Chapter 02: Expatriate
Æiristus left the temple ceremonial hall with one more nightmare to her name, one more success. The House Mæstre no longer existed, Prince Baravti's seditious undermining saw to that. And her assignment and unyielding sense of faith and duty saw the return of one more dissident back into the laity.
Her mind would not shake recent events…
What had been Baravti was now profoundly changed. He knew who he was, though no one of his original race would ever officially recognize him as such again. His soul was
terrentene
, sentenced back to primordial blackness for the Goddess' assimilation, but not before transformation. And there was no telling how long he would continue to live after transformation. Seasons? Decades? Centuries? Until another stronger monster or wanderlust-filled adventurer came along to kill him most likely.
His captor was there to bear witness of her service among the invited visitors, the lesser priestesses, the lay and the male priests, the templars and temple wardens, all within the hallowed amphitheatre of his making for the final three hours that was Ceremony. This area was not for public observance - it was one level away from inner sanctum. It was an area Æiristus loathed. She looked across the arena floor. Leather creaked as her arms tightened across her armored chest. Her eyes narrowed on seeing her cousin, her facial scar throbbed, a growl buried itself deep in her throat. Baravti was not alone in personal loss. This was where she lost her priesthood.
But this is where Baravti lost his race and became abhorrent, he became drider.
Æiristus knew very little of what was involved with the making of a drider. She studied many things as a
lytling
, more than she should have - things that began her troubles and things she could no longer remember even under threat of extended, exquisite torture. If she had known more about the making of driders it was information long lost to her. As it was now, she only knew what she witnessed in Ceremony and what the high clergy saw fit to feed her, just like everyone else not a member of the inner sanctum.
The templar gazed down on the activities of the lower theatre. The new drider lay crumpled on the floor of the temple's deep internal amphitheatre sapped of energies. After twelve hours of continuous rituals and magic bombarded upon it - initiated by the prime high priestess and maintained by divine Handmaidens and helper priestesses - the final three hours obliged by a witness audience, it was exhausted. The creature, an aberration of centaur-like features, lay shining in sweat and breathing heavily. Its lower body was now dual-sectioned, oblate, arachnid in appearance: one section, built to support eight legs instead of two and the still-elven upper body; the other, bulbous, made for poison and silk production. Eight segmented spikes for legs were all folded akimbo beneath it, serene for the moment, not yet used. The dark-elven body was still the man from the torso up, though nude, he draped from the spider-half down to the floor, unconscious. Before long, the beast would awaken driven by a new hunger for blood and lust. The beast would need to feed, almost vampiric, he would need to drain blood, the life essence of any victim he could capture; mammalian blood was not a pre-requisite. Retaining his intelligence and his memories, the dark-elf half would be driven to mate, but with a much more feral, far more base level of instincts driving the need. It was best to find a female drider to let the new driderling take his hunger out on, but such was rarely possible. In Baravti's case, a surface elfin female prisoner, a blood enemy, was readied for his new interests – whichever direction his hunger took as he woke.
Æiristus watched as required and though her jaw clenched pressing her teeth tightly together in silence, she exhibited no emotion at the display below. Unlike the gasping, whispering and awestruck younger priests and laymen nearby, she had seen enough similar scenes in her life before that permitting herself reactions were not an option. Higher ranking clergy and sister templars occasionally tore their eyes from the spectacle to observe and gauge the medjai responsible for the show. Acknowledgment would not come from her. She made no time for petty politics.
When all finally completed, Æiristus saw her cousin turn to her and nod. She ignored the woman. From the small arena field, the drider held under control by six guards, the surface girl unmoving - Æiristus could not see if she breathed or not - the presiding high priestess turned to face the templar responsible for bringing in their newest monster and dipped a modest bow. Æiristus dropped both arms to her side and bowed deeper. The drider screamed rage recognizing the templar standing in the amphitheatre seats.
The templar looked on one more nightmare to her name. One more wrong corrected. One more occasion where legend was retained. His failure, her race's success.
~*~ ~*~ ~*~
Æiristus left the clerical body of the temple and made her way to the barracks. She passed through the halls of the templars noting who was present and who was out. Some had been present during ceremony others, though within the temple, elected not to attend. Had she not brought the prisoner in this time she would not have been there herself, actually having not even been within the walls of the temple. She would have been in Antiago, her preference being the fighting arena there.
The muffled sounds of play from the mated cells she shared with another templar caught her attention. Hers was a cell she rarely used but it was a provided bunk between jobs if she needed it.
Apparently, her cellmate's was in use. The low laughter made her wonder at the sort of diversion going on in here, more than thankful to let go of the weight of Ceremony.
Unstrapping her spurs from her boots, Æiristus tucked the jingling metal inside her belt pack. She secured anything else that rattled, rang, or clicked before creeping into her room. The last she recalled, her shared cellmate's rooms were separated by an open doorway with black two-inch wide ribbons acting as a curtain that barely swept the floor that you could peek right through. There was a chance Sheylia had them tied off to the side and was using her room as a spare, it's not like she was ever there.
Stepping into the room using the lateral outsides of her feet and rolling slightly back in on them she padded silently across the floor into the darkness toward the stripes of pale blue light coming from the curtain of black ribbons she remembered between their small rooms. She stood back against the wall so as not to disturb anything going on in the neighboring room.
Tied down on the bunk was a delicious young male Æiristus remembered as a fetch. He was naked except for a white harness that reflected the room's blue lighting, hid nothing and ribboned the boy's dark body in a most enticing way. His wrists, ringed in white cuffs, were bound above his head away from the female in charge. His ankles, looped in matching white, were widespread and anchored safely down. He bared his teeth and growl-laughed for his mistress in appreciation for her as she flicked and swatted at the raging erection poised for her. It stood at sharp attention and likely did not need the support it had of the inch-wide harness wrapped around its blue-black satiny base.
Æiristus drew the corner of her lower lip in between her teeth as Sheylia licked a finger and circled one of the boy's erect standing nipples. She then leaned slightly to wrap her other hand around that pillar of excited muscle her playmate sported. She drew it tightly down and paused at the base. The male trembled visibly at her touch. He gasped and fell back at the shoulders pushing sharply carved hips up as the woman let go. She yanked him back down tightening the buckle around his standing cock one more notch making him jump and yipe. Then she smiled and with a terrible slow ease, drew her fingers with a feather's touch up the sensitive backside of his cock from the root of his tied up snug balls up to the taught-flesh tip. Æiristus suppressed a sharp intake of her own breath as the youth whimpered and struggled, pressing forward, reaching for a heavier touch.
"More!" he pleaded.
Sheylia laughed evilly and whacked the middle back of the boy's dick with two of her fingers enough to make it wave for her and annoy the male jostling his bindings. She leaned forward to kiss the lips of the angered face and laugh as he pulled his face away with a growl.
"
You
are an unkind playmate," Æiristus finally remarked to her cellmate.
Two obsidian faces turned toward the ribboned doorway to see nothing though they heard the voice. "Vrynn? Are you returned?"
"Flesh and whole." She dropped her gear in her room and appeared in the doorway to look sympathetically on a very pretty, very well harnessed young man. "Which one is this?"
"Jorek," he replied.
Sheylia whacked his cock again.
"Ow! Hey!"
"She was addressing me, dolt!"
Æiristus shrugged. "He can speak for himself. Pretty one. Alter boy?"
The youth looked at his mistress before responding. "Was," he said.
Æiristus walked over to the couple's bunk and looked down on him.
Good lean lines, few scars, alert
, she noted. She felt her body heat rise a notch looking into his eyes.
Nice face.
