Mourner in the Manse

Mourner in the Manse

By Azimuth J. Moore

1: The Jaded Dragon

A distant age as dark as death

A place untouched by living eyes

A dragon drew its brackish breath

And blew a specter into life

Sweat ran in golden sun-kissed beads down Qora's chest, like the mist on this morning's grass; his greatsword whirled in mighty arcs, carving seams in the fog of dawn. From a guard at his agile, muscle-corded shoulder, he practiced all strikes: a rising cut, an off-side blow, a plowing thrust, and again. His feet kicked up flecks of glittering dew from the grass- they set deep in the attack, only to rise again as gracefully as a cat's own paw before the next.

Nuha wrapped and knotted her silken silver hair into a tangly bun and returned, a helpless smile on her face, to her handcannon. The cleaning cloth ran over the copper dragon that coiled the iron barrel- around its frills and tall backsail, in the cleavage of its mighty, clapping ass. No matter the oils she used, or the force with which she scoured it, the jading of its metal could not be wiped away, as though the weapon's ancient provenance was as true a skin.

It was much like Qora in that manner, whose impulse could not be quelled no matter how many pussies bathed him in their waters, whose feral heart sought danger and newness at all junctures. It was that- the weight of his balls in spirit, more than that weight between his legs- that allured her so immediately to him, that put her here, more his bitch than his teacher.

But nonetheless he wore that weight on his flesh as well or greater; so often her good eye wandered down his misty slender belly to the great shaft that swayed there. Even the mightiest clap of her melony ass could not enclose his cock. Even just the force of his swinging ballsack could send shocks through those cheeks, like those by which ancient dragons broke open warm aquifers.

It was the manse which gave shape to her worries. The same bravado which sent her to lectures still bloated with jizz and wearing a red print on her rich tan buttcheek, now drew Qora to find thrills in the scuttling city. The tumbling tops of homes, of garrisons and turrets, breached a swamp of shadow in this breaking day; the xenoforms cried out from the veil of silhouette, in voices of dread and violence. Wreathed in a bleachy, twisted garden and wrapped in a brackish haze, an old bailiff's home stood, beckoning her Qora there.

No hint of fear hung above his raven head nor hid behind his snaggled smile; it seemed she felt it all for him. The fury of the young had long left her, felt now only when Qora busted in overwhelming gallons on her wizening face. Perhaps, she thought, it was not fear for a loss of him, but for a loss of the adventurous spirit that once drew her out of her home, to live by the blush of orgasm and the crack of gunpowder.

That was why he, and all his fellow students, came here to the academy. Not to mute their spirit, but to keen its edge. It was a lofty goal to her at first, to imbue her students with the curiosity she once had for the world, to see them off to greater heights. But that eagerness faded, as the instinct her peers had for teaching failed to wake in her. She showed them acrobatics, the duelist's measure, the pose of arms; what they learned, though, she could not say.

And so, to that shadow-strewn manse he would go, and she would not stop him. The thrill and danger he would find there would make a much better teacher than she, a woman as faded as the copper on her cannon. She only hoped he came back, and she could forget all her doubts at the end of his leash.

2: The Wretched House

Her hunger walked the land like men

A wraith that puppets hung'ring thralls

Who stole the cocks from marriage bed

And drank the semen from their balls

The sunshine was clouded away by a tangle of black briars and pallid, blighted branches. Scant light checkered Qora's fair chest, and gave a sliver of warmth to his chilly bare skin. He buckled his vambrace tighter around his arm, before he ventured further down the brackeny cobbled path, swinging his great balls and clacking in his cuisses.

For now, the slouching outer walls of the manor held the xenoforms at bay, though they were splashed over with sludgy green lichen and lain with great eggs. Those xenoforms, dark and shiny in the risen sun, chittered from neighboring rooves and peered for a glance beyond the manor's outer turrets. Inside the wretched garden, a black haze hung in ribbons, and tasted harsh like nickel when breathed. Qora kept one gauntleted hand on his mouth, and the other cocked to draw his sword.

Black-budded julias crowded the patio, their flowers not yet blossomed. Glass windows had been made opaque by the splinterings of time. Hatted in an old blessing arch, two oaken doors, choked with black ivy and hunching with rot, had settled out of their hinges. With effort, Qora pulled them loose, sent them flaking to the ground, and opened the way and the light, into that decades-old dark.

