Giving Thanks; Giving Love
Giving Thanks Giving Love
Rain pours down as a zeppelin docks with the stone tower of a fortress over looking a port city of a mining community. Humans, gnomes, dwarves and beast folk depart and do their best to keep their footing on the rain slickened gangplank. One beast folk looks like a weird amalgamation of several animals and is unique enough to be considered more than a curiosity.
He stands a full eight inches over seven feet and weighs three hundred pounds to be a very robust specimen of his kind even if he has no top fur or what humans like to call hair. Deep crimson fur shows on what is exposed with black tiger stripes framing a thoroughly canine face the features a black mask not unlike a raccoon and black eyes. Midnight black chain mail with red leather accents covers his torso with black leather pants down below, twin red leather satchels, a red hooded cloak and a set of reinforced gloves and combat boots also in black completes the outfit.
A black tipped and ringed wolf's tail of red fur comes out of his rear as very little else can be seen of his body as he moves into the tower. A grizzled and bald dwarf with a long white beard acts as paymaster and gruffly hands out the earnings of the sailors and mercenaries as the men and some of the women as well move out to enjoy themselves in town. A few of the mercenaries go after the maids of the fortress, distracting them from their duties with their own lusts.
The lupursyn just shakes his head and proceeds to the town itself where the hustle and bustle of the crowd is almost too much to take in all at once. Human guards eye him warily as they debate among themselves which one is going to remind the monster that all weapons must be peace bonded within the city. Then an ogre with them notes that he isn't carrying any weapons and goes over to try and shake him down for cash.
"Don't do it, Brutus!" One human guard, a mousey brown haired and mustached man yells.
"Yeah, Brute," a black haired man cautions, "That's Kodyax, he keeps his weapons in his satchels!"
"What does he use? Knives?" Brutus asks mockingly and comes face to face with Kodyax who has a weapon consisting of twin sword blades mounted on a six foot pole that is just right to stab like a spear or swung like an ax. "Uh, hi," Brutus says Kodyax glares at him while leaning on his pole arm. "Weapons, gotta be..."
"Peace bonded, I know," Kodyax growls, "But you're going to have to beat me honestly if you want to try and shake me down."
"No," Brutus says nervously and backs away as something about the wolf-bear says that the ogre would lose if he took him on. "I'll just be on my way." Then to his fellow guards: "Those big bags are enchanted aren't they?"
"Yeah," The brown haired guard says, "And it's good you backed down when he took out his sword-spear."
"Yeah," the black haired guard adds, "Kodyax is a ranger, and the damned Druid Council would launch a formal complaint if you had attacked him."
"He's wit de Council?" Brutus asks, "I thought he was a Merc!"
"He is a mercenary," brown haired guard says, "but he's also a spell caster, The DC recognizes him as a wandering warrior-priest."
"I'm just glad he didn't howl," the black haired guard says, "he can sound a howl that will turn your blood to ice."
"Uh, guys," Brutus asks as he watches Kodyax descend into the caverns below, "I think I'm seeing things. Kodyax went into the catacombs. Nobody in their right minds goes down there, right?"
"Most don't but Kody is an experienced adventurer," Brown states. "There are places down below that actually cater to his kind."
"Yeah, Brutus," Black states, "monsters we guards dread meeting down there run from guys like him."
Kodyax descends to the catacombs with his forked sword-spear in hand ready for use in case he should run across any monsters that might think he'd be a tasty meal. Actually he's kind of hoping to get attacked as it will mean some bits to sell off to supplement what meager wages the transportation company paid him. Not that he will be complaining as he knows for a fact beast folk like himself are never paid as much as what the rest of world calls the "standard" races which amuses the beast folk as they are dying of more frequently than anyone else.
Toads whose bulbous eyes emit blinding light and are large as a human child croak a challenge at the descending ranger that he ignores as about thirty of the enchanted animals start to surround him. Every member of the horde activates their dazzling eye beams at once which forces Kodyax to close his eyes and rely on his ears and nose to detect how near the monsters are. About ten of them rush him as soon as he gets to the bottom of the stair with the rest keeping their eye beams upon him.
Half of them actually reach him to attack with three of the other five getting skewered on the great tines of his weapon and the other tow just plain missing him entirely. Kodyax can feel the weight of the bodies on his weapon and instinctively swings it to clear them before sweeping one of the two edges in a wide arc to hopefully score a few more victims. Another three fall as the warrior guides his blade to where his ears and nose agree are targets.
