, her uniform thoroughly soaked in her own sweat, my hair sticking to my cheeks as I leered down at her, watched some of my semen trickle out from between her legs.

I was caught up in the moment. It had felt so good, to simply let go, to find release. To revel in - I knew, deep down, even at the time - the Dark Side. In power. I'd heard that Sith tortured people into joining them, and up until that moment, it had never made sense to me. After it? It was the only thing that made sense. Hurt someone hard enough, make them feel powerless enough, and they'll hurt someone else, just to regain the tiniest feeling of power again. Even as a Zeltron, literally feeling her anxiety and fear as I choked her, I still enjoyed what we did.

When I woke up the next day, I let Errai clean her clothes off in the ship's washing machine. I kept my distance, in fact, and we parted ways without much in terms of words. No "See you again," no "Put in a good word for me," no "Sorry for losing control," no "I enjoyed it." Just her in her underwear quietly staring at the washing machine as it cleaned her clothes so she could be presentable again, running the shower for three or four minutes to clear away the sweat from her body, and then leaving me alone, on the ship, with my thoughts and my feelings.

Next Chapter

World's Worst Sith Master, Chapter 2:
Previous Chapter
I have to admit, I did wonder if Darth Rakali actually had forgotten about me. I didn't see her again for quite some time. The Solace and Refuge was still in port. I'd check on it every day, occasionally getting inside, though I wasn't dumb enough to try to run away. I'd kill Darth Rakali one day, and getting mutilated would only make that harder. She also seemed unhinged, so I didn't want to risk her going beyond mutilation and just killing me.

Xig was helpful in practice, though his saber skills were actually below my own. I relayed him advice about his footwork based on what Darth Rakali had done for me. It took him a few hours work to properly adapt it to his own digitigrade legs, but we were soon going at it. I was starting to pick up a bit of vocabulary here and there. The grammar was thoroughly touch and go, but I was starting to get the major nouns. For example, " ͟ ͝ ̀" meant "saber." " ̀ ̧ ̸ ̷ ͟ ̶ ̴ ͠ ̵ ͏" was his way of saying my name. And so on - you get the idea. Transcribing xinderan is a pain, so I won't waste your time with it again.

I wasn't properly counted as an apprentice - maybe Darth Rakali was too busy with other things to actually claim me - so I was just bunked with all the other… conscripts, I suppose, would be the best word. We bunked together, like a barracks. The girl and boy I'd fought to protect Xig were there too - their names were Errai (girl) and Alhenas (boy). I could feel the malice radiating from them towards me, but I kept a low profile and managed to avoid being alone with them. After their fight with Xig had gone south so suddenly, they apparently decided to avoid getting in a fight in a public place where some interloper could involve themselves.

After all, even if you're a psycho Sith asshole, it's still a good idea to stab potential threats, and what was more of a potential threat than a peer or apprentice who couldn't keep their hands to themselves?

It was possible, when Xig and I were fighting, to forget all about our circumstances - to forget that I was the apprentice of a Sith and currently on Korriban. I was a young boy, so it was only natural to enjoy the thrill of combat. The fact that, unlike the practice droids, Xig was not quite on my level, made fighting him pleasant - the venerable standby of enjoying something because you can win at it. Our sabers would clash, we'd get a couple hits in, then pause and take a break.

We chatted quite a bit. He talked about his home planet, some pleasant-sounding jungle world called Zansax, covered in thick canopies of trees, plant life which was almost predatory, and large, insectoid creatures similar to himself - well, in the same sense I was similar to a kanter cat, I suppose. [I'm the seventeenth oldest, which gave me a lot of seniority.] He was explaining with the datapad, even as he clicked and clattered the words with his mouthparts.

I had to interrupt him. "The... seventeenth?" I asked.

[Of three hundred! Well, three hundred when I left. Mom wasn't very fertile.]

"Oh. Ah, humans have more like... one to four kids each."

[Wow! That must be so lonely! Though you probably have an easier time getting access to the bathroom!] He let out a chittering noise that I knew to be laughter. [We normally have a few, but when there's bad food, it can be really bad! A line of dozens for each bathroom.]

I let out a laugh of my own at that mental image. "I'm an only child myself, but I know about having too few bathrooms. I mostly lived on the Solace and Refuge. We had one bathroom for the whole ship, ten people including me. Normally it was fine, but when something happened..."

He laughed again at that. [Probably still faster than our lines! Oh, that reminds me - Errai said you're a near-human, what's that?]

"I'm a Zeltron." He looked at me as if that explained exactly nothing, which, I suppose it didn't. "Humans who genetically deviated from the baseline due to being separated."

[How do you tell if someone's a near-human or a human?] I'd only just been starting to get a feeling for his expressions, but I'm pretty sure this whole subject was genuinely baffling.

I pulled at my skin. "My skin tone. Normal humans aren't red."

[Oh! So then the dark-skinned humans, they're near-humans too? Since I don't think Errai is a near-human.]

"No, those are regular humans."

[But.] Pause, erase. [Okay, then what are the normal human colorations?]

"Um. Sort of... anything in between Errai's skin tone, and the darker humans you've seen. It's more like dark to light, than multicolored? I know Chiss have blue skin."

[And Chiss are near-humans?] I nodded. [Man. You people make this so complicated! You have the same number of fingers, the same hair, the same everything pretty much.]

"Well... Zeltrons are different from normal humans on the inside."

[Do you have green blood? Xinders have green blood,] he added, helpfully.

"No. We're sort of... different sexually..."

[Oh, praise be the Force!] He lost his grip on the datapad, he was so excited, and it took him several times to get it together. [Humans are disgusting about sex!]

"...huh?"

[They have sex by putting their parts inside each other! Blech!] He mimed puking. I think. I've never seen a Xinder puke.

"Oh... Zeltrons have sex the same way as normal humans. We're just less inhibited about when to do it and how."

[Does that mean you've...] He put down the datapad and mimed two fingers thrusting into his hand like they were stabbing it. I shook my head, and he picked up the datapad. [Whew! If you ever do, don't let me see! I think my insides might go outside if you do, you know?]

"Is it really that gross?" I asked.

[Yes! You're literally penetrating someone... I mean, imagine if instead of the sexual organs, it was putting your tongue in the other person's mouth.]

"...humans do that too."

[Ah! Disgusting, I don't want to hear about it!] He waggled his hand in the air in front of him defensvely, as if pushing me away, shaking his head rapidly.

"My parents sometimes would just do it right in front of me, since-" His thick keratinous hand pressed against my mouth as he shut me up. I couldn't help but smile a little from teasing him like that. "Alright, I get it, I won't talk about sex or kissing."

