Part The First Through The Ruins

Author's Note - This story is basically one continuous narrative in three parts. The sex scenes are different in tone, reflecting the stages of the protagonist's journey. The first part is heavy on story and light on sex, and the third part is heavy on sex and light on story.

Tags for Chapter 1: Female/demon, Female dominant, handjob, cunnilingus.

Tags for Chapter 2: Female/Female, Female dominant, makeout, tribbing.

Tags for Chapter 3: Male/Female, Male Dominant, reluctant?

NARRATOR:

The Protectorate is near the end of the current Age. The Flame of Masculinity is dying out. Protector Potentate Gabriel (father of twins, Gabriel and Gabrielle) - the most powerful and sexually potent man in the land due to his proximity to the Flame - is aging and decrepit. Gabriel has withdrawn to the Citadel of the Eternal Flame and has not been seen for years. His Silver Knights no longer attempt to maintain order outside Royal properties. Bereft of the Masculinity spread by the Flame, the men of the land are devolving into empty, shrunken caricatures of themselves. The Hysterical Curse, once merely a legend, has been seen on a number of women. Those who bear the Curse use the femininity it brings to perform the duties once the province of men - commerce, warfare, even government. When found by the women keeping a marginal society going, women with the Curse mark are often sent to the Asylum of Sisterhood, to be safely caged away until they die.

FROM THE SHRINE THROUGH THE RUINS

Probity looked back down on the womens' settlement. She hadn't realized how high she had climbed - the steps carved out of the cliff that rose above the settlement hadn't seemed that steep.

Probity stood for a moment, her lithe figure silhouetted against a sky that, though cloudless, was dim. Her stance was a trained warrior's, balanced and predatory. Her pale blonde hair flowed down to her shoulders in the absence of a helmet. Her dark-colored, close-fitting armor was light leather, favoring mobility over protection. The leather jerkin and leggings hugged her slender body, revealing curves that were feminine though not pneumatic.

Tantalizingly, there was a narrow opening in the front of her armor, from just below the jerkin's neck fastening to the center of Probity's respectable cleavage.

A businesslike sword, meant to be wielded one-handed, hung at Probity's left hip. A tiny buckler, barely larger than a wrist-guard, was strapped to her left forearm.

At this point in her climb, Probity had reached higher ground, and the way forward opened up, leading towards an ancient aqueduct silhouetted against the sky.

Probity was at the edge of what had been a thriving community. Before the Eternal Flame had betrayed the land by depriving it of the Flame's blessing. This age was coming to an end.

Ancient prophecies were all the remaining vestiges of civilization had to guide them. They spoke of a Champion, who would revitalize the age and restore the Flame. Or who would end the age and bring darkness to the land. They just didn't agree on which it would be.

But it wasn't just the land that was suffering from the absence of the Flame.

Looking down from her vantage, Probity saw some of the men who had lived there, in the field spreading out before her. What they were doing now wasn't exactly living. They were hunched around a guttering fire, which was barely more than ash and some faint coals. Their skin was sunken and hollow, their clothes unkempt and barely more than scraps. Probity could even see under their scruffy loincloths as they squatted, and their male organs were as shrunken and wrinkled as the skin of their faces.

Although women like Probity had always been warriors, only men had been Champions. But without the strength of the Flame, no men anymore had the physical or mental strength to step forward. So now it fell on a woman to be Champion.

It was the additional reserve of feminine power that the Hysterical Curse allowed Probity to tap into that brought her the strength to call herself Champion. That was, Probity believed, why the Curse had chosen her, a warrior, to bear the Curse mark on her breast.

There was a path leading up towards the aqueduct, hugging the curve of the cliff face. Probity wondered if the hollow men by the fire would even notice her - her leather armor wouldn't make much noise and they didn't seem to be paying attention to anything but their ashy "bonfire" - so she started slowly in that direction.

Indeed, the men in the field didn't notice Probity. But she saw a flicker of movement from the corner of her eye as she looked back down. And she heard a sniffing sound from the path above her.

"Smells like... woman..."

