"Friend Guardian, we would bargain for our crossing", Benivere called out in the traditional words of the Covenant, as his party completed the precarious climb to the chasm-span.
Agnok stood at the gated entrance to the span, hands resting on his long sword. Broad-shouldered and heavily-muscled, he stood two feet taller than Benivere, who was himself a tall man. "You may cross for a toll of value that does not unduly hinder your quest" Agnok replied, also using the traditional words.
Regarding them more carefully, he said "Two humans, a dwarf, an elf, and..." he looked quizzically at the petite young woman with long green hair "...a nymph of some sort?"
"Yes sir, a water nymph, sir, though we prefer 'naiad'", she replied, half hidden behind Benivere.
Agnok nodded and began the negotiation in earnest. "For weeks I've taken nothing but gold and have no need of more till the chance comes to spend it. I've been looking for a spare work pony, but you have none. Have you seeds I can plant? Drink you can leave? Or..." he said with a knowing smile "perhaps one of your party would join me in my lodgings to persuade me."
"Friend Guardian, we have neither seed nor drink -- we have had no food since yesterday and we need to cross to resupply. And..." Benivere laughed, trying to deflect the Guardian's last comment as a jest "you surely could not ask that toll of my wife Miranda, and the nymph remains a virgin -- but perhaps we could pay you a sufficient sum to hire a camp-follower?"
"I didn't say it had to be one of the females," Agnok laughed in return. "From the look of that elf it wouldn't be a new experience for his mouth!" Benivere laughed along hollowly, making a placating gesture. The Guardian began to say "But, if not that..." when he stiffened, his eyes unfocusing for a moment and his back straightening. A moment later he shook his head, clearing it, and glared at Benivere with sudden anger.
"You would try to Sway me?! Are you a complete fool?"
Benivere hastened to say "Friend Guardian, I assure you, I attempted no enchantment! I know that you were jesting, I'm sure we can..." He was cut off by Agnok booming "Do NOT lie -- I felt the spell! I will not stand this insult! Now one of you will satisfy me or none of you will pass!!"
The party broke into a babble of voices, talking over one another: "...so STUPID as to..." "...does he mean..." "...days to any other..." "...do it?" "...you shouldn't have..." "...proposed a camp follower!!" "...can't seriously expect ANYONE..." "...did not attempt..." "...ran out of water this morning..." "...will do it..." "...practically invulnerable..." "...other options...".
Agnok, still angered, called out to them "Decide now or go back. Soon no toll will do."
"Friend Guardian" Benivere began, but in the pause before he spoke again a small
voice, unnoticed, said "I'll do it." Benivere continued "There must be some other arrangement!" "I'll do it" the voice said again timidly, before Agnok called out "You brought your party to this -- live with the consequences". "I'll do it!" the voice said, more loudly.
Benivere held a hand up to hush the naiad standing at his side, beginning again to say "Guardian, surely we can..." The naiad gently put her hand on Benivere's arm, pleading "please, Benivere, I said I'd do it, there's no other way, please don't make me say it again!"
Benivere looked down at her with concern. "Ariel, you don't understand what he's saying, he's..."
She cut him off with a sudden rush of words. "He's SAYING he wants to put his penis in my mouth until he ejaculates!! I understand, but can we please stop TALKING about it?! PLEASE don't make me keep saying I'll do it, I'll do it, but I can't keep saying it!!!"
Benivere stepped back as though he had been slapped. Emboldened momentarily, the naiad wheeled on Agnok. "But you have to let them cross first! Only after you let them cross!!"
Agnok pondered this. "What is to prevent you running off?" he asked.
She paused for a moment, then took off her pack and placed it at her feet. "I'll give them all my things. I couldn't run off -- I'd have no supplies, nothing, and we're leagues from anything but you. I couldn't leave until you agree that I have...that, that...I've done that thing you want."
Agnok narrowed his eyes. "Speak words of binding," he ordered.
"NO! Don't!!" cried out Miranda, but was cut off as Ariel placed her palms flat against each other, fingers pointing to the sky and said "I vouchsafe to the Naiad Council that I shall give my companions all my belongings to take with them across the bridge, and that I shall not join them until you agree that I have..." her voice broke a bit "...let you...ejaculate...in my mouth." She raised her hands, palms still together, over her head, where the air shimmered around them for a few moments before a soft beam of light shot from them into the air.
Agnok mirrored her movements, saying "I pledge myself as a Guardian to your words of binding", and light shot from his hands as well. "We have an arrangement" he said, smiling as he looked at her.
