Welcome to Layman-upon-Waters. Elliot is the city’s new overseer for the Office of Municipal Integration, and his days are spent encouraging the region’s secretly inhuman denizens out of hiding and into cooperative citizenship.
This is a bonus entry in the Laymen story, taking place after the events of the main ten chapters. The cast are exclusively returning characters from earlier in the story, so you may want to read the rest of Laymen first!
Blue Moon
Thaddeus paced to the tall window looking out over the city. The old man’s hands were clasped at his back, his bearded face bathed in sapphire light.
“So, what exactly is the nature of this… blue moon?” he asked the room.
In her seat at the long council table, Harriet, ambassador to the elves, brushed the coarse parchment of her thick tome with an absent swish. “There is little doubt in my mind that this is elven magic,” she said. Her voice lacked melody, just as her lips lacked their usual distracted smile. “The blue moon is an artefact of Ilvarith’s original domain, according to the ancient tales. It is a relic from a place of lurid chaos, brought somehow into our terrestrial realm.”
“Lurid chaos, is it?” chuckled Sasha, sitting across from the elderly woman with her hands behind her head. The guardswoman’s sharp smile had been cut along a whetstone tonight, and her eyes flashed dangerously. “That sounds about right, given the reports we’ve been getting. The city curfew seems to be holding, but only with the entire watch maintaining it.”
“Any injuries?” asked Thaddeus.
“A few scrapes and bruises, one or two black eyes. The people aren’t acting violent, you understand, Castellan. Just… loopy. A bit manic. Like they’ve lost the… social membrane that stops you doing whatever the fuck you want. Pardon my language.”
Harriet nodded. “They are acting much like elves, in that respect.”
“And the Low Town?”
Sasha glanced at the door briefly before opting to take the question herself. “Nothing, Castellan. None of the watch stationed at the gates have reported in. Low Town doesn’t have a standing guard, so the squad may be stuck out there if they went to help.”
“I fear that the Low Town will be experiencing increased upheaval compared to the city proper,” added Harriet, also glancing once at the door. “Given the prevalence of residents with non-terrestrial origins. Magical bloodlines are more susceptible to the blue moon’s curse, if what I am reading is to be believed.”
Thaddeus sighed, but the line of his shoulders remained steel-straight, the very picture of a veteran military commander. “Then our course is clear,” he intoned. “We must send a force to Ilvarith to determine the source of this disturbance. If it is elven magic, our woodborne cousins will know how to dispel it, at the very least. I hate to suspect our allies of setting this curse upon us intentionally, but perhaps a degree of suspicion is prudent. This night has already gone on for so long…”
Sasha clicked her teeth, rubbing her eyes with a gauntleted thumb and forefinger. “A force might be a tall order, Castellan. Like I said, everyone’s got their hands full keeping a hundred mad celebrations from spilling into the streets. And besides, if I may, a smaller team might be better for this sort of infiltration. Even just an individual. Less likely to get nabbed by a mob of revellers.”
“Very well.” Thaddeus turned, fixing the council table with the full force of his attention. “We nominate a single agent to investigate Ilvarith and put an end to the blue moon. Someone who knows our streets and can quickly and secretly seek the source of this disturbance.”
“Someone who can negotiate with the elves on our behalf,” added Harriet. “Someone with clout in their court, if we can find such a person.”
“Someone with experience in the Low Town would be nice,” said Sasha. “Someone who’s dealt with non-humans before. Who isn’t afraid of a few fangs or claws, if it comes to that.”
A moment of heavy silence. Then, as one, all three looked to the council chamber’s sealed doors.
Elliot blinked in surprise. He yanked his hands from his pockets and tried to match all three pairs of eyes at once.
“What?” he asked.
“C’mon, Elliot,” said Sasha. “It’s obviously you.”
“You do fit the bill rather neatly, son,” agreed Thaddeus with a hint of a smile below the curls of his beard. “I can think of none more qualified.”
Elliot swallowed. He’d been pulled from his bed and tugged up the Castle Road what felt like hours ago, and he was tired. And still no sign that this night was ending any time soon. He’d not seen any of Sasha’s reported debauchery out in the blue-wreathed streets of Layman. In fact, it had been eerily quiet. But he’d at times heard noises from the homes and taverns. Very… organic noises.
“You merely have to reach Ilvarith and beseech aid from those elves still interested in helping us,” said Harriet with a kindly smile. “You have that rapport with Princess Miriham. She will surely attend to us in our hour of need.”
“And like I said, the curse isn’t making folk murderous,” said Sasha, unsheathing her winning grin. “At worst, you’ll just, y’know, get tousled a little. You’ll be fine.”
“You will be fine,” Thaddeus said. “We have complete confidence in you, Elliot. Please, save our city from this curséd night.”
There would be no arguing with three of the most powerful people in the city, Elliot knew it well. He was loathe to let down even one of them. He patted his bed-hair and pulled his green coat of office tight across his chest.
“Fine,” he sighed. “I’ll be on my way.”
* * *
The castle side-door slammed shut in his wake, and Elliot breathed out an anxious sigh. It was still summer, so the air was humid, the stone paving below his boots warm. Regardless, he hunched his shoulders in his coat and hugged his arms. The damp air was still and silent. He’d never experienced the city of his birth so devoid of sound, of life, before. He’d have forgiven himself for believing he was the only one left alive in all of Layman.
That thought didn’t last long. Leaving the Castle courtyard and pausing at the very top of Castle Road, moving his eye along the path that would take him down the city slope to the Low Town and the forest, Elliot was overcome with a wave of animal threat, seemingly from everywhere at once. The air thrummed with unspent tension like the taut string of a bow. Like the primed haunches of a predator waiting to leap. As if the city itself would be the one to tear him apart.
And the moon above, so very beautiful. The blue shimmer tickled his skin and made him want to dance. Made him want to scream.
Elliot hissed out a wordless self-admonishment and put his eyes on the road ahead. He’d been through worse than this. He wasn’t a magical entity, not like most of his friends, so the curse shouldn’t affect him unduly. He could keep the mania at bay. People were counting on him. The first step along the road took effort, but the second, and all those that followed, came easier.
Elliot’s instinct was to keep to the side streets and avoid the wide central thoroughfare. Stay in the shadows, stay out of sight. But one look down Primrose Avenue, its trimmed topiary turned gossamer by the moon’s fiendish light, made him think again. He didn’t want to be hemmed in, and all kinds of creatures could be hiding in the gloom just as he intended to. Instead, he hurried down Castle Road itself, holding to the side of the road where patterned awnings masked his flight from above.
He jumped out of his skin the first time he heard laughter. The shuttered tavern on his right rang with the sound, though none of the lamps within were lit. It didn’t even sound like a human noise to Elliot’s ears. The laughter was tight, discordant. Desperate. It was followed by a shattering of glass, and Elliot could take no more. He fled down the street as fast as his feet could carry him.
In time, the black shape of the Layman city walls, ancient and unmovable, stood before him. Elliot wiped sweat from his brow with the sleeve of his coat, and he allowed himself a smile. Look how far he’d come already! He’d be safe with Miriham and the rest of the elves soon, and someone smarter would solve the blue moon issue once he’d explained it. He’d be back in bed before he knew it.
Still, the sight of the huge city gates wide open and entirely unmanned made him uneasy. There should have been at least two soldiers on duty at all times, checking paperwork and answering queries from travellers. Layman stood wide open. Anyone could have sauntered in without undergoing any of the usual checks and measures. Elliot, whose whole purpose was to close the gap between outside and in, should have found the sight comforting. Instead, and on this night in particular, it worried him.
The next sound came from the barracks office inside the walls, the clattering of a wooden door thrown open into the night. Flickering lamplight from within burned away the dark in a wide wedge along the stone paving. Elliot was frozen solid with fright. He could do no more than stare.
The figure silhouetted by the light stretched her arms over her head and let out a pleased, satisfied grunt. She was slender with a dancer’s grace, slim arms and beautifully curled hair knotted at the top of her head. The playful wiggle of her hips demonstrated the athletic strength of her core. But her ears possessed a distinct, devilish point, and below, the fat length of a serpent’s tail where there ought to have been legs. The tail rippled down to its tip, then curled into an inviting coil. Its owner slapped her hands onto her waist.
