A Drow's Dilemma Ep. 65: Lotta

Author's Note:

A Drow's Dilemma began as a one-on-one roleplaying project and has been converted into a chapter-by-chapter format for weekly posting with the permission and assistance from my partner. It will contain a considerable amount of sexual themes such as femdom, lesbian, straight, 'reverse' rape, BDSM, group sex, romance, and other themes. The main goal of the story, however, is to tell an epic tale of adventures, gods and goddesses, fae, and nymphomaniacs. This episode and every episode to come will be available for free on Literotica for the foreseeable future. All characters that engage in sexual or suggestive situations are mentally and sexually mature: the human equivalent of 18 for their race.

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Episode 65: Lotta

Demetus led Caleldir and the rest of the party through the castle. The route was not as direct as Demetus would have liked, which he observed on multiple occasions. There were also a few tense moments where the party was very nearly caught by a servant or a guard. But eventually, they made it without alerting the whole castle of their presence.

"Through this door," the skald finally said as he float-walked through it.

But the door was locked.

"Still got those tools on you, love?" Ashyr asked as she rattled the handle impatiently.

Caleldir stared at the lock. "Hmm... Oh. Yeah. Lockpicks. I remember those. Just one of my many mechanical skills." He laughed slightly. "I used to use those back when I did not solve all my problems through ritualistic suicide. Good times." Punching himself in the gut, he made an awful noise, then horked up the small leather bag of lockpicks. "I was quite proud of myself for thinking this up." He said with satisfaction. "Takes so much more creativity than a Knock spell." With that, he pulled out the picks and set to work on the door.

After a few moments, he stepped back and wiped his brow. "This lock is a bit more troublesome than I am used to," he admitted.

Ashyr huffed in annoyance. She wanted to get to Carlotta right damned now - especially if she had endured any abuse at the hands of Faust. The little human probably needed a see a friendly face. All this rattling at the door probably didn't help. The ranger could help but imagine a terrified Carlotta huddling in some corner or another. "Selene, can't you do anything?"

The mage frowned. "No. There's a spell for it, but I never bothered to learn it. I don't make a habit of breaking and entering."

"Well, we don't really have the time for you to learn it. Strength me. I'll bash the fucking thing down," Ashyr said through clenched teeth.

"That's too loud; people will know that we're here!" Selene protested.

"And we'll take out whoever comes to look. You can fix it after, can't you?"

"No, not the whole door; it's too big! Maybe if you break the handle I can do something about it, but it will take time and finesse. And it'll still be quite loud but whatever, what other choice do we have? Althaia should do it, though. She's stronger to begin with." With that, Selene laid a hand on the nymph's shoulder and buffed her strength. "Quickly. We spent too much time here already!"

"I do not understand locks." Althaia shrugged. "But, if I follow you, we just need to break the lock, but do so without too much noise. Thanks for the strength buff: I think that it will be useful for this." Closing her eyes, she summoned forth a lot of tiny vines that crept through the lock on the door, then grew out much larger. Years of plant-growth, plants that could grind mountains into dirt, infested the lock, shattering it. The vines retreated from where they came, and vanished. "That should do the trick." Althaia said with satisfaction. Then, she hit the lock with her bare foot, deadening the sound from what it would have been had she used her steel boot, but not noticeably lowering the power of the kick (because the lock was not cold iron, of course).

With a crack loud enough to make the drow wince - not with pain, but with regret for how loud they were forced to be - the locking mechanism within the door handle broke. Then, finally, the door cracked open.

"I meant for it to be slightly less loud than that." Althaia said sheepishly. "But it is what it is. Oh well. This is a good a place as any to make our stand."

"Knock out anyone who comes, dearest." Ashyr said quickly. She didn't even wait for a nod from Selene before the ranger pushed her way through the door with Caleldir at her heels.

Beyond the door was what looked to be a three-room apartment. It was comfortably furnished, but not as overtly lavish as one would expect from a lord's quarters. Not, at least, by the drow's expectation. The room directly beyond the door held a small table, a fireplace, and several comfortable-looking couches. To the right, Ashyr could see a room and part of a unmade bed beyond. Across the room was another door currently shut, but must have led to the washroom. The ranger quickly took in her immediate surroundings to make sure there was nothing more dangerous than what was right in front of her.

