Talla's Fallen Temple

Shen reclined with his arms spread across the back of the bench and breathed easily as he sat in the small waiting room.

He'd arrived at Sweetness's gate at half past the sixth bell, as ordered, and handed his Summons to the guard. She'd led him here.

Quiet place, empty except for him. Couple of benches, two chairs and the yellow-brown sandstone walls. Could have been any place in the Temple, really, if he hadn't been paying attention to geography on the way in.

'Ho-hum,' he thought. 'Why in the nine hells am I here?'

How long had it been since that last incident? What? Two months now since that weird episode where -- so they told him -- he'd almost died?

There had been Talla, then a fuzzy, timeless greyness, and suddenly Yinna riding him. Since then, he'd felt great. Yet here he was, back in the Temple -- somewhere near the hospital if he knew his directions at all.

But if he was here for a check up, why in the evening?

A door, opposite to the one through which he'd entered, cracked open. A woman in a plain, white skirt peeked through and, upon seeing him, opened the door the rest of the way.

"Shen M'han?" she asked.

"Yes, Mistress," he replied, not yet rising to greet her.

"Come in, please."

"Alright," he said with a heavy sigh.

He gathered himself up and sauntered through the doorway. The room behind was darker than that in which he'd been. Thick drapes were drawn against the setting sun and a scant few candles were all the light available.

As his eyes adjusted, he realized the room was empty of furniture save for a single bed. He took this in as he made out the shapes of two girls standing side by side at the other end of the room. The expressions on their faces were -- mystifying. They knew something that put those quirky smiles on their lips and they weren't going to tell him.

The woman in the yellow skirt closed the door behind him.

"We need to test you," she said, quite formally.

"Really," Shen replied, unimpressed.

"Yes," she said. "Do you remember your first attempt at performing an Upgrade?"

A faint twinge of shame came over Shen's face, but it washed away in less than a heart beat.

'That was a long time ago,' he thought. 'You're talking about someone else.'

"Yeah," he answered, letting his voice drawl a bit. "What about it?"

"We may give you another chance," she said. "Do you want it?"

His heart skipped a beat; he had to force it to relax.

Deep breath. That had been Talla's advice, hadn't it?

"Yes," he said, the casual aura he'd been projecting suddenly all but vanished.

"Good," she said. "My companions are Primers."

With a jerk of her head, she indicated the two brown haired girls in white skirts.

"Survive them until seventh bell, and we'll put another bolt in your quiver."

Another chance, that meant.

"Survive them?" Shen asked slowly, raising an eyebrow.

What was that supposed to mean?

The woman in yellow raised both her eyebrows and tilted her head with a downward glance at his shorts.

Oh, wait a second ...

"Didn't the sixth bell just ring?" he asked in amazement.

"Indeed," she replied, her voice dry. "I'm sure they'll be gentle."

With that, she turned on her heel and went out by a door different from the one through which he'd entered.

The two girls approached, smiling fully now.

"So, uh -,"

"Uh?" the slimmer of the two girls answered.

"You're going to spend the next bell -"

"Trying to make you come," the second girl, the one with the larger breasts, replied.

"And I have to, uh, not come?"

"That's right," the girl answered, smiling with an almost sadistic glee.

His mouth forming an 'o', Shen involuntarily stepped backwards.

"Ah," he muttered as he became aware of his situation. "So where you girls from?"

"Within," one said.

"Abundance," said the second. "Wanna see?"

He could already see, in fact. The little top she wore did little to hide the general shape and size of her breasts. She wasn't quite like Talla in that department, but she was still generously endowed.

"Well, Abundance," Shen said, with a breath. "I guess I would."

"Oh," she admonished playfully. "Don't call me that. That's what we call the Sorceress."

"Then just for tonight," he answered, "you two are my very own Sorceresses: Within and Abundance."

They giggled, both glancing at the closed door through which the woman in yellow had passed, making sure his seditious word play hadn't been overheard. From the way their cheeks had flushed, he'd have to take note of the effect of such appellations for future use.

"Okay," Within answered. "But just for tonight, and don't you tell anybody."

-----------===================-------------

"Do you think he'll last the whole bell, Mistress?"

"Of course not, Jora," Tia answered, not looking up from the documents in front of her. "No one lasts the whole bell."

