Talla's Fallen Temple

Having set her scant clothing aside, Talla surveyed the steamy inside of the Temple's largest pool house. It had never occurred to her that she and her fellow conspirators needn't spend all of their time hiding out in Endowment's triangle. Here was a place, far more magnificent than the one they'd been using so far, and only the advent of needing to meet simultaneously with V'shika and their allies in Form had brought her to find it.

Fortunately, Tina and Yua were both quite familiar with the layout of the central triangle and knew the place quite intimately. With it's size, large pool and multiple smaller deep baths, it provided more anonymity in its large crowds of naked women than any other place within Gern's Temple walls.

"Let's get our tits under water," Tina muttered, looking around self-consciously..

It was the nature of conspirators, after all, to give anyone watching as little information as possible. With their clothing hanging on pegs along the stone walls, Tina, Yua and especially Talla, stood out in a quite literal way.

"Over there," Talla nodded toward a bath in the corner, trying not to look suspicious or nervous in any way.

Though many colours of filtered sunlight dappled down upon almost every pool in the hall, the crests of the waves in Talla's chosen bath were outside the reach of the light. There was nothing to shine upon their naked bodies as they slid into the water, nor anything to glint off their conspiring eyes.

Talla didn't feel safe until she watched her cold and nudity stiffened nipples dip below the surface. Securely concealed once more, they sat on the underwater ledges and spoke in low voices.

"What does she look like?" Yua asked, keeping her eyes on the main entrance.

"Slim," Talla said. "Of course. No boobs. Her hair's a bit dark. The thing you'll notice mostly is her eyes. It's like she's got part of a Facial upgrade or something. You can see it in the eyelashes."

'And the darkness,' Talla thought to herself. 'You'll notice the darkness in those eyes right away.'

It was not, however, V'shika who arrived first. A flash of red hair, glinting in the sunlight that glared through the entrance, announced that Zoe had managed to find her way. The eyes, the lustrous hair, the clever smile – it was enough to light a flare of jealousy in Talla. Not enough of a flare to go begging for a load of semen in her face, but still: a flare.

Watching Zoe disrobe however, even with all the filtered colours of sunlight highlighting her body from different angles, made Talla smirk.

'Yeah,' she thought haughtily, 'I've still got you there.'

"Ladies," Zoe gushed as she sank in to the tub. "The new one isn't here yet?"

"Haven't seen her," Talla replied. "Rika coming?"

"No," Zoe tilted her head. "No point being too obvious about it, right. What about Illya?"

"Same," Tina put in.

"There she is!" Talla hissed, her eyes narrowing with an eager smile.

In her excitement, she stood up out of the water, revealing herself almost to her crotch. Her breasts beading with water, she waved to V'shika before quickly sinking back into the little pool.

The girls pretended to be having a conversation while waiting for V'shika to hang up her clothing. When she too slipped into the water, the others were able to take their first good look at her, each one trying to decide if Talla was right about half-Facial upgrade.

Talla looked her in the eye and V'shika glared back.

"You want to join us?" Talla asked.

"Yes."

"Zhair'lo said that we could trust you."

"You can."

"I trust him to the three corners of the world, to the nine seas and beyond," Talla said. "Do you understand?"

"He deserves your trust," V'shika said. "He's a good man."

Talla smiled.

"You aren't going to test her?" Zoe asked sternly, turning to face Talla.

"It was hard enough getting to be alone with you," Talla pointed out, featuring Zoe with a sideways glance.

Zoe frowned into the space between Talla and the new recruit. Talla noted with chagrin that she was beautiful even when she was petulant.

"She's been with Zhair'lo," Talla explained to the obstinate Zoe. "He's been inside her and I've been in his head."

Zoe seemed unconvinced, folding her arms underwater.

"I've never been on that table," she clarified. "I'd planned to avoid it my entire career."

"I can feel Zhair'lo right now," Talla explained, her voice gone low and tense. "V'shika has his – and my – complete confidence."

V'shika looked back and forth uneasily between the two of them.

"Look," she said, her voice full of placation. "If there's some test, I'll take it right now."

Nothing but eagerness in her eyes, she seemed almost hyperactive. Talla was briefly reminded of her days minding children at the nursery. Periodically, there were days of nothing but rain, when the children were stuck inside. V'shika triggered a clear memory of one of those children who had far too much energy and was ready to explode.