“What’s this?” she said into the night. “Is that… Elliot?”
The serpent slithered out of the barracks and into the night. Elliot took in the decorated chestnut of her hair and the clear ivory of her skin, the emerald shimmer of the scales on her cheeks, the sides of her neck, her shoulders and upper arms. She wore a cotton camisole that he recognised as her usual bedwear, short enough to almost expose the alien fascination of her sex between the soft scales of her pubis. And that smile, coy and confident, was unmistakable.
“Asura,” he breathed. “What…? What are you doing here?”
“My words exactly,” chuckled the dancer, approaching him over the paving stones. “I hadn’t expected to meet you here. Not that I’m disappointed,” she added with a luscious purr. “It’s always a pleasure to see you.”
“Y-You shouldn’t be outside,” he said, since his mind didn’t come up with anything better. It was too caught up in the lustre shine of Asura’s eyes, the cheeky shading of her cleavage, and the beautiful light of the moon. Asura’s identity as one of those Harriet had warned would be greatly affected by the night didn’t cross his addled thoughts. “And… you’re unmasked!” he said next with a scandalised stare at her long tail. “Shouldn’t you be wearing your glamour? A-And maybe some more clothes?”
Asura laughed, ringing the air with her melody. “It’s this night!” she said through a deep breath of summery air. “I want to bathe in it! I’d slither the streets naked if it were just a touch warmer!”
“That’s not very responsible.”
What was he saying? Elliot recalled his first meeting with the serpent dancer, when she’d sought employment from him with naught but the promise of sex. Asura wasn’t one to care whether an action was responsible. But even she had her limits.
Elliot glanced again at the empty city gates, and he swallowed. “Are you even permitted to enter the city? I don’t think I ever issued you a certificate of aegis.”
“Oh, I just finished discussing that with the brave soldiers keeping our city safe this wondrous night.” She giggled, then raised one slender hand to her face to touch at the curls of her hair. “They were very amenable to my negotiation. Yes, I think they all came away from that discussion fully satisfied.”
Asura paused to sniff at her fingers. Then, meeting Elliot’s gaze with her own, she licked them from root to tip. Her long tongue was forked at its end, and the little tendrils caressed her skin with a wet tickle. Elliot began to sweat.
“If only I could say the same for myself.” Asura advanced, slithering around Elliot and trapping him in a long, scaled loop about his feet. “Humans, especially males, have such little stamina after I sink my teeth into them. Even a whole room of them couldn’t keep pace with me. The only exception to that rule, in my experience, has been you.”
She completed her circuit and lunged into Elliot’s space, her hands on his shoulders. She leered close and washed him with the heat of her breath. Her eyes sparkled.
“You know just how to treat me right,” Asura hissed. “Elliot, won’t you do that for me now? I’m so very needy. And the moon!” She tipped back her head and beamed a smile upwards. “The moon bids me dance!”
Her tail tightened around his calves. There was little chance of escape for him now. Not that he dearly wanted to escape. Elliot took Asura’s wrists and pulled her off him.
“We can talk about this at the office,” he stalled. “I don’t have a lot of time tonight. Let’s go there together, then you can wait inside, and I’ll-…”
“Elliot!” Her eyes snapped back onto his, and her smile was gone. Her fangs glimmered in the moonlight. Her tail lashed tight around his thighs. “Don’t ignore me! You don’t come and watch me dance as often as you used to! You’ve been neglecting me. You should make it up to me.”
Yanking her hands back, she gripped the sides of his head and stared into his eyes. “I insist.”
Elliot’s vision swam. Asura’s irises were spinning, dancing, just as she liked to dance on Lantern’s little stage. She turned his mind on its head and refused to let it find its feet. Elliot wobbled, but her strong tail, coiling him up tight, didn’t let him fall. Drowning in her embrace, Elliot remembered belatedly that she had a history of hypnotising him.
“I insist!” sang Asura, and she shoved.
Together, they slipped onto the paving stones of the city of Layman. Asura lay over and around him, holding him tight and running her fingers through his hair. Elliot was helpless. He was unable to muster the strength to raise his hands against her. Not out of fatigue, he just didn’t see the need to.
And beyond Asura’s dancing eyes, the moon. So beautiful. It bid him dance.
“You’re so kind,” Asura moaned, licking his lips with her forked tongue. Her scaled hips pulsed against the rise of his cock beneath his trousers. “Elliot, you are so good to us. So generous with your time. So generous with your marvellous human body. Give me a taste, please.”
He was unable to fight as Asura moved one hand down his body, under her own coils and against his belly. She snaked her fingers into his trousers and tugged them open with expert dexterity. She ran a fingertip along his throbbing rod, then uncurled herself around his hips so she could manoeuvre him into position.
“Give me a taste!”
Asura squeezed him tight, and he slipped right in. The snake shivered as she embraced him with the full length of her body, skewering herself on his erection. She was wet and slick, and he delved deep. Her lips parted into a wide sigh of pleasure, slanted eyes creasing around her hypnotic irises. She gasped, showing off the long whip of her tongue and the sharp points of her fangs.
“Ohhh!” cried Asura. “Elliot! That’s… just what I need!”
She began to fuck him on the city street. Her pussy was a relentless suck enveloping his cock. Her coiled body was a vice that held him steady and erased any hope of escape. Elliot’s muscles cried out, his bones creaked.
But still, so good. Asura’s needy sex milked his cock of pleasure, and the hold of her scaled length, taking away his agency, made him feel strangely safe. He couldn’t fight, so he wasn’t obligated to try. He could let her take control. She was warm, and she was strong. She was making him feel so very good. And her eyes, and the moon, were beautiful.
“Elliot, darling!” she laughed against his slack lips, painting his skin with her ticklish tongue. “Yes! You know… just how to… make me… feel good!”
This was why he’d stayed with the Office of Municipal Integration. Not the sex; that continued to be a surprise every time it happened. But being of use to someone, supporting them with their needs, especially when the wider culture neglected or misunderstood them. There really was nothing like it. Elliot’s lips curved into a lopsided grin of pride as he was fucked by the snake, feeding her lust with his cock. His hands lifted dreamily from the stone and landed on her hips. He used a tug to encourage her thrusts to speed.
“Asura…” he groaned dazedly.
She giggled, stroked his hair. “Elliot…”
Maybe he had been neglecting her. Maybe this was his just desserts for not spending much time with her. Well, he ought to make up for lost time. He ought to treat her right.
Elliot slid one hand up her waist and over her arm, into the soft curls of her bound locks. He stroked. Then he tugged. Asura twitched and stared.
“You’re such a bad girl,” he growled.
Asura was a fiend and a menace. But Elliot knew from experience that getting her way was never the goal behind her mischief. She wanted someone to fight back.
While he still held the momentum, Elliot held tight to Asura’s hips and pushed upwards into her. It wasn’t much of a pound, not while she held him so tight, but the shocked gasp from her lips told him she hadn’t been expecting it. Elliot rutted up and into Asura again and again, preventing her from restoring her control.
“Such a brat!” he hissed through gritted teeth. “Asura, someone needs to put you in your place!”
“N-No!” Asura gripped his shoulders and glowered into his eyes. She fixed the full force of her hypnotic influence against him. It didn’t hold, not when her eyes kept crossing. “No, Elliot! I-I’m the predator! You’re – ahh! – my prey!”
She did feel magical around his cock. Elliot’s fierce erection was meeting tight resistance in the very depths of her. Asura shuddered around him, but he fought to not give her the satisfaction of watching him come.
“You’re a criminal,” Elliot chuckled as he fucked her on the city street. “You need to be punished for c-c-coming here without a permit!”
Asura snarled, pushing her lips against his. “Y-You are the one who will come!”
“I will let you do that for me,” countered Elliot. He had to blink sweat out of his eyes. “But only after I see your pretty lips scream my name.”
“N-No chance!” Asura gasped.
“Wanna bet?”
She tried to argue, but Elliot punished her with another upward thrust of his hips, and her brow tightened. Her mouth pursed, and instead of a saliant reply, all that came out was a screech of joy.