Above Probity on the path was a slightly less unkempt, but equally wrinkled and shriveled, man - with a helmet in decent condition capping off his decrepit armor. But the man's skin was just as shriveled as the others, and his movements were slow and shuffling. He carried a long sword, which he could probably have handled single-handed in the past, but needed both even to lift in his current condition.

But he had the high ground, and there was little room to maneuver with the dropoff to Probity's right. She would have to be careful. But the hollow man didn't spare any thoughts to strategy and shuffled forward to squash the uppity woman before him with an overhead blow from his sword.

Probity felt the Curse mark on her left breast glow warmly, empowering her. Uniquely feminine strength flowed through her trimly muscular limbs.

The enemy's attack was slow, and the withered warrior was overbalanced. Probity had all day to choose a counter. She merely reached up with her more slender blade and flicked the descending longsword to one side, causing it to lodge in the turf of the path as it flashed down - safely wide of her body.

As her emaciated enemy struggled to pull his weapon from the ground, Probity gingerly circled behind him, and struck decisively with her straight sword. A precise backstab, striking upward just below the ribcage to penetrate her opponent's vitals. His last breath rasped out of his stilled lungs, and he fell face-first to the turf without further sound.

This was not the first man Probity had killed. She had been a warrior from childhood, and this was far from her first battle. The mark of the Hysterical Curse flared, warming Probity's resolve. This was her quest. This was what she was here to do.

The Curse was taking Probity on a journey. It would give her the strength to complete it. But would it give her the knowledge to understand it?

Champions were particularly popular subjects of the ancient prophecies, but the prophets were obscure as to what they believed the specific roles of Champions would be. Restoring the age, or transforming it, or destroying it?

No one even knew why the Curse had reappeared. The curseborne, flush with the femininity the Curse provided, were outcasts, misfits in the dying land. Many communities had the Curse bearers exiled or committed to asylums to avoid disrupting what order remained.

But the Curse was also empowering, providing enormous reserves of femininity for the curseborne women to draw from.

It was the Curse that drove Probity onward. The Curse mark on her breast was a northstar, leaving Probity restless and wanderlustful. It was taking her inward, towards the spiritual heart of the land. The Furnace. The place that housed the Flame that had once showered masculinity on the land. The place where the Flame was dying and burning out.

It was the duty of a Champion to find the Flame, and to do whatever was necessary to save the land. Probity felt the Curse pulling her in that direction.

Probity moved gingerly onward. She was still approaching the outskirts of the ancient capital. It wasn't safe out in the open here.

Soon, as she climbed to the eroded staircase leading to the aqueduct itself, she gazed out on the land now revealed below her. And a pattern emerged. The gaunt, wizened men of the area, their masculinity sucked from them, were scattered in ones and twos, either easily avoided or barely offering a threat. Even when Probity was attacked by two at once, they didn't have either the remaining physical or mental capacity to co-ordinate their attacks.

After entering the aqueduct, Probity waited, Curse mark glowing as if in warning, as her eyes adjusted to the lack of light. The breakdown of civilization had impacted the water level, and now it looked barely ankle-deep. Probity figured she should be able to make her way forward, if she avoided the rats. Some of the rats were twice normal size, but they seemed to remember how the food chain went, and even the largest decided on the better part of valor and let Probity pass, her booted feet splashing, without incident.

After a large number of damp, dank furlongs wading in barely-flowing water, Probity saw a shaft of light ahead, entering the aqueduct from the side. When she reached the light, as she had expected, it revealed - whether an intended exit or just another instance of disrepair - a way out.

Probity had indeed traveled far, certainly at minimum she had crossed the gorge the women's settlement was precariously huddled on the edge of. Beneath her, the remnants of a small burg were spread out, buildings and roads in ruins, streets vacant but for an occasional hollow man, walls crumbling and precarious.

Probity brought back to mind what she remembered of the land's geography. She would have to go down - presumably into the town - then back up. Which would be... somewhere on the walls? She scanned the layout of the town, and the state of the walls as best she could from this vantage point. And she planned. And she plotted. Probity fixed her intended route in her memory because she certainly wasn't going to be able to pick it back up from down at the bottom of the hole.

