Amber's chambers are practically a floor unto themselves, one that I've never before stepped into. She has a large lounge built around a fireplace, what can only be a television of demonic design above the mantelpiece, many seats of varying proportions, some simply massive, crowding around a central low table.
She sits me beside herself on a more human-sized sofa, then the girls start arriving. 'Telshvala,' Amber says, smiling at the man'ari. The daemonic draenei has a matronly beauty to her, ashen-white skin, hair like pure snow all braided and coiled, horns great and pointed like a crown. At twelve feet tall, more than twice my height, the great demoness is immense and intimidating. Her wings are immense, tail long and muscular, ringed by platinum bands jewelled in rubies. Telshvala wears a loincloth hanging from a revealing girdle of platinum, a brassiere of that same solid metal all jewelled in rubies, and nothing else besides. Her smooth legs end in hoofs, as is expected. She is enormous, truly, in all senses of the word.
As Telshvala seats herself, curious white eyes never leaving me, the centaur-like dryad trots in, the corrupted nymph upon her back. 'The dryad is Alannah,' Amber says. 'The forlarren, Verelyn.'
Two more gorgeous, intimidating creatures. Alannah at eight feet, the majority being her equid portion, has the lower half of a centaur, albeit less overtly heavy of build, closer in some ways to something nimble and sprightly, like a deer, brown fur soft and spotted in white dots. Her upper half is violet-skinned, almost elven but too thick, curvaceous, despite the long sharp ears and pointed wispy eyebrows. The dryad's enormous fat chest, barely restrained by a bra of silvery-gold leaves, bound together by flowering fruiting vines, wobbles heavily as she moves. Her eyes are golden autumn, her face a heart, warm and smiling, her hair flowing like a waterfall of spun gold, a set of antlers protruding from beneath it on either side.
The forlarren by contrast is reminiscent of a female faun, yet furless, having goat-like legs ending in black hoofs but no tail of which to speak. Standing about halfway to eight feet, her eyes are rubies, her lips full, taut in a perpetual yet sultry grimace, cheeks gaunt and cheekbones high, hair black as night and flowing down to her plump backside. Verelyn wears leather, bound in skulls and sinew, covering her genitals and quite large -- though compared to the competition, second to both Telshvala and Alannah -- breasts.
Next comes the dark lamia and the dark elf, chatting in mercilessly enrapturing voices about things doubtless cruel and venomous. 'Anabella is the Apophis,' Amber says, assuming knowledge on my behalf. It might ring a vague bell? 'Morrigan the dark elf.'
In hearing their names they fall silent, smiling with dangerous beauty. The elf looks older, appearing as a healthy woman in her early forties, in fine feminine shape yet showing faint marks of age, her pale skin hinting at slight wrinkles. At six foot, she might be the smallest of the coven, ghostly-looking and deathly beautiful, with blood-red hair that forms great coiling waves behind upon and behind her shoulders, and eyes like arctic sapphires. Her garb is some black-plate bikini, hiding small pert breasts and girding a motherly pair of hips. She wears long cruel gauntlets, and boots of a similar kind, her collar draped in black metal jewellery, all the stones green, noxious. She winks at me, taking her seat as the Apophis coils around to sit atop herself beside the fire.
A lamia, yes, but something darker. Anabella is all tainted rainbow scales, deep indigo skin, a waterfall of obsidian hair, full lips and youthful beauty that occasionally hints at monstrousness with a flicker of a long bifurcated tongue. Draped in a crown and jewels and bands like some monarch, she sits there cross-armed, forearms tucked beneath a pair of gargantuan breasts, the gemstone embedded in her belly button glowing at odds with the flickering flame of the hearth. How tall I can't say, but coiled maybe eight, or nine feet, though her body, so long and serpentine, could well be three times that in total, its underbelly bluish-black, softer-seeming.
By this point, I have five sets of unbelievably attractive and deadly eyes set upon me, sat as I am most unusually beside the Queen of Maids herself. 'Where are the others?' Amber says, hands crossed neatly upon her lap.
'Tytana has business,' Anabella says, tongue lapping the air, tasting. She smiles at me. 'That ice-nymph and her demon are struggling to breed.'
Amber sighs. 'And Jezzana? Thynelleph?'
'Here,' the Amazonian says, stomping in, crossing the room but pausing upon spotting me. 'What's the monkey doing here, Amber?'
