Arcanum - Of Steamwork and Magic Ch. 15

"Oh, without a doubt," I murmured. Ken Karsi drew up. She looked into my eyes. Her slitted eyes focused upon mine, and I felt uncannily like she was peering into the depths of my soul. Slowly, her tongue darted along her muzzle and she hissed.

"You are not," she whispered. "I...see two gods' hands upon you..." She pressed her scaled palms to my chest. I had but a moment to remember -- Aribela and Bridgette had both blessed me, after all -- before suddenly, all the strength of the Bedokaan's chieftain was forced against me. My back slammed into the fur matting beneath me and the air rushed from my lungs. Then those claws pressed to my clothes and looked ready to tear into my stitching. I grabbed her wrists, shoving up and to the side, so that her hands slipped off me and onto the fur to either side of me. This meant that Ken Karsi was now leaning towards me, and her breasts -- her full, perfect breasts -- were mashed against my chest.

"Please, ma'am, this suit is rather expensive..." I said, chuckling, even as she slid her tongue along my chin, then churred quietly.

"You are very warm, green sssssskin..." Her nose pressed to my neck again and her tongue slid slowly around my neck, demonstrating her impressive length, and the incredibly flexibility of that tongue. My eyes widened as she licked me this way -- and slowly, my hands slid along her shoulders. I felt the coolness of her skin responding to my touch. I left behind warmth, and the contact of my hands drove her to press herself more firmly to my body. Her hips and mine met, and her tail wrapped, snakelike, around my ankle.

"Will you let the elf go?" I whispered.

"Yes," she said, then nodded, drawing back, her palms pressing to my chest. "We shall slay the poachers, but we shall not attack the warm bloods in the trees, nor the warm bloods elsewhere. And you will sire me a clutch of eggs."

I nodded.

Then blinked. "Wha-"

But her breastband had already fallen upon my face. I yanked it aside in time to see her lifting up onto her haunches so she could begin to skim her thong down, revealing that between her legs rested a scaled pussy -- glittering in the pale illumination of the room and glistening with her own arousal. My cock hardened as she stood fully up to get her thong off, which let me see her perfect, hourglass body. Her breasts swayed from side to side as she cocked her hip to the left, her tail whipping left and right behind her -- having released my ankle as she stood. She hissed in eagerness as my member strained against my leggings. I licked dry lips and reached down, jerking my buttons open. My green cock thrust into the air and Ken Karsi paused in her hissing.

She knelt down, until her ankles touched her thighs, her hands on her knees. She leaned forward, balanced perfectly upon the tips of her toes. "Amazing... "She whispered, her nose bumping against the very tip of my cock. Her tongue darted out and I reached down to begin to drag my shirt up. By the time I had gotten my shirt up an off my head, freeing my chest from the cloying heat and humidity of the tent, Ken Karsi had slid her thighs to lay beneath her, her legs thrusting out into the darkness of the tent, her head resting on her palm as her elbow settled on the ground. This let her observe my cock from nearby, without having to balance precariously. Or, so I thought. For once she had finished observing me, she attacked. Her muzzle opened, her tongue lashed out. It wrapped around and around and around and around my cock, holding my member in a tight sheath of slick flesh. My eyes widened -- and then I grunted, low and fierce in my throat as Ken Karsi pushed her head forward and sucked my cock into her eager, waiting muzzle. I felt the faint brush of her teeth, blunted by her own tongue, rubbing against the girth of my cock. But then my member was sliding down her throat.

So, that was what it took to best Virginia at this game.

A woman with a twelve inch tongue and no gag reflex.

Ken Karsi's head bobbed and she began to suck...and I have to admit...

There was a certain lack when the woman lacked lips. Her tongue was marvelous, do not take me wrong. But without lips to really apply pressure and suction, the movement felt half wasted. I squirmed as her head bobbed, trying to glean the same pleasure I would if Virginia had been the one bobbing her head in my lap. But despite my efforts, I felt more teased and frustrated by the lizardwoman's efforts. Not that teasing and frustrations were a particularly bad thing, of course. My breath started to come in low pants, and I felt a feral frustration filling me. It grew and stoked as she caressed my balls teasingly -- and finally, it broke a damn. I grabbed her frills, then jerked her head back.