It was Tina who spoke, breaking the tension between Zoe and Talla.

"The test requires some privacy," Tina said. "How quickly could you reach orgasm?"

V'shika's face shifted to wide-eyed shock.

"You want to watch me masturbate?" she asked nervously as she pressed her thighs together.

"No," Talla said. "I can – I can mesh, with women, you see? And when I do, I can tell if I can trust them."

"It's not like you can just do that in a pool in public," Yua told V'shika.

Yua gulped and looked nervously at her companions.

"Right?" she asked desperately.

"It would be stupid to try," Tina confirmed, looking pointedly at Talla and then Zoe, who were glaring at each other.

"Once we mesh," Talla said, barely getting the words past her clenched jaw. "We won't be able to break apart. If someone walks over here, it will be obvious what we were doing."

V'shika's hands were underwater.

"What if ...?" she asked. "What if we got a head start?"

Talla looked over at V'shika.

"What are you ...?"

Then she looked under water and saw that V'shika's thighs were no longer pressed together and that her hands were quite busy.

"Seriously?"

"If it'll settle things once and for all and you'll trust me."

"This is not a good idea," Yua said, practically twitching with anxiety.

"How long do you need in the mesh?" V'shika asked. "Before we come, I mean."

"Not long," Talla said. "Five or six deep breaths. If someone wanders close to our pool, we'll come sooner and get out."

Tina looked over at V'shika, surprise on her face.

"Can you actually make yourself come? In public?"

V'shika nodded and smirked before replying.

"I used to do it all the time," she said. "Before they let me have boys. It's more exciting if there's danger."

Under the water, Talla began stroking between her own lips with one finger while her free hand squeezed at her breasts and lightly rubbed her nipples.

"Do you even know what you get if you're caught doing this?" Yua asked.

"All the more exciting, I guess", Talla replied, deadpan.

"Will it even work under water?"

"Yua," Talla sighed and rolled her eyes. "Why don't you be the lookout? Distract anyone who comes by."

Yua, admonished, nodded and gulped as Talla turned to V'shika.

"You ready?"

"I've never meshed with a woman," V'shika replied, her eyes alight. "Can't wait."

"Sit here on the ledge next to me."

Smiling with a disturbingly relentless enthusiasm, V'shika obeyed and spread her legs as she turned to face Talla.

Talla slid a finger underneath V'shika's legs, parted her lips and rested the tip against the girl's vagina, feeling that tunnel twitch with the same eagerness she read in V'shika's eyes.

"Do the same," she said.

V'shika was quick to obey and soon there was a tingling, both from her finger and the base of her spine.

"When it goes in, it's going to go in pretty quick," she said. "Just like when you mesh with a man."

The Within girl nodded.

Talla took one last look around before speaking.

"Now," she commanded, and pushed her finger up inside V'shika.

She had just a moment to become aware of how slippery and easy that motion was before she felt herself being penetrated – far too quickly to be accommodated, but this she ignored as the mesh took hold.

...

Nine gods!

Yes!

Quite suddenly, Talla became a first hand witness to an experience of which she'd only previously seen shadows. Zhair'lo had told her that V'shika was unstable, but Talla was unprepared for the complete mess she found inside the girl's head.

There was no time to dance around the point of this venture, though, as the level of urgency was still foremost on her mind. With the same disregard for comfort she'd used in penetrating her target's vagina, she delved into her mind.

'What a mess!' she announced.

What part of that sentiment reached V'shika, however, was a mystery, for the girl responded only with wonder and excitement. Talla felt a hand, not her own, on her breast, squeezing savagely and forcing a moan from her lips.

She checked her throat, lest a louder noise betray their actions, and dove deeply as she could.

Through the calamity that was V'shika's emotional state, past humiliation and excitement, shame and playfulness, past images of dark failure and one brightly burning success, Talla cut through. She imagined herself as the very arrow that Zhair'lo had somehow shown her how to loose.

Who are you?

Your friend. You can trust me. I can help.

There was no lying in the mesh. Talla would have spotted deception in an instant.

But even with the truth laid bare as their naked bodies, she had to know why.

So she dug, shovelling through the muck now that the arrow tip could no longer cut.

And there it was, a blackened core of fire-charred stone lying at the very centre of the catastrophe that was V'shika's mind.

