1: Slaves and Servants
The town of Quanish stood on a peninsula in the Northeast of the continent of Perversia, its ramshackle architecture almost a mirror of Perversia's overall political structure. For whilst Perversia was nominally under the control of the three goddesses who resided within the Holy City of Shareem, the reality was that Perversia was a chaotic land. The continent was willfully strewn with countless petty dictatorships, independent fiefdoms, walled cities towns whose rulers regularly took the title of Emperor, King, Lord or Baron, mostly according to whimsy rather than any hereditary right.
Likewise, the port of Quanish was a riotous mix of influences and architectural styles. Nominally independent from all other rule, Quanish was a thriving port which at first glance was a bewildering mixture of architectural styles and cultural influences, as the town had been built and razed, rebuilt and razed again over the centuries. Yet a closer look revealed the historical influences that had shaped the town. The hundred years that were spent under the rule of the Pirate Islands, for instance, could still be seen in the preferred fashions of the townsfolk, along with certain roguish attitudes. Prior to the influence of the Pirate Islands, the battle for inheritance of Quanish between the three sons of Olymph the Grotesque, left the town split into three distinct quarters, each with its own gaudy style as the feuding brothers attempted to outdo each other with brash architectural statements culled from various influences across Perversia. An observer who looked further back still and stripped away the faded gold minarets and turrets, would find austere elements from when many of the townsfolk became members of the Church of Artice. This brief aberration eventually led to the near razing of an area now called Pleasant Green, under which the body of many a priest and the remains of at least two churches lie.
Going even further back, beneath the semi piratical fashions that they citizens adopted and the gaudy ramshackle puzzle of the town, a few signs were still visible of the long-passed time when the townsfolk consorted freely with a colony of Sea Daemons that once resided in a reef. The reef was long since gone, for reasons lost to history. A true native of Quanish was recognizable by a faint bluish hue to their skin, which still after centuries of breeding with pirates, traders, settlers and passing soldiers, stubbornly refused to fade away completely. Their fingernails still mostly grew into points rather than smooth curves. A carving above a doorway here or an almost destroyed relief there gave testament to the carnal acts that the inhabitants used to engage in with the Sea Daemons of old, before the colony crumbled. It was still, amongst the true natives, considered a good year if a child was born with a tail. And when the moon was gibbous, and the tide right, the inhabitants of Quanish still to this day left their houses to bathe and fornicate in the warm shallow waters of the frisky sea. If one or more of their number and did not return from such revelry, this too was considered a good omen - and not a sign that a Sea Biter has taken them, or that a cuckolded husband had used the cover of darkness to his own bitter ends.
High above all this, in Quanishes Citadel, Eldred the Uncanny looked down upon what used to be his domain from an open window - and spat vehemently.
He hoped that a stray wind would enable his saliva to catch one of the degenerate townsfolk below in the eye. His former people, he knew, cared nothing for the reversal in his fortunes that had occurred some months earlier, stripping him of his title of Lord of Quanish, reducing him to less than a servant.
It was probably, he guessed, regarded as a good joke.
Eldred was a bedraggled spectacle. Once he had worn fine cloths and silks, and exquisite leather boots, and had adorned himself in precious metals and gems. Now he was clothed in a rough potato sack which, by cutting three holes, he had fashioned into an unflattering, coarse dress. He walked the cold stone floors barefoot. Stripped of his staff, he now carried a simple, thick candle to light his way through the halls and stairways of the citadel. He served where a short while earlier he had ruled, and the bitter taste lingering in his mouth was a reminder of how he served.
Somewhere beneath the stooped shoulders, the ragged beard and the hooded, sullen eyes was still the not entirely unhandsome Magician and Lord of old. Eldred, who had reveled under the moon with the night witches and slept with succubae, escaping with his soul intact. Eldred, who had ruled Quanish with an iron grip for over a decade. Eldred, who had fought the Threefold Foul, and won, banishing it back to the nether hells.
But to the casual observer all that could be seen now was nothing more than a poorly clad and surly servant.
Eldred turned away from the open window. He had been summoned to his mistress's chamber, and he shuddered to think what punishment she would create if he was tardy. With sullen footsteps, he made his way up the stone stairs.
Eldred had good reason to be sullen, beyond the simple fact that he had lost his town and been stripped of his magics. Since his fall, he had also been magically forbidden from seeking pleasure for himself. He was not allowed to physically handle his member with his own hands, feet, arms, or indeed with any part of his body. This, Eldred had discovered after several weeks of various limbic exercising, also included using his own mouth. He was not allowed to let another to pleasure him, either, nor was he allowed to seek pleasure by rubbing his cock against any solid surface. Various experiments with the wind and liquids had yielded no respite, and an attempt to pleasure himself against a glass surface had almost ended in bloody catastrophe. It was with absolute despair that he had approached the horses in the stables, only to find that even here he was unable to satisfy his cock, the spell that bound him had prevented him from thrusting his cock between the animal's tantalizing entrances.
It was not, however, only the inconvenience of not being able to spill his semen that caused Eldred daily discomfort. Even pissing had required several attempts to get right to avoid urine spilling onto his feet and legs, and the resulting hands free pose that he was forced to use was most unbecoming for one who had once ruled Quanish.
Eldred hesitated before the door to the Chamber of Nymphs, reluctant to go any further.
He scratched his chest, where the rough cloth of the sack that he was wearing was causing an itch. From the other side of the door, he heard feminine giggling.
Aralyn, the bitch, was no doubt enjoying the nymphs, he thought bitterly. His nymphs, he reminded himself. It was Eldred who had captured them with promises of gold and honey, and it was Eldred who had bound them inside the chamber. It was Eldred who had spent months tracking the pair. They were his toy, not hers. How sweet the twins had been when they were his, despite their complaints.
His cock started to swell at the thought. Eldred scratched again, and grimaced as a few drops of hot wax fell from the candle and onto his hand. He tipped the remainder of the overflow onto the floor, where it splashed and cooled.
The giggling on the other side of the door continued.
Eldred knocked on the door.
"Enter," came Aralyn's voice.
Reluctantly, but with no choice in the matter, Eldred entered the Chamber of Nymphs.
The sumptuous chamber, rich in reds and browns, was dim to the eye. Dawn was approaching outside the Citadel, but the rich tapestried curtains were drawn. The central bed was large enough for a dozen individuals to comfortably rest, carved from redwood. Its posts had various erotic carvings, mostly of women, being penetrated in various ways by over-sized phalluses. Upon this bed, by the light of a single flickering candle, Eldred could dimly make out three female shapes. There were wet sounds as the indistinct forms and curves shifted slowly around each other. Eldred thought he could see the twins as they shifted around their new mistress, but she was obscured from view. The warm shadows played on his imagination.
"Eldred," Aralyn's voice purred from somewhere within the vast bed and the tangle of shadowy bodies.