“Come for me, Asura,” Elliot coaxed. He kissed her lips, her scaled cheeks. He tasted the powdery fragrance of makeup on his tongue. “Come for me. Come!”
“Elliot! Y-You…! You…!!”
Asura came. Her hypnotic eyes snapped shut. She squeezed him with her whole body, and all the air left Elliot’s lungs. He choked, almost blacked out. But the warm kiss of Asura’s leaking pussy kept him grounded in consciousness.
“Elliooooot!” she screamed into his ear. Then the tension fled her, and Asura fell flat atop him, heaving breaths through her panting lips.
“Good girl,” Elliot whispered.
“M-Mmph. Elliot…”
Asura pushed herself up on shaking hands, and she stared down into his face. A long curl of hair tumbled out of her knot and tickled his cheek. Her bright eyes now reflected none of the moon’s eldritch light.
“Elliot,” she said again once she’d licked her lips, “what… is happening? Where am I?”
The serpent snapped an urgent look up and down the city street. “Am I in the city? Are we…?”
He couldn’t help but laugh. Asura’s baffled stare was too adorable.
“It’s the moon,” he said. “It’s affecting your blood. Call it sleepwalking, if you like.”
“I was having such a wonderful dream,” the snake sighed. “So many… new friends. But now I’m awake. How?”
How, indeed. The stimulation of her orgasm must have broken her out of reverie. The ‘terrestrial’ influence of sex, as Harriet might have described it, cancelling the loftier influence of the moon’s arcane chaos. That was good to know.
“I get the impression I should thank you, Elliot, my hero,” she continued, and her coy smile had returned some of her familiar confidence. “This silly feeling in my belly tells me you were the one to wake me from my sleeping. Is there something I can do for you to show my gratitude?”
He grinned. “You were about to make me come before you woke up.”
“Oh, well. In that case…”
She squeezed him, and Elliot sank into her afresh. He shivered. This wouldn’t take long.
“Have I told you lately how much I’ve missed you at the Lantern?” Asura sighed as she made love to him with her coils. The pump of her body was slow, deep and intoxicating around his cock. “You’ve been neglecting me. Did you know?”
“I-It came up,” he croaked.
“Mmm. You should come over more often.”
“I r-really should! Asura!”
“You should come, Elliot,” the snake purred. “You should come.”
“I-I…!”
He came, and the rush of pressure after Asura’s punishing treatment was transcendent. It left him in a wild rush, breaking his dam and flooding her pussy. His whole body shuddered with his seminal flow. Asura held him tight and drank up every drop from his pumping rod. She laughed proudly, victoriously, and she kissed him, sucking even his orgasmic cries into her body. Greedy girl. Wonderful girl.
“Asura…” he sighed once he was done. “Thank you.”
“Then we’re even? Good.” The snake winced, rolling her shoulders in her sockets and wriggling her tail down to its tip. “Unless you’d like to be a gentleman and walk me home? I don’t feel entirely steady. And I’d hate to suffer another bout of… whatever that was before I can get out of the moonlight.”
“I don’t think we should risk going by the Lantern,” said Elliot, “not if everyone’s there. I hate to think what they’re up to. But I can let you into the office?”
“You won’t be joining me?” she pouted.
Elliot chuckled. “Oh, my night’s just getting started.”
* * *
Elliot sealed the office door behind him, then locked it. Asura could free herself from her side if she felt the need, though Elliot had left her sleeping the rest of the night away in his bed. She’d been out like a light. Adorable.
Now that he’d stood up to a bully and had his cock drained, Elliot was feeling a lot more confident about his mission. The understanding, not properly tested but sounding very feasible, that orgasm could reduce the moon’s effect on a person, gave him a degree of hope. It was a weapon he could use to defend himself, from some who might bar his path at least. Elliot stepped down from the office doorway and onto the dirt road of the Low Town with a cocky stride.
He flinched at the sound of feathers at his back. So much for boldness. Elliot spun on his heel and stared up at the source of the sound. He spied a rush of black up in the sky against the moonglow, heard a distant, melodic cackle. Then nothing. Elliot’s heart refused to calm, and he moved on with a hurried step, hands deep in his pockets. He made his way west towards the edge of town and the dark labyrinth of Ilvarith Forest.
Harriet had suggested that the elves had done this, since that was their moon in the sky. Why? What did an endless night of debauchery gain for any of them? He’d not seen tell of any elves on Castle Road, nor the Low Town. Surely if they’d wanted humanity and her kin to fall into revelry, they would be here to take part in it. Too many questions. He just hoped Miriham would be around to answer some of them once he reached the elven city.
A gust of wind rushed up a nearby street, and anticipating a chill, Elliot tugged his coat tight. The gust continued to approach. Louder and louder. Too late, Elliot realised it may not have been natural. He tried to turn, but a dark shape landed between his shoulder blades and sent him tumbling into the dirt. He coughed, winded for the second time of the night.
“Attend to his legs!” snapped the weight pinning him down. “Hurry! We rise!”
Elliot wriggled in a bid to free himself, but a second attacker gripped his ankles in sharp claws. The one on his back tucked petite hands under his armpits and held him tight. The hold was stronger than those small hands suggested, and Elliot was helpless to resist as he was yanked upwards, off the road and into the air. He was flying.
Elliot yelped. He was taken high over the tops of the Low Town buildings, up towards the distant clouds. Towards the baleful moon. The flyer on his back soared with steady grace, contrasting the one holding his legs who carried him with rhythmic jolts of upward force. When he slipped, the hands against his chest snapped tighter around him. In his ear, a bestial growl of hunger.
He recognised the new townhouse on the south side of Low Town as it swiftly approached. He’d not found the chance to visit yet. Well, he was about to get that chance, as the flying kidnappers shot straight towards the low angle of its tiled roof.
“Drop!” came the command.
Elliot was released, and he cried out in terror. He hit the tile with his shoulder and rolled onto his back with a clatter of ceramic. He hugged his bruised arms and groaned out his pain towards the sky. Mercifully, he didn’t slip from his place on the roof. His new wounds would seem trivial if he fell two storeys.
He pulled open his eyes. The moon, so beautiful. So much closer up here. Then obscured, as a dainty figure surged from the sky above and landed on his hips. Sleek black locks framed wide, bloodshot eyes and a fanged mouth lined with noble lips.
“Good evening, Elliot!” laughed Penelope. “Out for a stroll, are we? On a night like this? Verily, it is as though you wished to be preyed upon!”
He stared up at his vampire attacker. It had been a while since he’d last seen the bloodsucker, since Penelope haunted the night up in the noble quarter, draining the essence of the hapless high-and-mighty. She didn’t like rich folk, but Elliot rather liked her. She just wasn’t the sort of creature you could up and visit if the mood took you.
“Hello,” he croaked, since he was still pulling air into his wounded body. “Nice to see you. I’m actually off on a quest to save the city, so if you could just let me down…”
“A quest? How noble.”
Penelope sat up on his hips. She sported a fetching riding jacket in luxurious black tonight, a fair match for her lovely long hair. She didn’t seem to be wearing anything beneath, though, and the moonlight made gentle shadows along the inner curvature of her breasts.
“And, pray tell,” said the vampire with a sharp grin, “what are you saving the city from?”
Elliot pointed up at the moon behind her shoulder, and Penelope’s smile turned dreamy.
“It is marvellous, isn’t it?” she sang. Her fingernails dug into his shirt and raked his skin. “Whyever would you wish the end of such a thing? I haven’t felt so attuned to my true nature in many long nights!”
“It’s dangerous,” Elliot insisted. “You’re dangerous, while it has its hold on you!”
“Oh, why? Because of a little bloodletting? It is hardly fatal, Elliot. Tonight’s many victims haven’t unduly lamented their fate. The state of some of them; away with the faeries hardly does their behaviour justice! Your antagonist moon’s doing, no doubt!”
“I wish I could trust that you’re being careful.”
Penelope rolled her eyes and pursed her lips, which Elliot knew as a sign she was about to get political.
“Elliot,” she said, “when your city taxes you of your hard-earned income, do you trust that the scriveners are counting your silver appropriately? Moreso than I, a dear friend, who only needs a little rich-man’s blood to sate her particular appetites?”
