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 103: Labor
Everyone got through the portal into Risa's dimension and the door shut out the horrors of the fleshy domain. Safe in her realm, Risa sighed weakly and smiled. "The succubi are in my bag. Someone should pull them out." With another deep sigh, Risa collapsed into the arms of her subsystems and carried herself away to recover. The core party wasn't too surprised when the goddess of this realm collapsed. That was a lot of power that she had just spent - right after she drained a lot of power getting her dimension's time altered.
Thankfully, there were a lot of succubi freshly rescued to aid in powering her back up. Phanuel took the pouch and rather haphazardly dumped its contents onto the floor. Anything that wasn't sex demon, he put back into the pouch. He didn't quite approve of the seduction's existence, but could easily draw the conclusion that they needed to be around, being partially familiar with how Risa worked. Besides, he knew a certain Nymph who may one day prevent the foibles of her born nature from ruling her life. Just as he, a former tiefling did.
"I can see your thinking there, Phanuel," Althaia observed. "And I do not think that the succubi will help with Risa until they themselves have recovered a bit."
[Do not worry. We will take care of them all.] R.I.S.A. said in response. [They will all have to be fed, which takes a lot of effort, but for now, we will put them with the main program in recuperative sleep. They will recover at least a little on their own that way.] And so, the R.I.S.A.s carted away the whole Seduction.
Ashyr stirred in the duergar's arms, and her brown-and-red eyes finally fluttered open. "Tor?" She muttered in confusion.
About the same time as Ashyr was stirring, so was Caleldir. He got up from the ground, groaning. "I am not fond of that personality," he sighed. Then he brightened. "But! he helped get us out of there!"
"Where... oh gods..." the ranger began to ask before her face contorted into a mask of pain.
[You can't have him...]
A faint voice came, this time centered around Ashyr. Evil not natural to her nature began to read in her aura, and chaos began to radiate off her body in heat-distortions that literally caused the air to shift around her.
"It's not over yet," the duergar ('Tor'?) grumbled aloud. "I need a bed to put her on and divine and psionic spellcasters to help ward him away. And a midwife." As he said this, he began to walk purposefully across the hall towards the bedroom that he read off of Selene's mind (who was frozen into speechless inaction.)
"I... can qualify as a midwife, I suppose," Caleldir said uneasily, trying to get his wits about him. "Things are a bit more complex than I usually like, though." Caleldir directed Tor away from the bedroom that Selene had thought of and down to the laboratory, where Risa and he had started recreating the first vestiges of the Geneforge. It was not done yet, and barely functional, but other tools and machines down there could help quite a bit in controlling what was going on.
"I can do the Divine spellcasting when Risa is not available. Sidhriia can help," Althaia added. "And I believe that Selene can use psionics from her artifact. Finally, Phanuel can help ward his father away."
"The first thing to do is to get a genetic sample of the infant," Caleldir said in a brusque tone. "I have Faust's DNA on profile; we can match it with that to check and see if the child is that of the Dark God." Because that really did seem to be the most likely scenario at the moment.
The chaotic evil presence subsided when Ashyr's contraction did. It was still there, though, faintly felt. Waiting like a tiger in the grass. No more words came, only a sense of anger and frustration.
"There is really no need to test whose child that is," Phanuel told the party gravely. "I would be shocked to the core if that isn't my father's. He is doing what he tried to do with me, only this time from birth when the mind and soul are not formed enough to fight as I was able to. But why does he want to be mortal flesh so badly?"
"You can't understand the mind of a chaotic god," Tor grumbled. He seemed to accept the rest of the plan, and so followed Caleldir's lead to his workshop and set Ashyr down with Phanuel's help (for insufficient height reasons.)
"Even if it is obvious that this child is your half-brother, Phanuel, I still need to do a quick genetic analysis," Caleldir replied. "That will tell me a lot of things besides the parentage. And give me the data to concoct a genetic cure for the extreme predilection towards evil that a half-fiend demigod would otherwise have. It will be much more difficult since the baby is currently being born, but it will still be possible with help from Risa." Who was still unconscious. R.I.S.A. could fill in for her somewhat, but only somewhat. "Furthermore, we can also come up with a less-severe version of the countermeasure we took with you to sever your genetic connection with your erstwhile father. This is going to be very difficult."