It was in Nuha's hands that he grew nearer to his potential by the day; she spread her legs beneath his war-spirit, his untamable heart, and his pussy-shattering cock when first she laid eyes on him. She keened these things in him, awakened in him a soul that relished in thrill and danger- with her martial motions and the kiss of her cock-sucking lips, she inspired him: to receive the godlands' worship on his balls, as completely as Nuha had put her worship on them.

The black haze belched out from inside, the floorboards settled with a disquieting groan, as if to welcome and beckon Qora in- as if to grip him with a hungering tongue. After a moment's second thoughts, he set his teeth, clutched his zweihander's scarred handle, and crossed the creaking threshold.

From the few wisps of daylight outside, he could spy a faded portrait, a table with some cracked wooden cups and fouled pewter goblets. From atop a flight of whitewashed stairs, a loft overlooked the foyer. In the loft, candle sconces sank into the floor like it was quicksand, and moth-bitten clothes spilled out from a dust-oozing wardrobe.

As Qora resolved to check the vantage points in the loft first, he noted a peculiar sound. It was soft, muted, but human. Though he could not make words out, it whined and choked, fading between groans and sobs and whimpers. Gingerly, he moved across the floor, shuffling to keep his armor quiet. First to the western wall, and then to the southern, searching for the source. When finally he put his head to the staircase, he heard it-- not from above, but below.

"...dragon, beg thy pity, does the omentwink." Words were lost in the dulling of the walls, and in the gurgling of the wretched sobs. "...hold thy curved teeth- but I am too skinny; I cannot twerk."

Even honed and war-wrought as he was, as many monstrous pussies as had left their hostile juices in pearly trails on his cock, he felt these minor fears as sharp as he had some years ago. Battle was never won until it was, and even the most careless of opponents could claim victory should luck smile on them. The barrier between glorious victory and crushing, irreparable defeat was often as thin as a thread, no matter how practiced the warrior.

But the serpentine hand of misfortune lingered behind everyone. To cower from it was the trade of lesser men; those with realer, truer balls, welcomed its touch, held it like the hand of a suitress, and in so doing, knew the world in more intimate ways than others dream of.

His curiosity drove him to find this lamenter, but first, he intended to clear the upper levels. With a heavy foot he tested the first step; it whinged but did not buckle, and the second step did too. So into the lofty cloud of foul vapor he went again, shielding his mouth in his elbow.

As he went, the mist began to scratch inside his ear; as the fell streamers washed over him it felt as if they traced tingling fingers in their path. The corners of his vision filled with the ichorous stuff, and in it shapes pursed like lips, and particles twirled like hair. He even swore two points the stiff texture of lustful nipples were at his back, and clutches like embracing hands were plunging from his waist to his cock.

He cleared the illusions from his mind; they were but the misread tickling of the haze. His hand did not release from his sword, though; only when he took another step and the staircase crumpled beneath him, did he let go to catch himself.

As the mist stung his throat, his fingers cried out with the pain of clinging to splintering studs, of bearing the weight of Qora and his armor. His teeth cringed and crunched with exertion, as he inched his grip forward to pull himself up. His scabbard buckle worked loose, and his sword began to swing with him, betraying his efforts to draw the both of them to safety. With grunts and swears, he curled his fingers around the rear of the forward step, and reached his coutered elbow onto the surface.

But then, like a taunting assurance of its realness, the illusion began again. Hands seemed to clutch at his arms; they caressed him at first, but then, they pushed. And Qora tumbled into the darkness of the cellar.

3: The Lamenter's Cellar

The dragon roared and thundered cheeks

Descending on the wood-strewn lands

With sabers great she slew the trees

And bathed the hills in fell demand

His landing was broken by some dark and liquid mess that seemed to eat what little light crept in from the hole in the staircase. It ran off from his hands in slow cascades like slime, and sometimes lurched or lumped in unexpected ways. It seemed to move subtly despite no flow or outside force; it clung to his body, cinched snugly against his ballsack, and crept up his belly like the fingers of some strange ivy.

