FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Chapter 13: And Darkness Was Upon the Face of the Deep

Floating halfway between unconsciousness and awareness, Tuco found no peace. He could feel the blow of Brother Gabriel's staff on his head as though it were happening again and again, a kind of horrible physical echo. He could hear it, too. Crack! Like someone dropping a log. Crack! Over and over, each time with a repeat of the blow.

It wasn't all just in his memory, he groggily realized. It was happening over and over. Were they beating him? He struggled, fighting his way back to consciousness again. His head throbbed. The blows weren't hitting his head itself, he realized; they were striking against his backswept horns, sending reverberations through his entire skull. He shifted and felt his limbs constricted, wings and arms. He was lying on his back on-no, he was being dragged. Dragged down stone steps. The crack was from his horns hitting the steps with each movement forward.

A strange scent filled his nostrils, something mineral and chemical. It came from his chest and arms, and he could feel something thick and flaking coating his scales.

He forced his eyes open and saw the ceiling of the stone tunnel above him. Leaning his head up, he saw two large monks-ones that had been changed by demons into burly, hulking shapes-pulling him, each of his legs hooked under an arm. His chest filled most of his vision, covered with painted marks that he recognized from his summoning lessons as sigils of warding and abjuration. Crack! Down another step. He lifted his eyes and saw that beside him walked Brother Gabriel, his staff coming down on each step at the same time as Tuco's head. Crack!

"Ah, so you're finally with us again, Master Witchywine," he said. Crack!

Tuco struggled in terror, and found his wings and limbs could scarcely move.

"Ah ah ah, be careful now." Crack! "You're far too heavy to carry, so we had to bind you. It would be a shame if you wrested free of Brother Herodotus and Brother Jameson and went tumbling down all those stairs." Crack!

Tuco stilled. "Let me up and I'll walk. I won't be any trouble."

"Promises from a liar's tongue. And yet- Brothers, hold a moment. Take a rest." The movement downward stilled, and Tuco enjoyed the respite from the unending pounding against his head. He tugged at his arms, straining every muscle, thinking surely there was no force capable of resisting his prodigious strength, but whatever had bound his wrists and wings was utterly unyielding.

"Such an impressive display of strength," Brother Gabriel observed. "But you fight against Dimashq steel, blessed by an archbishop and warded against the powers of the infernal. I have had the only key melted down in the furnace. Those bonds will hold you forever. Do you understand?"

"Yes." Tuco didn't feel terribly strong now. He felt small and alone and afraid. But despite his terror, something puzzled him. "You can see me?"

A smile curved Brother Gabriel's thin lips. "Surprised? But I confess, it is not you I see, but the paint with which we slathered your body. A devil I had imagined all along, but not one so enormous, so bloated with the corruption of the Abyss. Not a word from your lips can I trust, but still I wonder how you were able to slip past our Gasen, survive the touch of Holy Water at Mass. And why indeed, it seems I alone have been touched with blindness toward you. There is much I could learn from you, Master Witchywine. And learn I shall, never you fear. The Apocalypse approaches, sooner than those blithe fools out in the secular world suspect. I know you are a key to it. You and that accursed ritual Brother Melvin performed. But a key can both lock and unlock. I intend to probe all of your secrets, Witchywine. Whatever your charge may have been, you will become the dagger in the back of Lucifer himself. You will cut through all his schemes. I have-"

Brother Gabriel broke off and stared out into the Throat for a moment, his eyes dilated against a darkness Tuco could no longer see. "I have made sacrifices. Ones you could not appreciate. My whole life, I have rigorously devoted myself to an ascetic ideal. I eschewed the pleasures of the flesh, and shunned any hint of enchantment, as the Almighty has commanded. Even those magics considered to be holy arts, I have condemned."

"Those do sound like difficult sacrifices," Tuco agreed.

"Those were not the sacrifices, thou tongue of the Serpent! No, those were an honor. It was a blessing to walk in the footsteps of the Almighty, to hew to His holy ways. And always had I kept myself pure. Until you, Witchywine. Because of you, I have resorted to enchanted steel. I have polluted my soul by ordering Brothers to use wards to capture you and your infernal kin, incantations to subdue you. Because of you, I have stepped outside the footsteps of the Father, and for that, I will make you suffer."

He clasped his hands behind his back. "Let us continue. Bring him." And with that, he began down the steps again. The two hulking Brothers silently crouched, grasped Tuco's legs, and dragged him down the steps again, his head hitting each on the way down.