[What's kissing?] A fraction of a second after displaying that text to me, he was desperately deleting it. [Wait! No! I don't want to know!] I just smiled. [It's bad enough you people eat dead food!]

I almost asked him what he meant by that, but quickly realized that on that subject, discretion was the better part of valor. "I guess that's just one unfortunate part of living in such a big galaxy. Ready for another round of fighting?" I asked, standing up and stretching. There was a slight ache in my palms, but I'd found a pair of gloves to wear, so it was vastly reduced from what it had been in previous fights, the training saber not having the chance to dig into my hand anywhere near as cleanly.

It was then that Errai appeared in the portal to the training room, accompanied by Alhenas. She smirked as she saw the pair of us - we quickly rose to our feet. "Oh, not so cocky now that you're not sneak attacking us?" She half-spat the words out.

"A certain degree of cleverness is part of battle," Alhenas said, readying his training saber, "but if one can't win a battle outside an ambush, you're doomed from the start."

"If you're twice the fighter that Errai is, I'm pretty sure I can beat both of you," I told them. With Xig's improvements to his form, he was probably the better fighter than the human girl - who apparently had literally no training, despite her bravado.

"Let's show this cocky little shit what for! Thinks just because he's cute he can get away with anything or something, I swear to fuck," she spat, drawing her training saber from her side. Alhenas gave her the tiniest, briefest of looks. "He claimed he was Darth Rakali's apprentice, crock of shit. What, you think just because you've got a good smile I'll buy that?"

Zeltrons have a certain natural magnetic charm to us. We naturally seem to 'pop,' like the only person done up in makeup in a holonet vid. It's normally associated with more postpubescent Zeltron - particular since we have a reputation as party people - but it applies just as much to younger Zeltrons. When I'd been on the Solace and Refuge that had manifested as just being the ship mascot; now, dealing with Sith, apparently being particularly attractive was some sort of personal slight against Errai. My own training saber was in one hand, a fresh electrical disabler in the other - I shot it without any warning, aimed at Errai. She managed to block it, to my chagrin, with a haphazard and desperate wave of her saber.

"That kind of trick won't work more than once, retard," she said, snarling, rushing in without any hesitation. As she made a wild haymaker of a swing, I pushed her training saber to one side before getting in under her guard and hitting her chin with my skull. As she juttered backwards in pain, I brought my saber around, slamming into the side of her neck, making her hiss and fall to one side, clutching the zone I'd struck. Alhenas had followed after her, but he'd been held off by Xig for a moment.

By the way Alhenas moved his feet, he was a much better fighter than Errai was, having more precision in his footwork. The pair were parrying one another, avoiding getting close enough for any proper fighting - fencing, Darth Rakali would have called it, and sneered at it. In her mind, strong defense was necessary to combat, but it shouldn't be predicated on distance. That was something that only helped with melee opponents, and your only melee opponents would be Jedi or other Sith. Or at least, something like that. She knew a lot about saber duels, so I listened to her on the subject.

She had also made it incredibly clear that flanking was something you should under no circumstances let happen to you in a fight with multiple opponents. She'd done so by explaining that, when she'd carved her way through my family and crewmates, she had done so mostly one-by-one, since it meant the thin possibility of a lucky flanking maneuver or surprise attack were minimized. It left an impression, particularly since when she was explaining that to me, she had one hand on my cheek, that sadistic smile on her lips.

I got up behind Alhenas as a consequence - he tried to reposition so I couldn't, pulling back, but it put him up against the wall, against two saber fighters. When Xig made an overly telegraphed strike (nothing compared to Errai's exaggerated blows, like she was trying to hack down a tree), I took the opportunity of Alhenas's defense to get under his guard, slamming my saber into his gut, hard, shifting it as I rushed in closer, so that rather than the point he took the brunt, hissing and gasping as he got forced back into the wall. He tried to bring his sword around to attack me, but he couldn't.

"I'd really rather we didn't have to fight again," I told him, as Xig and I held him in place.

He just spat in my face, the saliva hitting my forehead. "I would rather not have to see a bunch of non-humans in the prestigious Sith Academy. Yet, here I am."

I heard Errai coming up behind me; she hadn't bothered to disguise her footfalls at all, and I managed to slip to one side before she hit me. We shifted around one another, neither side wanting to back down. Xig chattered excitedly, but all I caught was a couple nouns - saber, fight, Soleil. Alhenas had the better skills with his saber, while Errai had all the venom for the two of us.

The training sabers were painful, but not really incapacitating. I could see this fight play out in my head: we beat each other around the head with the light saber equivalent of a pool noodle, and both sides get bruises and burns. Maybe whoever wins decides to kick the other side while they're down and add a few more notes of pain and injury to the affair. It wasn't worth it. I managed to silently drag Xig with me towards the door - then we fled quickly, getting out in a public place where fighting between trainees was slightly more frowned upon.

Would they keep trying to fight us, or would our 'flight' let them hold enough pride to leave it be? Honestly, I had no idea how Sith even thought, so I just hoped it was the latter and tried to move on.

* * *

Xig and I practiced several more times over the next week, and we weren't interrupted again - maybe the first interruption had just been a fluke, or maybe Errai and Alhenas were satisfied with a 1:1 win-loss ratio.

Then Darth Rakali appeared in the barracks in the middle of the night, simply striding into the bunk with the utmost confidence. She moved with a slow, methodical gait, as if everything in the bunk was beneath her notice, her eyes cold as they swept across the room. She emanated a faint scent of blood, or cooked meat, or something like that, and it produced an instinctive sense of fear in me - one I kept tamped down on as she came to me, her hand soon pressing down against my sternum in the bed.

Other people were awake. My eyes weren't drawn away from Rakali at any point, staring up at the murderess as her palm pressed down against my chest, but I could feel their returning to consciousness, the anxiety that came with recognizing the presence of a Sith Master in their midst. It was tangible in the air, like a thick honey that clogged up the inside of my mouth. "Why did you not go to the ship to rest?" She asked.

"I didn't want you to think I was trying to escape."

She gave the thinnest smile at that, fingertips dancing across my cheek as she stared down at me. "I would only think that if you tried to leave the planet. Get yourself presentable and come to the ship - we're leaving."

She didn't bother to stick around, simply leaving me in a room with a dozen young wannabe Sith, who promptly stared at me with some mix of jealousy, hate, and cautious covetous thoughts - as if considering exactly how best to push me to the side to steal my position as Darth Rakali's apprentice, without getting in trouble themselves. Errai seemed vaguely frightened, and Alhenas seemed disappointed, perhaps.