“Why are you in the Low Town, then?” he asked.
Penelope gifted him a saccharine smirk. “The buttery taste of moon-crazed nobility is sweet, but I wish to wash my palate with something different.” She began to roll her hips, and her dainty eyelids fluttered. “Something earthier. Saltier. Something like-…”
Her next words went unheard, as a second dark shape blustered into her and toppled her off Elliot’s hips. Elliot stared into a pair of huge, bright eyes, his shoulders pinned now by the feathery joints of a set of wings.
“Hello, Elliot!” squawked Mag with her own wide smile. “I’m here too! I captured you too!”
“Bird, attend to sensibility, I beg!” Penelope righted herself into a kneel and shoved Mag aside with both hands. Her usually immaculate locks were tousled by her fall, and her impatient scowl was an expression Elliot hadn’t seen before. “I asked you to wait!”
Mag hunched her shoulders. The harpy’s monochrome plumage ruffled from her chest up to the panelling of her hair. “You said I could have him too, if I helped.”
“Yes, after I am through with him.”
“Ah! I know this word!” Mag accused, leering a grimace at the vampire. “You want to give me sloppy seconds! No, I want him now!”
She turned those saucer-sized eyes on Elliot again, and he saw the blue glow of the moon reflected bright within.
“I want him now!” the bird hissed.
Penelope huffed. “Then I shall offer you the use of his face, while I take a ride on his manhood.”
“But I like his manhood.”
“His mouth is plenty skilled, take it from me. Don’t be greedy.”
Elliot, naturally, had no say in any of this. Penelope dismissed him by moving out of sight down his body and grabbing at the catch of his trousers. Her slim fingers made short work of his clothing.
Mag, meanwhile, planted her talons on either side of Elliot’s head and sat her bum on his chest. She loomed forward on her wings. She was naked tonight, and the graceful curve of her chest and abdomen looped down to the enticing, feather-lined slit of her pussy, which wriggled closer and closer to his lips.
“M-Mag,” Elliot grunted, “I thought you promised not to steal anymore.”
“Hm? Steal?” Mag tipped her head sharply to one side, her eyes wide. “What steal?”
“This! My honour! Sex, Mag!”
The harpy grumbled in her throat. She narrowed her eyes. “Elliot, you don’t want this? You?” Then she tipped forward, bending at the waist so that her face was right against his. “Tell me you don’t want this sex, and I will stop.”
His cock was out of containment. Elliot couldn’t see Penelope’s hands working their magic on him, but he did feel them pause.
He licked his lips. Then he laughed. “I… can’t in good conscience say I don’t want it,” he relented.
Besides, if he could get these two to come, like he’d done with Asura, they’d go back to being comparatively harmless. He’d satisfied them both before. He was reasonably confident he could do it again.
Mag was blinking, so Elliot lay a comforting stroke on the ridged flesh of her avian legs.
“I want it,” he explained. “You caught me, Mag. Come here and take me.”
The harpy grinned. “Elliot, I’m very happy you came out tonight!”
“And I’m-…”
He never finished his sentence, as Mag hopped off his chest and slammed her hips onto his face. Elliot got a mouthful of feather and salt. Her rutting plumage tickled his nose, and he struggled not to sneeze.
Mag was relentless. She rubbed herself vigorously on Elliot’s lips. Her animal grunting was unlike the vulnerable singing he usually associated with her. It was a hungry, desperate and sharp song. Elliot barely heard it through the insulating press of her feathery thighs.
“E-E-Elliot!” the harpy sang. “L-L-Lick! Taste!”
With little recourse but to obey, Elliot pulled his lips open and pressed his tongue into her plumage. Mag’s taste was a familiarly slick, salty brew. She rubbed it all across his tongue, his lips, even his nose. Drowning him, making her all he could sense. But Elliot’s precise pressure between her lips and over the little mound of her clitoris caused the bird to shiver to a halt. She squeaked.
“Elliot! H-Human mate! Yes!!”
Behind the blackbird, Penelope laughed. Elliot could feel hot breath, practically steam, on the sensitive flesh of his cock.
“Good! The prey recalls his place!” Her soft hand squeezed. “You are such a good meal, Elliot.”
A humid vice embraced his erection, and Elliot let out a shocked grunt into Mag’s pussy. Penelope was sucking him. She’d never done that to him before, but he could attest she was skilled. A circle of her thumb and forefinger acted as vanguard to the tight vacuum of her lips, the possessive lapping of her tongue. He could hear her moaning through the vibrations of her throat on his skin. Wet, doting and luxurious, Penelope sucked him.
Elliot flinched all the way up his spine the first time her sharp teeth raked his skin, and Penelope chuckled around his cock on sensing his anxiety. She didn’t pause to explain or mitigate the threat of her mouth. She just continued to suck. Elliot didn’t want her to bite him, but he also didn’t want her to stop. He idly wondered if the lifegiving properties of blood that her kind required could be found also in his come. That would be convenient. He’d feed her daily and gladly if so.
Sensing he was losing focus, Elliot raised his hands and planted them around Mag’s slim waist. He pulled her tighter against his mouth and sank his tongue deep between her folds. Mag sang atop his face.
“Ah-ah-ah! Y-Y-Yes!!”
“Yes, Elliot…!” Penelope’s tongue ran up his shaft and tickled his cockhead. “Luscious prey! How you spoil us!”
“S-S-Spoil me! Elliot!”
“There is hope for humanity yet, I see.” A rustle of fabric and a weight on his ankles told Elliot the vampire had shed her jacket. She wriggled up his thighs and rubbed his cock with her cotton-soft pubic hair. “We can all make use of your kind. You make such lovely playthings.”
Penelope’s warm hands touched his, still pressed around Mag’s waist. She sat tall on her knees, and Elliot’s wet cock slipped between her legs. Penelope shuddered.
“A-Ahh! Such a flame you have lit inside me! Pray, Elliot… quench it!”
With a push of her slim hips, Penelope squeezed his cock into her and sat herself down. Elliot slipped right up to her zenith. The vampire squealed.
“Ohh… I’m alive!”
Without warning, Elliot was accosted by a pummelling dance beneath the two women. Penelope’s fierce bouncing was a reverse rhythm of Mag’s furious rubbing. Every downward slam of the vampire’s hips was followed by a swipe of the harpy’s pussy. Elliot was caught beneath two pulverising acts of sex with barely the space to breathe. He was ground against the roof tiles. He was turned to dust by the animal rutting of two wonderful girls.
Yes, Elliot revelled in his destruction. The shrieking celebrations they cast into the moonlit night were adulations of the skill of his body. The moon had made them mad, but Elliot, buried beneath their lust, allowed himself to believe that he had driven them to madness. So overcome with desire, perhaps even love, that they willingly made themselves simple on the altar of his body.
Penelope’s slick pussy rubbed him up and down with a vampire’s enhanced strength. Mag’s lust-drenched lips drowned him in viscous lubrication. Their secretions suffused his skin and made him like them. Special, like them. More than human.
Elliot attacked Mag’s pussy with abandon, and where he was able, he thrust upwards into Penelope. In response, he heard Penelope’s rich laughter crack and falter. Her smug shouts of desire turned discordant. In contrast, Mag’s shrieking died on her lips. In their place, ragged, desperate breaths. He was winning. They would come in no time.
Perhaps sensing this, Penelope released Mag’s waist and put her hands on the bird’s breasts, then pulled. Elliot stared up at the new view he was granted, Mag sitting back on his chest and Penelope embracing her from behind, her fanged lips pressed against the harpy’s feathery ear. Two lovely, bouncing bodies. Two sets of shining eyes, locked on him.
“Elliot,” the vampire hissed, brushing Mag’s cheek with her breath. “Darling prey. Don’t you want to… t-to come?”
Sweat, glistening blue in the moonlight, dripped down her pale brow. Beside her, Mag’s big eyes spun with barely controlled joy.
Elliot, obviously, said nothing. Even if his lips hadn’t been sealed by avian pussy, he was working too hard to push his partners to orgasm. He licked with gusto, and Penelope’s bloodshot eyes narrowed into addled frustration.
“P-Prey,” she moaned, teeth bared in a desperate show of aggression. “I know you want to come! I give you permission! I allow y-your seed in me!”
