The Song of Roland Ch. 16

Carl let out a fecund yell as he pressed himself tight to her warm confines, draping himself around her like a blanket of animosity as he held her rapt against the tree, her cheek moving rough across the bark as he bit and nipped at her earlobe. He used her horn as a handhold, pressing her still tighter against the trunk, her right eyelid closed against it. Kelsea let him have his indulgence, her voice rising to a banshee's scream as she clenched her thighs and felt the warmth of his seed begin to move within her. For nearly a minute he held her there, spurting his hot load inside like a ruptured blood vein leaking fluid into the greater body. Kelsea stayed there, relishing the feeling of being fed while simultaneously wondering who she was, anymore. Carl flailed against her rump a few more, tepid times before at last he pulled himself free, completely spent.

Kelsea did not bask in the post-orgasmic bliss, merely pulling up her pants and shakily relatching her belt. Carl let out another huff of air as he did the same. "You feel like sin." He said, letting out a self aggrandizing chuckle. "At least now I know why so many fools have fallen for it: even as you are, you're the best lay I've had."

Kelsea didn't answer him, her toes curling in her boots as she rode the internal sensation of orgasmic aftershocks that languished like a wicked transgression within her body. "Please," she said, her voice empty of energy, despite the sudden boost in sustenance. "Just make the fire for Roland." She headed back towards the cave, her movements sluggish and sedated as she left Carl alone, staring after her. The light began to sink heavily in the sky as the afternoon wore on into the early evening, a purple sunblaze forming on the edges of the horizon.

She arrived at Roland's side in a trance, not even noticing the change in scenery as she kneeled like a guilty supplicant next to him, her mind in a fog of gloom. Without thinking, she undid the red-maned man's bandages, peeling back the bloody rags as she bent her lips to the task. Using the very seed that now squirmed within her, Kelsea applied her powers to the wound, healing and sealing the final stretches of bloody skin, feeling his heartbeat steady within her as his body returned to an appreciable, hale state. As she worked at him, she heard a heavy groan, his eyelids shifting beneath his brow as he awoke from his groggy stupor.

"Uhn." He said, his head lifting as his eyes turned to blearily gaze at the world around. "Where-" Roland started, his body torpid and lethargic. It took him several seconds of breathing to continue. "What's happening?"

"Shh." Kelsea whispered, putting a hand to his forehead. At least he didn't have a fever, thank the Gods. "Lean back, Roland. You were badly wounded."

The exhausted mercenary did as she asked, lying against the ground with a wordless sigh of pain. Kelsea finished her labors, slowly working away the wound like it was a stain upon his person, applying her power to his body as she infused him with new health. As she finished, she felt his hand touch the trailing locks of her hair. She turned away from him, uncorking a leather water skin before leading it to his lips. It all felt so familiar. "This is twice now I've had to nurse you back to health." She said.

"Third time'll... kill me." Roland said after swallowing heavily at the fount of liquid. His voice was a pale whisper; she couldn't tell if he was joking. He turned his head, his wondrous blue eyes staring at her as she found herself unable to gaze back. His breath was still strained from his recent struggle, his words dripping forth in plodding succession.

"You guh- goddamned fool." He said it with such a toneless magnanimity, as if he were simply informing her of an obvious truth. His left hand reached up, cupping her cheek, touching the scraped and damaged skin that had been so harshly shoved up against the the tree. Kelsea let out a tremulous whimper as she felt the soothing contact Roland gave. "What... what the fuck were you thinking?"

"I... I wasn't." She said with a low sense of hopelessness. "Like always. I just wanted you to be safe, I just wanted us-" Kelsea felt something very human rise up from within her. "You almost died." She said, stating the obvious.

"I feel it, yeah?" He said, letting out a pained moan. His hand idly reached down to fumble with his pants, touching the empty, leather holster in an attempt to lift and lower his favored weapon in its sheath. Roland let out a dissatisfied grunt. "Fuck. My knife's gone."

Practically dazed at the day's events, Kelsea's voice was weak and wavering. "We can get you another knife, Roland."

"That was my favorite knife. Had it since I was a guard."

"I'm sorry." She said, meaning it.