After some time observing the movement patterns of the town's scattered occupants in the afternoon sunlight, Probity realized that she was woolgathering and that it was time to get on with her mission. Slowly, she picked her way down the hillside - given how unobservant the earlier hollow men had been, Probity felt she was safe from the natives' lessened observation skills. So she carefully descended the grassy incline to the beginning of the route she had chosen.

As Probity entered the town proper, the afternoon sun began to be blocked out by the high walls and she was thrown into dimness. The better to sneak when she might choose to do so. She worked her way slowly through the shadowy streets. As she progressed, Probity encountered hollow men, and scruffy sire mastiffs, and hollow men with scruffy sire mastiffs, and carefully defeated each challenge, afterward dragging the corpses into the eaves of the surrounding buildings.

Slowly, Probity worked her way towards the far end of the main boulevard, the way that would lead to the walls. The way which would in turn lead her out of this accursed, shadowy place.

Street after street, the women's Champion progressed, leaving two dozen or more of the township's decrepit men defeated in her wake. Each provided no more challenge than the last. The fight had gone out of them along with the bloom of masculinity. The Flame had a lot to answer for.

In due time, the twisty streets branching off the boulevard thinned and evenually ceased altogether. Probity found herself at sloping ramp leading to the dilapidated main gate that marked the entrance to the town proper. The road itself, wide enough for carts and even the Protector's cavalry to travel, seemed finally empty. No more of the town's bedraggled men would bar her way forward.

Gingerly, Probity walked up the uneven cobbles of the slope leading to the gate. The afternoon sun, wan as it was, was in her eyes - shining through the jammed-open gate - as soon as she crested the top of the slope.

As Probity crossed the ring-road at the base of the walls - in no better shape than the boulevard - she still kept her guard up. The gate, ramshackle as it was, was still defensible, and would be a fine place for an ambush. Assuming any of the remaining men still had the gumption, that is.

The sigil of the Curse over her left breast was a warm presence, as it had been through the town itself. The Curse was seemingly not concerned enough to warn her of any potential danger at the moment.

Probity kept to what shadows still gathered at the base of the wall. Her preference was to approach from the side, where one of the imposing city gates was hanging from one massive, rusty hinge. An army would be required to close it now. Panther-like, Probity stalked forward on the balls of her feet, alert for anything and everything to come through as she approached.

But there was nothing.

Feeling somewhat foolish at her precautions, Probity stepped through. She spared only a single look back at the town. Once so proud. Now the home of rats and ratlike dogs and doglike men. Perpetually in semi-darkness even at noon.

The Eternal Flame truly had a lot to answer for.

The road leading out of town was in little better shape than the road leading in. Probity knew that around an ordinary abandoned city, farmers would be cannibalizing even the stones of the road to build their own steads. But there were no farmers around here anymore.

Probity wondered what the half-feral men who listlessly roamed the place ate to survive - but then realized that she didn't want to know.

Holding up a hand and squinting against the sun, Probity noticed, perhaps a furlong further along, an outer barbican astride the road. Presumably part of the defensive works, and presumably in even worse repair than the town itself, with no one interested in leaving the crumbling walls to mend the outer tower.

So Probity proceeded on her way. The need to pick her steps somewhat carefully to avoid an ankle-turning misstep on the uneven stones was the only tarnish on her mood.

Probity was surprised when, as she had closed about half the distance to the outer rampart, the Curse mark over her left breast suddenly burned hot. Probity snapped her head forward to look down at it, and she could see even a glow through the partly-open decolletage of her leather armor.

So the heavy arrow - almost a javelin - that had been aimed at her forehead only parted Probity's hair before clattering uselessly away down the road behind her. Rather than cleaving her skull in two as intended.

Probity didn't need the Curse's guidance to know that there must be an archer at the top of the barbican. And if he could hit that small a target at four or five chains' distance, a damn good one. And a good archer would be readying his next shot just about...

Probity dove for the side of the road just as the second arrow passed through where her sternum (and heart) would have been.