The woman in yellow twisted her lips. She was new here and hadn't known that.

"So why do we -?"

"To get them to try their hardest," Tia cut her off without looking up. "Men require motivation, impossible goals and such."

Tia paused a moment and looked up thoughtfully, not at her underling but rather just over her head.

"Not my idea, mind you."

One side of her face twitched, the closest she would ever come to shrugging, and went back to her work.

"Why are we testing him, Mistress?" Jora asked.

"Have a look," Tia said, sliding several sheets of parchment across the desk. "What you'll see is that since his strange Catatonia incident, Shen here has been behaving very strangely. I interviewed several of those who have Served him since and they all indicate that his previous traces of nervousness and premature ejaculation have vanished."

Jora looked the sheets over.

"I don't know the boy personally," she said. "Are you certain these problems didn't go away gradually?"

Tia raised an eyebrow in a way that made Jora step back.

"Yes," Tia said slowly. "I did take care to interview several women who Served him before. They found him unsteady, as suspected."

"Of course, Mistress," Jora replied. "So we're testing him again to see if he can be used for upgrades?"

"Ostensibly," Tia admitted. "That's our rationalization."

"In reality?"

"I'd like to know what happened to him."

A long pause.

"Mistress?"

"Yes."

"What of the one who Served him the night he went Catatonic?"

"I met her, briefly," Tia said, almost dismissively. "When we Awakened Shen. She confirmed that he was very unsteady that night as well. He even ejaculated in her mouth, apparently by accident, I recall her saying."

"Indeed."

Tia bobbed her head from side to side.

"Still," she said thoughtfully. "Now that you mention it, it might be worth interviewing her in greater depth."

Jora nodded agreeably.

-----------===================-------------

The Within and Abundance girls had at least started slowly. He gave them that.

After laying him down on the bed, the former had begun kissing him very gently and the latter to rub her still clothed breasts against his groin.

"You should know," Abundance said. "That there are no rules here."

"Hm?" he asked around Within's enthusiastic kisses.

"None at all," she went on. "You can come while I'm rubbing you."

Even as she kissed him, Within reached down past her partner's breasts to grasp his erection through his shorts.

"Or even," she pulled away long enough to say, "while I'm squeezing you."

"But you'll last longer than that, won't you?" Abundance asked.

"I'm sure he will," Within whispered in his ear, nibbling all the while. "At least let us get it out of his pants and have a look ..."

Abundance murmured appreciatively.

"Then you can come anywhere you want," the girl said as she pushed her breasts into the base of his erection. "My tits."

"My pussy," Within whispered.

Shen moaned and wished it hadn't sounded so much like a whimper.

"Oh, you like that?"

Shen withheld any further sounds. This bordered on cruelty, this test of theirs.

"Would you like to see my pussy?" she asked. "And then make a big mess all over it?"

Her tongue traced the edge of his ear.

"Let's see, then," Within whispered.

While her partner worked the lower end, the slimmer of the two girls got up on the bed and threw a leg over Shen, straddling his face.

No panties. Of course there weren't any panties.

"See my pussy?" the girl simpered. "So nice and tight. You wouldn't believe what I could do with it."

Nine gods, he was not going to last a whole bell if this kept up. Not one tenth of a bell, the way this was going.

"And the hair," she murmured. "So soft. I have one of those upgrades, too ..."

Shen felt his erection swelling, uncontrollably. The girl working his cock knew how to use her breasts. No doubt. She was hitting just the right spot at the base of his erection to force a crude and quick orgasm from him. If he didn't do something quickly, he was going to fail this test.

And he couldn't have that.

He wanted a second chance at the Augmentation Chamber, and this was it.

What did he do, these days, to calm himself? Deep breaths? Not likely. Every time Abundance pushed one of her tits against him, his whole body shivered involuntarily. He couldn't take a deep breath, what with all the gasping.

What else? What else?

Think, damn you.

Focus.

Focus on what?

Well, that presented itself right before his eyes, didn't it? How else to take his focus off himself than to take charge of the situation.

His hands, which he had left limp in an attempt to ignore all about him, now firmly grasped the rear of the Within girl hovering over his face. He pulled her down, bringing the light brown curls of her genitals to his lips.

