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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
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
HE KNOWS! Quick snap neck