Probity realized that she was now in a deadly game of cat and mouse with the unseen archer. Every fathom she closed to his position would be won with dexterity and with an unfailing calculation of risk vs. reward. Because if that calculation failed even once, just one of those three-cubit-long, two-finger-wide arrows would end all her days.

Probity called on all her skills, including skills she didn't even know she had. Hesitation steps. Gymnastic rolls, sometimes multiple rolls chained together. Going prone and crab-walking for a few precious yards.

In the end, it was just - barely - enough. Probity could almost sense her adversary's frustration as the easy prey turned out not to be so easy. Arrows came further apart, then further still, as the archer became more careful. But still the arrows missed, by just enough.

Suddenly shadow. Startled out of her combat focus, Probity darted a look around her and realized that she was at the base of the barbican, which was now blocking out the sun. The archer would no longer have an angle! Now Probity just had to figure out a way to get the man down to fight fairly, one on one.

"Smells like woman," a voice rasped from the archway under the barbican, where the road passed under. It wasn't one of the men she'd killed earlier, obviously, but she knew the type now.

Or did she? Two men ambled out of the archway, each in much better shape than the hollow men Probity had fought in the town. Their armor, while mismatched, was almost intact. Their skin was sunken and wrinkled, but tanned rather than sallow. And their eyes fixed on Probity with anything but the disinterest of the town dwellers.

From her hands and knees, Probity looked up, then up again. No shrunken half-corpses, these men were each easily half a head taller than she was. And their weapons looked like they had at least been cared for in the past decade.

Probity was in for a real fight, it seemed.

The taller of the two run-down men, whose hauberk hid the remnants of what must have been an impressive paunch, strode forward slowly, bearing a sledge held with two hands. His shorter companion, brass-washed scale armor almost intact, twirled a short stabbing spear absently in his right hand. Shorty lurked a half-step behind Fatty, waiting for Probity's attention to become divided.

Probity realized that she couldn't just engage them. Even if she took the first down almost immediately, her attack would leave her open for the other. And fencing was probably out too, the big guy's sledge was too big to be parried, and they both had a range advantage on her relatively small sword.

Quicker than Probity had intended, the large man was in range, and with a cocky smile he drew the sledge back slowly and took a massive horizontal swipe. But at that range, Probity barely had to step back to let the heavy metal head of the sledge pass tamely in front of her. As if the big man was unprepared to miss, his momentum twisted him around, and the sledge comically almost hit his partner before he staggered uncertainly to a halt.

Probity took the opportunity to circle behind the bigger man, flicking her eyes from one side of him to the other, looking for the smaller man to attack. He did not disappoint, circling his friend to Probity's right and swooping forward, spear at attack position, with the grace of a dancer.

The smaller man swept past Probity in what was almost a tournament saber pass, spear flicking out at his opponent. Knowing that only the point was a danger, Probity disengaged and changed her line of attack slightly. So when the scale-clad man came up short at the end of his attack pass, the point of Probity's sword took him just below the hem of his mail shirt, in his unarmored right buttock.

The combat timer in Probity's backbrain went off. Without thinking, she dove in an awkward forward roll, careful not to lose her sword or break her wrist holding it. She didn't see the big guy's attack, but heard a thud from right about where she had been standing that might have been the massive head of his sledge thudding into the ground.

Probity scrambled to her feet and faced her opponents, all three of them now more careful. The big man was clearly unbalanced, and the smaller man wasn't moving nearly as gracefully and was frankly limping on his wounded side.

That limp might give her an opening...

Surprising all combatants, including herself to an extent, Probity lunged forward at the bigger man. The sledge was too heavy for him to block, and it affected his balance too much for him to dodge. So the tip of Probity's sword took him cleanly in the right bicep, where the hauberk didn't cover. He squealed, surprisingly high-pitched for such a big man, when the point grazed bone.

The lunge had left Probity open, but her instincts had been good. The gimpy little man tried to rush around his wounded friend, but it was more a stagger than a swoop, and his spear thrust barely pierced the leather over Probity's shoulder before she sprung back out of range. She was nicked by the spear's tip, but no more than that.