A Drow's Dilemma Ep. 69: Maturity

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 69: Maturity

As Tsabdrin left the room that morning after the party confronted Faust, the bird that was Althaia swept down in and landed on his shoulder.

"Out for a bit?" she asked him. Apparently, she had shifted into a raven for the express purpose of being able to talk while still in wild form.

The male ranger hissed at one of his allosaurs when it came within inches of snapping at the bird Althaia on his shoulder. It hissed and grumbled back, but stopped before it literally bit off more than it could chew. He continued to make his way out of the city with his extra passenger.

"You do not mind if I accompany you, do you? I have a bit of meditating to do, but I can do that far easier on your shoulder than I can in a room with the four of them. Also, I heard that you wanted to take a bath, and I could use one of those myself." The raven tilted her head. "So... I did not realize that I could actually do this. I am realizing a lot about myself recently." If she had still been humanoid, she would have sighed. As things were, she merely let her head droop a little.

"I don't mind," he told her in his heavily accented voice. "Though, honestly, having you there spoils the point of having a cold bath. Not that I'm complaining." He smirked, a very Ashyr-like expression. Tsabdrin seemed all around more at ease with himself and the world around him with his animal companions alive.

"Why would my presence spoil a cold bath?" Althaia asked innocently. "I have several ways of changing the temperature of water. So, a bath with me can be any temperature!"

"Yeah. I'm sure you have no idea what I'm talking about." Tsabdrin said with a good-natured eyeroll.

She cocked her head a bit to the side to get a better view of Tsabdrin and and the allosauruses. "They seem to have adjusted to life well. It suits them better than death. I wonder if they remember that I killed one of them... Or brought them back to life, for that matter." Taking flight off of his shoulder, she lighted down in front of the two dinosaurs.

The same allosaur that chomped at bird Althaia the first time tried to do so a second time. Before it could really get his teeth around her, however, she turned back into her natural form. That gave it quite a bit of a startle.

She gave the animals a charming grin. Nymphs had a power over animals like that of rangers or druids, but impressively more potent. The dinosaur not directly bonded to Tsabdrin would have trouble resisting her. But, she was not trying to dominate the animals, only to make them a bit more friendly towards her.

"Either way, I would prefer that you two not try to bite me. Okay?" she said sweetly to them.

Curiosity struck, and the both of them began to circle her. Neither were trying to threaten her anymore. Her charming personality seemed to have worked.

"I don't think they remember what happened," the ranger said with a shrug. "Their thoughts don't work like ours."

"I admit, I am not familiar with allosauruses. Being that they are not a native species to this forest," Althaia noted. "If they were a native creature, I would be far better at empathizing with them."

Tsabdrin shrugged. "You did well enough. Come on, if you're coming. I prefer to run outside of cities. And I think my companions are hungry. They get mean when they're not allowed to hunt." To punctuate his words, one of them bellowed in excitement and led the way down the street and out of the gates, with the other at its heels. Althaia was completely forgotten.

"I will accompany you."

"Alright," he responded. "Keep an eye out for a pool to bathe in."

"I do not need to do that." Althaia pointed out. "I can instinctively sense any if they are near. And if they are not, I can make them (as long as I am in my native region: here). I am a nymph, after all. Springs of fresh water are my race. So, just speak the word, and I can have you to a pool within minutes."

"I'll... keep that in mind."

Out of habit, he kept to the shadows as he walked. It was still too early for the majority of people to be out, but those who were seemed wary and afraid of what might be lurking on their once-safe streets. Everyone jumped and quickly went the other way when they saw the drow and dinosaurs. As a result, Tsabdrin and Althaia were pretty much alone.

Once out of the city, Tsabdrin lifted his hood over his platinum hair and stretched his legs and began to jog for the forest after his beasts. They ducked in and around the thick foliage until the circled around to the south where it was much easier to run and hunt.

When Tsabdrin stopped paying attention to her, she disappeared into the forest. She would appear again the moment that he began looking for her, but as Althaia said, this was her forest. Her mystic link to this region was enough that she could meld with the terrain pretty much at will. There was a reason nymphs were never found unless they wanted to be.

It didn't take long for Tsabdrin and his companions to hone in on a small herd of deer just recently risen from their dewy beds. He bared his teeth, a quick flash of bloodthirsty white. It was an expression that somehow echoed the look his beasts had when they realized the hunt was on.

An odd, almost alien silence settled over dinosaur and drow as they stalked forward. Predators they were, but they were unlike any warm-blooded predators that could be found in these northern forests. Their behavior made this glaringly obvious. On an unseen cue, all three of them burst into action. Tsabdrin and one of the allosaurs circled around, while the other simply sprinted through the brush and bellowed at the animals breaking their fast. The deer acted predictably, and began to bound away through the brush with their white tails upright in alarm. The other dinosaur came in from the side and tackled a yearling buck. Tsabdrin came in from nearby and slit the hoofed animal's throat as his companion held the deer down. It thrashed once, twice, before finally, it went still.

The drow rose to his feet. This time, the white flash of his teeth was exultant. It was good to properly hunt after that time he spent north of the city, starved and choked by an unnaturally grown jungle. His companions devoured the kill, leaving none for their master.

Althaia appeared next to him once more, flashing her own smile at the result of the hunt. "Nature red in tooth and claw," she intoned. "We are all of us part of the natural world, from prey to predator, from insect to dragon, from human village to dwarven city. Not that I have seen all those things yet. I want to though. It is one reason why I started my adventuring." She glanced over at the deer. "If you will kill one for me, I can cook it for you. I will not hunt myself in this forest. It would be too easy, and a betrayal."

"Eh, the herd is gone." Tsabdrin said with a shrug. He gazed out across the disturbed ground and brush that the small stampede had created. There were no animals in sight beyond his companions and the carcass they enthusiastically consumed. "We can eat with Ashyr and the rest of them when we get back. Give the animals here a rest. It's been a scary time for them." What with drastically changing homelands and two armies to keep sated.

"I suppose that you are right," Althaia agreed. "Would not want to over hunt. Populations need to be sustainable, after all." She closed her eyes and concentrated. "The animals here are pretty worried, but they are not yet close to being unbalanced." She opened them again. "But eating with the others will still be nice. Provided that your sister and cousin are not still furious with me for blowing up that shop."

"I guess I can use that bath now, though," the drow told her as he watched his newly restored allosaurs enjoy their first properly acquired meal. His eyes didn't quite meet hers when he made the request. Tsabdrin was not a forward drow female to be asking or even hinting at what he would sort of enjoy doing in said bath. For now, he would just pretend he needed one. He hadn't managed to sweat all that badly, but there was mud up to his mid-calves and blood splatter across his torso. Tsabdrin lowered his hood to reveal hair that had somehow managed to get some stray forest debris in it despite being covered. It wasn't too uncommon for him not to be able to properly clean himself for days or even weeks out in the wilds, but there was no way he was going to pass up bathing in a pool with a nymph (previous reasons for getting a cold bath be damned).

If Althaia understood Tsabdrin's real request (which she very much did) she pretended that the two of them would only be bathing. "I will find a nice spring for us then," she said. "I even have some nice soaps in my ring, so we can get all nice and very clean."

With that, she melded back into the forest.

He rolled his shoulders, looked back towards his companions, and settled on a fallen log to watch the beasts eat.

She was gone for nearly ten minutes, then reappeared. "I prepared a bath under a waterfall. The water is warm and clean, and I tiled it with stone." She carefully took his hand and gave him a smile. "Right this way." She said sweetly.

Gently, but firmly, she pulled the baffled drow to a tree. Then, the two of them exited from a different tree. It was a rather jarring experience, being pulled into one tree and out the other. He'd teleported before, of course, but his experience had been with purely arcane workings. For a moment, it almost felt that he was part of the forest. It was... kind of wonderful, actually.

"Tree-teleportation," she explained. "Treeportation, I like to say." There was the natural-turned-artificial pool as she had described it. "I built seats into the side, but the middle is deep enough that we can swim in it." She said happily. She seemed quite proud of herself.

He blinked at the lovely pool.

"Nice," he managed to say.

Then, she was naked and slipping into the water. "Come! Join me. I can wash your back."

If he was going to say anything more, it was interrupted by the sight of the impossibly beautiful nymph's clothes melting away. The drow stood transfixed for a moment before he realized there was something he needed to do as well. He tried to restrain himself, but still his fingers flew and sort of fumbled over the latches and straps of his armor. Soon his armor and clothes were on the grass, and his lean and scarred naked form waded into the pool and towards Althaia. He pulled his hair over his neck and turned his bared back towards the paladin to allow her to do as she offered.

Althaia took a seat behind Tsabdrin. Rather unnecessarily, she wrapped her thighs around him and snuggled up to his back, embracing him from behind and resting her chin on his shoulder. She was quite a bit taller than him.

Althaia let out a sigh. "One of the things that I miss from living with the other nymph is all the skin-to-skin and the lack of need for clothing."

The feel of the nymph's soft breasts pressed against his back cause Tsabdrin to heave a sigh of contentment. There weren't very many soft, secure moments like this one where he had been working the past several years. Hell, that wasn't even a thing that regularly happened in the Underdark, either. It was a shame.

She pulled back a little and began rubbing down his back with a wet, soapy cloth (both the cloth and the soap having been in her ring, of course). "Then again, I found all the near mindless, well, 'nymphomania' to be rather gratuitous and in general too much. It is nice to be around people that can think of things besides orgasms." A hand slipped between his legs and caressed his balls for a moment, causing his breath to catch, before she went back to busily washing him down. "Not that I do not enjoy giving and receiving those, of course."

"What happened to make you so different from your sisters?" he asked softly. "...Not that it's a bad thing," he quickly amended to avoid insulting her. Or try to avoid it, at least. "Sex isn't the only good thing about life." He let out a short, soft chuckle. "Even Ashyr would agree about that, and sometimes it is hard to find the end of her-" The drow said a word in his native tongue, realized that he did it, and began to search for the word in a language that Althaia would understand. "uh... sexual hunger, I guess." His shoulders rolled in a languid shrug.

With a wave of her hands, Althaia brought warm water up across Tsabdrin's back, washing the soap away.

"I was born. They were not," she said simply. "Most nymphs are ageless, unchanging spirits of water, nature, and beauty. I had a father and a mother, and yet am fully a nymph. My 'sisters' sprang fully grown from the spring they now live in. They remain today as they were then. Eternal, unchanging, never really considering their place in the universe or why things are what they are. In a way, they are as much eternally children as they are adults."

As she continued talking, she moved from washing Tsabdrin's back to massaging it, working all the kinks out from his muscles. She had a nymph-born urge for unscarred beauty to remove his scars too, but she knew that they were badges of honor for him, and so left them be, as alien as that thought process was to her. "Perhaps I told you this already; when we nymphs have children with other races, they are only ever half-nymphs, never fully as we are. And nine out of ten are female. But that last one, the very rare male, well, that is our only chance to have daughters - and maybe even sons! - of our own race. My father was just such an individual, so I was born, not sprang full-grown. Thus, I grow. I mature. I have ambitions and desires beyond that of my race. In a way, I am mortal, albeit without the lifespan restriction."

Althaia let out a long sigh. "Aelsuna, the goddess I worship, has a soft spot for nymphs above all other races, but she is rather annoyed that her chosen children are always content to do no more than to lay around in springs and have sex. Felesh, another of my patrons, is fine with that, but Aelsuna and Merethllyr wanted more from us than mindless hedonism for all eternity. They want us to be a race, not just spring-bound fae. And so, I was chosen as their instrument. That is why I must follow Caleldir. His bloodline is unique, and uniquely necessary. Thus, my divine mission is to become the mother of a new kind of nymph, one that is born and ages to adulthood and has both male and female members, while not only retaining, but expanding upon our race's natural talents. This race would stand as the ultimate expression of Aelsuna and her exarchs' ideals."

She stopped messaging Tsabdrin and wrapped her arms around him once more, putting her chin on his shoulder and letting her long golden hair flow across his dark skin. Her soft breasts pressed once more into his back, and her hands roamed lightly across his stomach and chest. "My patrons are all Chaotic, not the types to normally empower Lawful paladins, but Aelsuna knew that one of her ordinary chaotic followers would be unable to summon the discipline needed for her grand plan. So I, who early on began to show signs of more ambition and self-restraint than others of my kind, became her chosen tool for her plot. It was soon after my eighth birthday, when I had reached full adulthood (we nymphs mature at twice the rate of humans and four times the rate of elves), that Aelsuna appeared to me and told me of her plans. She sent me from my family across the woods to the spring where you kinswomen found me to wait for the ghostly primordial Caleldir to appear. All the while, her and her Exarchs taught me of the magic and skills I would need on my journey."

A short, almost sad laugh came from her. "Amazing, is this not? I have been with Caleldir, Ashyr, and Selene for weeks, and I have not told them the half of this. Probably partly because the plan would eventually see Caleldir as the breeding stallion to as many of my sisters as Aelsuna can sway to our cause. Instead, I have implied that the goddesses I serve are flighty, immature creatures not capable of the sort of planning which resulted in my existence and mission. That was true of Felesh, but not of Aelsuna. Her faith may seem to be... but I digress. Anyway, I do not know why, but I felt as if I could tell you all this, even when I could not to the object of my mission." She sighed, her body quivering against his own. "I hope that you do not take offense at my liberties in this, dear Tsabdrin. But I must tell someone, and I cannot tell those three, much as I love them. So, feel honoured. You are the first mortal to know of Alesuna's divine plan for the nymph race."

Tsabdrin didn't know quite what to say about the onslaught of information he was given. He sat and listened thoughtfully while enjoying the touch of another person. The ranger might have said something after she had finished all this. Questions did rise in his head - much like what was happening underwater with his other head ...which made it quite difficult to put his thoughts into cohesive sentences. Althaia's roaming hands could have no other effect.

Shifting positions, Althaia's manner suddenly changed. She shifted her size so that she was just barely shorter than Tsabdrin, and slid over on top of his lap. His cobalt eyes watched with lidded hunger. She fixed him with a dazzling smile.

"But enough of all that! Let us enjoy the present for what it is, and pay no heed to the future for a few moments."

She pulled him into a kiss with one hand while she guided his dick inside her with the other, causing him to groan low in his throat. The drow's hands ran along her thighs, then one went around to her ass, and the other slid along her abdomen and up to cup one of her breasts.

It was odd, but the entirely situation felt more... intimate than Tsabdrin expected. There they were, in a nymph-made pool no one had ever seen before. In that beautifully made pool caught perfectly between natural and manufactured, he became the mortal who literally knew Althaia better than anyone else in the world. And it was a secret that only he was trusted to keep. He hadn't felt this close to a person in over a century. It was strangely glorious.

She melted down a little into his touch. Using that reduction spell to make her the right size for this position had been a good idea. One of her hands went to the back of his neck, the other played along his cheek. Pulling away, she broke the kiss. She gave him a smile as she began to raise and lower herself on him, her core pulling at him as if reluctant to let go as she rose, and hungrily sliding back down.

"You can keep all this a secret, right? I... I do not want the others to know this. Not yet. I want to be the one to tell them the truth when the time comes." She let out a sigh as she rolled her hips, feeling his manhood churn inside her.

Tsabdrin stared at Althaia thoughtfully. He was taking the whole situation very seriously - or at least as seriously as he could while she began slowly fucking him. It was incredibly distracting. For some reason. He made a soft noise at the back of his throat, his eyes only breaking their shared gaze for a moment when they fluttered shut with pleasure.