Tallas Fallen Temple Ch 04

"Gods damn it," the Queen of Form shouted in frustration. "Harder."

In the mirror she'd placed on the far side of her four post bed, she could see the dark-haired hulk of a man standing behind her. He thrust himself forward with all the power he could muster, driving her body forward into the rumpled grey bedsheets.

She looked back at him over her shoulder, tossing her head to flip her silver-flecked red hair aside so she could glare at him clearly. He was strong enough, that was certain, but he wasn't the brightest torch in the room. Some men just needed really explicit instructions, especially when all of their blood flow was diverted to their erections.

"Not your cock," she told him. "Your hand."

Bent over the nearest sturdy piece of furniture was the favourite position of most women with Tight upgrades. Not only did it provide an excellent depth of penetration, there was also the thunderous sensation of feeling a man pounding his body against her cheeks and thighs.

Sure, as a Queen, she also had breasts that would be the envy of almost any member of the Division of Endowment. As well, the muscles that currently squeezed at the penis inside her were both powerful and capable of delicate control. But the Queen of Form had come up through Tight, and one's first upgrade was always one's favourite.

That was why she'd chosen this lumberjack tonight. There was one other thing that the women of Tight liked, one other thing for which this position was just perfect..

And still, he stared at her in confusion.

"Madra Zen! Spank me, already!" she demanded.

Maybe it was the fact of her rank that made him afraid to strike her. Or maybe men were taught to defer to women in general and he didn't want to cross that line without explicit permission. It could also have been the two orgasms he'd already had tonight.

Maybe he was just a bit slow on the uptake.

Finally -- finally! - that big, heavily callused hand came crashing down on her cheek. He was right handed. That was fine. Whatever worked best for him was good enough for her, but he wasn't doing it right.

"Harder!" she screeched desperately, thrusting her hips back into him.

Again he struck her. There was the satisfying crack. There was the rumble that radiated through her entire body. She pulsed her muscles around his shaft, turning her toes inward to part her cheeks and let him in deeper.

"Keep going," she panted at him.

He seemed to understand now that this meant both the thrusting and the spanking, as he began to pound repeatedly at her cheek with his open palm.

That's what she wanted. Clarity of desire at last.

In her mind's eye, she pictured her much younger self, bent over the wooden table in the Justice Hall, being lashed for some offence or other. What had it been, the first time? Jin ree? Or something else?

If she could have a table like that in her room, it would make this all the more delicious. She stretched her arms out, pretending that her bed was that table, pretending that her wrists were belted in to it. She imagined that what crashed against her rear was not a man's hand but a whip. What crime might she have committed to deserve this? Her mind could construct a scenario where she had earned this punishment, even if the responsibility that went with her rank would never let her step out of bounds.

She crooned aloud, preparing to release both of them to their shared orgasm.

If only she could sneak him down to the Hall, and they could mesh right there among the belts and whips and splintered wooden surfaces. Gods how she loved the texture of wood, the look of it, the feel of it. She had stripped her bedroom of every red curtain and drape she could, just so the grain of lumber would be visible everywhere about her.

Her fantasy took her away. Ten Within upgrades gave her a great deal of power to control a mesh, to withhold the mutual orgasm that was the promise of every sexual encounter. Yet even with all of that going for her, her willpower collapsed before the strength of her imagination. Her fetishizing of her own punishment and the hundreds of such punishments she'd dealt out in her time as an Adjudicate was simply too much to bear.

With a roar of triumph, the lumberjack struck her flesh one last time and released a jet of semen into her. She pushed her hips back hard as she could, grinding the tingling flesh of her rear into his pelvis as her orgasm set her body on fire from the entrance of her vagina up through to her fingertips. Where his ejaculations came in pulses, her ecstasy was a burning sensation lighting up every bit of skin on her body

She wasn't sure how long it lasted. He stopped spanking her once the orgasm began. Eventually the fire in her spine cooled. He withdrew, flaccid and spent at last, and threw himself somewhat deliriously on the bed.

The Queen of Form smirked at the naked man who was slowly passing in to unconsciousness. She could easily go once more, but she'd already put to use her considerable oral talents to get this third episode out of him. A fourth was extremely unlikely. There just weren't men in existence with the stamina that the gods had given her.