---

By the time they reached the tunnel to the prison, Tuco's ears were ringing, his head splitting with pain. His pleas for a rest, his protests, his desperate attempts at forming a connection with the Brothers had all gone unheeded. Neither had he been allowed to stand and walk down the steps, even though long before they arrived, the two monks were puffing and faltering with the effort of hauling his prodigious weight. At times, Tuco tried again to work free of the steel cuffs that bound his wrists and wings, but they were as unyielding as... well, as unyielding as steel.

But pulling Tuco down the steps, letting gravity do most of the work for them, was one task. Dragging his half-ton of weight down an even passage was another. The two large Brothers made an effort, but already they were exhausted, and they had not gone more than five paces before first one, then the other, dropped to his knees, panting. Brother Gabriel turned, arching a thin brow. "Does the Lord not grant you strength enough for this burden?"

"Apologies, Brother, but-"

"Repent not to me, but unto Him." The tall monk grimaced. "Very well. Have you stamina enough to help him to his feet?"

Tuco narrowed his eyes. "I can stand on my own." And he did so, using his sturdy tail for leverage as he pushed himself upright. Despite the ringing in his ears, his bonds, and all he had suffered in the past several days, his body was still powerful; he thought he could have sprung to his feet, but he dreaded alarming the Brothers and giving them another excuse to use that weakening spell of light again. Even so, he noticed Brother Gabriel's eyes tightening, the monk stepping back as Tuco towered over him.

"This way," Brother Gabriel said, and headed down the tunnel-as though there were any direction to go other than forward or back-his staff clacking against the rough-hewn floor of the passage. Tuco followed, the exhausted hulks following to either side, panting. He cast a longing look at the guardroom as they approached it, a place of comfort and safety, and desperately wished he could be there with Pike, Etreon, and Braxus now. A night of rest and harmless sex would be very welcome. But as they passed, he breathed a sigh of relief; it seemed that Brother Gabriel and the others were still uninterested in it.

Instead they continued down the hallway, which was wet and smelled of mold and fear soaked into the stone walls themselves. A deathly chill hung in the air, which itself was stirred only by their passing and the terrible sounds that came from the prisoners beyond: horrific screams, roars, and moaning, as though all the demons in the Abyss were being tormented somewhere far ahead, beneath the mountain. There was terrible pain in their voices, and rage, and something worse: madness. Wild laughter mixed with sobbing, gibbering strings of nonsense, guttural groans that might have been agony or ecstasy or some unholy combination of them. Each sound struck dread into Tuco's gut. What was being done to them, and how long before he joined his voice to that ghastly chorus?

Rather than narrowing, the passage they followed grew wider, the ceiling higher, until it extended so far upward that Tuco could no longer see it. The screeching and yowling was almost deafening now, and Tuco noticed that the two men to either side of him had gone pale and drawn, pulling their cowls down over their ears as though to shut out the sound.

Finally, they reached a wider chamber, and at the far side of it stood an enormous, square stone archway fashioned into the stone face of the mountain wall, large enough to sail a ship through. Its surface was inky darkness, a void not even Tuco's eyes could penetrate. To stare on it was to stare into blindness. All the world ended at this archway, Tuco's gut told him, and yet he knew they would pass through it.

Brother Gabriel stopped some ten paces from the archway and turned. "Give us the Watcherbane," he said severely. His face, too, looked white in the torchlight, but the two hulking Brothers were visibly trembling. One reached into his robe and withdrew a handful of small phials with strings tied around their mouths. He handed two to his compatriot, one to Brother Gabriel, and put the last around his own neck. While the others followed his example, he pulled the cork from his phial, and Tuco tasted instantly in the air a bouquet of extremely strong odors: a nose-stinging mixture of peppermint, lavender, and citronella. "The scent will repel the Watcher during our voyage to your prison. Lower your head," Brother Gabriel instructed. "We are not savages. Still, I advise you not to remove the phial. The Watcher ensures that everyone remains... compliant. The penalties for ignoring it are... well, of course you hear the screams. Let us proceed."

And he stepped forward through the portal, passing through it as though falling into eternal shadow. The hulking Brothers took Tuco's elbows and dragged him forward.