I tried not to pay them any mind as I got dressed properly and scurried off to the port. At the very least, no one interrupted me.

Darth Rakali was a very scary woman.

* * *

The moment I was back aboard the Solace and Refuge, she was closing the hatches, hitting buttons like she had been born on the ship, as if she had been an actual crew member rather than a murderer who had stolen it a few weeks ago. She didn't give me a second glance, but I didn't let that trick me. I knew she had her eyes, or her senses, or something, on me - she'd taught me that lesson, at least. Mainly by kicking my ass both times I had tried to surprise her while she was distracted.

"What did you do for the past while?" Darth Rakali asked, when we were finally in space and going on our way. "Since you are my apprentice, I should take an interest in such things."

Any suggestion that she should have taken an interest in such things before abandoning me in the middle of the Sith temple on Korriban died on my lips as her gaze turned my way. I just swallowed. "I was practicing with my saber, and toying with the leftover droids."

"You managed to destroy one of them with that thing?" She asked, a certain alien curiosity in the way she asked it - as if she was already steaming for another go at humiliating me, but only if I had gotten stronger.

"No, other students had - I just took some leftover parts." I didn't actually want to fight her. She didn't have particularly kind teaching sensibilities, to put it lightly.

"I see." She absently clicked a few buttons on the ship's navigation panel, then rose to her feet, striding over to me with a fierceness in her eyes. "Let's see what improvements you've made to what I taught you," she began, grabbing me by the scruff of my clothes and dragging me to the room she'd set up as our training room - it was Mr. Gevlashi's old quarters, I knew.

I had made no meaningful improvements. Maybe a bit of exercise had resulted in my arms not aching quite as much (or at least, taking slightly longer to do so) when she'd smack my defense aside, but I was still a novice, and she was an expert. I couldn't so much as graze her hair, much less make an actual meaningful strike. She just pursed her lips as she looked down at me when I finally dropped my training saber. "I've told you not to look where you're going to strike. Use the Force to anticipate the enemy's blows." She stared me down for a few seconds. "When we get back to Korriban, you will be fighting one of those training droids blindfolded."

I was ready to argue, to make some desperate plea for mercy, just on sheer instinct, but she stepped towards me, and my voice died in my throat before a single word formed. I was going to get the shit kicked out of me by a combat droid with no sense of proportionality, and there was nothing I could do about it at this point.

I just nodded in acquiescence, and she smiled. "Good boy. You'll make an excellent Sith one day, if you don't die first."

I had no response.

* * *

We had landed on the multilayered megalopolis of Erulios, its massive, sky-scraping towers seeming like a million million tiny needles pointed out at the sky, giving the planet the vague outline of a stickerfish. As we came down, each one drew into full view, clearly complexes where people lived - at the uppermost levels, there were various adornments, paintings, advertisements, works of art, littering the location with a copious amount of color, like a bright neon bulb. When one looked further down, though? Inevitably, darkness coalesced around the buildings, a thick, creeping black, as the sun's light was winked out, like the jungle floor.

"Don't fall," Rakali said placidly, as if it didn't really matter to her whether or not I fell. She reached into the pocket of her cloak, retrieving a small device - about the size of my palm - and tossing it to me underhand. "If anything happens, contact me with that." She didn't even bother to tell me how to use it, which I'm sure was more out of absent-mindedness than anything like respect for my abilities, presumption that I could figure it out on my own, etc. "I'll be doing my job. Oh." She pulled out a credit chit. "Here. You can use this for whatever you need."

"You're just abandoning me here?" The words came out before I could stop them, mostly because her gaze had already turned away from me by the time I said them. I swallowed as her eyes turned back to me.

"I'm doing whatever I please to you. That's what power is. Meditate upon this lesson while I'm gone." Then she left, and I didn't interrupt her.

Technically, I'm sure, if one thought about it, I could run off. But there was something about her that made me think that wasn't an option. Maybe it was just an affected confidence, but when dealing with someone like her, and what she'd threatened, I decided to err on the side of caution.

That's how I wound up eating meat-on-a-stick (the species had a name I didn't recognize) in a street vendor's stall. The vendor was Resly, a large, burly man, with thick arms and a thicker body, but he treated me kindly, asked where my mother was. "Dead," I replied, then realized what I'd said. "The woman who's taking care of me is on some business - she'll probably be back in an hour or so."

"Ah," he said, seeming more sympathetic now. I didn't want him sympathetic, really. He'd only get in trouble if he did something stupid. "You can stay here until she gets back then."

"Thank you," I said, with a small bow of my head. "Should I tip, or-"

"No, no! No extra charge, kid! Sometimes it can be dangerous for a kid to walk alone, even up here," he admitted. We weren't on the topmost levels of Erulios - those were penthouses and high rises and the like. This was a dozen stories or so down, so still part of the "good" city, but not quite the neighborhood of the ultra-rich. Upper middle class, with some mixing in of people like Resly, who were here for work and generally went  back down to the lower levels.

I heard the curtain get brushed aside, and I saw Resly stiffen visibly, freezing up as he saw whoever it was.

Trying not to be too obvious, I glanced over my shoulder to see whose presence had so affected Resly - it was a woman, with warm brown skin and long, inky black hair that seemed to absorb the light. She moved with a confidence not so different from Rakali's, save that it had a bit more swagger, more seductive movements of the hips in there too. She paused as she saw me, then smiled and sat down next to me. "I'll have what he's having."

"Y-yes ma'am," Resly said, glancing at me with a worried look before stepping back to make fresh food.

The woman glanced my way, and I felt my heart beat slightly faster in my chest. Her fingers, delicate, slender, ran across my neck for just a moment - I didn't flinch at the warm feeling of them against my bare skin. Her expression was warm and friendly, but her eyes had a cool, calculating note to them, taking me in with care and precision. "You are so cute. Where's your mommy?"

"Dead. I'm here with the Sith Master Darth Rakali," I told her.

"Oh my! A Sith Master! What is your relationship to her?" She obviously didn't believe me. In fairness, it was ridiculous.

"I'm her apprentice." Unwillingly, but I didn't want to whine. My parents had taught me not to whine, and it was something that I'd kept up.

She just giggled at that, clearly not believing me. She pat my head, even, as she smiled. "You are the cutest Sith lord I've ever met. I think that if the Sith keep recruiting cute little guys like you," she said, grabbing my cheeks and pulling on them, "then people will stop being so scared of them. It's a good plan."