Mag’s head lolled against Penelope’s. “Elliot! You should come! You should f-f-fertilise us!”
Elliot continued to ignore them. He let the lovely creasing of their brows spur his upward pounding, the hungry circles of his tongue.
“Prey, I insist!” Penelope’s hands were claws on Mag’s breasts, and her sharp teeth brushed the harpy’s bare shoulder. “I am o-o-ordering you! Come!”
“Elliot, come!” Mag agreed. “C-C-Come!”
“Please!” Penelope’s eyes closed, and her voice slipped into a breathy whisper. “Please come!”
“Elliot!”
“I need it!”
“Elliot!!”
Tossing back her head with a bellow of defeat, Penelope slammed one final time onto Elliot’s cock, and she came. Her teeth pushed against Mag’s skin, dangerously close to breaking through. Her arms around the harpy’s chest must surely have been restricting airflow.
Perhaps it was the discomfort that pulled Mag over the edge with her. Her pussy quivered on Elliot’s mouth and disgorged a flow onto his tongue. Her squeaking song was a long, wavering note, an exaltation to the moon above. The pair shook in one another’s arms. Their tremulous pressure threatened to tear Elliot apart.
Finally, Penelope opened one eyelid. Her eye glistened dreamily, and a strand of long hair slipped from her fringe and danced across her wet lips, the points of her teeth.
“You monster…”
Elliot came. His vision turned white. Bestial instinct made him push upwards and plug Penelope with his rod. Even so, thick semen dribbled from within and nestled in his pubic hair. His shaking shout of release was an offering into Mag’s lips.
The two women stared down at him, sharing in his release. Penelope’s lips curved into another doting smile, and she nuzzled Mag’s neck with her face.
“That’s better,” she said. “That’s so much…”
A blink, a wince. “What… just occurred? Why am I…?”
Mag’s reaction was much more dramatic. She started, head turning back and forth and lips a long, thin line of surprise.
“Why am I on Elliot?” she demanded.
Elliot patted the bird’s waist, the vampire’s thigh. “Are you feeling more like yourselves now?”
“I am,” said Penelope, pushing her hair back into order. “What a queer experience. I feel as one awakening from a long dream. I haven’t truly dreamt in quite some time. So odd.”
She put her sharp eyes back on Elliot, and her grin was equal parts mocking and appreciative. “I suppose you are going to claim your human rod as the cause of my sudden healing? How high above your station, silly prey!”
“Can you think of another reason you broke out of the moon’s spell?”
“Not presently,” she admitted. “Perhaps after some sleep.”
“Sleep!” Mag wobbled out of Penelope’s arms and fell face-first onto Elliot’s chest. She nuzzled him aggressively, and this time, Elliot did sneeze.
“Perhaps not here, songbird,” giggled Penelope. She stroked Mag’s black-and-white hair with her fingers. “We ought rid ourselves of moonlight, and I dimly recall Elliot is due on a quest to erase it from the sky. We should remove ourselves from his hair.”
Mag hugged Elliot’s shoulders with the joints of her wings, muttering petulantly, and he and Penelope laughed.
“Do you yet know how you will achieve salvation?” the vampire asked.
“Not yet. But I’ll need to get down from this roof first, in any case.”
“We can do that for you. Plenty recompense for your rod’s heroism this night.”
Elliot scoffed, pushing up onto his elbows. “You’re the ones who put me up here, you know.”
“And you have already been partially repaid, no? I saw how your prey lips twisted with joy at the squeeze of my sex. Do not tell me you didn’t enjoy it.”
Mag giggled against his cheek. “We had fun together.”
“I suppose we did,” Elliot relented. “Then, if you would be so kind.”
Before long, he was standing on the roof’s edge. Sleepy Mag was draped on his back with her avian legs around his hips, and Penelope, standing on nothing at all in the open air, held his hands. She smiled, and Mag’s warmth was sweet. Elliot held no apprehension in stepping off the roof.
* * *
The forest of Ilvarith was a sweltering cage, bathed in heavy dark like an overwarm blanket. Suffocating. Intoxicating. Elliot had long since shed his green and gold coat of office, and the white shirt beneath was drenched in sweat. His hair was sodden and stuck in his eyes, and his boots squelched in the mud. Heady scents of summer flora and the sap of old trees invaded his nose and cast spinning colours in his head. The arcane membrane that Harriet had named, the barrier between Elliot’s physical world and the ever-shifting dreamworld of the elves, was all around him, an electrified thickness of the air that he pushed through with each step.
The moon, still high, still glaring down at him from its astral throne. How long now had it held dominion over the world? More than one night’s duration, certainly. Elliot had lost count of the hours. And still that eldritch light cast its spell across the woods. Elliot often found himself chuckling at nothing at all, and he wasn’t the only one bewitched. Gnats and beetles settled on his warm skin to drink his sweat and mate with one another, no matter how often he cast them adrift with a brush of his hand. The nightbirds screeched an endless plea for sex into the starlight, where they didn’t collapse from exhaustion in the undergrowth. Deeper between the trees, the howling cries of foxes and deer. Even a bear, Elliot was sure, passing just beyond his path. It hadn’t seemed to know where it was going.
He trudged on through the night. The city of Layman was counting on him. His father had told him he was up to the challenge, and he didn’t want to prove the old man wrong. He just had to reach Ilvarith. Miriham would know what to do.
But when a trilling song drew his attention north, urging him in a different direction to the city of elves, he blinked sweat out of his eyes and moved to investigate. Few called the woods their home, and none of them human. Not anymore. Whoever was out beneath the boughs this night, they deserved to be seen. Elliot pulled his weary limbs through bracken and the lusty grasp of roots, and he pushed from the treeline into an unfamiliar glade.
It was a ruin of grey slate, not the chalky white that indicated elven architecture. Cylindrical pillars lined a wide path of long forgotten stone half-buried in grass. The remains of a wall provided a crumbling backdrop at the far side of the glade, the cracked shape of an empty window frame. And before it, a throne of cut stone, bare save for inscrutable carvings of people – or something like them – pictured in worship. With no ceiling to cover it, the furious light of the moon washed the ruined hall in blue incandescence, a burning fire that paled Layman’s sapphire suffrage. Elliot hesitated at the edge of the glade. For a moment, he was sure the light would turn him to ash if he stepped into it, so intensely it burned here.
There were elves bathing in the light, and the sight made his heart churn. The elves were dancing, but not with the bright, mischievous smiles Elliot had seen during the King’s Ball. Not with the sure steps and confident sweeps that Miriham had employed as she’d danced with him. No, there was something wrong with this dance, this drunken, stupefied dance of the elves. They swayed and staggered, lolled and tumbled. They fell, and they did not rise.
Many had turned their dancing into something else. Elliot’s eye took in elves copulating on the cut stone or in beds made of undergrowth. In pairs, mounted on one another, pinning one another to the earth. In threes, interlocked in increasingly dizzying configurations. In fours and fives, and beyond that, uncountable orgies. Elliot couldn’t pick one elf from the others.
The sounds made his ears shiver. Howling laughter, almost screams. Exhausted grunts that sounded like life’s final gasp. Weeping; horrible weeping. Was this the chaos of the elves’ original realm? If so, Elliot could see why they had come here in aeons past. He would have fled such mindless revelry too.
There was but one elf unaffected by the scene around her, a luscious, naked shape reclining on the throne with one shapely leg cast over an armrest. Her walnut skin glistened with sweat, and her black locks, long on one side but short on the back, had curled in the humid air. One slim finger brushed at the lobe of a long ear, and another danced in the air before her face, drawing spectral patterns of blue moonlight which her brilliant eyes followed. Her red lips curved around a smile that, for all the madness of her surroundings, was entirely present, entirely aware. She sucked in a breath, the curve of her chest rising, and then sang it out as a satisfied laugh.
Evelyn, Miriham’s cousin. Even months after their vicious encounter in the palace of Ilvarith, Elliot’s heart couldn’t make up its mind about her. She had been sweet to him, in a manner of speaking, and filling her up with come had been transcendent. But Elliot hadn’t been himself at the time. Evelyn had used an elven brew to rid him of sense and turn him into… well, into something like her current retinue, mindlessly rutting. A beast, and she had loved dancing with that beast.