He thought about fighting them. He was far more powerful than they. He could easily knock them to either side and bolt for the Throat. He could run for the Abyss, find his way through the Seal and into safety. Perhaps someone in his demesnes could find a way to break the bonds around his wrists and wings. But the thought of that sickening, enchanted light-the same light that had destroyed Belial-blazing across him again made his stomach turn. He still felt weak and weary from its last application. To escape, he'd have to hurt the two Brothers, perhaps even kill them. He tried to send out a pulse of lust and felt the sigils on his chest-and apparently on his arms, back, legs, and forehead-heat as they resisted his power. His mind raced for some lie he could tell them that would trick them into letting him go, but could come up with little.

"I'm a venomous serpent," he tried in desperation, but felt the forks of his tongue catch on the sibilance and speak them without a hiss; again, the sigils heated as they absorbed whatever fiendish power fueled his magic.

"That you are, devil," grunted one of the men pulling him along. "Strange to hear you admit it."

And then they pulled him through the portal.

The world beyond was dark in a way that Tuco had never seen. It was not that there was no light; it seemed that there was no possibility of light. Even his devil eyes could see nothing outside of the reach of the lantern Brother Gabriel held aloft. All he could see in its flickering nimbus was the narrow stone ledge upon which all of them stood, and beyond it, the glint of moving water. They had arrived, it seemed, at the edge of some vast, underground lake, but there was no roof above them, nothing behind them but the portal. The water, the stone, the air had no scent at all. Tuco could catch no smells but the strong odors from the phials around their necks, the paint smearing his scales, the burning of the lantern, and the fear and desire for safety of the two Brothers with him. The air, too, was oppressively silent, the screams of the tormented creatures suddenly gone.

"What happened? Where are we?" he breathed aloud. "What happened to the screaming?"

Brother Gabriel did not turn. When he spoke, his voice sounded muffled, as though heard from behind a heavy door. "Silence reigns in here. Come forward," he commanded, and he stepped down from the edge of the stone ledge into a large, wooden boat that rested at its side. It was not moored or anchored by any means that Tuco could see, but neither was there any wind or movement in the water that might have carried it away. Ripples radiated away from the boat a short distance before vanishing into darkness; the water was otherwise as smooth as glass. "Into the boat."

Warily, Tuco stepped down into the wooden craft. It rocked dramatically to one side, and he had to lash his tail for balance; even Brother Gabriel had to grasp the edge to steady himself as it swayed. The boat contained a bench for two oarsmen and a seat near the prow, with a long rod on which Brother Gabriel had hung the lantern. Otherwise, the craft was empty. With his bound wrists, Tuco assumed the bench was not for him, so he positioned himself near the stern, standing with his feet planted wide to keep his balance with the rocking of the boat. The two monks who had dragged him here occupied their places on the bench, took up two oars, and pushed away from the stone pier. They sailed out into absolute darkness.

"It is the Void," Brother Gabriel said finally, his severe voice cutting across the splash of oars. Again, his voice sounded small and distant. "Formless and empty, the Nothing from which the Almighty created the Heavens and the Earth. Within the Void there is darkness and silence, and neither day nor night. Here you shall not hunger or tire. Nor shall you age. However, I am given to understand that none stay sane long here. Perhaps it is a blessing..." He murmured those last words as if to himself, and their craft continued on, oars splashing through the inky water and endless darkness.

Before long, they reached the first island. The barren mass of rock barely jutted over the rim of the dark water. It appeared empty, but the rowers kept far from it, their pale faces gone taut and anxious in the gloom. Tuco peered through the darkness, trying to see what might be hidden there, and then nearly leapt from his seat as a horse skull-bleached white, hollow-eyed, and nearly as big as he-swooped out of the darkness toward him. He cried out, the bellow of alarm sounding foolish in his deep voice, and scrambled to the other side of the boat, making the whole craft lurch alarmingly.

"Be still and be silent!" commanded Brother Gabriel, whirling on him. "The wards let nothing escape!"

And indeed, the terrible skull stopped at the edge of the isle as though struck. A horrible, deep, equine sound roared through the sockets of its eyes, the broken hole of its nose, and it slammed up against the invisible barrier again and again, until with a crunching sound, cracks faulted through the ghostly white bone of its snout. It shook once, twice, like a stunned animal, and then drifted backward into the darkness.

"That cannot have been..." Tuco's words trailed off. His heart hammered in his chest.

"Oh yes, that was an apprentice once. One whose desires tore him away from everything that made him human. I found that one in the records in my studies. No telling which of his desires turned him into that, but he was consigned to the Void when they found him eating the skin of a fellow apprentice. Everyone here is for a good reason."