"I really am a Sith, that's not a joke, here, I have a saber." I pulled it out, making her laugh.

"I have a couple of those. Training sabers aren't even that hard to get, sweetie." She smiled, and this one easily reached her eyes. "You have such an active imagination. Here, let me keep you company. You don't have to worry about anything bad happening to you while I'm around." She absently flipped open the curtain, intentionally, revealing the presence of two large, well-dressed Trandoshans, these big, beefy, reptilian men in high-collared black and white suits, who gave her quick nods of their heads, acknowledging her as their superior. "I'm Inessa," she said, offering my her hand.

"I'm Soleil," I said, giving it a shake. It was nice that she was treating me as an adult, but Resly's uncertainty on her entrance left me a bit confused as to who she was.

She started chatting me up, and there's really no other way to describe it. Little compliments about my facial features, my build, asking me about my life story, talking about her own in oblique terms. If I ever made a contribution, she'd act as if it was incredibly insightful, no matter how insipid it actually was. On the one hand, having spent the past couple weeks on a roller coaster of emotions, getting a pure, uninhibited confidence boost was nice. On the other hand, she obviously had ulterior motives, and I was a danger to anybody who got too close, at the moment. Darth Rakali was an arbitrary and unpredictable woman, after all.

"You know, I have a hotel room just a few minutes walk. There are some fun games we can play there, would you like to do that while we wait for your Sith Master to get back?" She gave me a playful wink.

I swallowed. I looked at the curtains. I thought for a long few seconds, and, in the moment, emotionally compromised by everything I'd been through... I made the decision to just give in. I could feel her underlying emotions, thanks to my empathic abilities. Being around her felt warming, like a pleasant bath. She wasn't planning to sell me off as a slave or something.

I was no stranger to sex, obviously - my parents fucked in every room on the ship, and I had seen them doing as much. I was a bit younger than average to actually start doing it, but Zeltrons matured relatively quickly in that respect. I knew what she was suggesting, and I could only wonder if she knew how willing I was. It was obvious I was a Zeltron, but was that what she was seeing?

My feelings at the time were a mess. A consequence of the situation of being a Sith on Korriban, of being Darth Rakali's apprentice, of my parents being slaughtered by an alien. There was the confusion as to what had made Resly afraid of her. The basic young lusts that appear when approached by an attractive member of one's preferred sex. The anxiety as to what Darth Rakali would do to her. In the end, I was a Zeltron, and I wanted to be touched by someone, in a good way. It had been nearly a month since I'd had that experience.

"Sure, that sounds like fun," I said.

She smiled brilliantly at that. "Come on, then. Let me show you."

* * *

The hotel room was as clean and featureless as any other, and Inessa laid me down on my belly atop it, soon straddling me. My clothes at the time were rather form-fitting - I preferred the comfort such clothing brought - and she pressed her hands up against my shoulders. "Oh, all these muscles feel so knotted up," she said, in this sweet voice, as her hands wandered, pressing against my skin here and there, taking advantage of the opportunity to quietly grope me. Her fingers came to caress my biceps, my shoulders, my stomach, my thighs, my ass, each time giving them a thorough little squeeze, more for her sake than mine.

I didn't stop her. I just enjoyed her touch; I was more put out that I couldn't feel skin against bare skin as she worked me over like that. Eventually, she stopped, but only after giving my calves a thorough working over, earning a groan of relief from me. "Now let's do the front," she said, taking hold of my hips and easily flipping me over so that I was face to face with her.

I could see the look of distinct arousal on her face, the raw desire for me. Without offering any excuses, she simply grasped the base of my shirt, starting to pull it up, revealing my stomach. I hadn't built up that much muscle in the time I'd been on Korriban. I just quietly stared up at her, wondering if she'd noticed my hard-on when the back of her hand had brushed against it. For the moment, her eyes were entirely on my chest, but there was this rapacious smile, as if I was the most delicious little thing she had ever seen. "You have a lot of muscle. I guess you get a good workout as a Sith apprentice?"

"Sort of," I agreed, and she just smiled as her hands traced out my bare skin, pausing for a moment as they reached my slender neck, then sliding back down, this time towards my groin.

She felt my erection, fingers caressing it. "Oh my. Do you want me to take care of this, too, Soleil? I'm sure you're so stressed."

"Yes, please." Her touch was intimate, and that was so soothing, but that and the emotional warmth she was still emanating couldn't deal with the fact that I hadn't even had the chance to masturbate since my parents died.

She slid down my body, then, dragging my pants down, revealing pale pink flesh and a throbbing hard-on. I was on the larger side, I knew that much, and she licked her lips as she saw it, her eyebrows rising in appreciation before she leaned down to kiss the tip. Her hand gently started to stroke my length, a soft, slow movement. Loving, caring, giving. She nuzzled her cheek against my cock, staring up at me warmly, her tongue occasionally slithering along the whole length of my dick, sliding up and down. Her breaths, hot and sweet, tickled my dick as she moved this way and that around my cock, her hand grasping firmly the base of my dick whenever the work fell to her mouth.

At last, she made her way up to the tip, teasing it with her breath once more. "This is a really amazing cock," she said, her voice dripping with warm sincerity, a smile on her lips, in her eyes. Then she opened her mouth wide and started to take me inside it. Her throat bulged to accommodate me, the inside of her mouth wet and inviting as she kept taking me slowly but surely to the base. Warm saliva dribbled down my length as she just kept going and going, more and more of my cock vanishing within her mouth. Her fingers grasped my thighs, squeezed them tight, her brown eyes staring up at me lewdly before she hit my groin, her nose pressing up against my pelvis.

Once she was there, she started to twist her head left and right, her gaze on me as she did so. Her dark hair pooled around my bare skin, teasing my thighs, and her tongue flicked and rubbed at the underside of my cock. I gasped in pleasure at the sensation, already on a hair trigger from how long it had been, feeling my ability to resist her oral assault decline to nothing in what felt like a matter of seconds. As her lips slowly slid back up my length, popping back off, it was only the fact that my cock was no longer in her mouth that kept me from coming.

"Does it feel good?" Her fingers stroked my thighs, and I nodded rapidly. "It's fun, isn't it? This game is called 'cocksucking,' but let's keep it a secret between you and me, alright?" I nodded again, my length throbbing and twitching - my hand went down for the back of her head, trying to push her back to my cock, to get that sweet release that I needed. She giggled at that, but let me, smiling with her eyes as her mouth once more engulfed my length, my hard cock vanishing into her mouth and being entirely swallowed up. My fingers were clamped tight around her head - both hands, in fact, and soon my thighs as well, pressing against her, holding her in place.