........
The others, subdued, avoided eye contact with Ariel as she folded her cloak into her pack, and then took the knife hanging from her belt and attached it to a strap. She removed a ring from her finger and then finally a pendant from her neck and placed them in an outer pouch, before handing the pack to the elf, Valinel, and turning back to Agnok. "There's a brooch in your hair" he said.
Ariel reached up meekly to remove it, and placed it with the ring and pendant. "Can they cross now?" she asked.
"You said all your belongings."
Ariel looked in confusion at Agnok for a moment until realization dawned on all of them. "Bastard!" cried Miranda, but Ariel shut her eyes for a moment then held up her palm to her friend. "It's ok. It's ok. He's right, it's what I said, I have to follow the vouchsafe", she said resignedly.
Ariel lifted each foot in turn, slipping off her moccasins. She unbuttoned and took off her vest, pulled her blouse over her head, removed her belt, and slid out of her leggings. Wearing only a thin linen undergarment and a band of cloth covering her small breasts, she looked hopefully at Agnok, who simply stared back. Suppressing a small sigh, she untied the band of cloth and pulled it from herself, turning away from him as she did so, and then bent down to slide the linen from her hips to the ground, placing these last scraps of cloth on top of her small pile of clothes. Naked, placing one hand over the tuft between her legs, green like the long hair flowing down her back, and the other arm across her breasts, she turned to him. "Now?" she said meekly.
"Turn around" he said, and she spun slowly. When she finished he nodded at her curtly.
Miranda stepped forward to pick up Ariel's belongings, first wrapping her arms around the nymph in a hug. "There must be another way!" she said in a hushed tone. Ariel leaned into the hug, replying "We both know there isn't -- and I've already vouchsafed. And, and..." Ariel looked with embarrassment at the ground "...well, you solved the three griffins' riddle, and Thrask cured everyone of the Screaming Pox, and Benivere and Valinel saved us all in the Dragonvale woods, and all I've done so far is be the reason we
needed
to be saved in the Dragonvale woods! I...I have to do this."
Suddenly a large arm swept between the two, the hand spread roughly across her breasts and lifting her off her feet and carrying her to the gateway station. She watched as the gates to the span opened and her friends walked disconsolately across, Miranda pausing at the other side to look back and wave sadly. It was the last thing Ariel saw before the gates swung shut.
........
Hesitantly, she turned to face the Guardian, eyes aimed just above his head, again with one hand between her legs and the other arm splayed awkwardly across her breasts, and said "um, hi, my name is Ariel, if, if that matters, it, um....it's nice to...meet..." Her voice trailed off. "So, um, should, should I...sit on the...." she looked around the room "...um, so there's a bed, I guess that makes sense, this is where you live, should I sit on the bed, or did, are you going to, to sit on the bed, or, um, there's a chair, too, I guess, though you are so very tall that, you know, maybe, I mean, I'm not that tall, we're practically in the right, um..." her eyes darted to his belt "...orientation...as, as it...sorry, I'm nervous, I tend to ramble when I'm nervous, I think I'm sort of -- "
Her voice cut off as Agnok's hands grasped her by the shoulders, lifted her bodily into the air and across the room, and placed her in front of a stool. He walked away to sit in a chair a few feet from her, leaning back in it and resting one ankle across the other knee.
Ariel swallowed. "Should I...sit? On this stool, I mean?" Agnok fixed her with his eye, until eventually, hesitantly and eyes looking in case of disapproval, she bent at the knees and sat down, hands still covering her nakedness as best she could. She sat there, looking uncomfortable. She tried to smile, but her eyes and mouth crinkled too often into barely concealed dismay to have much success at it.
In the midst of a long silence which made Ariel even more uncomfortable, Agnok asked
"Aren't you a bit old to still be a virgin?"
Ariel blushed. "Um, so, there actually aren't any male naiads? I mean, river gods, yes, but they're hardly ever around. So growing up in the brook, it, it just kind of never came up."
"You never saw any humans? They fuck naiads, don't they?"
Ariel winced a little. "Theoretically we
can
mate with humans, yes, I mean, you know, the...pieces would all, um, fit..." Her eyes involuntarily glanced between Agnok's legs. "...I guess. And if you were doing Riverbank, well, yes, young men did hunt through the forest near us, so you had to keep an eye out for them so they didn't defile the river. But we'd never get out of the water around them! That was against the rules! Mostly we, um...we just, well, tempted them to join us