Wetly, he licked. And deeply.

"Oh, I think we got him, Abundance," Within called out triumphantly. "Push him!"

Then his tongue touched the rim of her vagina, tasting the juices that leaked from her tunnel, and she gave a start.

"Oh, hell," she breathed.

And his tongue pushed in.

She'd made a mistake - exposed a piece, a player of board games might say. Every piece on the board should be guarded, and she'd left one without any protection when she'd volunteered her Discipline.

'I know what you like,' Shen thought. 'And I can concentrate on pleasing you and ignore everything else because I know it's working.'

Even as Abundance unlaced his shorts, he knew he could beat them, at least for the moment.

"I don't think we can make him come in his pants," Abundance said, sliding the offending clothing out of the way.

Within only murmured back, lost in the techniques Shen had been perfecting for weeks now with one partner and another.

"Let's see what happens when he feels my nipples against his cock, hm?"

Shen wasn't paying attention and neither was the girl who rode his face. He knew he had her when she began rocking and grinding.

The moans weren't far behind. So even as he felt that nipple slide the length of his erection - Even as he knew the head was swelling and turning purple -- he knew that he could hold on.

Within tensed, driving her hips down and squeezing his head between her legs. He felt her cheeks turn rock solid with the tension in her muscles. Just for a moment, he felt her juices leaking over his chin -- and then she screamed.

In pulses her orgasm came, each one punctuated with the release of a spot of sweet tangy juice from her moist tunnel. Each one noted by a smaller and smaller squeak from her throat.

"What in the nine hells?" the other girl asked, almost laughing. "He made you come?"

Within slipped off his face and off the bed to kneel on the floor, a look of complete shock on her face. She glanced at her partner, nodded once in acknowledgement, and then stared at the far wall while she tried to recover.

Abundance twisted her lips.

"Fine, then," she declared. "You suck him. I'll work the top half."

-----------===================-------------

Zhair'lo's opportunities to meet Sealed Virgins had seemed to have dried up, and he couldn't be sure why. He was certain that he was doing things correctly, at least from a technical aspect, so that couldn't be it. Form had been using him to clear out its backlog, but at nowhere near the rate that Endowment had.

Was that because he was so often on foray with the Hunters? For now, the trips out in to the woods were never longer than four days, which gave him plenty of time to come into the Form's Triangle and ejaculate all over some poor Sealed Virgin's stomach or ass.

Thrilling as that was. Zo'kar, lucky bastard, had drawn the two remaining Facial girls.

But Zhair'lo did his duty and, true to their nature, the girls of Tight and Iron did not grace his bed.

This night, however, would be different. After six weeks of slowly going through Form girls, he was finally getting a chance at Sweetness. There was hope, here, of finding someone important who was also sympathetic to his cause. If Zoe had given them access to Form and the ability to send messages, what could a girl from Sweetness provide?

He thought that he might be able to count on Kenji, and maybe a few of the other Hunters who had had similar experiences, if it came to something insignificant like sneaking him off somewhere to meet Talla.

But overthrow the Temple? No one owed him that kind of loyalty. No one he had met seemed to have the drive to try anything like that. Every one of the men at Lyric's camp had been through the same test that Zhair'lo had taken. Every one of them had passed with full marks.

Consequently, every Hunter to whom he spoke was unfailingly loyal to the women and their Temple.

Every night, Zhair'lo wondered how he had passed the test. What had they measured in him which had resulted in permission for weapons training? No answers were forthcoming. They'd been testing what? His obedience? His stamina? When the girls had told him to stop, he had obeyed. What else was there to do? He had nothing against them -- no desire to hurt them. They were as much playing pieces as he was. Even exhausted and overloaded with sexual frustration, it had been clear to him that they'd had no more say in their actions than he did in his.

His anger was directed towards the Temple -- the Temple in front of which he now stood.

"Sweetness, tonight, huh?" Zo'kar asked as the two of them stared up at the small triangle above the little gate.

There was a twist in his lips that came through in his voice and it had nothing to do with what drove Zhair'lo's cynicism.

"What's with you?"

"I was just getting used to the horses," Zo'kar said. "Now I'm off to that Hunter's Camp. They're turning me into you."

Zo'kar sighed.

"Still, we get to fuck lots of women, wherever we are. Right?"