"Don't be." He replied, alike in earnestness. "It's my knife. My job to keep track of it." He sighed in annoyance, staring up at the stony ceiling as he lay prone upon the ground. Kelsea felt as weary as he looked. "Where are we?" He said, breaking the hallowed silence, "Smells like death in here."

Kelsea touched his shoulder, her fingers running across his body as if to confirm to herself that he really was okay. Her tail moved along the length of him, curling with protective intent around his ankle. "We're in the Hautviech's lair, the Harpy found it for us. I had to get you out of the cold."

"Quick thinking." Roland replied, "Shame it had to be this place, though; the aroma's atrocious." Kelsea smiled.

"We can move in the morning." She said, "It's almost nightfall, there's no way we'd find better shelter from the snow before then."

"What happened to you being my personal fireplace?" He said. Kelsea giggled.

"Carl's collecting firewood. I-" She lowered her head, her eyes closing as she grimaced. "I-I had to lay with him, to have the fluids to heal you." She'd already used almost all of it; even now she could feel the physical want returning. Kelsea angrily shoved down the thought.

"Hm." Roland said, seeming unruffled by the admission. "Hopefully it was fun for ya. From personal experience, gettin' something big shoved in your belly doesn't always end in orgasms." He put a hand to his head, covering his eyes as the memories of the eventful day filtered through his aching mind. "Gods, you killed them all."

"I did." Kelsea said. She didn't know how else to respond. "Some of them escaped, but they won't follow us up here."

"...I didn't want this, yeah? You shouldn't have to-" He let out a fatigued sigh. "I make my own mistakes. That one wasn't yours to deal with."

"I make plenty enough on my own, Roland." Kelsea replied. She took his hand in hers, feeling the thick, calloused digits across her palm, taking an obscene sort of solace from it. Her smaller, purple fingers traced the line of them, remembering times when they'd slid themselves against her naked, gasping body. She wanted to feel him there, again. "I have... I've got something I need to tell you." She said. "Something I wanted to say since you first found me in the cave. I just... I couldn't bring myself to do it until now, until I saw just how close it all came, to falling apart."

Roland stared at her, an even expression set upon his bearded face, the kind he always wore, like a mask. It never ceased to amaze her how nothing seemed to faze him; he seemed so confident, so self-assured, as if he always knew what to do. Kelsea desperately wished to know what that felt like. "Go on." He said, his hand squeezing hers. She sighed in resigned despondency.

"I've never described it to you, what it's like to be this way." She gestured down at herself, taking her own tail in her free hand and running along its length. "What it feels like to be a Demon."

Her head lowered, her voice struggling to compose itself as she tried to find the words to say to him. She sat in silence for a moment, her breathing steadied. "It's like, I can see you: you're right there. My eyes can see you, but through a long tunnel. And split within that tunnel are a hundred different filters; a thousand different sexual things that color my perception of you, and everyone else." She gestured back and forth with her hands, releasing her grip upon him as she began to quote her inner thoughts. "Look at the curve of that woman's breasts, check out the body structure of that man, the cleft of his chin, the color of her eyes."

She continued: "Look at his bulging muscles, see her clenching thighs, look at the way his face changes when I touch him like this. Hear the sound she makes when I make her do that." Her purple skin flushed as she shook her head from side to side, her dark horns turning about as she looked away from him. "It's all too much. And it never stops. I begin to lose sight of who they are, what they mean to me. Eventually, you're just a thick, warm feeling inside. A sensation, a smell, a sound of masculine grunting."

Despite her best efforts Kelsea couldn't stop the tears from building on her face again. "I start to notice little pictures of independent physical slices of you. But I lose sight of the man: of Roland. Of the way you make me smile, of the way you stroke my hair, of the things you whisper back at me when we finish in each other, and I pretend that our lovemaking was enough."

Kelsea's shoulders shook as she fell in on herself. "When the need gets stronger, my dreams, my will and thoughts begin to fade. All I can feel, all that I can comprehend is that I'm hungry. And thirsty. And so, desperately horny." He looked at her in silence.