Tuco hunched lower in the boat. They rowed on. Another island loomed, this one housing an unearthly, green, glowing mist that shifted about, sprouting various animal heads or long, curling tendrils. "And that one? What did he do?"

Brother Gabriel cast the cloud a disinterested sidelong glance. "I haven't seen that one before. The islands shift about. I've personally witnessed very few of the Things imprisoned here. Now still your voice, lest you draw the Watcher."

They moved on through the still water. The darkness above them was almost as oppressive as the silence. The sky held no stars, no light of any kind. Nor did any clouds pass overhead. Not since Tuco's eyes had transformed had he witnessed any world like this, and it was terrible. The torments of Sathanus's palace in the Abyss seemed preferable to this endless nothingness. His breath sounded far away in his ears, and even the splashing of the oars was thin and muffled, an imitation of sound.

They passed several other isles. One inhabited by some enormous creature made up of a dark, viscous liquid. It pressed itself up against its invisible wall as they cut through the water nearby, its form shifting and changing, sometimes with many arms, then a cluster of tentacles that sprouted from its loins and squirmed across the barrier as though attempting to copulate with it. Its dripping mouth opened too wide, and then eyes opened all down its sides. Tuco shuddered and looked away. Another island swarmed with uncountable insects that looked like glittering black beetles, filling the air with an iridescent shimmer. They coalesced briefly into different shapes: the blurred outline of a man, a lion, the bones of some enormous sea creature. A third island sprouted a vast tree made of flesh.

Tuco stared with a mixture of pity and revulsion. He wished all those imprisoned here could be freed, but perhaps to do so would be folly. If these creatures had been homicidal before being incarcerated in the Void, this place surely would not have improved them. And what could the mortal world do against a murderer who could form himself into a swarm of beetles or a wrathful, shapeshifting liquid?

His ear twitched toward a sound that penetrated the thick, oppressive silence of the Void, a crisp, rattling sound, like the sawing of some enormous tree mixed with the sound of stormwinds howling past the windows of the Abbey. "What is that?" he asked uneasily. Unlike all other sounds here, it cut through the air like a hot knife.

"What is what?" Brother Gabriel asked in irritation. A moment later his face tightened. "The Watcher," he hissed. "Down, Brothers!" He lowered himself to his knees in the boat, hands shaking as he clumsily tried to unstopper his phial. The two rowers hastily pulled their oars into the boat and followed in kind, pulling their cowls up over their heads and twisting the corks from their phials. They lay face-down, trembling, in the boat.

The sawing sound in the air was getting louder; a grinding now, like the sharpening of an axehead, the gnawing of giant termites in the Firmament of the world. Tuco's wrists were bound, and he could not reach the phial on his chest to uncork it. "Help?" he ventured. "Someone help me open mine?" The monks lay prone in the boat, not looking up. None even stirred to assist him. Anxiously, he scanned the darkness for the source of the sound, but it came from all around, from all sizes, a horrible rasping sound of strangulation, a... a buzzing.

It sounded, he realized, like the hum of an enormous insect. And then, abruptly, it appeared, approaching him with the speed of a lightning bolt before stopping, hovering in the air before him. Its body was pale, with drooping, withered limbs smeared with dirt and filth. It looked about half the height of a man, its torso thick and bulbous. From its back sprouted two pairs of wings, barely visible as they buzzed through the air-the source of the terrible sound. Its short neck hung limp, almost boneless, and from it lolled its enormous, horrible head. It might once have been the head of a man, perhaps, but now it was covered with round, segmented eyes, dark as the void, dozens of them in irregular sizes, some larger than Tuco's own, some as small as the eye of a needle. They stared in all directions at once, between the wiry bristles that sprouted from the thing's dome. Ichor oozed from its spongy proboscis.

It was looking everywhere at once, but also, it was looking at him. It drew his gaze back toward it, into those hundreds of dark spots. Its head buzzed around in sporadic blurs, but its eyes stayed the same, always looking at him. There was no place to look away but into the eyes, into that raw black void, and inside it was only endless madness.

Tuco giggled to himself as he murdered everyone in the boat with his claws, raced back up the stairs to the Abbey, killed everyone there, and began removing his skin with his own talons. No-he had never left the boat; he had never been in it, he had never come to the Abbey. His parents had left him to die out in the rain. Squirrels ran through his village and devoured everyone bit by bit. He was still looking into the eyes. The eyes were everywhere, all around him. His head felt as though a knife had slid into it, just above the forehead, a slick iron edge of pain, and twisted. Blood poured from his nose as his brains rushed out. He screamed and screamed until his voice went raw. The visions went on, visions of disease, of torment, of abandonment.