Elliot trembled at the edge of the clearing, overwrought with emotion. Desire, certainly, there was no mistaking that. Fear. But also anger. This blue moon’s effect on the people of Layman was clearly Evelyn’s doing. It was so very like her, and Elliot could say that having only met her the once. Eventually, the anger overcame the terror, and he stepped into the glade.
“You.”
Evelyn blinked. Her eyes held a weight that pushed against him, but Elliot pushed back, reaching the near end of the ruined hall. Evelyn’s gaze examined, then celebrated him. She sang with laughter.
“You!” she countered, pointing one set of toes at him. “What wondrous fortune it is that you are here, Elliot of Layman! My tamed pet! I should have known that this night would bring you to your dear mistress’ heels.”
“I’d ask what you think you’re doing bringing this calamity upon the land,” Elliot spat. “But this isn’t the act of a woman with a plan. This is just madness. You’re mad for this, Evelyn. You need to stop.”
The bobbing dance of her foot ceased, and Evelyn’s sharp smile dropped. She scowled. “How dare you. Simply because you cannot see my design, do not discount it as mere madness, Elliot.”
Sneering openly, Elliot gestured for her to continue. Evelyn rolled her eyes.
“I learned something from my time with you,” she said, once more painting blue patterns in the air with her finger. “Humans lack foresight, and they lack stamina. Their numbers and ingenuity are fearsome, yes. But offer them pleasure in great amounts, and they will expend themselves on the sacrificial altar for you. They will gorge themselves until there is naught of them left. You felt it, no? The human urge to self-annihilate?”
Elliot gritted his teeth. Old shame burned bright and new in his belly.
“I gifted that to your people through the incarnation of the Feymoon,” said Evelyn. “Right now, they are indulging in its wondrous light. And soon, very soon, I shall rise from my waiting and march upon them. My people shall settle velvet collars around the necks of the animals of Layman. We shall put them in their proper place. And ever shall the moon burn bright, until all the terrestrial realm bows to me. As it should be.”
“Why?”
Evelyn faltered. “Why?”
“Layman has nothing you want,” Elliot snapped. “You would be destroying an age-old friendship, and for nothing.”
“For a new gamut of playthings,” Evelyn corrected.
“Who you will certainly grow bored of, and soon, if I know you. Just as you grew bored of life in Ilvarith. Bored enough to challenge your eternal King. This is all needless. Pointless.”
Evelyn clicked her teeth. “Says the shortsighted, short-lived, ignorant human.”
“You’ve underestimated us,” said Elliot. He reached up and pulled the buttons on his damp shirt, then tugged the garment off with a whip of his arm. Evelyn’s brow rose, and around the glade, a number of dancing elves paused their activity to stare at his bare chest.
“I can stop you,” he said, shirtless in the moonlight. “I’m gonna stop you, Evelyn.”
“By bringing me to climax and severing my focus on the spell, yes?”
He’d taken one step out of his boots and towards her, but already, Elliot stumbled. Evelyn laughed.
“You thought I did not know my own spell intimately? Or was thought beyond you when you came here? So eagerly you cast yourself into my care! You must have missed me so dearly. Come then, Elliot. Take me. Wrench me from my conjuration, if you can.”
She turned on her rear and raised her knees to proffer her sex to him. It glistened in the moonlight. Her viscosity appeared as blue gemstones. Elliot’s cock throbbed. It knew how good it felt to be inside her. Though her boldness worried him, he shook his head and reset his resolve. If she wanted to throw down just as much as he did, then good. He’d throw her down. He’d make her scream his name as her awful curse came to an end. Elliot strode across the stone of the hall.
One foot slipped between slabs and plunged into warm liquid. He staggered, arms flailing. He’d not seen the little pool hidden in this weird light. Evelyn laughed, and biting back a curse, Elliot tugged at his sopping leg. Then again. It would not be freed.
“What…?”
Before his eyes, the thick liquid in the pool began to grow upwards in sloppy tendrils around his ankle, then his knee, then his thigh. Elliot pulled against the trap, but to no avail. He could only stare as his legs were coated in sapphire-blue jelly. The shape entrapping him bulged into the silhouette of a familiar face. Black eyes with icy irises, a button nose and curled locks of blue hair. A pouting mouth, a thick tongue.
“I am sorry, Elliot,” sighed Sita, holding tight to his legs with both arms and much of her body. She kissed the fabric of his trousers with moaning lips. “I can’t help it. I’m hungry tonight, and your skin… so tasty!”
The slime pushed her face against his bulging erection and kneaded him with her lips. Her entangling hands sought the catch of his trousers and tugged them open. Elliot reached down to pry her off.
Instead, his wrists snapped back. Green vines bound his arms and yanked him off balance. He fell against a warm surface standing at his back. The scent of summer flora in his nose. The luxurious softness of breasts cushioning the back of his head.
“This is the new law of the forest,” said Sycamore the dryad, placing her big hands on his shoulders and holding him tight. “I am an agent of the natural order, as are you. You ought to obey. I am sorry.”
“Sorry,” said Sita again as his cock popped free of his clothing. The slime ran her lips along his swollen shaft. “Ahh, so sorry!”
Elliot wriggled in a bid to be free, but it was no use. Sita had his lower body in the tightness of her slimy form, and Sycamore’s hair-vines bound him relentlessly to her fragrant body. Sycamore’s hands ran up his neck and dug through his hair, coating her fingers in his sweat. She shuddered out a moan, and Elliot felt it through her chest, pressing against the base of his skull.
“W-Wait!” he grunted. “Wait!”
But they wouldn’t wait. Sita plunged her mouth onto his cock and engulfed him down her throat. Her alien interior got to work coating him in slime and massaging him. Her hands remained tight on his bare hips, and her head made deep, slurping lunges on his erection. Her black eyes fluttered shut. She ministered to him with a dreamlike insistence.
It felt incredible. Of course it did. Sita’s anatomy was ever a pleasure. It conformed to his shape and pampered him. Her lewd hunger, too, was a sight to behold.
“Elliot…” Sycamore rubbed his temple. Her huge body writhed needily against his back, her grand hips bouncing against the base of his spine and pushing him deeper into slime. Her nipples were insistent points in his hair. The vines of her hair were soft bindings that he endured gladly. She smelled divine.
Elliot’s head lolled against Sycamore’s cushioning breasts. His breathing sharpened to match the pace of Sita devouring his cock. A distracted moan escaped his lips, and with it, much of his resolve. There wasn’t anything he could do about this treatment, after all. Besides, would it really be so bad to give these two a moment of his time before he attended to Evelyn? Time was unstable in the Ilvarith Forest, and the night was unceasing. The moon was beautiful. He could afford one load of come down Sita’s throat, followed perhaps by a ploughing of Sycamore’s breasts.
Evelyn’s shrill laughter yanked him out of his stupor. Elliot scowled across the glade at the crowing elf, who was touching herself in her ancient throne.
“Good!” she sang. “Surrender to earthly pleasures, pet! Does it not feel so good to leave your agency behind? The path of the beast is so much sweeter, so much kinder, than whatever your city could offer you.”
Elliot gritted his teeth, even as his cockhead slithered against the back of Sita’s mouth. He’d shut that one up eventually. But then his eye moved to the mating elves around the ruins. Some had turned their attention on him, but all were still deep in the throes of sex. They juddered with the penetrating thrusts of partners, lying back on the stone. They held tight to their fellows and rubbed themselves inside one another. Elliot spied the black rings of exhaustion around their eyes. The mad, blue glaze of their mystical irises.
He sniffed, and the air was heavy, dense with pollen. His heart jolted in his chest.
“You are realising?” Evelyn mocked. “This is a place of dance, and my dance shall never end. Not while our dear forest warden is enjoying the dance with us.”
Sycamore’s spores. Elliot recalled a long midday spent in the dryad’s company. Even after hours exploring one another, he had not climaxed, save the once. When she had permitted him. Sycamore’s massaging hands in his hair told him permission was yet far away. If it came at all. If he came at all.