The four blinder toads of the first wave slam into Kodyax again for his effort and the lupursyn decides that he has had enough and lets loose with a terrifying howl. Six of the toads flee into the darkness outright as Kodyax opens his eyes to see eighteen of the things just quaking including the quartet that are the survivors of the first wave. He smirks and takes out the four around his immediate vicinity and howls again.
Panic reigns supreme as the little monsters run around Kodyax in purely random directions and speeds as he just smirks. Reaching into his satchel he pulls out a bunch of dagger and starts to get in some target practice as he tosses the blades at random blinder roads. With such a target rich environment, missing is hard and at first Kody doesn't.
Kodyax takes his time to line up the shots for an instant kill until all the toads have been slaughtered. He also takes his time in collecting the corpses to sell to an alchemist's emporium later as his actions were noticed by others who took exception to his victory. Belinda and her twin sister Kali are a pair of snake women who work as slavers and dominatrixes which nets them plenty of coinage from the decadent nobles running the mines and its port city.
The alchemist most interested in his wares is a lady skunk who goes by the name of Magenta Skye, more for the color that she dyes the white portion of her fur than anything else. Magenta also has a kind "friends with benefits" relationship with Kodyax Vagabond as his known among the beast folk and those who regularly traffic with the Druid Council. She and her assistant Lorelei Harlequin have plans for Kody as they lead him to the back and has him strip.
Lorelei also strips in front of Kodyax as a warm bath is drawn by Magenta. Kodyax's body is fully revealed not for the first time to the girls as his body is all red fur with black tiger stripes with the natural black gloves and socks of a fox making his naked form aesthetically pleasing. Both girls shampoo and massage his body with special attention given to his genital area which naturally stimulates his member to peek out of his sheath.
Kodyax keeps Lore's blonde hair out of her faces as she bobs her black and white head up and down his emerging member as Magenta probes his tail a little with her fingers. The play at his back door entices his tool to come out and play even faster, which they were planning on all along. Magenta demands and gets Kody's cock between her legs fists as she has Lorelei rub a cream on his scrotum that they are developing.
What the cream does is keep a male's member up longer and gets even harder within a female's body, and for their own pleasure they are rather specific that the effect requires a female's sexual juices to help fuel it's staying power. Lorelei applies the salve liberally to his nut sack to get him going and then his shaft when it's up and out properly from the sheath. Miss rabbit is annoyed that madam skunk is the first beneficiary but a vague wink from Magenta tells Lorelei that she has something special planned.
Magenta arcs her back to let Kodyax lick and suckle her tits as he thrusts his soft sword into her oh so willing sheath repeatedly although his egress from her port with his pirate ship is never complete. She holds his shoulders and moans in ecstasy as he takes her in measured strokes while Lorelei is using her fingers to probe his tail hole. Kodyax howls when he climaxes inside of Magenta who is pleased as punch as they lead him out toe the water and onto a table.
Kodyax lets himself be lead after the girls towel him off and Magenta's other plans for him are starting to take shape. Kali and her sister have been watching all this and as quietly as they dare they have been getting each other off as they masturbate together. Kodyax's shaft has yet to get soft as Lorelei leads him to the station with her hand on his dick and hand jobbing him to keep him stimulated.
Once Kodyax is on the table on his back, Lorelei mounts him and makes sure his jack is securely in her box before she starts bouncing up and down along his length to distract him from what Magenta is doing as well as her own pleasure in have his prick between her legs. Magenta takes out a purple dildo of a completely alien configuration but it includes a bulbous node that she slides into her own pussy and clenches with her own inner walls to keep it in place. The skunk reaches around to tease the wolf-bear by kneading rabbit's breasts as she slides his faux phallus into his tight hole while miss bunny continues to bounce on his pole.
He moans with pleasure as he is taken by the two females; giving them a lustful grin to tell them he appreciates this greatly. Magenta can feel her toy rubbing in all the right places as she buries the business end of her strap-on in his back door even as she roughly fondles her partner's rack. Lorelei is in her own kind of sexual heaven as she has the lupursyn's generous sized sausage safely hidden in her picnic basket as her other "friend with benefits" and erstwhile employer is playing with bosom.