It was my first personal sexual experience, and I had neither control nor a real sense of propriety. Was choking her on my cock like that wrong? At the moment, I didn't care, and the waves of sweetness and warmth and giving kindness that rolled off of her as thick as a physical stench meant that I didn't even think to do so. I had my legs crossed, soon enough, writhing and humping at her face, balls slapping her chin.

Then I found release, release from everything that had been going on for the past month, release from my physical urges. I came like a geyser, shooting out every last droplet of cum directly down her throat, seemingly completely letting go of my balls. When there came to be a slight note of panic in Inessa's feelings, as she was held down for so long, I didn't let her up. I focused on coming, filling her throat and stomach up with virtual rivers of cum, letting it splatter and spray across her insides.

It was only when I was utterly spent that I released her, prompting her to rapidly slide back up off my cock, taking in a few haggard, desperate breaths once she was at the tip, tickling my still-swollen cockhead with her breath. Her eyelashes fluttered, her tongue wetly flicking at the tip of my dick, and I just sighed.

"It's still hard," she said, sounding impressed, and she started to disrobe a moment later, revealing that rich brown skin, her dark nipples hard, her pink sex glistening. I drank in her curvaceous, beautiful figure, the dark hue of her skin adding a particular note of contrast, as my throbbing red cock twitched before her. "Now, what we just played mostly felt good for you - this game feels good for me too. Ready?"

I nodded, and that was all the response I got to give, before that tight, wet sex of hers wrapped around my cock and began to slowly slide downward, making more and more of it vanish inside her. She softly sighed, closing her eyes to enjoy herself, her tongue slithering out to wet her lips. Her movement was slow and sensual, her hips making a gentle rocking movement on the way down, angling my dick this way and that. Her expression was one of serene bliss, as she felt her pelvis press against mine, my cock twitching in her cunt. I could feel the radiating sensation of pleasure, joy, ecstasy, something very warm and reassuring to have wash over me.

For a moment, that was all there was between us, that quiet shared ecstasy, our bodies fitting together snugly. Then my cock absently throbbed inside her wet sex, and she smiled, starting to really move at that point, her eyes a little wild as she slid up my length, wet sex gripping my dick, before slamming back down with an unceremonious thump of her rump against my thighs. "Ah, that's really good. You're so big inside me, Soleil," she said. Her emotions were a bit of a dazed, confused thing, pleasure washing over more rational thinking. Her fingers grabbed my shoulders, digging into them as she started to ride me, these furious, forceful slams of her body against mine.

The show was good too - her full tits bouncing up and down, her green eyes occasionally crossing or rolling up. She seemed to suck me in every time she went back down, her inner walls caressing and guiding my dick ever further inside her, squeezing my length where it rested in her eager, wet sex. My hands went to her body, starting to freely grope her, fingers digging into her ass cheeks, sliding up to her breasts, groping those, too. I was uninhibited in my touches, feeling the way that her soft flesh billowed between my fingers, perhaps a hint of sadism creeping its way into my actions.

She just moaned delightedly beneath my eager fingers, letting me feel her up, letting my hands dig in wherever they found. She even verbally encouraged me, with lines like, "You like my sexy body," or "Touch me all you want, Soleil." She came before me, even though I wasn't being a particularly attentive lover, just moaning atop me, her eyes rolling up in pleasure as she did so, her cunt clamping down on my cock.

My sexual endurance, as a Zeltron, was far above hers. Sex for Zeltrons was a fairly common part of social bonding - not quite to the "fuck as a greeting" level, of course, but certainly something common for anyone of opposite genders who were close to each other - and thus it was important to make it a lasting experience for both parties. That's a long way of saying that my hips started to buck up into hers, my cock slamming deep inside her, my fingers groping and squeezing her tits, even as she started to lose her own energy to repeated orgasms. I could feel her juices trickling down my cock, teasing my whole length, and she shivered softly atop me as she made a slow, sensual movement up and down.

I could feel the warm, happy feelings that came from her with each orgasm, the quiet blissed out pleasure she was currently experiencing. Having already come once, any problems caused by too much built-up libido was long gone, and I grabbed her hips and twisted her around on the bed. She was out of it enough to let me, falling onto her back, dark hair pooling around her features like a black halo. I pounded into her at that point, enjoying the sight of her breasts bouncing and jiggling, my fingers moving to grope her plush ass cheeks as she took it all.

She was beyond the point of words, only animal noises coming out of her mouth, the occasional trickle of saliva. There was no anger at me for turning the tables on her, just the pure, raw, bliss of sexual pleasure as my cock repeatedly thrust inside her, my balls slapping against her ass cheeks as she salivated in pleasure. Her whole body was warm, coated with a shiny layer of sweat, her eyes rolling around in her skull.

I don't know quite how long we were in that position, how long I was ramming away with all the frantic, pent-up need. Each beautiful wave of pleasure that I sensed from her when she came was a kind of aphrodisiac to me, and my fingers were allowed full reign over her body, groping her ass, her tits, her stomach, caressing her cheeks. At some point I kissed her on the lips - her own tongue was sloppy and ineffectual, but she hardly tried to push me off.

By the time I finally finished with her, it had been over an hour. Her skin was slick with sweat, her dark hair knotted and tangled around her, sticking to skin in certain places.

I sat down on the bed, panting for air, my naked body a little sticky. Unlike her, though, I caught my breath in a couple minutes, my dick half-flaccid, but a glance over at Inessa's naked body soon had me hard again. I teased her sex with my fingertips, and she showed no sign of displeasure, so I got in between her legs again.

I didn't know when I would next get the chance to enjoy something like this, after all.

* * *

A silent figure simply stood on the balcony. She paid attention to each presence within the building itself, waiting for her target to arrive. The wind here was heavy, the buildings serving to form a sort of gash that the wind flowed through like a raging sea - it was loud enough to leave a ringing in her ears, but she didn't care. Nor did she care that her target was over an hour late. She was patient. She would wait.

The leader of the Antusian ring, Inessa, would return to her home soon enough, and then the killing would begin.

Next Chapter

World's Worth Sith Master Chapter 1
Beneath a loosened wallplate in the storage area of the Solace and Refuge lurked a single solitary figure. She was a vision of beauty, and death alike; blood red hair flowed down her body, reaching past her waist, and she wore her battle armor, a cursed smile on her lips. A weapon was in her hand, the simple device called a lightsaber, and though it was not yet activated, it soon would be.