"...Do you understand, Roland? What it's like to feel like it's never enough? To keep deluding yourself that just over the horizon, the last time will come, and you'll feel satisfied. You'll feel content, and you'll be able to think about something else. That the endless, everlasting want will disappear and you can just go back to being... you." She sighed so deeply it sounded like a sob. "But I know that's a lie. I know there isn't any 'last one' coming. I'm going to feel this, for the rest of my life... And it makes me want to die."

Roland's eyes were the only things that seemed to ever really see her. He watched her with an openness that made Kelsea feel more naked than she ever did lacking clothes. His very scent was like a brush fire in her chest. "You're not getting out of this whole mess that easily." He said, "You asked me way back then to tag along. Now I'm stuck with you. What's the point of bein' mobbed on your crotch if the person doing it is so damned dismal?"

"You heartless bastard." She said, choking out a laugh. "Just for once, I wish you'd let me wallow in self-pity."

"You tend to 'wallow' a lot, ya woeful woman." He said, smiling at her as he put a hand to her wrist. He pulled it to his lips and kissed the top of it. "I just had a hole made in my stomach, you see me blubbering about it?"

"You don't seem all the worse for wear." She teased back, wiping at her eyes as she felt a warmth rise inside of her that had nothing to do with sexual desire. Her hand cupped his cheek. "If you want we can see if you'd have done better lying out there alone in the snow."

"-Would have smelled nicer, at the very least." He said, taking a dismissive sniff of the air. The two turned to watch as Carl strode into the room, dropping the large bundle of wood in his hands in a heap next to them. His head turned, and the two men's eyes met. Roland's face lowered into a scowl at the same moment Carl's broke out into a grin.

"Evening, Roland!" Carl said, sounding chipper. "Hope you're doing well, old friend."

"Gods." Roland groaned, "Don't tell me he's awake."

"More than that, doing downright wonderful!" Carl replied. "Lovely day to kill your friends and be enslaved by a creature of the void, eh? You and I have so much in common now."

Roland glared at him. "Fuck off, you insufferable cunt." Carl merely laughed.

"Already did! Your lover's lower lips feel wonderful in the cold. Her 'insufferable cunt' warms a man right up!" He gave a passing wave as he headed out the cave entrance, "See you in a moment, still got more to bring in. And then you and I have got some catching up to do!"

Roland made to rise from the bedroll, but Kelsea pushed him back down. "I'm gonna kill that man." He growled, his eyes staring daggers.

"Another time, Roland." Kelsea said softly, "He's had a foul day, himself. Get some sleep, I'll make sure he doesn't trouble you."

______________________________________________________________________________

That evening, Kelsea sat at the front of the cave, away from her fellow companions. She'd left Roland to convalesce in peace, letting Carl know in no uncertain terms that he was not to disturb him. For the first time since he'd gotten his wits back, Carl assented without protest. He merely munched on what little food he had left before curling up to an early sleep; it had been a difficult time for everyone. Kelsea looked from a distance, watching the two men rest as the fire slowly sputtered and died. It had been well over a year now since she'd actually 'slept' in the literal sense. She missed the pleasant feeling of not thinking, not feeling, simply... ceasing to function. She never felt less human than when she watched the mortals slumber, as alert during the witching hour as she was at high noon.

The raw air blowing through the mouth of the cave was a refreshing change from the stuffy grime that caked the walls of their appropriated shelter. Kelsea had no doubt that they would soon be moving on, off the plateau and up the High Road, in the direction of the town she'd grown up in. The resplendent city of Arjal, with the great, multicolored lights shining down upon each district at all hours of the day. Kelsea had been born beneath the shade of the massive, scarlet, magical orb that hung above the literal red light district, casting everything in a blood-colored hue as the whores and pimps plied their trade across the narrow, winding cobblestone streets.

How fitting, then, that she return to that place she'd left with such high hopes as a creature literally built for sex. Had Kelsea's mother known, she might have made use of her as she'd always said she would: turning her into a star attraction as Kelsea wore some silly, ostentatious dress of foreign design, used to excite rich men with the allure of erotic coupling. Kelsea had never wanted that life, yet somehow it was all she could ever think about anymore. If she'd stayed she'd have ended up a whore. When she left...