"Yeah," Zhair'lo confirmed, taking his turn to sigh.

There was no getting through to Zo'kar. He was the one that Kenji spoke of when Kenji said that most people were happy. Zo'kar didn't care about any particular woman and didn't see any reason Zhair'lo should care. Sure, he had a certain appreciation for Talla, given what she'd done for him, but it went no further than a faintly glossy look he got in his eyes when Zhair'lo mentioned her.

Nine hells, there was even a pretty good chance Zo'kar would be Served by Talla someday as they rotated the women around. An opportunity that would almost certainly be denied to Zhair'lo.

'What if I'd waited?' he thought. 'What if we hadn't been caught? We could have been together occasionally, me and Talla, once a year if we were lucky.'

"Zhair'lo and Zo'kar?" a gentle female voice called out.

The boys turned to look at her. The first thing they noticed was that she wasn't wearing armour. The woman who came to escort them through the Temple always wore armour.

'Always from Form,' Zoe's voice echoed in his head.

'Only Form wears armour,' Talla's voice added.

But this woman wore orange: a strange short and very transparent skirt he had never seen before and a pair of sashes across her breasts.

And not a stitch of armour. He tried not to stare as he searched for any sign of leather protection or weaponry -- the skirt really was see-through and the dark patch of pubic hair was clearly apparent even in the dim light of wall mounted torches.

'No armour. It means they trust you,' Zoe's memories advised.

The woman took their scrolls from them and indicated that they should follow her. When she turned away, Zo'kar gave Zhair'lo a sideways glance before nodding toward the finely sculpted, and nearly exposed, cheeks that twitched in front of them.

Zhair'lo smirked.

Yeah, Zo'kar really was a hopeless case.

-----------===================-------------

The girls were starting to get desperate. Within was inhaling as much of his erection as she could while Abundance was smothering him with her breasts. But it would go no better for her than it had for her partner.

It turned out Abundance had a Point upgrade, and as much fun as her breasts were for him, the attention he could lavish on her nipples in turn would prove too much for her. When he reached under her belly, questing for her lips, she made no resistance but rather welcomed him. When he plunged between those lips, she let out a sigh and pushed her breast more deeply into his mouth.

It took barely any movement from Shen, for she did most of the grinding all on her own. He teased her, keeping the pressure on her weak so she had to work harder and harder to get the sensation she needed.

Within removed his erection from her mouth to watch in fascination as her partner began moaning and forced Shen's hand to push harder against her mound. He obliged, simultaneously letting his teeth sink -- every so gently -- into the flesh of her breast.

That was how he made the second girl come, with one finger and his teeth upon her nipple. When the pulses around his digit ceased, she backed off to sit her bare rear on the floor while gasping for breath.

"Enough of this," Within said sternly. "Sit him up."

Abundance groggily came around and helped her pull Shen up so he was sitting on the edge of bed with his legs spread. Within pushed the large breasted girl down, positioning her under Shen's testicles. She started licking underneath and Within went back to working the tip.

He watched, helplessly unable to do anything to distract himself, as they worked in flawless coordination. Abundance would take both of his testicles in her mouth, then pop them out and lick her way up to his tip. As she did this, Within would come off the tip and flutter her tongue down until it was her turn to take his pair in her mouth.

They did this over and over again and Shen fought to keep himself as steady as he could.

-----------===================-------------

Zhair'lo and Zo'kar were having their own battle -- attempting to maintain eye contact with the gorgeous specimen of femininity who, having led them to a small room laid out much like a school, was briefing them on their duties as Conduits.

"As you can imagine," she cooed to them, leaning the backs of her thighs against the large desk at the front of the room, "things are a little more delicate here than elsewhere."

The boys nodded amicably and didn't look down below her waist at all, though her genitals were ever in the periphery of their vision. Zhair'lo had no doubt that, in the brighter light of this room, the skirt she wore would turn out to be more than just translucent.

He'd be able to see everything.

"While I am sure that the two of you are quite confident," she went on. "You should know that the Seizing points are scarcely separated in this Division and that you must take great care in positioning your ... selves."

This last sentence she finished with a slow turn of her eyes towards their pants. Zhair'lo found his own gaze inexorably drawn to her skirt.