"Who are you?" Carlotta demanded. The little redhead stood in the middle of the living room, her stance aggressive, and her hands wielding a sizable candelabra. She was in a translucent nightgown of some sort with an overlarge jacket covering her upper half. Probably Faust's. What could be seen of her body - everything above her neck and below her knees - was only lightly bruised and scratched. All were injuries that could easily be received in her initial capture. The charcoal that she normally wore around her eyes ran and smeared down her face as if from tears, but at the moment her eyes were dry. And angry.

Ashyr in human form lifted both her arms, palms out. There were no obvious weapons on her body. "Shh, Lotta. It's me, it's Ashyr. I'm in disguise."

Carlotta lowered her impromptu weapon, but didn't completely relax. It could be a trick. Someone could have learned Ashyr's name to get her to... what, be in even deeper shit than she already was? Her pretty, freckled face twisted in confusion.

Caleldir blinked. Rather than identify himself, he merely dismissed Selene's disguise. Then identified himself. "And I am Caleldir. Remember me? We are here to rescue you! And kill Faust. And take over Port Afron."

Lotta let her candelabra clatter to the floor, and her posture slumped from aggressive to simply exhausted. "I'm so glad to see you two."

Meanwhile, it did seem that the noise of the lock attracted someone. An inquisitive guard poked his head around the corner, his dark brow furrowed in a puzzled expression. Selene was ready for him at her place with her back to Ashyr just inside the door. Her hand shot out, and the guy crumpled to the floor, asleep.

"I'm going to run out of spells at this rate." She griped. "Let us get him inside and get the door shut. Then maybe I can make it look like we we never here." And by 'us,' she most definitely meant Althaia, the strongest of the party. The mage certainly wasn't going to drag the heavy guard by herself.

"I can drag him in." Althaia said. So, she did, pulling him into the room. "We should stay here until it is time." She said. "Either Faust returns, and we ambush him, winning in one fell stroke, or we launch our invasion from his bedroom. He will not see that coming!" She took a deep breath. "At any rate, I am tired of being a human." Suddenly, she remembered how to get out of the disguise: she was a natural druidess. She blinked from human, to cat, and then to nymph. She did not bother to put clothes on after shifting. It was possible she had forgotten to.

Lotta's eyes blinked rapidly in surprise. Yeah, she spent a lot of time with druids. But every time one shifted for the first time in front of her, she was a little surprised. What was truly shocking was the form that this other woman settled into. Despite all the shit she'd gone through recently, Carlotta couldn't help but notice how absolutely gorgeous the strange blonde was.

Demetus hovered slightly off the ground to the side of the living room. Althaia was the most beautiful woman he'd ever laid eyes on. The apparition ogled her openly, but didn't look too happy about it. "Of all the times to be dead..." he muttered to himself.

Selene pushed the door shut now that everyone had gotten in safely. Then, with a look of concentration on her face, she began the process of magically mending the door. It had the chance of locking the party in the room until they repeated the process of breaking it (or until Faust came), but Selene felt it was worth it to keep them undetected. The rather short journey through the castle had been uneventful, but the mage still felt like she needed a chance to sit and catch her breath. By the looks of relief on the rest of her party's faces, they all agreed.

The nymph gave Carlotta a smile. "You must be Carlotta. Good to meet you. Always a pleasure to meet one as lovely as you." Looking down at her minor wounds, Althaia frowned. "You are not in the best of health. Here, let me fix that for you." She gently laid her hand on Carlotta's shoulder, and channelled healing energy into her, removing all the scratches and bruises and returning her to perfect health. Better than perfect, in fact. "Much better!" She said cheerfully.

Carlotta's face flushed a brilliant red. The alchemist froze, unable to think of what else she should do. Her eyes fixated on a point just beyond the naked beauty.

"This is Althaia. She's a nymph paladin," Ashyr informed Lotta gently. Another time, Ashyr might have been amused by Carlotta's reaction. At that moment, however, she was worried about what might have happened to her friend in Faust's bedroom. The drow - still in disguise - slowly put an arm around the smaller woman's shoulders. All the while, she watched for any adverse reaction to the touch. "Are you alright, Lotta?"

The human clenched her eyes shut, nodded, and turned into Ashyr to embrace her fully. Her face burrowed into the ranger's neck, but she was otherwise silent and unmoving.