Secreted away in their own little nook, Belinda and Kali are too busy masturbating to notice another horror creeping up on them. While watching the wolf-bear get his from the tow ladies that normally considered prey species a ten armed octopus like monster with fiendishly human like face at its front is stalking them. It vocalizes words of power that paralyzes both females into inaction before it can claim them as its prize.
It uses its tentacles to molest Belinda first as it draws her to its prodigious mouth and while still pleasuring her; it proceeds to devour her before the terrified gaze of her sister. It probes Kali's pleasure pit and squeezes her breasts in a terrifyingly pleasing manner as it munches the only constant companion she has ever known. After it finishes devouring Belinda, it starts on Kali, mercifully massacring her via decapitation to start off before slurping her body like a spaghetti noodle.
Kodyax howls again as all the stimulation gets him to his next climax sooner than he thought possible. This is another side effect of the cream Lorelei used on him but he just smirks and fills the bunny full of his cum. Lori's eyes glaze over with pure pleasure as Magenta just giggles like a giddy schoolgirl.
Magenta pays Kodyax for the toads he collected and helping her test out both the cream and the dildo. Kodyax gets dressed as Magenta drags Lorelei off to their shared bedroom. The monster that ate the snakes is still here and moves to stalk the lupursyn as he leaves the lighted doorway into and out of the stone longhouse that he entered to make his sale.
Unlike the snakes the wolf-bear is not so distracted and in fact the first whiff of the thing puts him on edge as he quickly takes out his forked sword-spear. Raising his right hand to his face like a knife, Kodyax whispers a prayer to set his senses to especially be wary of the unnatural which the decapus is and when he is done the monster is highlighted in the lupursyn's field of vision. Kodyax takes out a serrated chakram, a flattened steel disc with a handle in the middle for ease of use, and tosses in the air cut through the stalactites on which the decapus is holding onto and send it crashing to the catacomb floor so Kodyax can destroy it.
The realization that it has been made doesn't take long to sink into the monster's brain as it tries to flee from the ranger. Unfortunately for it, monsters like it are high on Kody's "To Kill" list so escaping is a bit harder than it otherwise might be. Kodyax hurls more chakrams at the creature when he gets close enough to do so and then runs even faster, aided by the casting of yet another spell once this has been accomplished with his favored weapon, the twin bladed forked sword spear leading the way as he runs it through as part of an effort to complete the task he set for himself of slaughtering it to removes its foul presence from the whole of the world.
Kodyax brings his full weight to bear in his initial charging attack which forces the decapus off of a stalagmite it was climbing to try and escape, the ranger's wrath. The monster puffs itself up to almost twice Kody's height in an effort to frighten him but off but it only strengthens his resolve as he lays into the monster with reckless abandon. Ax strikes are what follow as Kody bellows oaths of the purity of the natural world as he works feverishly on slaughtering the unwholesome abomination before him.
Semi-sentient spiders watch the fight from high in the stalactites as a caravan of humanoids in immaculate gray robes; veils and turbans begin to arrive. The beasts of burden pulling their wagons look like beetles as large as Kodyax himself with whip like antennae that constantly twitch and a mass of tentacles at the front. Kodyax recognizes the wagons and their drivers as men from the plateau of Leng and grips his weapon ever tighter as they come nearer.
Without warning the spiders attack the caravan and Kodyax slips away; uninterested in learning the details of this latest fight between the men of Leng and the great spiders native to the dimension of horror on which they dwell naturally. As he makes his way towards the Grotto of Goodwill a druid stronghold underground where he needs to report in a fissure opens up in the cavern floor and crimson skinned humanoids, burly in form and completely devoid of hair of any sort but from whose brow forms bull horns and spikes of purest, blackest iron, climb out followed by a blue skinned giant with three eyes on his brow with the third eyes just below the brightly colored fez perched on his pointed head and wheeled cages that move of their own accord. Clockwork soldiers and servants half the giant's size of about ten feet tall with a robust frame covered by a colorful vest of orange and purple in a paisley pattern with pants to match attend the giants needs as the devils seem to be mercenaries working for him as extra muscle.