She heard the engines whine, felt the thick force of acceleration as the ship left the atmosphere of Ashiqa. The effortless jerk and cessation of entering hyperspace, and then her lightsaber came to life.

A single man was present when she emerged, letting out a yelp of surprise at her appearance and dropping the datapad with which he had been double-checking the cargo. She drank in his eyes as she approached, locking her gaze to his, the Force aiding her in holding his body in place. She wanted to savor the moment - she could chase him down, but she would much rather kill him like this, slowly approaching and eyeing up her prey before a single swift slice carved him in twain, the fresh burn running from hip to shoulder and seeing his body simply slide in two.

The wet noise of his torso hitting the ground brought her little joy. Her delight was in the moment that the person realized their life was utterly in her hands, and they had no choice but to suffer or expire, as the case may have been. For those aboard the Solace and Refuge, it would be expiration.

So it was that she swept through the ship’s corridors, her victims occasionally drawing a blaster that she effortlessly snapped aside with a simple flick of the wrist. She didn’t parry: these ones were beneath such efforts. Her eyes would always lock on theirs, and she would drink in their panic as death came for them. Race, task, gender, none of them mattered, as she slaughtered her way through the crew.

Such was the price of treachery - these smugglers were carrying weapons to the world of Drenaaj, which was currently in rebellion. They should have known that the Sith would not tolerate it.

With an idle flick of her wrist she decapitated the pilot a moment after he relieved himself, grasping his body by the collar and yanking it out of the seat in the hopes of avoiding the thick scent of urine staining it too badly. She settled into the seat he had just left, feeling invigorated and yet unsatisfied, the quiet pleasure of putting the fear of the Sith into these wretches having no proper apex, like intercourse that never achieved ecstasy. They had seen, they had understood, and they were nothing to her.

She did not feel the presence that approached, and she knew the crew of the ship counted nine - and nine had she killed. All that ought to have remained was deciding where to take the ship she now was sole proprietor of, but instead she heard soft footfalls, heard the distinctive whine of a blaster powering up.

Within a heartbeat, her lightsaber snapped in the space between her and the noise, and when the bolt fired forth, it was deflected.

There, standing before her, was a young boy, skin a pale red from whatever particular near-human race he was derived from. At her estimation, he was perhaps ten. With shaky hands he held the blaster, and he swallowed before firing again. She deflected once more, smiling viciously down at him. She could feel him, faintly, through the Force, now that she knew he was here - more than that, though, she could see the fear in his eyes, yet the courage that made him continue to pointlessly fire the blaster. She did not bother to block all the shots, since only perhaps one in three ever had a chance to strike her.

When the boy winced and dropped the blaster, it having become too hot for him to hold, she made her move. She approached, grasping him by the collar, hefting him easily into the air; in the other, the red glow of her lightsaber was accompanied by its hum. The boy swallowed, his expression defiant for a moment, and she stared him in the eyes, let him truly understand his position, the truth, the reality.

He lost the defiance. She let his body descend to the floor, her breath hot in the air at the rush. The boy was Force sensitive, and her heart was pounding in her ears, her mouth feeling as if it were simply drenched with spit, so much she almost worried she would drool. This was the moment, the perfect ephemeral moment, when a strong and courageous person knew they had to suffer whatever she would do to them. She lived for these moments.

“You are now my apprentice,” she told him, as she stared down at the piteous little thing. He stared blankly up at her. It wasn’t fear on his face, but acceptance of the fact he no longer controlled his fate, and ignorance of what she would ultimately do to him. She didn’t care, though; the point was that he understood that he was powerless. “I am your master now. I will teach you in the ways of the Force. If you fail to learn, I will extinguish your life.”

* * *

That was how I met Darth Rakali. She is, to put it simply, crazy. She decided that I would be her apprentice, after killing my whole family, and she has, in fact, kept to that particular promise. She even gave me a training saber and fought me again and again, over the course of our trip together. If there's one thing I learned from that, it's that I had no chance whatsoever in a fight against her.

About the only nice thing she did for me was not force me to clean up the dead bodies from the Solace and Refuge; no, that honor went to a couple poor schmucks on Ashiqa, which she returned to within a few hours of having killed everyone except me on the ship. She apparently decided that the ship was hers now, and I guess she did kill the previous owners. Is that how it works if you're Sith? I know it's not how it works for normal people, but if there is one thing I was very, very sure about, it was that Darth Rakali is not a normal person.

During the long hyperspace journey to Korriban - it wasn't anywhere near Ashiqa - I once stood at the threshold to the place she'd claimed as her quarters. It belonged to Mr. Gevlasho, who had been the ship's cook, a nice old man with three grandchildren and an ex-wife that hated him. I never saw his body in particular, but I knew she had killed everyone.

I had a blaster. I silenced my hesitation, did my best to calm my mind, to will myself to do what had to be done with the utmost stealth. If she was asleep, she wouldn't have a chance - that was my thinking at the time.

As I stood there, mentally preparing myself, she opened the door and kicked me in the head hard enough to send me to the ground. The only thing I was aware of for a moment was the flashing colors and lights in front of my face as my brain and eyes struggled to cope with the devastating blow. When I recovered, I heard her speak, her voice bored. "If you want to kill me, you will have to learn how to properly use the Dark Side. Until then, or I get tired of you, you are my apprentice."

When I finally arrived on Korriban after what felt like years - but was actually just a week or so - she practically huddled me against her side, pressing my cheek against her ribcage. (And certain other parts that I didn't appreciate in the least at the time.) Given the way that people looked at the two of us, I could almost imagine it was… protectiveness.

Baffling as it seemed, she was doing it to ward strangers off, to protect me from the riffraff that coated Korriban. I followed her obediently, definitely not interested in pissing her off on the Sith homeworld, and she took me to out of the space port, headed to what looked to be some kind of temple. That made even more people pay attention to me, and I could tell many of them were Sith - others were slaves or servants of various strides.

"As a young Sith, it is considered important for you to visit the tomb of a fallen Sith," she explained to me. It sounded like she couldn't give less of a fuck about it if she tried. "However, you are certainly too weak to survive such a task without supervision. Korriban has excellent training facilities for young Sith - but if you die, you will be dead, so use your discretion in taking advantage of them."