It was hatred; steady and burning. It was a violent antipathy toward the Temple, born of humiliation and resentment. It was a loathing that would survive every up and down of V'shika's fitful personality; a driving force that would see the Temple destroyed even if V'shika had to surrender her own life.

Talla knew her well enough at that point and it was time to end the mesh

There was a flash of resentment at this, but Talla overrode it, curling her finger slightly and forcing it to hook around inside V'shika. Further to the point, Talla took control of V'shika's mind and forced the girl to squeeze the breast she held in her hand.

That did the job.

It wasn't even four breaths from when they'd started and already she felt the muscles of the Within girl involuntarily twitching around her finger even as her own vagina spasmed through their mutual orgasm.

As she became aware of her surroundings, she was able to see the shock on V'shika's face.

"Madra Zen," she whispered.

"You're done?" Yua asked in amazed relief. "That was fast."

As soon as the dissipating mesh allowed, Talla gently slid her finger out. V'shika, limp as she was in every part of her body, simply let Talla back away, her finger idly slipping free.

"Good?" Zoe asked.

"Yes," Talla declared, trying to regain her breath. "Quite good."

"I'm sorry," Zoe said, her eyes downcast. "For pushing you so hard."

"It's alright," Talla said. Heaving a sigh, she added, "I know her better now. It was worth it, even if it was dangerous."

It was how they'd learned to behave, as children in the nurseries. Conflicts were not to be allowed to fester and grow. Bitterness and resentment were not acceptable, especially between women. The tension between them dissipated very quickly, as if the orgasm itself had been felt by everyone.

"We'll make her a sister, then?" Tina put in.

Talla nodded immediately and they politely urged the dazed Within girl to get her chest above the water line.

Taking it by turns, they planted kisses on each of her nipples before letting her sink back into the water.

When that was done, Talla lifted herself up so her nipples, now stiffened by her recent arousal, narrowly cleared the water. The other girls did the same, making an arc around their newest recruit.

V'shika, seeing them so displayed, began with Zoe at the far end, giving each of her nipples a light peck. She worked her way through Yua and Tina, going from smallest to largest, with each girl sinking back into the water when her turn was done.

When she arrived at Talla, her breasts as large as all the rest put together, she took the whole of the first nipple's aureola in her mouth. As she moved across Talla's chest, she looked up into Talla's eyes and spoke.

"Mistress," she said, and immediately took the other nipple in her mouth.

Talla choked on a protest, but Tina grabbed her elbow before she got a word out.

"No," Tina told her. "Accept it."

"But I'm not -"

"Yes, you are," Yua interrupted. "You're the one we trust to lead us."

Zoe agreed, jerking a thumb in the general direction of the centre of the Temple.

"Better than that lot."

Talla glared at them.

"I don't want to just replace them," she said firmly. "I want to get rid of them. I want everyone to be ... to be ... to do whatever they want."

"You're still our leader, like it or not," Tina said, a light smirk of determination touching her lips.

"Accept it," Zoe said firmly, repeating Tina's advice.

Talla was still standing in the tub, her breasts out of the water, nipples getting harder and harder as the steaming water evaporated off her chest.

This is how it was when, Tina going first, the girls floated over to her, took each of those little pink nubs in their mouths, and called her 'Mistress'.

"Whoa," Talla whispered.

There was silence for a while as they let Talla, temporarily overwhelmed, recover her wits.

"So what's the plan?" V'shika shook them from their daze.

It was Tina who answered.

"Not much of a plan yet," she said. "We know the weak spot is the Ascension of a new Goddess, but we can't figure out how we can get in the way of that. All we really have to do is prevent one Queen from passing on her Perfections, but -"

"We figure the best target is Form," Zoe put in. "The Queen of Form rarely gets to Ascend, so if we can reliably plan to interfere with her progress, whatever plan we might make is most likely to survive contact with actual events."

"Are you kidding?" V'shika snorted. "With all those enforcers around her? And even if you get past them, she's personally the single most dangerous person in the entire Temple."

"Exactly," Talla sighed. "But those are the facts. The weakest point in time – the Ascension – is the hardest point is space. There are a lot of games like this that we know how to play, but I don't see a way through. You've got three Queens coming together, and they'll all be heavily guarded. How do we get in the way of that?"