Kelsea laughed under her breath. The Gods had a funny way of doing things: leaving her standing in the exact same place she'd started at, like running on slick ice. All she had left in this world was the man lying asleep inside, the man she'd proven willing to kill for. That inherent threat she'd laid at Carl's feet should he harm Roland still echoed over and over in her head, spoken in the heat of the moment with nary a thought to its true implications.

I'll break you.

Why had it been so easy for her to say that? Worse: why had she been serious about it? Kelsea knew firsthand what that torturous oath truly entailed, the horrors she'd have to inflict upon him, should she make good on the menace. That she truly meant the words made it all the more damning to her that she had no hope left, anymore.

She looked out across the snowfields, at the swaying, shifting branches of the pine trees sitting all around. Kelsea wondered what feeling normal was like, what feeling sated felt like. She could no longer remember a time she didn't want something, crave it like a longing ever unfulfilled. The moment someone pulled free from her insides, she desired something else to fill it still. It was-

A sudden flash of moonlight white across the treeline to her left made her head snap up. Kelsea stood to her feet, watching for the darting thing to come across her vision again. The sky was empty of clouds, and the stars shone like bright diamonds upon the earth, but there was no moon out. Another flitting figure of white came from the right of her vision, but just as she turned to look it was gone again. The hair on Kelsea's neck began to stand on end. Without knowing why, feeling a tug at her senses, she walked out into the night towards the direction of where she'd last seen the aberration.

She wandered through wood and glen, her footsteps aimless, yet led by a haunting, creeping pull. The Succubus stepped blindly through the darkness, conjuring a small flame to her hand as the flickering shadows drew her deeper into the murky copses. The trees grew thick, and soon Kelsea had to bob and weave between individual trees, set so close together it was a wonder that any light could be seen from the sky above. Like a lantern in the darkness she slowly came to the core of the thicket, the light dancing on her fingers as darkness fell around her, and she could barely see her hand in front of her face. What could be doing this?

The answer came when she felt a presence at her rear. Turning with the ponderous curve of one walking through a dreamscape, Kelsea watched as a rider wreathed in silence came through the whistling trees. The beast it rode came at a full gallop, its white fur flashing like a beacon of light in the mountain woods, so agile that not even the crushing press of trees could halt its hasty path across the uneven ground. The creature was a horse... but it was not a horse. Not one that Kelsea had ever seen, at any rate.

It's white muscles rippled as it rode towards her, its cloven hooves shining like silver teardrops in the darkness as it expertly weaved between the low hanging branches. Its ears were long, far taller than a normal equine beast, and its adamant eyes were slitted, its snout short and narrow. It moved more like a big cat, weaving back and forth on its flexible spine as it bent and shifted around the irregular flow of trees, on paths Kelsea could not see. The beast made no sound; its entire body screamed out that there should have been a loud commotion, or at least the blaring noise of inhaled breath and pounding hooves... yet there was nothing, as though the thing really were a ghost, as Carl had said before.

As they approached, however, it was the rider who drew her eyes: a thin, hooded figure, dressed in a patchwork of dense fur skins of multiple animal colors: a red fox, brown grizzly bear, the tannish orange of a manticore's massive, leathery hide. All were tied together as this impossibly thin being moved like a ghost upon its steed, turning and bending as if preternaturally aware of every stray branch or thistle that stood in the way of itself and the woman it approached. Its arms wrapped around the neck of its mount as if it was the only thing necessary to keep it upon the beast's back. No bridle sat upon the creature, no saddle nor stirrups hung down from its body. It was pure, as free as nature itself.

Kelsea felt a deep, animalistic terror rise up within her. She was so taken aback by the thing's unnatural existence that she merely stood, frozen in fear as she watched it arrive like a gale wind through the mountaintop. It came to a halt in front of her, as utterly silent as if she were all alone in this dark, empty place.

"What..." She stuttered out, looking into the rider's hood and seeing nothing but the shadowed blackness. "What are you?" The thing looked at her. With no eyes to speak of, and no uncovered skin to read the phantom's movements, she could only guess how she knew that, but she could tell: it was looking at her. It raised a slender hand, almost skeletal in its narrowness, pointing with a long finger wrapped in a glove of dark leather and fur. Its voice issued forth, the only sound she ever heard from it, like the murmuring rustle of wind from a sword swing.