Author's Note -- If you're a Coven fan then don't worry Laura and friends will be back soon just wanted to get another story started too.
Chapter 1 -- The Map
Jess gasped in excitement, her whole body shaking with the physical excitement. She'd finally done it, years of loneliness and failure were now behind her. No longer would people make jokes about her, tease her or call her a silly, little girl. Finally she felt like a woman.
"QUIET!" The stern and ageing librarian shouted at her from across the stacked bookshelves.
Jess shook her head, still smiling, she wasn't going to let some silly old bat ruin her moment of triumph. She'd finally found Francis Cuthenburt's map! Every other historian had claimed the map was a myth but Jess had known otherwise. They might think it had been invented by Victorian storytellers to add a little flavour to their tales but she'd found reference to it in the much earlier works of Father Victor Fileni when she'd been studying for her doctorate. Fileni was a source trusted by few historians but she'd never found him to let her down and so that had been enough to convince her the map was real. However her tutors were the first to laugh at her when she suggested so in her thesis. It had almost got her kicked out of the university, with one professor suggesting she may as well have written about the Loch Ness monster or Bigfoot. It had been a massive blow and she'd been devastated, in tears for days with the thought of her long dreamed of career vanishing before her eyes. Yet she'd never been one to back down when others told her she was wrong so she'd carried on. Thankfully her unparalleled knowledge of pre-Roman Britain meant she did, in the end, get her PhD even if half of her teachers didn't think it was fully deserved.
However that had only been the start of the ridicule. She understood why the map seemed so ridiculous to other scholars. It was claimed the map showed the path to an ancient and lost underground city that had existed at the height of the Iron Age. The city was home to a mighty and powerful Pictish tribe that numbered in the hundreds of thousands and who had amazing technologies and even magically powers. The story went that in the early 1800's gentleman adventurer Cuthenburt had discovered this city hidden in the wilds of Scotland along with it's supposed treasures and mysteries.
This idea was clearly anathema to most historians. The pre-Roman tribes of Britain never built cities, let alone underground ones. And any mention of treasure or magic was usually the first clue that such stories were total nonsense. Their argument was further backed up by there being no actual evidence the map was ever drawn and only scant references, outside of the tabloid tales written half a century later, that Cuthenburt was even a real person.
Yet Jess had persisted. Fileni was merely the first reference to the map or the city from sources much more reliable than Cuthenburt. She'd published a series of articles arguing the map and the city were real but each time was met with howls of laughter and scorn. She had soon been fired from her job at a heritage society and found it increasingly hard to find work as by then she'd been clearly labelled as a crackpot. But Jess was sure she was right, she knew it didn't fit into history's picture of the era but just dismissing all the evidence out of hand was just bad science.
So relegated to working in a museum running tours for stupid tourists she continued her work in the evenings and at weekends. Slowly amassing all the clues she could until finally a few weeks before she'd become sure that the map was hidden in the library she was now in -- the library at the British Museum no less. The map had been stuffed in a large collection of similar documents and never properly analysed. Due to her reputation it had taken some time and the calling in of a few favours before she could get access but she eventually was allowed and once inside it had taken her only a few minutes to find the legendary map.
Breathing slowly and running a hand through her shoulder length, silky red hair to calm herself down she started to examine the map properly. She'd expected the map to be roughly drawn but was in fact exquisitely decorated. The main portion of the map showed a detailed route from the town of Lairg, a path that seemed to ran for miles through the highlands. At one side it showed the fabled city itself. The city wasn't mapped in detail but certain key features had been sketched out and it was here the artist had really put the work in. In one section of the city was drawn a beautiful red haired, Celtic women who the map indicated stood guard over the city. Most of the city however seemed to be populated with a host of bizarre monsters, each more alien than last. Looking more closely Jess noticed that one of the tentacled beasts near the entrance hadn't been drawn alone. In fact it's slimy appendages were wrapped around a beautiful and naked blonde girl. And not just wrapped around the girl but fucking her -- Jess could clearly see tentacles pushed up her pussy and arse.
Jess immediately felt her pretty, freckled face go bright red. This had not what she'd expected to find on the map. She looked around to make sure that no one could see her staring at such pornographic images. Sure they could not she turned her attention back to the old map, even more intrigued by it than she had been moments before. Further examination revealed two more such scenes on the large map. In the first a dark haired women was being what could only be described as gang-banged by a group of Pictish warriors, drawn as if it were still the 2nd century BC. In the final scene a cute blonde was being fucked by a giant, tentacled slug like monster. It then dawned on Jess who these women were, in some versions of the story Cuthenburt had been accompanied by a trio of sisters, daughters of a local aristocrat who had a keen interest in history, but they had never returned with him. Sometimes it was said that had been why the map was lost, Cuthenburt had retired in scandal and fled the country as the aristocrat declared revenge for murder of his daughters with all of Cuthenburt's work destroyed or hidden.
Jess had never been so sure about that part of the tale but the map now suggested the sisters had been there with Cuthenburt after all. Though she had to admit it seemed unlikely the cause of their vanishing was at the hands of monsters. She thought perhaps these monsters were a feeble attempt at an excuse of Cuthenburt's? Maybe he had murdered them after all? That idea upset Jess a little as she'd long admired Cuthenburt and the way their quests for the city had been the same. Yet the idea the map was a cover up of murder didn't really make sense either as it was very clear the women were very much enjoying themselves with the disgusting creatures and that seemed a very odd way to explain their fate to a worried father! Maybe they were more metaphorical? An example of the dangers of an ancient ruined city and the artist just got a little carried away but showing such sexual pleasure was still odd and more than a little distracting. In fact Jess's attention just kept returning to them.