"Calm him!" a voice shouted through the sound of his own screams. "Repel that thing or he'll swamp the boat!"

Something went over his eyes and then, blessedly, he could not see. The visions frolicked through his mind a few more seconds like fire playing over a log it was not quite hot enough to burn, and then he realized he was lying on his back in the boat, his wings half-crushed beneath him. Broken wood was under him, and cold water splashed at his scales and cooled his tail. The horrible farting, sawing noise continued, jerking back and forth in his hearing for a moment, and then the sound vanished in the distance. Tuco ran out of breath to scream, and his voice trailed off into a hoarse rasp.

"There. There. It's gone now," one of the Brothers said in a soothing voice, and Tuco was grateful for the unexpected kindness. He tried to sort out reality from the horrible things he'd seen, he'd lived through. A convulsive sobbing from behind him must have been one of the other monks

"I saw it, I saw it," the Brother wept. "It saw me. It saw the things I would do, it made me do them."

Brother Gabriel's voice contained a rare tone of gentleness. "Calm yourself, Brother. What you saw is the punishment that awaits those who reject the love of the Almighty. It was not a true vision, and need not be, so long as you remain disciplined and faithful in your devotion. No, good soul, you deserve no such fate. Only those who have given themselves over to their evil one deserve it." His voice went hard and cold as marble. "Such as this foul creature. Get him up."

Tuco felt small hands tugging uselessly at his arms and shoulders. "I-I can get up," he managed, and using his tail as a lever, he pushed himself upright again. A Brother's robe pulled free of his eyes as he moved, exposing him to the threat of the Watcher again. He flinched and squeezed his eyes closed, dreading that he might see it. "Why?" he murmured. "Why would you inflict that on anyone?"

"Think you it was I who created the Watcher, or this Void?" Brother Gabriel asked in an arch tone. "They were here long before any of us. Turn your searching soul, as you should have done, to the Almighty. Even for one such as you, there may yet be forgiveness. If not from our hands, then mayhap from His."

Shaking, Tuco settled down in the boat again, realizing to his dismay, and the Brothers' annoyed grimaces, that he had broken the rowing bench in his fall. He supposed they were lucky he had not splintered the craft through. He hunched low in the boat as they rowed on.

The oars splashed endlessly, the only other sound the grunts of the rowing Brothers, one of them still quietly weeping. He still did not dare open his eyes. The thing had come so quickly. It could come again. Time drifted by, and then finally, after it seemed hours that they had journeyed, Brother Gabriel's voice came. "There. That is an empty one."

The sound of earth and rock crunched against the underside of the boat. "Here we are," Brother Gabriel said. "Go ahead, demon. Open your eyes. Behold your new home."

Tuco reluctantly opened one eye, then the other. Before him lay a dark, barren bit of rock and earth, with nothing more than a few piles of boulders to break up the land. He hunched lower in the boat.

"Don't like it? But you've earned it. Go on, get out."

He shook his head. "I can't. I can't get out here. Take me back."

"A pity." Brother Gabriel gave a theatrical sigh. "Well, I suppose I can't force you. I'll just have to summon the Watcher. A few good shouts should do it."

"I'll get out!" Tuco stammered, lurching to his feet, at the same time the Brother behind him moaned, "No, please!"

"One moment," Brother Gabriel said, and a hand grasped the phial around Tuco's neck and yanked it, snapping the cord that held it there. "You won't be needing that here. Well. In any case, you mayn't have it."

The water on Tuco's scaled feet was icy cold. He waded across the rocks onto the dark, flat surface of the shore and took a few steps inward. There was nothing there, nothing. No light, no sound, no scents. He turned around to beg forgiveness once more, but his face and arm hit an invisible wall, and he grunted in surprise. With both hands and his tail, he felt the smooth, flat surface of the air resisting him. He pressed, and it yielded not at all.

Brother Gabriel seated himself back down in the boat. "Goodbye, Tuco Witchywine," he said, a smile curling his narrow lips. "Never fear. We shall meet again, at least once. I have plans for you." His voice grew distant as the Brothers eagerly turned the boat around and rowed away from the island, taking their meager light with them. Tuco watched them go, the light dwindling to a tiny spark, and then going out. Then there was nothing.