Lifting her upper body off the bed just a bit, she eyed herself in the mirror. It had been placed there for their pleasure. Standing up, she ignored her voluminous breasts and their wide smooth aureolae and perky, dark nipples. Those weren't her favourite attributes, though the gods knew that men loved to frolic in that playground.

No, her fascination was held by the power in her thighs and calves, the muscles in her belly that could stop the strongest punch cold. It was in the lungs that provided the air to let her outlast any man in bed. For the nine hundredth time, she lamented the fact that Temple Protocols forbade the taking of more than one man per night to her bed. How long could she go if she wasn't limited by the stamina of her partners?

A smirk crossed her lips. Rules were to be followed. She couldn't be the Queen of Form and not respect that. Still, she had her fantasies.

Another thing the Queen of Form couldn't do was be late for an appointment. She had an example to set, after all. If she started missing bells, the Temple of Beshenna would likely fall into chaos within days.

She slipped quietly out of her bedroom into the small anteroom outside it. An attendant was waiting there; a Virgin girl in a white skirt and top. Seeing her Queen naked, the girl stripped off her clothes immediately.

A Disciple of Facial, that one. It was the odd Discipline in the triumvirate owned by Form. Tight and Iron were all about rules and obedience. Jammed in sideways were the women of Facial; the artists of song and dance; the painters; the sculptors. The pretty ones.

This one wasn't that pretty, what with only having the one upgrade.

"Highness," she said with a bow.

"A quick shower, Yidi," she told the girl. "I'm meeting Endowment shortly."

"I'll ready the work outfit, Highness?"

"Yes, please."

The anteroom had a shower whose cistern was always full and reasonably warm. Rank had its privileges, and if a Queen was to be confined to a Temple, she ought to at least have some luxury for her sacrifice.

This evening, however, afforded her little time for luxury. She'd been pushing her time a bit with that third round of Service and had to rush herself through the shower. One kick of a lever sent warm water coursing down through her hair. The flecks of glitter that she'd decorated herself with washed out quickly but left a bit of silver behind. Not all of it was artificial, after all. No telling how much time she had left before the Weakness took her. Years, probably.

With her body wet, she turned off the water. Women of Form believed more strongly in conservation than others. She could soap her body up just fine without the unnecessary stream of water continuing to spray. Arms and legs; under and around the cumbersome breasts; down the legs -- taking great care to clean out between her thighs; to the buttocks -- there was actually a sore spot where he'd slapped her hard enough to leave marks that might outlast the night.

Scrubbed and clean, she let the spigot douse her again until the soap was gone.

Yidi was there immediately with several red towels. One was placed on a wooden chair so the Queen could seat herself. The second was handed to the Queen so she could dry her body while Yidi used a third to squeeze dry her hair.

Sometimes the Queen really wished that everything she owned didn't have to be red. As much as she regarded Facial as the tag-along child of her Division, she did hold eleven upgrades in the Discipline which had given her -- among other things -- a deep red shade of hair with natural amber highlights. Try as they might, even the best clothiers in her Division could not quite manage to find a legally appropriate fabric dye that didn't clash with her hair.

She preferred, quite frankly, nudity, just as she preferred the bare, unupholstered wooden furniture in her room.

As it was, they pushed her clothing as far towards orange as the rules would allow, and perhaps into burgundy if the dyes were available. Never quite as far as purple though. That certainly wouldn't do.

The only colour of clothing to which she could aspire was black, and that was unlikely to come her way. It was rare for the Queen of Form to ascend any further.

The Goddess of Beshenna, older even than the Queen of Form and with a much greater weight of Perfection pressing on her health, was growing weak. It wasn't often that a Goddess reached forty and this one probably wouldn't. This had little bearing however, on the prospects of the Queen of Form. There was just no reason to call a Goddess up from this corner of the triangle.

"In stability: Sweetness. In expansion: Endowment."

She was fairly certain that this was the reason for the visit from the Queen of Endowment. It was Form's place to act as the arbiter when the decision had to be made. Sweetness would argue that this was a time of stability. Endowment would argue that the Temple should be expanded. There was some validity to the latter: it had been decades since Beshenna had undergone any major growth.