“I am going to watch you fall to pieces in the care of my new friends,” Evelyn said. Her finger slipped around the slick mound of her clit, and she bit her lip. “Elliot, I am going to witness your annihilation. Only when you are a quivering, panting mass of need will I invite you into my arms. Once you are here… ohh! I doubt you will ever, ever want to leave!”
Elliot once again yanked at his restraints, but all this did was make Sita squeak with excitement. Sycamore may not have even noticed he was trying to escape. The slime drank his pleasure through his throbbing cock, and the dryad’s chest heaved, rocking him towards surrender. Elliot’s vision blurred. His mind was melting. The thought of hours, days of being fellated, knowing nothing but stimulation, made his head spin. He was going to go mad.
He rested his head back against Sycamore’s breasts and took in the light of the moon. It really was beautiful. He’d been working so hard to keep it at bay. Would it be so bad to let it in? Giving up would be such a relief.
If only his home wasn’t counting on him…
Heaving against sensual lethargy, Elliot craned his head and met Sycamore’s amber eyes.
“Th-This isn’t… right,” he croaked.
The vines about his wrists twitched, matching Sycamore’s dark brow. She gazed down at him.
“You’ve seen the woods,” he said. “The animals. The plants. They can’t… p-put up with this! They’re so tired!”
The dryad slid her hands down to his shoulders. “This is a new cycle,” she intoned. “The old ways have died, as all things do. Old rules need not be applied.”
“After everything we did to maintain them? You know this isn’t a new cycle, Sycamore. Th-This-…” He was forced to pause as Sita’s tongue whipped at his shaft. “This is static! This is… s-s-stagnation! As agents of this world, we have to fight it!”
In the dryad’s eyes, the blue light of the moon faltered, a stone casting ripples across the surface of a lake. The vines around Elliot’s wrists began to slacken.
“S-Sita,” he said next. “Sita!”
The slime opened her eyes, though her gluttonous dance continued.
Elliot tried to smile. “Don’t you want to do this another way?”
Sita shook her head. “Mm-mm.”
“You won’t get to eat like this.”
She scowled, pulling her mouth off his cock with a pop of air. She met his eyes around the raw-red rod and pumped its length with her hand.
“Sweat is good,” she insisted. “Play is good.”
“But do you remember when we lay together in bed? That was good too, right? That was nice, wasn’t it?”
Her slick grip faltered. Sita looked away.
“I’d love to be with you again, Sita,” said Elliot. When Sycamore’s bindings loosened to allow him, he reached down and stroked the bouncy curls of the slime’s makeshift hair. “Not just sex. Being with you. Could we do that?”
She fell still. Her black eyes shimmered. “Elliot was… scared, when we met in the bath,” she whispered. “I liked it better when… you weren’t scared of me.”
“I liked it too. Could we go back to that? Please? I promise you, it will feel even better than this.”
Sita’s fingers slipped from his cock and rested in the grass. The slime pouted, then nodded. Sycamore moved around Elliot’s shoulder and stood with her.
“I believe this game has gone on long enough,” the dryad said with a powerful smile.
“Thank you, both of you.” Perhaps orgasm wasn’t the key to ridding the kin of humanity of mind control. Perhaps Elliot just had to make contact with their hearts, the way he’d done before. Such was the mission of the Overseer of Municipal Integration!
He looked up, and Sita and Sycamore parted to reveal Evelyn, still reclining on her throne. The elf’s eyes darted between the three figures, each wholly themselves once more. She licked her lips, and her fingers against her pussy were still.
“How would you direct us, Elliot?” asked Sycamore.
“Come with me,” he said. “Let’s put this mad sorceress in her place.”
“We can play some more?” Sita pulled herself up onto gelatinous feet, and she skipped across the paving alongside Elliot’s advance. On his other side, Sycamore took great, loping strides.
“H-Hold,” stammered Evelyn, shrinking into her throne. “Hold, mortals! I command you!”
“What’s wrong, Evelyn?” Elliot said. “Can’t take as good as you give? Don’t you want to dance with me?”
Though her brow remained twisted, the elf managed to sneer. “Bold words, beast! You believe you can yet undo my work? Then yes, let us dance!”
Parting her knees once more, Evelyn offered herself to him. Sweat dripped down her brow.
“I will yet take your heart!” she hissed. “I will yet make you beg for me!”
“We’ll see. Sycamore?”
The tall woman spread out her fingers. Thick strands of green snaked between Elliot’s bare feet and wriggled up the sides of the stone seat. This time it was Evelyn’s wrists that were bound, and the elf yelped as she had her arms tied up over her head, leashed to the throne. Another vine slithered around her neck. Evelyn squeaked, but it didn’t sound much like fear to Elliot. It sounded rather excited.
“Sita?”
The slime giggled, then lunged. The lower half of her human form fell apart like the rushing advance of a wave, and Evelyn’s thighs were coated in the blue gel of her formless legs. Sita formed her body into slippery bonds around Evelyn’s supplicant body. She made her legs into a lewd, gelatinous undergarment for the nude sorceress, holding her thighs apart and exposing her vagina. A thick nodule of slime slithered against Evelyn’s quivering clitoris. It pressed down. Evelyn croaked with delight. Sita, her upper torso reclining by Elliot’s feet, giggled with pride.
“Now then,” said Elliot, striding forward with cock in hand. “You were saying something about me begging for you?”
Evelyn gritted her teeth. “Y-You will!”
Elliot smirked. Then, looming over the bound elf, he fed his cock into her.
Evelyn’s head tossed back. Her eyes slammed shut. She fought against voicing her pleasure, jaw tight and lips quivering. Then she surrendered. Evelyn shrieked her joy up at the moon, and her pussy squeezed, wet and tight, around Elliot’s cock.
It had been a long night, and Elliot was tired. His body was bruised and lacerated. He was dizzy, and his mouth was dry. He’d been awake for far too long, making love for far, far too long.
But he wasn’t one to complain, especially not with the sweaty, walnut form of Evelyn bound up before him. She did feel splendid, the sex equivalent of a sweetened liqueur. Syrupy and languid, luxurious. Elliot put his hands on her waist, drawing a hiss of ticklish surprise from her lips, then began another push into her.
“Good girl,” he sighed. “Just like that. You just hold still and… let me take care of you.”
“Beast!” she wailed in response. “Th-This is not fair! How dare you be s-so… so very big inside me!”
“You like it?” he asked with a sweaty grin.
“M-Mmmph!” Evelyn wriggled against her restraints, but to no avail. It didn’t look to Elliot like she was trying very hard.
Elliot set himself into a deep, rolling rhythm. He pushed his cock into Evelyn over and over. He plumbed her depths and teased the edges of her, again and again. Moisture dripped from his hair and splattered the flat plain of her writhing stomach. It ran down the bare mound of her pubis, then escaped into the folds of her bum.
A grip around the base of his cock made him stop and blink. Sita’s gooey bindings had taken a hold of him, just as they were coating Evelyn’s sopping pussy. When Elliot thrust anew into his lover, Sita’s flesh was squashed lusciously between them. She made a warm, insulating, lubricating layer for him, and down at his feet, the slime was singing. She held tight to Elliot’s bare leg and pushed her lips against his knee, squealing against him.
“Elliot!” she gasped. “T-Tasty!”
“You have certainly learned a thing or two,” chuckled Sycamore. The dryad pressed against his back and recommenced her stroking of his shoulders. Her proud smile pushed through his hair and kissed his temple. “Mighty impressive, for a human.”
“Glad you approve.” Without dropping his resolute rhythm, Elliot snuck a hand off Evelyn’s waist and fed it around his back. He sought Sycamore’s bushy sex around his bum, then the wet within.
Sycamore let out another rich laugh, then let it fall apart. “Mmm,” she growled, massaging his shoulders, “you ought to be focussing on yon elven tyrant, dear.”
“I can give you a hand too,” he insisted. “I need to thank you for your help. For all your help. I need to reward you for your… prevailing friendship.”
The dryad squeezed him. She rolled her body on his sneaking fingers. “It is so very rewarding to be your friend, Elliot.”
“I-I love it!” groaned Sita. “I love you!”