'He's the topic of conversation, Jez,' Amber says, turning, smiling. 'Sit, would you?'
The Amazon glares at me the whole while, a barbarian compared to the others. Utterly muscular, chiselled arms and legs and belly on full show, an eight or ten-pack on her abdomen, at odds with the full curve of her hips, the massive breasts on her chest, the giant backside she sits herself down on. Eight-and-a-half feet tall, bronze-brown skinned, hair flame-red, eyes sapphire-blue. Garbed in leather and bone and metal, a warrior as much as a woman, a braided crown of sinew holding her long hair back and aloft, spikes of bone pointing upwards, the teeth of the headdress.
Just as Amber goes to speak, the nightmare steps in. The orange flame-maned horse-woman, over nine feet tall, rattles as she steps, clad in full black plate armour.
'Sorry, Amber,' Thynelleph says, sonorous softness at odds with her vigour. 'I had business in the eastern quarter. More of those foolish Red Terror followers. Please accept my full apologies.'
'You're always forgiven, Elle.' Amber smiles warmly. 'Please sit. We were just beginning matters.'
The nightmare puts down her long bardiche, gently balancing it against the wall, and then comes to sit with the rest of the girls. I can't make out much of her body, other than the anthropomorphic equine beauty of her face, its dark horns piercing the air above and behind her head, her lips full and lacquer-black, mane pure living flame, orange and vibrant. The mane, like some warrior's mohawk, brings to mind the plumed helmet of a roman centurion, only this one falls into a searing braid behind her neck.
'Tytana's yuki-onna and her breeding problems aside,' Amber says, rolling her eyes, 'I've called you here for a proposition. A pact, of mutual benefit.' She turns to me, and all eyes follow hers, and naturally I blush. 'This is Peter. Mother's pet writer. The boy we saved from being broken in by an old-fashioned throat-fucking.'
'Hi,' I say, for some reason, meek and stupid. Jezzana grunts, lets her head roll back.
Alannah waves. 'Hi, Peter,' she says, enthusiastic but measured.
The dark elf smirks, rolls her eyes. The Apophis licks the air, smiling curiously. The forlarren and the man'ari both stare, curious, but say nothing, inscrutable. The nightmare considers me with dull seriousness, more formal than the others.
Amber jabs me in the side. 'Talk only when spoken to, idiot.' The others laugh, innocent and pleasant all the way to unkind. Jezzana, basically. 'Ignoring his basic misunderstanding, Peter has a predicament. One I would ordinarily ignore, but' -- she scans the room, garners all attentions -- 'one that might benefit you, or at least, most of you.'
Benefit them? And yes, a few eyebrows lift. 'Today, Peter's idiotic decision to leave the confines of this castle, being prime meat for such beasts as befell him, might well have caused the death of one of my personal pets, Narglarn Farris. Tomorrow, that same decision might kill her, or one of yours.'
'Easy fix,' Jezzana says, crossing her arms. 'Lock him in here. Break his legs.'
Alannah frowns. 'Must you be so needlessly brutish, warrior-queen?'
The Amazon rolls her eyes. 'Must you be so dotingly motherly, cum-flower?'
'Continue bickering, and there will be upset,' Amber says, cool and composed and somehow, despite her lovely voice, as sharp as any scalpel. The other two fall silent, nod their apologies. 'Believe it or not, Jez, I actually sympathise with the little idiot. He is, like as not, trapped in his room. However, that alone, by itself, is not enough to provoke this meeting.'
Amber smiles now, all threat and fell glamour. I shudder, despite the warmth here. 'I wanted to organise this meeting so as to produce a pact, between yourselves and Peter, for mutual benefit.'
'Mutual benefit?' Thynelleph says, studying me. 'What might a mere human provide? What might we provide him?'
'Meaning that outside, the boy is protected. He can, when any one of you is free to do so, be given a chaperone of sorts. So that if trouble should arise, it is not our feeble pets who face it, defending our mistaken honour, but rather one of we dangerous creatures.'
And what I fear, as she finishes speaking, comes to a head. Silence. Deadly, deathly, I-am-fucked silence. Because, ultimately, I need freedom, and if Amber won't allow it any other way, then I need the aid of her girls. Her coven. Her harem.
Then Alannah says, beaming at me, 'I'll do it.'
'You will?' I say.
She smiles bright, nods. 'Sure, sweetie. But in return, I may need your help with the bees and the hornets. Oh, and the dryads. Little rascals that they are.'