Was this to be his fate, then, trapped in this terrible place, fearful always of the Watcher? How long in his solitude until he made too much noise, until he roared like the things that could be heard from outside, and the Watcher came, and looked into him, and through him, looked with that lolling-head stare that could pierce a brain and wither it from within?

Truly the Void was a prison like no other: a sea outside of time, whose warden was madness. None had ever escaped here and, he was suddenly certain, no one ever would. Pike, Etreon, Braxus, Hhalbor, his other friends, his family, all of them were gone from him forever. This was where his story ended, in the dark and the Void, where no one even knew his name.

---

Pike lay under the blankets, trying uselessly to sleep. How could he sleep when his mast-when Tuco, he corrected himself mentally-was taken away and imprisoned? What horrors had he already faced in the prison of the Throat? Even coming here to Tuco's old room was little comfort, though it was reassuring to be enveloped in the still-lingering scent of him that the Brothers had not been able to scrub from the walls and floor. They had not even been able to remain long in the room before being overcome with lust; more than a few had ended up rutting each other like animals in the midst of their cleaning duties, until finally an exasperated Brother Gabriel had ordered them out and declared the "lair of the devil" off-limits.

The scent didn't overwhelm Pike too much, though. Since his previous changes with Tuco, he was eternally aroused anyway: his erection had not gone down in weeks, and he doubted he was capable of it anymore. He had wished to be perfect for his -for Tuco, and the demonic magic had changed him in a number of ways. His shaft had grown even larger, and was now eternally erect, which, while frustrating, was thankfully never painful. Nor did his arousal ever cease; twice he had spent the entire day in congress with various apprentices, sucking and being sucked, fucking and being fucked, until his climaxes ran together into one gooey eternity of bliss. And yet there was an emptiness inside him now that no one's cock seemed able to fill, not even the most prodigiously endowed of the apprentices. He knew with a gut certainty that only Tuco could; that he needed the devil lord inside him, he needed to wear that cock like he belonged around it. The hollow feeling went all the way through him, from tail to throat. Something inside had changed drastically: he no longer needed to use the latrine, and while he still enjoyed food, rather than oversating him, a big meal only seemed to make his balls heavier and fuller. He hungered for Tuco with a need that was deeper than his need for food or sleep, and yet ever since his last change, Tuco had been gone. And now he was in the Throat, a prison from which none had ever escaped.

But if anyone could change that, Pike would. The problem was how. He had no idea what the prison was even like, nor how the captives were secured. He, Braxus, and Etreon had all attempted to summon Tuco, but their efforts had been in vain. The summoning had found nothing to grasp onto. It was as though Tuco had been removed from existence. What kind of prison was this that not even a summoning, which could wrest devils from their homes in the Abyss itself, could not find them? He, Etreon, and Braxus had all attempted to group together in the watchroom down in the Throat, but the stairs down now always had a guard standing vigilant.

After imprisoning Tuco, Brother Gabriel had summoned all Brothers and apprentices to the refectory and there announced that a great and insidious evil had been purged from within their midst, but that no one was to let his vigilance falter; that the Enemy was always ready to insinuate himself into the minds of those who let their attention slip from prayers to the Almighty. Rather than looking relaxed and relieved after his victory over Tuco, the monk's face was tight and drawn, his expression that of a hunted man. Or perhaps that of a man himself hunting a very dangerous predator.

Pike groaned and pushed thoughts of Brother Gabriel out of his mind. He'd never be able to help Tuco if he couldn't get some sleep. But it was no use; as soon as he turned his thoughts away, he focused on the scent of Tuco surrounding him in the room, in the blankets, and the ache of arousal flooded through him again. The blankets' coarse fabric rasped against his sensitive flesh, and he felt the cold of his precome which had smeared across it.

He twitched an ear. The sound of Braxus's soft, heavy paws was moving through the apprentice dorm, and then down the hallway. Moments later, the wolf's huge, shaggy head ducked through the doorway. "I can't sleep," Braxus whispered loudly.

"Me either."

Another wolf head pushed its way through the door, this one's eyes burning with lust. "Can I come in here and lie with you?"

"Of course," Pike answered.