The girls felt very small, then, imagining the walls of armoured Form women, bristling with spears, that would turn them into breakfast.

"Three Queens and Synergist," V'shika corrected with a light tilt of her head.

"What?" Talla twitched.

"Synergist, right?" she clarified. "That's the actual weakness. The stuff is fragile as all nine hells, hard to produce, doesn't last long after it's made and nobody trusts anybody with it."

Four pairs of eyes went wide.

"Why didn't we think of that?" Yua asked, bewildered.

V'shika raised one hand to just above the surface of the water so she could point a finger down toward her crotch.

"Within," she clarified. "It's why you wanted me in your group, right?"

"You know how they make the stuff?" Talla asked eagerly. "Where it's kept?"

"I can find out," V'shika promised. "I know the formula is complicated and the process is time consuming. They have to bring it out just before they need it, or it goes bad."

"Come on, though," Zoe pointed out, twisting her lips in doubt. "The stuff has got to be well guarded. Every time I see the chalice show up at an upgrade, there are, like, four guards delivering and watching over it."

"Yeah," V'shika agreed. "It's guarded that way so they can bring it to the Upgrade quickly."

"And when the Temple is between Goddesses," Tina pointed out, "it'll be even more heavily guarded."

"Still," Talla said, her eyes narrowing in that expression that had become all too familiar to her friends and followers. "Still, it's better than attempting an assault on the deadliest of the Queens."

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

It was a sign of a good Hunt when the men returned a day early and for this particular Hunt Zhair'lo had done more than his part considering his junior position on the team.

There were thoughts on his mind, however, that pushed pride far to the back.

"You sure about this, Zhai?" Kenji asked.

It wasn't like him to repeat himself and he had already asked this question, phrased one way or another, at least half a dozen times.

"I think it's where I have to go, Kenji."

Kenji shook his head. The man's distress was so obvious that Zhair'lo was actually starting to feel sorry for him.

"What do you have against the Fighters?"

"Nothing against them, Zhai," Kenji replied uneasily. "It's you I'm worried about. You're pretty young, and it's not a ... it's not just a job like roofing, or farming, or even like Hunting."

The fact that Kenji was having trouble formulating sentences told Zhair'lo quite a bit. What it didn't tell him was how to respond, so he simply kept walking back toward the large hunting chalet that was the home of Lyric's camp.

"Why do you want this?" Kenji asked. "You have years of life yet. You could do this some other time."

"It's my time now," Zhair'lo said firmly. "I want to know what's out there."

Kenji, most uncharacteristically of all, shrugged.

"You'll have to tell Master Lyric," he said, his voice gone so flat he might as well be dead. "He'll handle it from there."

It wasn't a conversation to which Zhair'lo was particularly looking forward. He'd moved around a lot in his life, but the decision to change either vocation or location had never been his. A scroll would arrive, usually with a red ribbon, and he would pack up his belongings and get going. He'd kept a few friends, long term, like Marek and Plin, but had otherwise allowed such things to happen to him with no more opinion on the matter than a branch might have as it floated down a river.

This would be different. It would be his decision; the first in a long line of such. For once he was choosing his own road, and the road he would take today was one he hoped would end at a Temple in rubble.

"He'll be in his office," Kenji offered helpfully, for they were on the threshold of the gated garden around the lodge.

He left Kenji at the gate, dumbfounded, as the familiar scents of lilac and juniper wafted into his nose.

'I thought you were like me,' he beamed back at Kenji. 'I thought I had found a kindred spirit, someone who wanted to be with one girl more than any other. Someone who knew what it was to be wronged by the Temple.'

But Zhair'lo had been mistaken in that regard, for Kenji was a Temple man, through and through, and Zhair'lo couldn't lay a hand on that. Furthermore, Kenji was quite convinced that Zhair'lo would eventually feel the same way, once he calmed down.

'No,' Zhair'lo thought. 'I'll never let them own me as they own you.'

With that resolution foremost in his mind, he passed out of the late afternoon sun and into the lodge. Gone were the floral scents, replaced now by the scent of cedar and pine, of long extinguished fires and resin.

Lyric's office, directly off the large, airy common room of the lodge, stood with its door open so that the Master Hunter himself was visible to those entering the building. Zhair'lo noted that the man had his head down, tabulating a chart of some sort as he consulted several documents spread about his desk.