Perturbed, he climbed off of his aching back to his feet, and sloughed off the sludge into its fell puddle. Unease seemed to hang in the cellar, partner to the haze that made the stale air closer to a stinging drink. Around him, wine shelves were empty of their bottles; what few remained were just dust-lined containers of red chalk.

He heard the voice clearer here. It repeated the same stumbling ideas, in phrases just barely changing, fluctuating between roaring agitation and whimpering mournfulness. "Oh, please, mother of my hunger, dancer of the vapors of death, whose ass soaks in baths of worshipful cum... Make me worthy, great wyrm; fatten my butt."

Qora thought of announcing himself, but instead chose care, not to aggravate this person's paranoia without a human face to show them. After his eyes adjusted, and the darkness of the cellar alit colorlessly before him, he waded gently.

As not to splash the slime, he shuffled; the slime though, seemed not to slosh with his steps, but dragged each one as though hesitant to release him. It stained his greaves, and crawled up them like undressing caresses, to slip boldly inside his cuisses. There, it moved in unsettling ways: at first just the undulating of something alive but dumb, then an uncanny mimic of lips and labia.

Qora bit down the panic rising up through his throat; he thought of shouldering his sword, but he thought better of coming to a person in distress with weapon proud, and the cellar off-rooms were too small to swing it inside if he had wanted to. Instead, his hand hovered at the dagger on his waist, awaiting a truer foe.

The dry-rotted oaken door out of the wine room was stuck by the slime, so with the strength of his shoulder he pushed hard. It was made ajar some, but mostly it caved, and drooled soft, pale splinters onto Qora's spaulders-- just enough for Qora to twist his catlike body and slip through.

As he stood straight, and scraped away the slime which clutched needingly at his ballsack, he searched for a route farther. Candlelight peeked through the riddled wallboards, and illuminated as much as it prevented his eyes from adjusting. He felt his way through the room, searching for a door handle. Instead he clattered some hefty oaken things to the ground.

The shelves in this room, wearing cobwebs like paint and draped with moth-gnawed linens, were overwhelmed with countless wooden carvings. They were weighty, but could be held in the hand, so he put one up to the peeking glow. In the warm sliver of yellow light he saw a horrific visage of a horned and skull-faced dragon. Crouching with legs eagle and pussy bold, and booty clapping behind a curling and spiny tail. Its forelegs crossed before it, and held great sabers the blades of which haloed its head.

Every carving was like this, whittled with scavenged house knives and dull chisels; each stroke was splintery and jagged, but the image remained the same. A feverish repetition, of the kind only madness or grief could spawn. He heard the person sob again, and saw prostrate movements from between the cracks in the board. "Please, mother of my hunger. Please, dancer of the vapors of death. I want to be worthy."

Qora splayed his hand on the next door, and steeled himself with cool breath. Once more he sloughed the creeping slime from his body. Then, he pushed the door open, and entered into the candlelit basement.

Before him, a great wooden idol, graven from the trunk of a severed orchard tree, drenched in the candles which stuck to its body. Its hollow skull-eyes stared unfeelingly ahead. Its crouching butt, though just a mere sculpting, evoked a hint of primordial dread as though the image was pulled from the depths of daevic history. In its foreclaws rested two glittering sabers; their hilts were coiled with the tail of obsidian dragons, which sprawled on the false edges, ass up.

The slime here was the source of the black haze, which wafted up from its surface into the impression of women. Qora flexed his anxious hand at their seeing, and hoped not to have to draw steel against such ephemera. They floated abreast the idol like a council, glittering in scant yellow glow. They juggled misty boobs with illusory hands, and kissed with false lips, and lolled false tongues and whispered in hissy pseudolanguages.

At their center, washing themselves in the ooze, was a hunched figure. He was naked, on slender hands and knees with pussy exposed, except for rust-coated scale sleeves on his arms and legs, and a cruel iron mask welded around his messy, pale-brown hair. Eyes of feral black peered out from within that mask, and dug chilly nails into Qora with their gaze.

"You should have stayed well away," the man spoke- hoarse but effeminate. "You ought to have bewared the omentwink."

"Who are you?" Qora asked, a gentle, but uneasy note in his voice. "Do you need help?"