A third wolf head ducked through the doorway, jaws lolling in a lazy grin. "Thanks, Pike. I appreciate it." Squirming, the wolftaur squeezed his way into the room, shaking out his mane as he did so. His proximity to Tuco had changed him dramatically: his grey fur had gone charcoal black, with darker patterns spiraling and branching through his upper coat. The fur of his chests and bellies, however, had lit into a reddish orange that seemed almost to glow from within like hellfire, the colors twining up his shoulders and sides as though the wolf himself were a burning ember. Most extraordinary of all, however, his broad shoulders now bore three shaggy necks, each with a wolf head nearly identical-though the longer Pike looked, the more slight differences he noticed. From each of his brows sprouted thick, curling black ram's horns. He'd become a true hellhound, like the legendary Kerberos of myth, and what had tripled above had tripled below as well; his heavy sheath was now almost too wide for his belly.

The enormous creature flopped down heavily next to Pike, one set of jaws panting heavily while another nose sniffed the room. Pike wondered how he was capable of breathing in and out at the same time. "It smells better in here," Braxus said wistfully. "I miss him."

"Seems like most of what we do lately is miss him," Pike agreed. "First in the Abyss, twice, then out in the world, now stuck in the Throat."

The right head giggled. "Maybe it'll choke on him."

At the same time the middle head asked, "Can I sit on your cock? I think I'll feel better."

Yes. Always yes. Pike breathed out slowly. "Appreciated. I'll relax too. Sorry I only have one for you."

Left Braxus's ears folded back. "Be glad you don't have more. Three is just... feeling it from all of them at the same time... I think it makes me stupid? It's just all pleasure."

"I'd take it over this, I think," Pike said ruefully, and then clenched his large front teeth as Braxus settled back against him, soft wolf fur brushing against his hot, tight, eternally slick flesh, and then the warmth of the taur's tailhole as it slid down around him. "Sex feels good, but I miss not thinking about it sometimes. And there's no relief without..."

"Him," all three Braxi said in unison.

"Yeah," Pike sighed, and settled into an easy, comfortable rhythm, grasping around Braxus's waist as he rocked, trying to avoid the chaotic wagging of the taur's three black-and-red furred tails.

"Is Etreon back?" Left Braxus asked, as Middle Braxus let out low, happy moans of pleasure.

"No... he's still trying to find a way into the library to see if there's anything about the Throat."

A low whine. "I hope he doesn't get caught. He looks so much like a demon now. If the Brothers see him..."

Pike clenched his teeth in a groan. The conversation wasn't helping, but on the other hand, these days he didn't need much help. With a few spasmodic bucks of his hips, he felt the blissful almost-release as his unemptiable balls spilled their heat into Braxus. Pleasure ratcheted through his mind for several seconds until finally he sat back, panting, still-eternally-hard. "Sorry... I... what were we...?"

"Etreon," Right Braxus reminded him.

"Right." Pike didn't know why he separated them out. They were all the same person, and what one knew and experienced, they all did. And yet, each seemed to have slightly different mannerisms, manifesting different sides of Braxus's personality. He wondered what it felt like, but was careful not to wonder too much, lest an opportunistic demon happened to be nearby. "He's a slippery one, that. Think about it-he's never gotten caught or been in trouble. I don't know how he gets away with it. I suppose being small helps-aah!" He couldn't suppress his gasp as Braxus stood up, sliding off of him.

The great Kerberos stretched out his backs and shook out his manes, then turned around and lay on the floor in front of him, crossing his forepaws. "He'd get even smaller if he could, you know."

"I know." Pike sighed. "The little fellow knows what he wants, I suppose. Although sometimes I wonder whatever possessed him to..." He trailed off, frowning.

Braxus leaned toward him, six eyes peering with naked interest. "What is it, Pike?"

Pike shook his head. "I'm not sure. But... I think I might have had an idea. Something that might save Tuco, something we haven't tried."

Three tails wagged in sudden excitement. "What is it? You think it could work?"

"I hope so. I don't want to say more until I've had a chance to read. Hopefully Etreon can find a way into the library."

"Oh, Pike! You're so clever! I know you'll find a way! I know it!" Middle Braxus almost barked the words. Then he leaned forward and three soft muzzles began licking Pike clean from every angle, causing the rabbit-man's eyes to roll back in renewed pleasure.

"Oh-Oh Almighty-" Pike gripped one of Braxus's scruffs, trying to pull him away, but just one of the cerberus's heads and necks weighed nearly as much as him, and even if he'd succeeded, there were two more intently licking him clean. He slumped back and let the bliss take him.