I bit my lower lip, tension making every muscle in my body freeze up. It almost sounded like she planned to leave me alone, but… this was Korriban. The heart of the Sith religion. Weren't they all murderous psychos? I barely knew anything about how to fight with my stupid training saber, and it didn't actually cut things. Excitement hit me as I realized that, on the other hand, if she was leaving me unsupervised-

"If you flee, I will track you down, and-" she paused, reaching for my cheek, forcing my eyes to go to hers. Her red eyes seemed to bore directly into my soul for a long couple seconds. I swallowed, trembling before her gaze, and her finger gingerly slid up my cheek, until her nail just teased at my eyelid. She smiled, then, and I could feel a pressure in my brain, like someone was directly stabbing a needle into it and injecting fear. "Hm. I suppose I don't know what I would do," she said, more to herself than me, but my brain was imprinting every last word. "I haven't had an apprentice before, much less one who fled from me. I think…" she trailed off for a moment, tilting her head gently, "I would probably permanently disfigure you," she decided upon, as if she was simply answering a question on some HoloNet interview. "Let's not find out though."

I nodded rapidly, and she smiled at that, patting my head as she released my cheek and let me move as I willed. She was playing at the role of my mother, after having killed my actual mother less than two weeks ago. "What am I supposed to do, then?" I asked.

"Don't die," she said, a stern warning that I didn't particularly need. "Avail yourself of the facilities at this temple; I will be checking in on you regularly, to ensure your safety and continued learning. I'll likely have fresh work within a month, and we'll depart then."

With that, she left my side; people parted for her, clearly quite intimidated merely by her presence. I couldn't blame them. For a moment, the attention of various people in the area came to rest on me - curiosity, envy, confusion. Even if it took what felt like an eternity, my breath held beneath their withering gazes, they lost interest, and returned to going about their days.

That's how I was left, alone, in a Sith temple, with zero supervision or protection, at the age of eleven.

* * *

Being as small as I was helped me keep a low profile, ducking below the sight lines of people, easily being lost in the crowd. The occasional shove or kick to get out of someone's way wasn't anything compared to getting hacked apart by a lightsaber. I had no real destination in mind - at first, I was thinking of some place to hide, a library or a closet or something - but I soon wound up finding the training facilities.

They had combat droids, dozens of them, armed with heavy sticks and the occasional blaster set to stun. They were these thin, wiry things, stretching up a good two heads above me, all arranged in a tight pack like a quiet phalanx. When you wantedone, you'd just take it from the mass and drag it to a training room, something I picked up by quietly watching a Sith do as much.

"Come with me," I said to one.

"Affirmative," it said, its voicebox crisp and clearly well-maintained. Its walking was somewhat jittery, and I could only hope that once combat mode was engaged, something a little bit better in terms of balance and mobility would be shown off.

As it turned out, it did. Unfortunately, the Sith were big believers in the school of hard knocks, so even though I only had the training saber that Darth Rakali had left me with, the droid was hitting me extremely hard with its own weapon. Since I was so young and, well, petite, I got my ass solidly kicked again and again. "Your fundamentals are acceptable," it declared, "but your ability to retain poise in the face of opposition must be improved upon." Then it immediately started beating me up again, and I could only just barely manage to block its strikes, with my arms aching each time its macelike melee weapon came down on my defense.

I gave ground, making a circular movement as I did, just as Darth Rakali had taught me. It let me avoid getting pinned against one of the walls. Still, I couldn't find any hole in its offense to attack myself, and the pain that shot up my forearms every time it hit my training saber was starting to make my fingers numb. "Stop, I'm done," I said.

"You are not done. You must complete the program." Its attacks got more intense then, as if it were angry at my cowardice. I had to grit my teeth to keep my fingers on my training saber. I didn't have any strength whatsoever to give it a kick or anything like that, and I couldn't spare my attention from it to find something else in the room, lest I get beaten black and blue by the robot.

I spotted some discarded, damaged bit of old droid as it fought me, tried to maneuver myself to it, hoping that it would fuck up the droid's footing. Instead, the shiny chrome skull cap of some forgotten droid got easily crushed underfoot, the sound of its deformation audible. If it changed the droid's footing at all, it was to make it push forward, making an extra step towards me, slipping past my guard with its whole body. One desperate, flailing swing of my training saber was all I got in, and it brought the mace down on my stomach, sending me collapsing to the ground, gasping for air.

It stopped then. "Training program complete. You are free to go. I can provide training information in the unlikely event that your future Master wishes to have it."

"Fucking, thing," I spat out. I didn't have much else to say, nor could I manage it, with the pain in my side.

"This unit is not capable of sexual intercourse. If you would like to have sex, please speak to a fellow student. Please, vacate the training room so that another student may use it."

I managed to drag myself up to my feet, giving the droid a hateful last look, and limped outside, clutching my side as I went. It followed after, rejoining the mass of combat droids to await its next request.

I went right back in the training room once it had done so, naturally. There were more bits of broken combat droids than just the skull cap that it had stepped on, and I started picking them up, piling them together, getting more pieces from another room.

On the Solace and Refuge, I'd learned to be a pretty deft hand with machinery, and it seemed like, when one of the Sith kids broke a droid, they pretty much just tossed its bits in the corner and left them there. There weren't complete sets, but I could get a decent variety of pieces. There didn't seem to be any torsos, though, I mused, as I quietly started toying with the bits I had, trying to see if I could build anything useful out of them.

My arms ached too much for any physical fighting, but the numbness in my fingers didn't impair my mind, as I looked through this power converter, that electrical twitch engine, and on and on. I couldn't put back together a complete droid; there weren't any main energy cells or cognitive modules, presumably because they were valuable enough that they'd actually be recycled. Still, I could make a simple electrical disabler from the bits I had on hand. It'd be better than a training saber - the thing was basically a warm baseball bat, for all the damage it did.

It wasn't as fast as all that. It took a while for the numbness in my fingers to fade to the point where I could put something together, then even longer for the ache in my side to reduce to the point I felt comfortable standing up. I had made a device about the size of a small blaster that would - hopefully - stun someone for a few seconds when I hit them with it. I doubt that my "Master" would fall victim to it, given her preternatural danger sense, but it could help if I got attacked by one of the Sith on Korriban. One of the many, many Sith on Korriban.

I stepped out of the training room, rolling my arms, stretching my back, now that I could walk free and under my own power.

Outside, there was a tall, slender, buglike alien, with a complicated carapace that surrounded a roughly humanoid body, currently being surrounded by a pair of humans, both armed with training sabers.

"Can you believe aliens really think they can be Sith?" The apparent leader - a blonde-haired human girl with a smile exaggerated by a scar across her lip - asked her friend, entirely rhetorically.

"It's how low the Empire's fallen," the other one said in a dull voice, as if he was bored and disdainful of the whole thing, like that was just how it was, the Empire was doomed, what can you do? Of course a dying Empire makes aliens into Sith.

