Lorelei's Note: This is a brand-new series in a brand-new fantasy setting called the Glowpebble Path. This series will contain themes of nonconsent, transformation, bimbos, gambling, addiction, monster girls, and possibly the occasional bad end.
Please remember that consensual nonconsent and hypnosis should always be practiced safely and ethically in the real world.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
True, total darkness was hard to come by. It crept beneath leaves, lurked behind boulders and bushes, made its home in the deepest depths of the cavernous weeping witchelms. No darkness survived long along the inner lengths of the Glowpebble Path.
The Glowpebble Path was not so much a road as it was a landscape, and it was not so much a landscape as it was a region, and it was not so much a region as it was a world. The smooth little pebbles chose a pattern to travel in, of course, a river of light none dared swim in, but the path was vast and sprawling, a pale rainbow hundreds of miles wide.
At the center of the path, the pebbles were placed so densely one couldn't even reach the precious enchanted earth beneath without digging. On the outskirts, one might have to deliberately search for minutes or even hours to find a glowpebble that had somehow found itself tucked within the petals of an unblossomed sugar buttercup. There the Path was so absent that the inhabitants considered themselves, wrongly, to be quite independent of it.
And, of course, even in those remote reaches, true darkness was usually put to flight by at least one of the seven beautiful moons.
It was only when clouds flooded the skies to block the demonic lights, when rain poured down and gathered mud and sludge to its cause and created a flood that could briefly submerge even the highest glowpebbles, when fairies and wisps and lamp sprites refused to come out to play or were forbidden to by their lords in the Underworld, could any stretch of land truly be called dark.
Only then was it truly not perilous to walk the Glowpebble Path.
Just miserable.
Celia blew upward, trying to dislodge a lock of wet silvery hair that had fallen in her eyes. The strand stayed stubbornly put. She gave an angry, rumbling sigh like an engine, but didn't dare release what she carried for one second to fix her hair.
The thief's heavy boots squished deep in the mud, nearly making her stumble.
Damn this rain. It was keeping her alive, but damn it anyways.
She needed to find shelter. Any shelter would do. She shot an annoyed lift at her cargo. Anywhere
dry
.
She'd had to drape it in waterproof canvasses, which didn't help one bit with the load. Those were the rules: covered with two oak's enemies and ten of the sun's wives cut before the dawn, protected from Styx's children, hidden from the little travelers' lanterns. Mistletoe and dead wasps and morning glory buds, protection from the rain, and shielded from glowpebble light. Simple. Heavy.
As inconvenient as it was, though, she didn't want to think about what might happen if it started to...
She froze.
A burglar needed good hearing, especially for the kinds of burglaring Celia partook in. You had to hear a door opening, the owner coming home early and hanging up his coat, a lantern being lit out of sight, a sword being loosened, a pistol being cocked. You needed to hear it before you even exactly noticed it.
When her head shot to the right, it was a second before she'd registered she'd heard it.
Music.
She almost laughed. Oh, that would be just perfect. Just what she needed--to run into some Fae, or a Concert, or a Revel, or...
She paused with a frown. Her head tilted to the side. The rain pounded and rattled against her poncho. The hair moved from tickling her cheek to tickling her nose.
That didn't sound... ethereal to her. Nor Fae.
A burglar also needed to know what sorts of perils could catch you after dark, because a lot of them liked to go after the wicked. Celia was very much of the wicked tonight.
But this... She squinted off into the murk. It was too dark to see anything. That was sort of the idea. But right now, it was a nuisance.
She turned and peered back the way she'd come.
Surely nobody could have followed her all this way.
Hissing in distaste, she dug the toes of one boot into the muck and probed around, then kicked up. Mud spattered against her face and wet her nose, and several little pebbles, each the size of a large coin and perfectly river-stone-smooth, went flying out into the darkness.
Light spilled in their wake.
It wasn't just that glowpebbles themselves, well, glowed. Any night traveler knew that. Light
followed
them. They gulped it down, swallowed and digested it like ravenous creatures. If you dislodged one, that light would
spill
. It would fall off them like dust from a fluttering bird's wings, settling and pooling on the ground and lingering there sometimes for hours before gradually being lost.
But while the light hung in the air, Celia squinted out into the retreating shadows and saw something out there. Something was walking with slow, measured steps towards the road.
And she was drop-dead
gorgeous
.
Celia was smart. Celia was careful. Celia didn't get herself into trouble with romance, or sex, or very obvious otherworldly tricksters in the shadows.
But her heart caught her breath in her chest and held it still, and she
stared
.
The beautiful woman giggled and tilted her head to the side. "Hi, cutie!"
Celia bit her lip.
The woman had bright, brilliant hazel eyes. That was the first thing Celia noticed. Hazel eyes, glinting in the light captured beneath her twirling umbrella. Hazel. So not a trick of the glowpebbles. Big, beautiful hazel eyes with thick lashes like weighty curtains, fluttering as if the only trouble with the rain was the risk to her mascara. She had generous black curls spilling down to her shoulders and bouncing up from them like the mist in a waterfall's wake. Her skin was that same soft hazel brown, with bright rosy cheeks untouched by rain or cold.
Her pretty face wasn't... exactly the reason Celia was flustered, though. Even if Celia wasn't used to pretty girls smiling at her like that.
The woman was dressed in a black silk leotard, like what a dancer might wear, form-fitting and absurdly low-cut to show off an equally absurd rack. A ridiculous little bowtie hung from the collar-esque choker. A delicate, almost ornamental-looking pink and white umbrella twirled behind her.
Celia tried not to let her eyes linger on those amply displayed curves, that flawless bared skin. Her eyes were too busy descending down the woman's svelte waist to the pert ass, barely concealed by the sheer leotard, and those sheer, enticing stockings hugging the thighs.
Fuck.
Celia swallowed and tore her gaze back up to the woman's eyes. Atop the head, she belatedly realized, rose two fluffy pink-and-white bunny ears.
"H-Hey," she said, snapping her guard back up. She hadn't heard bunnyfolk were around this area, but they weren't fey, and it wasn't breeding season--she was pretty sure--so the main threat she was dealing with was a witness. Act casual. Act normal. "Some weather, huh?"