Caleldir let out a long breath, then turned to the nymph. "Okay, Althaia. Put some clothes on. You are distracting Carlotta, and we have no idea what she has been through." Caleldir remonstrated with the nymph. It satisfied his morbid curiosity to see her reaction, and gauge from it how her psyche was holding up, but it was not worth it to keep going much longer.

Althaia paled. "Oh... oh. I am sorry." She conjured up her dress, and sat down off in a corner, looking rather sheepish.

Caleldir turned his attention back to Carlotta. "Worry not, dear Carlotta. You are safe now. Soon, Faust will be dead, and the town will be ours." He sighed again. "Now we just need to figure out how mad we need to be when we kill him." Seeing Carlotta this way reminded him a bit of Selene and the way she had been a mere week or two ago. Or had it been longer than that? His life had been really eventful, lately. But, he was not a good person to deal with such stress. His own psychology was too bizarre, fragmented, and pieced together, to really be able to see clearly how others might feel about things. Better that the drow deal with her. As ironic as that was.

His eyes darted to the dead skald. "Play your cards right, and you still may get a chance with her. Or with her four sisters. At the same time. And they are far, far nicer than the rusalka are. Overwhelming, but not murderous."

"You think so?" Demetus responded with a hopeful half-grin. The expression didn't last long, for his gaze had fallen back on Carlotta. The skald looked truly worried about her, and there was absolutely nothing he could do at the moment. Not without a body. "I'll go be lookout." He told Caleldir with a ghostly sigh. There was a lot of sighing going on in the room.

"That is an excellent idea, Demetus." Caleldir agreed. "A lookout is exactly what we need right now. We will definitely make sure that we resurrect you when we retake this city!"

"I could reincarnate him now." Althaia said. She, of course, only heard half of the conversation. "Granted, it is rather random what he will turn into if I do. I can at least make sure that he is something humanoid, but what race, or even gender, I cannot control. But still..."

"We need him to be a lookout. Maybe later you can reincarnate him into a female sprite or a troll, if he feels like rolling the dice instead of just letting the clerics do their thing." Caleldir replied.

"I suppose that makes sense." Althaia yawned. "Wake me when we are ready to take over the city." She leaned back in her chair, and appeared to fall asleep.

Demetus looked a bit disturbed by the talk of reincarnating him as something other than what he was - or had been, in his most recent life. "Yeah, no. I think I'll stick to being a ghost for now." He decided. Then he half floated, half walked out of the room through the closed door.

"Come on, let's sit down. We don't have anywhere to be for a while." Ashyr said gently, ignoring the half-heard exchange between the ghostly people. She then pulled Carlotta over to one of the couches and settled the human in her lap. "Do you want to tell me what happened? Or would you rather just sit?"

"No- I mean. Yeah. I'm fine, I guess." Carlotta began to say. She seemed to struggle with finding the right words. Her voice trailed off. "Um. He - Faust, I mean - he hasn't done much. I was- I was afraid that he would, but he hasn't yet. I mean, besides making me wear this" She picked up the outer edge of her nightgown between her index finger and thumb "and not allowing me to leave his rooms. I thought he was going to when he tied me up last night, but I guess that was just so I wouldn't kill him in his sleep. Or something. I- I think he thought that if I just stayed here with him I would... I don't know, learn to love him?"

Carlotta swallowed and rubbed some of the charcoal off her eyes. "He doesn't seem... 'right,' you know? In the head. Talks to himself a lot - even in his sleep. Something about his father and keeping the city safe. And he seemed incredibly paranoid. I was worried he'd, like, snap or something before I could get out of here."

"I don't think that totally fixed it." Selene informed the rest of the group as she pulled away from the door. She had been ignoring everyone up until then, and didn't care that she might be interrupting something important. "Sometimes the spell is... finicky with more complicated objects." The mage grabbed a chair and braced it against the door. It would have to suffice. She then wandered over towards a couch adjacent to Ashyr and Carlotta and stretched out upon it. "Oh. Right." Selene said. Then, with a wave of her hand, both herself and her cousin were back to their true forms.

"Thank you, Selene." Caleldir said, then returned his attention to Carlotta and Ashyr. "It seems as if Faust is having mental problems." he sighed. "It is easier to hate people when you know nothing but their actions. Knowing that he is a just a sad, paranoid man trying to do his best for the city, and resorting to increasingly terrible methods out of a self-destructive streak of well-meaning desire to protect others makes it harder for me to want to kill him. I am glad that he did not harm you too much, though."