The Queen of Form didn't see that as a decent argument. What mattered was the health of the city and its continuance over the centuries. Inappropriate growth -- growth for its own sake or because it was "due" -- was a hazard against which generations of her foremothers had protected.

Endowment would get its call some day, some year, but not this time around.

Still, it was the Queen of Endowment's obligation to make her case and it was the Queen of Form's place to hear her out.

With her body sufficiently dry, she tied her hair back in her most no-nonsense, formal style which also had the benefit of preventing it from clashing with her clothing. The fact that her hair was still a bit wet helped to darken it, which had a pleasant effect when mixed with her read clothing.

Her 'work' clothing was a three quarter length skirt, a straight black bra that no one would be able to see, and a blouse that fit tightly around her torso but was loose in the arms. She had always liked that feeling of freedom; the proper attire of a former warrior still prepared to strike.

She waved off the underwear. The meeting was in her own Domain. If she wanted to go without, that was her prerogative. As it was, she felt the need to let her body cool down.

"Let's go, Yidi."

"Highness," the attendant acknowledged as she slipped into her own clothing, including underwear.

To each her own, the Queen supposed.

Outside the ante room, four Officers were waiting. They bowed in unison.

"Status, Kallidi?" the Queen asked.

"Endowment is already here, Highness," the tallest woman answered. "Cursory examination in progress."

Checking her for weapons that meant. Old rules, ancient traditions. Once upon a time, assassinations had been attempted. History recorded that some had even succeeded.

"She will likely desire private conversation - "

Whatever else she meant to tell her underlings, she was interrupted by the entrance of the Queen of Endowment. If there was one thing of which Form was jealous, it was the fortune of Endowment's colouration. Pale skin, jet black hair and eyes of a blue so light that her pupils were nearly white. It was like looking into a deep, clear ocean.

Form frowned. Dressing in red suited Endowment very well.

There was no time for admiring clothing. The visiting Queen had already waved off her entourage, a group of women who stood quietly at the entrance to the large office that was called Principia Form, the domain of the Queen.

"A moment in privacy," Endowment said to her host and walked past the Officers of Form, each of whom bowed politely despite the brusqueness.

"Sister," the Queen of Form acknowledged, following closely.

They walked past several rows of lesser workstations to the largest, most ornate desk at the rear of the room. The Queen of Endowment, skipping all possible pretence of decorum and nicety, simply perched one cheek up on the edge of that desk and faced the Queen of Form.

Form, not willing to be quite that crude, stood a polite conversational distance away and folded her arms.

"Welcome," she said.

"Thank you," Endowment said, her eyes sharp and her manner hot.

Form waited. It really was Endowment's place to make her play and begin the discussion.

"We have a concern."

That wasn't right. This wasn't about the impeding succession contest? The use of the plural was noteworthy. That had no place in the discussion Form was expecting to have. That conversation should have been about the Queens and their plans, not their domains.

"A matter of law?" Form asked.

"We are not certain," Endowment replied. "It has come to our attention that the Disciples of Pussy are up to something."

Pussy. The genealogists. Historical issues of distrust there.

Sure, there were doctors and their assistants in Pussy. Childminders, too, and even teachers. But when Pussy was 'up to something', it meant genealogy. If the genealogists were stepping outside their bounds of preventing inbreeding, it was a problem for everyone.

One of the foundational principles of the Temples were the stone-etched rules that allowed equality of opportunity for every woman. Nepotism was eliminated ruthlessly. Childbirth was delayed so that women would rarely see their own children reach adulthood. Creche names had been introduced so that, some day, a child would not even need to know her mother's name.

There was a long simmering suspicion between the Disciples of Pussy with their libraries full of genealogies and the Disciples of Form with their desire for equality and justice.

"You have evidence?"

That would be important, if anything were to go forward.

Endowment's lips formed a flat line for a moment before she shook her head.

"Nothing strong enough," she said. "I can't even be certain anything is really happening."

"What make you suspicious?"

"Babies," Endowment said. "They're moving babies around."