Sycamore moved a hand down to Elliot’s bum. She coaxed him to plough Evelyn with speed. Then, touching his chin with her other hand, she pulled his face around and kissed him deeply. Sycamore tasted of spiced honey. Her taste dripped deliciously down his throat.
With the help of his friends, Elliot found a new reserve of strength. Grunting with pleasure and exertion, he slapped his cock into Evelyn at pace. He juddered her body against her throne, and each reluctant cry of joy from her lips was more fuel for his flame.
Elliot broke off his kiss with Sycamore and peeped down at the elf. Evelyn was panting. Her eyes were wild, pupils fat and full like black pools. Her red tongue was out from between her pouting red lips. She snapped a look up at him on seeing his attention, and Elliot smiled.
“You can come if you like.”
Evelyn sneered. “A-As if I would debase myself to you! I am yet in c-c-control, Elliot of Layman!”
“You’ve come for me before,” he purred. “I’d love to see it again. There’s no need to be shy.”
The elf twitched in her bindings. Her next words tumbled together into sexual nonsense.
“Come for me, Evelyn,” Elliot grunted, punishing her all the while with his cock. “Come for me, my elf princess!”
“You should come, elf,” laughed Sycamore. Her grand pussy shivered around Elliot’s probing fingers. “The game is over. Let it go.”
“Let go!” moaned Sita at the base of the throne. The fronds holding Evelyn captive wriggled against her engorged clit. “Let go! It feels so good!”
Blue moonlight. It washed over his skin. It melted his boundaries. Elliot swam in the chaos of Evelyn’s Feymoon. The waves no longer threatened to overcome him. No, they bowed to him!
And Evelyn came. Elliot was shocked out of his stupor. He hadn’t expected her to finish so fast. Holding tight to her waist with one hand, he pushed his cock as deep into her as it would go. He staked her against the back of the throne. He felt her orgasmic shuddering as his own.
“Fuuuuck!!” Evelyn’s cry shattered the heavy air.
A crunch of distant glass shook the glade, and the unearthly blue light warped, the beams bending like lantern oil mixing with water. Gossamer petals of broken moonlight tumbled like snow across the stone and trees. They tickled Elliot’s skin.
It was over. Evelyn was a lolling mess of sweat on her royal seat. Her eyes were crossed and unfocussed, her eyelids fluttered. The long side of her black fringe brushed across her nose. She fell slack in her bindings.
Before Elliot could take a breath, Sita was leaning up into his eyeline. She was beaming. “Now Elliot!”
“Yes,” said Sycamore, recommencing her riding of his hand. “You have earned release, Elliot. Take it.”
He licked his lips. The sky above had lost its lustre and was now a much more sensible shade of dark. Broken shards of fey fizzled away in the grass. But he was hard, and Evelyn felt good. Sycamore was right. He’d earned this.
So, with both feet firmly on the earth, Elliot fucked Evelyn. The elf whimpered under his redoubled pounding. She soaked his cock with her fluid.
“C-Come, Elliot!” groaned Sycamore. “Come, saviour!”
“Do it!” giggled Sita, pumping her fists in encouragement. “Feed her! Feed us all!”
And from the depths of her fatigue, Evelyn chanced a crooked smile. “P-Please,” she muttered. “Oh, please!”
Her sleepy squeeze yanked him right over the edge. Holding tight to the elf beauty, Elliot came into her pussy. His final load of the night was meagre, but Evelyn’s womb drank it up gratefully. On shaking legs, Elliot quivered out his climax.
“Mmm!” Sita nuzzled her face between the two lovers and stuck out her tongue. She licked the fluid that leaked out from between them, both Evelyn’s lubrication and Elliot’s lacklustre come. When Elliot staggered backwards and out of her, Sita engulfed his dripping cock in a greedy gulp and sucked him clean. An aftershock of climax sent a dribble of come down her throat, and she swallowed it with a happy sigh.
Sycamore, meanwhile, finished herself on his fingertips. Her vines slipped from around Evelyn’s slender limbs and gripped Elliot instead. They bound him up in the heavy scent of the forest.
“Nnngh!” The dryad’s climax was a tight embrace across Elliot’s whole body, even and especially his fingers. She grunted her pleasure into his hair. “Elliot! E-Elliot!”
Sycamore peeled herself off Elliot’s wet skin. When he threatened to topple over, she returned a hand to his shoulder to keep him upright.
“I am reborn!” she sang to the silver moon. “The cycle begins anew! All is well with the world!”
Around the glade, the elves of Ilvarith were coming forth from their cursed rutting. They blinked in the moonlight, whispering to one another. Their eyes fell over and over onto Elliot.
Elliot, naked in the moonlight. A dryad’s arm on his shoulder, and by the feel of his skin, a nectar from her nipples on his back. A slime still sucking on his wilting member. An elven royal quivering from his ministrations, stained with his semen. Scale markings on his thighs and stomach. The faint red lines of teeth on his rod, deeper lines on his shoulders from a set of talons. Sweat and saliva and all manner of other fluids caking his chest and lips.
So, of course, now was when a great host of new elves appeared from deeper into the forest. These came chattering and singing, and they were dressed in the gowns and breeches of a people in celebration. Though clearly tired, seen in the black around their eyes and the relative clumsiness of their approach, they smiled and laughed in full lucidity. At their head came Sayge; Elliot’s bleary vision recognised the King’s seneschal from his time in the city. The tall elf held out his arms, and though his bright eyes took in Elliot’s ludicrous state, his wide smile was approving.
“Here he is! The breaker of the spell! The hero of Ilvarith! Elliot of Layman, you have saved us all!”
A cheer went up from the host. Some of the dreary folk from the glade even tried to join in. Elliot swayed under Sycamore’s strong hands. Down at his crotch, Sita had turned her hungry lips on his balls, licking the sweat off his folds of skin.
“Sir Elliot?” Sayge’s head tilted to one side. Clearly he’d been expecting something from him. “Are you well? Please, is there anything you desire? How can we be of service to you?”
Elliot’s lips were swollen, and his tongue was dry as sand. It took him a few tries to get his words out.
“W-Water,” he gasped. “Sleep.”
The elves laughed. Sycamore likewise chuckled. Her breasts bounced against Elliot’s shoulder.
“Drink we have, and plenty!” said Sayge. “But sleep? Sir Elliot, His Eminence the King has asked to see you! He wishes to thank you personally for your endeavours this curséd even.”
Elliot groaned. He was so tired. The beginnings of a headache were working across his brow.
“You should not keep the King waiting,” said Sayge with a wag of his finger. A bare hint of sharpness had entered his speech. “He will want to celebrate you properly. Verily, this night is far from over.”
“We shall help you,” whispered Sycamore. “Let us go, Elliot. The crown may be heavy, but we shall hold you up.”
Sita finally relinquished his cock with a lick of her lips. She grinned up at him. “Party!” she said.
It took everything he had to keep the resentment from his expression, but Elliot managed it. With the help of his friends, he staggered into the care of the elves of Ilvarith.
* * *
The sun had finally risen over the city of Layman. After the long night, the rays burned the skin of the people, emerging squinting out of their homes and taverns. Many had misplaced clothing. Many had awoken in someone else’s bed.
Out on the western edge of the Low Town, Sasha and the few of the city watch capable of action had assembled to patrol the Ilvarith treeline. And though it had only been a couple of hours since his departure, Elliot emerged, wincing against the sun’s powerful light. Sasha pointed, then raised her voice.
“Here he is!” Sasha waved with both hands, and her smile was wide. “Elliot! You did it! What did you see in there?”
Elliot’s skin was pale. His eyes and cheeks were sunken, and his hair was an unkempt mess around his ears. His city overseer’s uniform had slipped from one shoulder. He wore a garland of out-of-season wildflowers around his neck, and his forehead had been painted with gold pigment, an alien sigil that hurt Sasha’s eyes. When she squinted, Sasha spotted kiss-marks of glittery paint along his cheeks and neck, descending deep into the collar of his crusty shirt. Elliot held himself up with one hand on the last tree of Ilvarith, panting heavily.
“Elliot?” Sasha called when he didn’t respond. “You alright?”
Elliot took one step out of the trees. Then he fell, his face planting with a thud into the soft soil. He was asleep before he hit the ground.
laymenstory
Ewan Stone 
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