Ken Karsi gasped -- in pleasure -- and then moaned as I slammed her back onto the soft fur of the floor mats. Her thighs swung wide like a welcoming gate and I crawled atop her, too desperate for real sensation to care particularly much if she hadn't finished sucking me off. I did see that her sex had gone from glistening to positively dripping, and when my cock began to grind against the folds of her labia, I felt her cool, moist eagerness. She warmed quickly to me, and her voice hissed in my ear. "Take me, warm one. Breed me."

Two simple words -- words that I had no promise of fufilling. We were of different kinds, and the human ability to interbreed with damn near anything had more to do with ancestral relation between elf and orc and man. But the impossibility did not make the word any less perversely desirable. While I never desired children...the urge to leave some behind was so overwhelming sometimes. I leaned forward and bit down on her neck, slamming my cock into her hungry sex. From within, she felt rather similar to a human woman...with one exception: There was a line of three hard nodes of tissue within the inside of her sex, adding extra pressure to specific points on my cock. Two were either comfortable nor uncomfortable -- merely a pressure that added to the overwhelming bouquet of sensation. But the third was positioned exactly in the right place to make my cock feel as if it was in heaven. Moving it ground it against a nerve ending that simply sparked and sung with joy, and my groan was intense and heated for that very reason.

I hung my head forward, my face pressing to her breasts. Easy, for she was arching her spine hard as pleasure coursed through her body. She moaned wordlessly and I began to drive into her, my balls slapping against her ass. Slap. Slap. Slap. Slap. Ken Karsi grabbed the back of my head and dragged me to her breasts. I kissed, then sucked on her nipples, my other hand squeezing the small of her back, holding her close to me as I hammered away at her exotic pussy. The feeling of her nodes grinding against my cock was...

Delirious.

"Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Breed me! Breed me!" She moaned. Even if I had wanted to, I could not resist. Pleasure exploded inside of me and I shuddered as I thrust home deep and came within her. My seed painted the inside of her womb, spurting from around my cock as I filled her and overfilled her, my balls aching faintly as I emptied every last drop inside of her. I remained poised above her, panting and gasping quietly, my head ducked forward, my eyes half closed.

Ken Karsi hissed. "Very good, living one...very good..."

My eyes closed.

When I woke, I was still naked. But the tent was gone. The altars were gone. My companions were sprawled in sleep as well -- and among them was a male elf. Scrambling to my feet, I saw that the clothing I had discarded remained and once I had dressed, I roused the others.

We found neither track, nor sign of the Bedokaan. It was as if they had never been.

***

How to summarize two months of travel?

We cut across the Glimmering Forest, returning to Quintarra to deliver the extremely relieved Pardon to his hunting master. We spent three days there, asking questions and accomplishing small tasks -- though I lacked a Vol'ars wisp for Whysper -- but no one would admit to who the leader of the elves was. Frustrated, we set out with Swyft on the 19^th of September. Trekking through the Hadrian Pass, we faced an early autumnal snow in the mountains, and trekking past Stillwater, we saw the landscape beginnig to fall to the harsh colds of Autumn and Winter in this part of the world. On the 7^th of October, barely a week before The Festival of Masks, we arrived with Swyft in Tarant.

Swyft had been an amusing, if somewhat bumbling, traveling companion -- but what had never come to pass was any sexual interaction between herself and me. The simple fact was...while she did claim to be an adult, and had an adult's build and the knowledge of almost two centuries, she lacked the gravitas that I was used to seeing in elves. That juxtaposition was too much for me to handle, even if I was somewhat more of a libertine with my sexual activities than most men of Arcanum.

The three days we spent in Tarant were spent preparing for setting out once more. I met with Mr. Bates, delivering to him my report of all that had happened (save some editing.) He took it well, accepting that elves operate on a time scale different from our own. I was hounded by that dreadful Victor Wright from the Tarantian. My interview had sold so many copies, and the publication of my inventions in the Technical Journal had the public hungry for more.