"That just makes it our responsibility as good Sith to help clean up the detritus, doesn't it?" She battered at the aliens leg, making it wince and step back, clearly in pain, its mandibles erratically twitching in the air. "Hey, you should get the fuck off Korriban, bugman."

The insectoid chittered angrily, indignantly, in whatever language it spoke - I didn't speak it either. The two Sith students laughed at the comment. "Can't even speak Basic," the smiling girl spat. "Why do we let these things in? Are we that hard up for new Force sensitive recruits?"

"Falling empires throw good money after bad, always trying to rebuild themselves with whatever's on hand. Quantity begins to replace quality, and inevitably, you get this result."

"Tch, yeah. Pretty fuckin' pathetic, if you ask me." The training saber came down to bat at the alien's leg again. It let out a quiet squelch of a noise.

I'd pretty much just been quietly watching the whole time, trying to get my bearings on the situation. It was obviously a case of… whatever you call the Sith equivalent of bullying, I suspected that was probably too light a term to refer to this sort of thing. But there were two of them, and one of me. I had the element of surprise… on one of them. As the smiling girl started to really batter at the insectoid's legs, forcing it to dance backwards in a rather elegant and dexterous manner, I got up behind the other one and zapped him with my electrical disabler.

Honestly, I didn't expect it to work. I kinda figured he'd use… the Force, or however Sith do it, and I'd wind up getting beaten up again. Instead, the electrical bolt went right into his backside and he just collapsed to the ground. "The fuck?" The smiling girl turned my way, her lips twisting into a sneer. "You defending a fuckin' alien? Man, I knew you near-humans were basically just bugfuckers." The insectoid alien removed its own training saber - apparently it had been on his back, and made a heavy smack against the back of the girl's head before she could actually get at me, making her reel.

I tried zapping her with my electrical disabler, but it just fizzled - the battery was too small for a second pulse, it looked like. "Oh, you think it'll take two of you to beat me? Yeah, probably fuckin' right, except make it ten," she sneered, waving her training saber at both of us. Her moves were basically spastic, unpracticed, wild swings at open air.

I didn't much like it, but as I got into a defensive position, I felt some gratitude that Darth Rakali had spent the past week drilling the basics of saber combat into my brain. She seemed to think I was just copying what I'd seen my elders do, and laughed. "You think you can pull off a real defense, kid?"

I just grit my teeth, ignored the way the throbbing in my arms had started back up, and pushed back against her. I didn't have the endurance for a real fight, but I managed to block and parry her first couple strikes before making a thrust directly at her throat, making her gag and fall back at the pain of the strike. She actually dropped her own training saber. "Li'l, fug, you shoudm', maeg enemies, of shomeone laik me. Nefer get a mashder." Her words were thick and malformed, like something was caught in her throat - then she puked, clearing whatever the obstruction was in the simplest way possible. I winced as I saw a hint of red in the vomit. It could just as easily be something red-colored that she'd eaten as a bit of blood, though.

"I already have a master," I told her. That was important, Sith were all about hierarchy, if you fucked up, they came after you.

She let out a choked laugh, wiping away bile from her lips with the back of her hand. "Yeah right. Who?"

"Darth Rakali."

She laughed at that, sneering. "If you're going to lie-" she paused to cough, "-come up with a better one. Darth Rakali hasn't taken any apprentices in all the years I've been here. And believe me, people have tried." Her friend started to rouse, groaning. She seemed to consider just taking a second chance at the fight, then thought better of it. "Come on, Tyber," she said, jerking her head and dragging him along. "Let's go."

I let her go. What else was I supposed to do? Kill them? This was Korriban, dark heart of the Sith. There was no law here, I knew about the Sith well enough to understand that.

After they were gone, the bug spoke up, chittering excitedly, energetic as it spoke. I still couldn't understand a single word it was saying. "I don't speak your language," I told it, hoping it understood Basic, even if its mouth parts couldn't let it speak it.

It pulled out a datapad, hurriedly clicking away with its fat fingers, typing out something in Basic. [I'm Xig! You must be new here! We should help each other out!]

"...sure," I agreed. I gave him a gentle smile, though I have no idea if he understood the meaning of it. "I'm Soleil. Let's be friends."

[Don't say that word! Sith think friendship is weakness! You have to call me an ally of convenience!]

I chuckled and nodded. "Sith sure are fucked in the head." It made a hissing noise of anger, hands gesticulating wildly. "Sorry, sorry. I just got here."

[I figured as much! Otherwise you wouldn't be pretending to be Darth Rakali's apprentice! That woman is only interested in killing for the Empire! If you're going to lie about something like that, I'd suggest Darth Nethos, at least he isn't here very often!]

I just sighed. "Okay." I let it go. How was I supposed to convince him I really was Darth Rakali's apprentice? For all I knew, she'd already forgotten about me. "Hey, I'm feeling worse for wear. Where do we sleep?"

Next Chapter

I'm Chastity, I write a kind of interactive fiction called "quests," where players vote for the actions of the main character. If you're here, you've probably read some of them, but here are a couple of my older, complete quests, in case you haven't: Repeater (a story where a normal man is reincarnated in a world that operates on hentai rules) and Doll Machine (a story where the protagonist gets the power to manipulate the mind and body of a single woman).

You can read a bunch on fiction.live here, and I also run on Questionable Questing, which unfortunately requires a (free!) login to read; once you have an account, this link will take you to my quests, plus a few other threads I've made. Subscribestar takes your money the moment you subscribe, and you can't message people you're not subscribed to, so if you want to make sure that I'm fine with the specifics of a commission or idea before you give me money, you can contact me at either of those sites first.

In any case, thanks for reading and enjoying my work! I greatly appreciate donations.

Commissions:
I am now doing direct commissions. For $10, you can commission a >1,000 word scene from me (and I'll write more for more money); 1,000 words being about the length of a typical smut scene in my various quests. You can provide as much or as little detail on the commission as you like, and I'm willing to do fanfic if that's what you want (though I may need time to consume the media in question, if it's not something I'm familiar with).

General Notes:
If you are contributing, you can message me on Subscribestar by clicking the little "Messages" option in the menu on the top right-hand corner of the screen. If you aren't on Subscribestar (yet), it's easiest to contact me with a QQ account, as fiction.live has an atrocious PM system that makes it easy to miss a message - posting in one of my quest's chats is more likely to catch my attention.

If you're interested in commissioning, here's a general list of what I dislike, so you can make your decision well-informed, and tailor any submissions to it: