At the End of the Temple

It was the greatest challenge in Hanabe's Tangle. Just finding it in this untamed jungle had been an uncertain thing, but now they had done it. They stood at the mouth of this cave that had in some ancient age been carved into a great stone archway.

Asmaä stood speechless as her companions climbed the steep hill to the entrance. Mitra was the first to set foot on the moss-covered stone threshold, trying to cut a heroic figure as always. A casteless runaway with nothing to lose, Mitra had always insisted on being the first one into danger and the last one out. But Asmaä could see the machetes on her flanks jitter; she was trembling. This temple, or whatever it really was, had seemed a lot less intimidating on a treasure map than it did in person.

For her own part, Asmaä couldn't bring herself to dread the cave—anything was better than the muddy, sweaty jungle! Her years as a pirate had not prepared her for the sheer, all-devouring density of the ferns and trees and vines. And now that they'd arrived, it was all worth it, for she smelled loot. Loot meant riches, and riches meant one step closer to the high life of nice clothes, fresh food and maybe even a man-slave to keep her company. This could be the day she made her fortune.

Behind them, Srinandi beheld the temple, and out of habit his fingers made a good-luck gesture. A moment later, he caught himself and winced. That gesture was a holdover from his life of learning verses with the monks, or as he called them, "those spineless old windbags." Asmaä did not fault his bitterness. The order of the universe they taught him was not kind to men. It was everywhere known that only women could gain enlightenment and achieve a higher state of being, and the best a man could hope for was to live a good life so he could someday be reincarnated as a woman, and from there have a chance at release from the cycle of death and rebirth. "And why do that?" Srinandi had said, "when adventure is right here for the living?"

Then again, it puzzled her that he'd stayed single. With his handsomely short hair and beard trimmed so neatly that it was barely there, and a limber body toughened by the life of a wanderer, he could surely have his pick of wives.

"I have to hand it to you, Mitra," said Srinandi. "You saw us through the Tangle with all four limbs on."

"It's all about the risk," said Mitra proudly. "If you have no shame, then you have no fear."

Asmaä shook her head at her posturing. "The nomads helped," she threw in. "They're the ones who showed us through the thick. We owe them an even bigger favor now."

The jungle was home to wandering tribes who burned away foliage, farmed it for a season and then abandoned it to let the jungle regrow. They, not Mitra, had been the ones to guide them through Hanabe's Tangle. As repayment, they had only asked something of Mitra, which Mitra gleefully kept secret. No doubt it was some specific artifact, and Mitra wanted to cheat them by giving them a forgery of it. Asmaä did not blame her for that; she knew all too well the lure of wealth, that addictive mix of hunger and hope that richer people so dismissively called 'greed.' But even then, it seemed wrong to deceive the jungle women who had done right by them.

Either way, the nomads were gone for now. Mitra, Asmaä and Srinandi were on their own.

Mitra took another tiny step into the night-black mouth of the cave. She hesitated.

"Go on," said Srinandi. "I'll be burned if I'm going in first."

Snarling at her own fear, Mitra forced herself the rest of the way up, then down into the cave, out of sight. A moment passed, and Asmaä heard neither screaming, growling nor slashing. A good sign. She and Srinandi followed their partner in.

The solid stone doorway traced out an aperture that was three times higher than it needed to be to admit a regular woman. Built for giants, the nomads had said. But privately, Asmaä believed it was only that big to intimidate visitors. Not that it failed to do that.

Mitra lit up a torch, and the firelight showed stairs, perilously steep, plunging down as far as vision could see.

For minutes, the three adventurers did nothing but climb down the uncannily even stairs. Asmaä felt her skin prickle as the muggy heat turned into clammy cold, and a rank-smelling wind gusted softly up from below. Asmaä bolstered her spirits by keeping the vision of gold and gems bright in her mind.

"Shit!" spat Mitra.

Asmaä jumped and drew her scimitar, but she had misunderstood. In front of Mitra, the remnants of a rockslide blocked the stairs. "Shit!" she said again. "Dead end!"

But as she regained herself, Asmaä noticed that to her left, there was no longer a wall, but a void too deep to be touched by the torchlight; the edge of the stairs was a deadly precipice. Down below—it was difficult to tell how far—a strange, pale light spilled out onto a flat surface that was either a floor or a lake.

"So much space..." Asmaä marveled. Even the gods rarely deigned to create hollows of this size.

"Aha!" said Srinandi. "A way down." He pointed to the thick, twisted roots that ran from cracks in the unworked stone down the side of the staircase.

Mitra scrambled up to the edge. "Yes!" she hissed. "Let's do it!" Passing her torch to her left hand, she grabbed one of the roots and shimmied down with a precarious one-handed grip. For a few seconds, Asmaä and Srinandi watched, half-expecting her to be swallowed by some horrid beast, be possessed by a ghost, or simply to slip and fall to her death. No such thing happened.

Asmaä felt a pat on her back. "Well?" said Srinandi. "Let's not give her too much of a head start."

For a minute, Asmaä reeled, not because she had almost been pushed off the edge, but because Srinandi had touched her. He hadn't done that in days. It was a happy memory, his hand on her cheek gently waking her up.

Asmaä cleared her head. She wouldn't find Srinandi at the end of this trek. She would find riches. Riches, riches, riches were the goal.

It was a blood-chilling moment, sliding herself down over the edge with only the root to hold her. But the thick, smooth root, which had looked so treacherous, proved sticky to the touch. She shimmied down after the others.

The cavern floor wasn't as far down as it might have been—only a few dozen spear-lengths, Asmaä thought.

The floor wasn't water or loose earth. It was stone tile, but like none she had ever seen. The tiles were lobed and pointed, no two shaped the same, yet they fit together with inhuman perfection. If any mortar bound them, she couldn't see it.

"Asmaä?" said Srinandi. "What's wrong?"

She looked up and jolted. Srinandi was right in front of her, close enough to touch. She saw concern on his bold, pretty face—concern and compassion for her.

"Uh?" was all Asmaä could say.

"Are you alright?" he tried again. "Mitra said your name twice, and you didn't seem to hear."

"Oh, yes, I'm fine. I mean, I didn't hear, but I'm fine."

"Are you hurt?"

"No, it's just..." She wanted to say, 'you're beautiful and I don't know what to say to you!' "It's nothing."

Srinandi began to turn around, then gasped and pointed at her feet.

Something slithered past Asmaä's leg. A thrill of fear ran through her, and she skipped away and drew her scimitar before she knew what she'd felt.

Srinandi wasn't so quick. A thin, smooth, ghastly white tendril clenched around his ankle, and he let out a low-pitched wail as he was hoisted up and hung upside-down. His arms flailed in a panic.

"Now what's stopping you?" growled Mitra, turning around. She saw Srinandi hanging in the air, and her mouth froze open. In the hand that wasn't holding her torch, she drew a machete. But already, she had failed to notice as two tendrils flowed up behind her—not slithered, but simply flowed. At the exact moment when the machete blade left its sheath, those hideous, boneless fingers enwrapped her. The torchlight jerked as Mitra was plucked off her feet.

Asmaä pelted for the roots, for her path to high ground. She mounted the strongest one and clawed her way up with panicked speed. Something warm and soft brushed the small of her back, and in an instant she knew she wouldn't make it. The soft thing encircled her and cinched tight around her chest. With a scream, she felt herself jolted away from the wall. Other tendrils brushed her sides, and one spiraled up her leg and enveloped her to the hips. In the dim light, she spotted a length of white rising to her like a snake with no mouth. She decapitated the snake with an instinctive flick of her blade, then found another tendril and severed it in turn.

Now she was making progress. The white tendrils seemed to hesitate, as if they knew she was fighting back. While they were still, Asmaä kept hacking, freeing her chest, then her waist. Finally, a quick few chops severed the tendrils underneath her, and she fell free.

The ground smashed into her feet. She tumbled onto her knees and hands, each limb taking a share of the brutal impact. Then she staggered to her feet. Where were the others?

Mitra was still on the ground, but almost completely enwrapped. The tendrils were thickest around her joints. Her thighs were in such a tight grip that Asmaä could see the mound between them pressed hard against her trousers. Even her chest was crisscrossed with those otherworldly tubes, pulling taut her sweat-soaked shirt, squeezing her breasts and constricting her stomach. She fought like fire itself, flailing about with both her machetes. She frayed the biggest tendrils but missed all the important ones. Even as Asmaä watched, Mitra began to tire, panting, sweating and drooling.

But the tendrils handled Srinandi roughest of all. Even Srinandi—calm, confident Srinandi—fought with desperate might as he was grappled from everywhere at once. His belt loudly snapped, and a hook-tipped tendril tore his trousers away and flung them off to a shadowy corner. His legs kicked helplessly, suspended off the floor, and Asmaä saw something swinging between them.

She had forgotten how low a man's balls could hang. They swung like a mystic's lamp, and his cock slapped ridiculously against his thighs. Even stranger, as the tendrils enveloped him further, that cock started to swell. In moments, it stuck straight out, wagging stiffly on its base. As he pulled uselessly with his arms, more of the tendrils slithered down his shoulders, down his chest and found the hard shaft sticking up from between his legs. His whole body jerked, and the tendrils seemed to have the same reaction. They recoiled from his shaft, as if they hadn't expected it to be there. Then they formed a circle around it and slowly wrapped themselves over his length.

Srinandi's male grunts turned into gasps. "W-what?" Wide-eyed, he watched those ghostly fingers press together and spiral around his cock until they cocooned it. Just as they enclosed the tip, a clear little drop oozed from him and plopped to the ground.

The tendrils on his limbs went still. They must have hardened, because suddenly his struggling went from a losing battle to completely useless. The white cocoon that constricted his cock had lengthened into one great, hollow tube, stretching all the way up into the darkness.

Srinandi lurched, and a ripple of tension ran up the spiraled tube. It pulsed again, and this time it made a distinctive smacking sound.

Through the side of her vision, Asmaä watched Mitra suddenly start to win her struggle. The white bonds around her slowed and loosened their grip. Her clawing and wrenching began to make headway and finally freed her. She landed hard and snapped to her feet, machetes out like scorpion's claws.

The tendrils, it seemed, only wanted Srinandi. And they worked him hard. The pulsing grew faster, and with every pull, Srinandi jerked forward and flexed his muscles in resistance, and more sweat ran down his legs. His loose shirt covered his chest, but Asmaä could see his arms grow more defined, then relax, only to tighten again when the white fingers made another pull on him.

Srinandi's eyes rolled up and closed. His mouth yawned open, and his attempts to form words wilted into nothing. "Oh no..." he gasped. "Ah... ah... ah!"

The binding fingers held still as he released. A few soft pulses sucked his essence up the length of the tube, then everything began to loosen. The tube came away with a distinctive smack, like a kiss, and excess cum drooled from the opening onto his half-naked body. He moaned and fell limply from their grip.

On his back, he did nothing but breathe as his cock drained and fell limp. His rolled-up shirt showed his stomach rising and falling. Above him, the tendrils shrank silently away and vanished into the darkness.

Mitra broke the silence. "Well, well, well," she said, strutting up to him. "You've been holding out. Back when Asmaä wanted to lay with you, you wouldn't do it. Remember that? But as soon as you get tangled up in some vines, you're a complete slut."

At that memory, Asmaä fought back the acute urge to hide somewhere. His rejection of her had been the low point of their time together, made almost worse by how polite he'd been.

Srinandi took a deep breath and struggled to get up. "I don't... I don't know how that happened." His shirt fell over his chest, the cloth bundling at the base of his flaccid cock. "They might come back. Let's keep moving."

"Forward?" said Asmaä. "But wait, don't you want to..." she swallowed, trying to think of a polite way to say it. "Don't you want to get your clothes?"

"From where?"

Asmaä looked around. The dust on the tiles was disturbed wherever they had stepped, and Srinandi's juice had left a few wet spots on the cold stone, but besides that, there was nothing. His trousers were nowhere in sight.

"See," he said. "Whatever that was, it stole my pants." He smiled ruefully. "Like those girls who steal men's clothes while they're washing in the stream."

Asmaä turned her head down. Years ago, she had been one of those girls. It seemed pathetic now.

"They can keep them," Srinandi went on. "I'd sooner burn than go rooting around in whatever filth is in the corners. I've had enough of that already." He picked up his supply pouch where it had fallen. "This is all I need." He looked around, noticing the female eyes playing over his bare male thighs. "Are you going to stare all day long, or are we going to keep at it?"

"I still can't believe you want to keep going."

"Of course. I didn't just get fucked by a whatever-that-was so I could leave empty-handed. How about you two?"

Mitra struck a fierce pose. "Fear is for ladies. You can't scare off an outcaste," she said, with the kind of bluster that only insecure people ever bothered with.

Asmaä was of two minds. It tempted her to flee back to the familiar poverty of the surface world. But then she remembered what she was a pirate. And a pirate never shied away from a chance at riches.