"This is well known," Form pointed out. "The easiest time to move a child is after weaning, when the emotional bonds to the mother are being broken anyway. Pussy tells us that migration is necessary to prevent inbreeding -- especially in the smaller settlements."

"Something isn't adding up," the black haired Queen explained. "The babies that leave here aren't accounted for. For every emigration, there must be a local creche that's short a child, but there isn't. Not always. You'd have to see the numbers to understand. When we look for records of the babies who have left, we see that the counts are sometimes off by one."

"I suppose," Form replied doubtfully. "But what you're saying makes very little sense. You count babies leaving and see one missing. You look at creches and see that baby isn't recorded as having left. It sounds as if the records line up perfectly. The baby wasn't born, didn't emigrate, and it isn't missing from a creche. What's the problem?"

"The problem is that the baby that wasn't born and isn't missing ... well ... that baby is on a outbound carriage."

Form raised an eyebrow.

"If this is some kind of weird ploy to gain my favour-"

"No," Endowment interrupted. "It isn't. I've come here under that guise because you need to know of my suspicions. We both know that there's no real case for Expansion right now. I yield that decision for the sake of this."

That wasn't evidence of any kind, but it certainly spoke to the weight that Endowment placed on the issue.

"I will investigate this migration, then," Form said. "At your behest."

"It must be done quietly," Endowment warned darkly. "The Goddess herself ascended via Pussy."

"One is aware," Form replied, keeping all emotion out of her voice.

There was a formal exchange of bows and the Endowment departed, her retinue in tow.

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Gern

Illya hadn't had a chance to sort out her emotions. Even though she'd wanted to talk to Talla, her friends - her sisters -- were waiting for her outside the examination room when she and Arda came out.

Nadine was there with Anzha and Yua. Gerta and Malin had come to watch, too. It was a bit of a reunion, but it left Talla and her friend Tina to tag along uncomfortably.

"How ya feeling?" Yua asked eagerly.

They were in the Tranquil Courtyard, sitting in a circle on the grass -- a circle to which the two newcomers were grudgingly admitted. It was dark where they were. The only part of the courtyard lit at night was the path going from Endowment Hall to the Offices. The rest of the place was pitch black, making it a perfect place to hang out and speak in whispers.

"Good," Illya said.

There wasn't a word that could cover how she felt. Part of her was overjoyed now that the realization of the upgrade's success had sunk in. She would be an adult in everyone's eyes. She would start doing her duty as a Temple woman by Serving the men, instead of being a leech on society.

Another part of her said that her happiness was a betrayal of her anger and her true feelings towards the Temple. Why should she serve the Temple, after all it had done to her? Shouldn't she be hating it right now?

But everyone was so happy for her ...

"Well, come on," Malin said. "Let's see, both of you."

Illya looked over at Arda. She couldn't help herself but to smile and blush. They were both so proud of themselves. She knew it was the wrong thing to do. Not that it was illegal. Nudity was perfectly acceptable in this courtyard. It was the place where women went to tan themselves. The feeling of wrongness came from her willing exhibition of the Temple's gifts. She hated what the Temple had done to her and yet here she was, stripping off her top, like a child squealing with delight over a piece of sugar candy.

The "ooh"s and "ah"s were everything she could have wanted, if only she could make up her mind about what exactly she wanted to be feeling right now.

"Same size as mine," Yua remarked. "You got doubled."

"And so did you," Nadine said to Arda. "Congratulations."

Illya noticed Talla, sitting opposite her in the circle, saying nothing. Talla's breasts were unquestionably bigger than any other pair in this circle and yet she wore the same Initiate clothing as all three of the girls who had been doubled.

"Told you it would work," Gerta said, full of confidence. "And, wow, was I right."

"Those two have never failed," Nadine said. "They'll get to you and Malin next. I don't know what the delay was all about and it doesn't matter."

Where Gerta had the cheerful optimism and bluster, Nadine had a cooler, more mature authority. Her much longer stay in the Sealed Dormitory gave her a certain amount of stature that made even Gerta defer. She not only knew the way things worked but she had been there to comfort every one of them when they'd been dumped off in one of those rooms. There was a certain attitude about Nadine, a strangely calm, resigned but positive air she projected. It seemed as if almost anything could happen and it would just wash over her.