By that time, Ashyr was more conscious and had yet to undergo another contraction. She was still worryingly sallow and filthy. Her hair was matted and it looked as if she had been wearing the same clothes for months. This seemed to irritate Selene the most; she began to neaten up her cousin with gentle magic and an angry expression. What was left of the clothing had to be removed entirely. Ashyr let herself be fussed over with a dazed, disbelieving expression.
"Tor... how do you know what my family looks like?" she mumbled.
"This is not a mindscape, girl. We're out," The duergar said casually as he began to set out a warding ritual. From seemingly nowhere, He began pulling large crystals that appeared to be non-magical. Selene, however, looked up at them with wonder. To her eyes, they pulsed with intense focusing energy.
Ashyr might have been inclined to respond, but another contraction clearly hit and it was all she could do to struggle through the intense pressure-pain. With it came the heat-wave of evil and the feeling that something was about to claw its way out, just as before.
"Shh, try to relax dearest," Selene cooed softly as she continued to clean Ashyr up. She supposed she was the one to fill the role of birthing coach since she was the only one truly experienced in the mother's side of childbirth. While also trying to focus on assisting with psionic protection and staying calm (because she could do neither job if she panicked.) "I know it hurts, but you have to remember to breathe. The more you fight it, the worse it feels."
Meanwhile, Althaia helped the Duergar with the ritual, while Caleldir and R.I.S.A. started work on prepping their machine. Caleldir did take a moment to give Ashyr a wry smile and a reassuring squeeze on the hand - which she didn't seem to notice - but otherwise was busy with the labor.
The ritual took about as long to set up as this unfinished version of the Geneforge did. It was an ornate ritual that wove together arcane, divine, and psionic magics. It was complex and needed some creativity to properly fold divine magic into the other two. But, when Ashyr's next contraction came near the end of the setup, they were able to activate and proverbially slam the door in the demon god's face when he tried to punch his way through the dimension through his newest son.
"I wonder if we could lay a trap for him," Caleldir mused. "Build a fake, soulless version of this child and 'fail' to keep him from getting through. If we structured that right, we could trap him in a near-powerless form in Risa's domain in a prison specially made for him."
Selene twisted her lips in a dubious expression. That sounded... difficult and unlikely to work. It was, however, the only idea they currently had for taking the demon god down a couple of levels. So she didn't try to outright forbid that plan of action for the present. Not that she was really able to concentrate on anything but making sure that the demon god didn't come into Risa's realm and harm her family. And that Ashyr was as calm and comfortable as possible.
[I am not sure that is possible.] R.I.S.A. responded dubiously. [The theory is good, and building a soulless homunculus version of this child would not be difficult, but I think our enemy is too smart to fall for that.] The projection quivered a bit, thinking.
The Geneforge's setup was finished, however, and the party turned their eye to the projection of a young man standing proudly in front of them, identical to the man from 'Tor's' prophesy that he shared with the party back in the dungeon. At first glance, he was very much like Faust with a slight color shift. His skin coloring was darker crimson, and his full head of hair was a shocking bright red. Ridged and spiraled antelope horns sprouted from his temples and curved around his scalp all the way past the back of his head. And he was large: easily six and a half feet. Aside from all that, he looked like a regular, strangely colored half-elf.
But then things began to change as the Geneforge processed more. His alignment was an uncertain, roiling mass of confusion. A miasma of red-black Chaotic Evil roiled across the outer layer of his skin, but it seemed that underneath was a beacon of Good instead. The layer of Good seemed to bleach his skin to albino white and changed his body and head hair a silvered lilac. Sidhriia smiled at what she could see underneath and brushed her fingers through that part of the projection.
"God-touched either way. Why am I not surprised she'd pull this sort of trickery?" the duergar complained in a low grumble. Most of his concentration was on keeping the ward up, but he was curious to see what the forge did. "Don't get distracted, girlie. Keep channeling," He reminded Riia as he turned his attention back to the ward.