Srinandi marched on. His shirt flexed behind him, sometimes covering his rear and sometimes brushing away to show little glimpses of it. With a view like that, Asmaä found it easier to rally herself.

The stone courtyard they stood in could have been its own temple, but down here it was only the entryway to something greater. The lobed tiles of the floor sloped down to the mouth of a great tunnel that burrowed through nothing. Inside that tunnel, Asmaä heard the whooshing of water against stone, felt the reassuring mist of river water. On either side of them, gutters as deep as a spear-length ran along the brick walkway, the sound echoing off the archways that ribbed the top of the tunnel. Crystal tiles in the floor refracted light into the tunnel and drowned out the glow of the torch. Where this light came from, Asmaä didn't dare guess. It didn't flicker like firelight, and for that matter it was whiter than sunlight, as if it shone with captive rays of the moon.

For a hundred paces, the corridor was nothing but stone walkway over the rushing canal. Then tall, dark stone pillars lined the sides, each about the height of a woman.

In fact, they were women. Asmaä realized it with a thrill of horror. They were statues, life-sized. The first was long-haired, dainty and in a dress that left her half-nude. A bronze shaft rose from the ground and pushed into her, and her face said that she felt it. Her fingers were splayed out, palms facing down, and her mouth open in a sexual scream. The folds of skin around her mouth had been sculpted to lifelike perfection.

No, not sculpted. Petrified!

Asmaä had heard of it in dark myth, and now here it was. Every statue was similar: living, breathing women made into decoration for this old temple. Whatever forbidden magic had done this, it had done it well. They were preserved so neatly that Asmaä felt as though the women could come back to life any minute. Despite herself, she blushed. This was a violation of their privacy!

Every statue was penetrated the same way, but each was clearly a different woman, covered from neck to waist by a unique dress that split at the belly button and flowed like honey down her flanks. Some of the women stood with their eyes closed, accepting. Others were screaming and fighting, clawing at the air. Many were contorted, moaning aloud at the moment captured, but none of them touched themselves with their hands, except for one, close to the end of the hall. The woman had drawn aside her dress, exposing her left breast, and fondled it with hungry, driven fingers. Her other hand splayed over her lower abdomen, fondling her prominent nub and spreading her pussy lips to welcome the shaft that filled them. Her mouth was open, but only by a few finger-widths, her eyes gently shut. Her back bent a little to thrust her pelvis down onto the shaft.

It seemed wrong that this woman would stand still. Everything about her pose suggested movement. Asmaä could imagine her heavy, hot breaths condensing in the cold air. She could imagine her legs trembling as the shaft slid into her. She could imagine sweat oozing from the skin, the heart pounding and blood rushing through the veins.

"Asmaä?"

Asmaä jumped and whipped around. Srinandi laughed.

"Do we need to leave you alone for a while?" said Mitra. "You look like you need to get release."

"No." Asmaä blushed, trying not to imagine it.

"Then focus up," said Mitra. "Because we've got problem."

At the end of the hall, engraved dragons and serpents chased each other around a circular stone door.

"There's no handle," pointed out Srinandi. "And no handholds. They didn't mean for it to be opened from this side."

His eyes darted to the edge of the path. Asmaä followed them and saw a single copper rod thrusting up from the floor, clean and ready. It was the last rod in the hallway. Across from it, a woman stood prettily impaled on her shaft, hair flung out and mouth open as if she were singing.

"Forty-two shafts," said Srinandi. "Forty-one girls." As he spoke, his cock filled out slightly.

Mitra approached, and Asmaä got a horrible premonition of being seized, stripped and forced onto the shaft. She imagined the cold copper on her soft skin, the unyielding blunt tip pushing into her. She imagined feeling her flesh crackle and harden into stone as she became just another pretty statue decorating the hall. She drew her scimitar.

Mitra and Srinandi laughed. Not mockery, but real, genuine mirth. "No, no, that's not it," said Srinandi. "We wouldn't do that to you. Or..." he looked at Mitra and laughed again. "At least, I wouldn't do that. Look there." He pointed to one of the gutters, knee-high and gently issuing out water from beyond the door. "We'll go through there."

Mitra dove at it like a hungry cat. Her boots clapped onto stone beneath the surface, and her legs drew wakes in the current as she forged her way through the gutters. She barely had to duck her head to fit under the door.