"Your balls, they smell so potently... they slosh with blessed cum." Golden threads of foamy slobber fell from inside the iron. "You have made a grave mistake. You will be my eternal, frenzied feast." Black tears striped what little of his cheeks Qora could see. "Forgive me, great dracolich. I am so hungry." From the idol's grip he drew both sabers, and held them ready in the way the dragon held them. "Draw your blade. I have held back long enough."

The madman leaped, with swords held skyward and scale armor glittering scantly in the candlelight. With chest stinging with breath and thundering with heartbeat, Qora reflexed and pulled his zweihander; it was only the crashing of his great blade into the cross of the dragon sabers that saved him from their sting.

His enemy twirled with a flower's grace and rabid fervor, to press again with a both-bladed strike to Qora's waist. Qora, with the impulse of a hundred drilling days and an expert's instinct, spread his hands apart on the long hilt and clattered away the offending blades with the battered wood and splitting leather there. Before a follow-up could begin, Qora drove his plated shoulder between the omentwink's pale nipples.

With that force, the foe stumbled back, and crashed through a pillar which held up the floor above. In a rain of dust and a hail of oaken shards, he was shrouded, a wrathful specter, silhouetted amidst the gold-flecked gray. Qora was left alone for a moment with the frightful visage of the dragon. Its gaze was cold, and empty.

Then, a wail from within that haze, and the omentwink pierced through with swords charged. He leapt, and sliced through the air, and grappled Qora's neck in the crook of his arm. His slender legs, cold and damp and scratchy with his scaly chausses, wrapped his waist. His tongue, hungry and wild, slipped longly through the iron grille that jailed him, past Qora's fair lips and into his mouth to do battle with Qora's own kiss.

There, in the battleground of mouths, they wrestled. The omentwink's kiss suckled on Qora's tongue, overflowing with a need that was echoed in the wetness of his grinding pussy. Black droplets drew lustful lines on Qora's ballsack, like prison bars; the soaking labia between those clutching legs worked up a lustful and brackish foam up and down his shaft.

Qora's snaggle teeth clenched away the tense euphoria waking in the twenty hardening inches of his cock. Furiously, he took his foe's dust-flecked hair in sure hand and pulled him free of the kiss; a quivering broke up the omentwink's heaving breath, and only grew more mewling as Qora pursed his lips and drew the skin of that neck between his teeth.

As Qora left spotty, purple trails after his kisses, the feral man ground harder, and with his moans of unmitigated urge, coaxed up greater lust in Qora's loins. Hot black-tinged gasps issued forth from the enemy's lips, a blush warmed his dark, sickly eyes. Saber-clutching claws drew red trails between Qora's shoulder blades and clutched him more preciously even as the whimpers grew nearer to roars.

Qora felt the chilly brace of steel press to his throat and challenge his breath; the hissing man crossed his blades there, and pressed them harshly. With force he bent Qora backwards, enough to break the kiss and lay bare, through the iron muzzle, a snarl of fanged, frothing teeth.

In desperation, Qora cast aside his blade and held tight the strangling swords; he shut his mind to the pleasure the foe was drilling soakingly into his cock, and dug his foot into the flooded, oozing floor. Both struggled to win this contest of strength; Qora's shoulders grew hot, and his chest puffed up with flexing. Each turned their gritted teeth into growls, each squeezed their eyes narrower, but the foe's soft and slender arms could not forever resist Qora's muscle.

The man spilled off of Qora's waist, and splashed to the ground; Qora rushed to find the tattered hilt of his greatsword amidst the agitated, animated sludge. The man was rearing again, to swing his swords in a felling arc, but in just time Qora had clasped the soaking handle, and crashed the sparking blades aside. As the foe raised his swords again, Qora did the same, and with a half-sworded blunt strike, pinned both wrists to the wall behind.

The walling boards belched out clouds of dirt as they struck them. Without delay the omentwink's labia began to grind again on Qora's shaft, eyes fierce with a rousing, provoking need. Soft pale nipples and pillowy pectorals caressed Qora's chest, and in their paths were drawn an image of desire.

Qora resolved- that should his foe rile up the lust in him, the fervor and the fury sloshing in his balls- he would show this omentwink exactly that. All it took was the pressure of his fist-sized cockhead between the lips of the foe's wet pussy, and astonishment silenced the muzzled mouth which once was raucous with hisses and growls.