In an act of upmost graciousness and civility, I set the date for our interview, then sold an edited copy of my journal of our expedition into Quintarra to The Naturalist Journals. Dr. Fenwick was more than happy to act as a go-between, and by the time I was setting out, I got to enjoy the mental image of Victor Wright watching as an entire mob of Tarantian notables flocked to buy a trade journal rather than his yellow papers. While the expedition lacked many actual scientific findings, Dr. Fenwick assured me that the descriptions I had written of tree and fauna and magickal phenomenon, let alone the descriptions and sketches of Quintarra, would be the talk of the town.

As October wore on, we once more reached the Hadrian Pass. Where once the pass had merely been wet and treacherous, now it was a miserable passage that required every bit of mountaineering equipment we had purchased on Gilbert Bate's dime. We used pitons and ropes to cross ice slick rocks, carefully crawling where freezing winds might catch us and throw us into rivers made narrow and rushing and killing cold by encroaching ice. Emerging from the Pass after only two days of slow travel and with nearly two of my fingers frozen off -- healed only thanks to Virginia's efforts -- left me desperately wishing for my own personal flying machine.

Virginia admitted that she was finding it difficult to fully master the magickal arts she had been seeking to learn -- the apex of the school of Conveyance involved teleportation across vast distances...but she had yet to go beyond a simple unlocking cantrip. She continued to practice as the whole troupe of us once more entered the Glimmering, which had taken on an ominous aspect with the coming of winter. Brown and dying leaves cluttered the grounds, and in the distance we could occasionally hear the mournful cries of wolves.

At long last, we once more arrived in Quintarra on the 1^st of November, 1885. It was hard to imagine it, but in a mere two months, it would have been a whole year since the crash of the IFS Zephyr and the deaths of all aboard.

Stepping off the wicker elevator of Quintarra, we found ourselves facing an elf I had not seen before. And in my time in Quintarra, I had come to realize just how few elves actually lived there. So, seeing a new one sparked a faint flicker of hope within me -- a flicker that was nearly completely burned out by sheer awe. For this elf was, by far the most beautiful elven woman I had ever laid eyes upon. Her hair was raven black and spilled along her pale shoulders, tumbling down to her neck. Her figure was more fully fleshed than many elves giving her breasts somewhere between Gillian's and Virginia's in terms of size, and with a rump that was clearly taut -- as only an immortal's rump could be. But what was more, she was clad in midnight black leather, which clung to her every fold and curve, demonstrating them clearly.

Her face, at last, was delicate and beautiful, with piercing green eyes, eyes that were locked upon mine.

"Rayburn Cog," she said, smiling.

"May I assist you ma'am?" I asked.

"I am Raven," she said. "And I have heard that you wish to see the Silver Lady -- the mistress of Quintarra."

I almost collapsed to my knees in relief. Only by sheer force of will did I manage to keep myself upright. At last! At long last, we were here, we were finally going to be allowed to see the leader of Quintarra. We would find answers. I smiled at Raven, finding her even more beautiful than before. I bowed to her, throwing out a single arm. "You have the long and short of it, miss Raven."

Raven beamed at me. It was a dazzling smile -- and I could almost feel Virginia bristling slightly. I supposed it was one thing to see me make love to another woman -- it was another to bask in the presence of one so...

Well...

So intensely immortal and beautiful.

I admit, the longer I thought of Raven's immortality the more I felt a sense of creeping jealousy. She looked twenty four. She might have been twenty four hundred years old instead -- while I would die in my sixties. I forced that thought away as Raven continued: "We have been watching you, Rayburn. We have seen that you are wise. You do not stop until you see the truth. You speak, rather than fight, and you can defend yourself when you need to." She smiled. "You are what few outlanders are."

"Thank you," I said. "May I speak to...the Silver Lady? It is of a matter of grave importance."

"Yes," Raven said. "You may speak to my mother."

She turned. "Come on, Rayburn." And she led me towards a walkway...that I had never seen before. I looked at Virginia. Virginia looked at me.

We all headed off towards the dark tree, shrouded by shade and misty lights, which had only now become visible to us, as if our minds had been opened -- or as if a new set of glasses had been slipped over our eyes.

The home of the Silver Lady.

TO BE CONTINUED