Ashyr frowned at nothing in particular. She seemed to disagree - very much so, in fact. "I still just want him dead." But then again, it had been his wizard, and not the tiefling himself who was responsible for the death of Celeste. But no. That didn't change her mind at all on the matter. "Who knows how patient that asshole was going to be - Oh, I'm sorry, Lotta." The redhead had shuddered at Ashyr's words. The drow tried in vain to smooth the incredibly curly mess that was Carlotta's hair. It seemed to comfort the human anyway.

"He needs to be stopped." Carlotta agreed. "Someone so... mad isn't fit to rule the city. Did you see the people outside the castle? Faust's wizard did something weird - I don't know what. Everyone is really - I don't know, busy. Like they have to work. They built that enormous jail in a week, according to someone we talked to before we were captured. And of course there's the curfew. He was trying to control every moment of everyone's lives." It was Carlotta's turn to sigh. "He's terrifying."

"Oh, I still plan on killing him. He may have tragic reasons for what he does, but he still has to be stopped, and as long as he is alive he is a danger to this city. So, yes, I will kill him. But I will not like doing so." He looked down at the floor. "I do not like killing people, after all."

"Well, it is not a healthy thing to like." Althaia said cheerfully. "I like beating things up, of course, but it is easier to kill some things than it is others. I hope Faust will be a worthy adversary..."

"Probably. He is quite powerful. But no need for a fair fight. A quick, subtle death would be less trouble for everyone." Caleldir replied.

"Not as much fun. Or honorable." Althaia groused.

"I'm hungry." Selene announced. "Did the tiefling leave you food?"

Carlotta blinked at the abrupt question. "Uh. Yeah... but I don't trust it. I had some and it made me feel... er... funny." She blushed again, and seemed unwilling to explain anything further.

"Shame." Selene said. Then she pulled out some of her trail rations and began to eat.

Caleldir quirked an eyebrow, and turned to Althaia. The nymph nodded. She pulled out a large bag from her ring. "I have enough food for everyone in here. Hope you all like bear jerky. And smoked salmon. And nuts. And other things of similar natures."

The human gratefully took the food she was offered. "Um. So, did I hear that Demetus is around? I can't see him, how can you tell?"

Caleldir gave Carlotta a lopsided grin. "I can talk to ghosts, provided I have 'died' myself recently, as you remember. I died down in the catacombs. Selene killed me to escape some rusalka." Huh. When he just stated the plain facts of his life, it sounded ridiculous. Quick, he had to make it believable! "Fortunately, when I was dead I negotiated with the King of the Ghast Sprites to free us from their evil clutches. They then guided us along the Night Paths to the surface, where we rescued Demetus's soul from the Three Reapers." Much better.

"I do not seem to remember that second half..." Althaia said in a dry tone.

Carlotta furrowed her brow and opened her mouth as if she was going to say something. But then she remembered how Ashyr told her that the man enjoyed telling stories. So she shrugged and curled into Ashyr again. She was sure the truth of it would come out eventually. For the time being, she was glad that they were here and were going to kill the psychopath who'd trapped her.

"You do have his generals to deal with as well." Carlotta reminded them. "I don't think taking the city is as simple as killing Faust. We did manage to get some information about him before it all went wrong. He has a wizard and an engineer with him. If he falls, one of them take his place."

"Taking him out will put the defenses into chaos. We will have to defeat the generals as well, but how hard could that be?" Caleldir shrugged. "Well, besides the wizard. The wizard I know to be a very deadly individual. Already killed me once. In one shot. From a mile away. I might have to ghost-up to defeat that mage. The engineer... well, I know nothing about him or her. But I assure you that I have far greater mastery of that art than he does. I helped build the Gene-Forge, Storehouse One, and the D.E.A. Project, after all. Even if that last one did not go so well."

"How powerful can one tiefling be?" Selene said with a shrug after swallowing a mouthful of salmon. The fish was so much better than the dried nuts and mushrooms that she had in her ration pack. "I'm sure between all of us we can capture him and make him make his generals stand down. And maybe find out why, exactly, he's going mad. This is kind of an abrupt thing, isn't it, his behavior? What if it's something that affects anyone in his position?" It wouldn't be the first time she'd heard of a similar curse being thrown around by warring drow nobles.