One devil catches a glimpse of Kodyax hiding out amid the tall tree sized mushrooms spread between the columns and stalagmites on the cavern floor and tosses an iron javelin in his general direction. Other devils begin searching for the interloper, cutting down the ancient stalks with their iron swords with angry words of alien syllables. Of the five devils that walked out of the fissure three are searching for Kodyax while the other two stay with the caravan.
Kodyax stalks the devils stalking him as he knows they do not belong in this world and things like them are also high on his perennial "To Kill" list as he does his best to send them packing back to whatever dimension of Hell from whence they came. He creates a distraction to separate one of the trio far enough from the other two that he can take it on one on one in a fair fight which they don't like to engage in. Attacking from behind the devil falls before it ever really knew how close its prey was to itself.
The cry of their brother devil brings the other two running but again Kodyax draws one of the two away by briefly revealing himself before hiding amidst the living mushrooms which confuses his heat signature as to where exactly his position is. Like his brother devil this one too goes down with surgical precision as Kodyax is unwilling to fight out in the open. The surviving devil calls him a coward in the common tongue of the land to try and entice him into revealing himself which the ranger summarily ignores.
Javelins seem to come out of nowhere to pin the last devil who cries out to his brothers to aid him. As one goes running Kodyax charges his pinned prey and slaughters him before help can arrive. The sights of his eviscerated brothers devils anger the devil who calls over his brother so that together they can kill the weakling that dared kill their other brothers.
The alien merchant yells that none of this is in their contract in protest to which the devil flips him the bird and says something tersely that sounded even more rude as it shocks him into keeping his mouth shut and just wait for his guards to return. The sounds of battle hurries the pace of the last devil as a severed head is launched overhead and skids to a stop at the giant outsider's feet, the slippers of which have elaborately curved toes. Twenty seconds later a second head joins the first as Kodyax emerges with his forked spear held tightly in his hands, if a little bent at the tines and the shaft of which starting splinter from the strain of battle.
"I don't know where you come from, alien, but unless you have a good reason for bringing those things with you, I suggest you turn around and go home before I get any more incensed at you interminable presence before me." Kodyax growls with no shortage of venom dripping from his every syllable spoken at the oversized alien merchant.
"You're a ranger, aren't you?" The merchant says with great annoyance to which Kody just grimly nods. "I had hoped to avoid any patrols of your bigoted profession," a javelin is quickly thrown with such a near miss to indicate it was done on purpose, "You don't scare me, lupursyn, I've had members of your kind in my slave cages before."
"Slavery is illegal here," Kodyax growls.
"And what's the fine?" The merchant asks in a tone that has hints of both amusement and annoyance.
"Your life," Kodyax counters, "Either I kill you or, if I'm feeling especially vicious, I find a way to sell you off as a slave."
"You can't be," The merchant starts to say in protest with an incredulous look on his face until he sees the look in Kody's eyes. "I see; is there no way we can make a deal?" A chakram pings off of several of his clockwork soldiers before coming back to his hand like a boomerang after which the clockwork warriors fall to pieces. "I am..."
"I don't fucking care who you think you are!" Kodyax thunders. "But before you go traipsing off..." He looks over the cages and his eyes go wide when he sees a naked vixen, stone gray furred with hints of other colors in markings on her body of a golden sun on each thigh, pink seashells on her upper arms, turquoise hair and a moss colored tree of life over her heart, hanging by her wrist in one of the cages. "AURORA!!!" he then charges and throws his sword-spear at the merchant with incredible righteous anger before proceeding to pounce on the crumpling form of the merchant and pummeling him with his reinforced leather glove-gauntlets.
"K...Kodyax?" The vixen croaks in recognition. "My master!"
"Release the vixen!" The merchant cries out as tries to curl up in a fetal position to protect himself. "Please, ranger, let me live, you can have her back, just stop hurting me!"
"Master!" Aurora cries and hugs Kodyax which distracts him long enough for the merchant to activate something on his belt sash that makes the caravan teleport out of the immediate vicinity.
"My sword-spear!" Kodyax whines. "Now I have to make another one." Then the he turns to the vixen. "Aurora, what happened to you?"
"Master?" Aurora says quizzically.
"Come on, girl, I need to get you to the Grotto," Kodyax orders as he continues on his way.
"Yes, master," Aurora says as she follows behind him happily, "Will you be using me soon? I've missed servicing you."
"What did they do to you?" Kodyax asks with tears in his eyes. "What happened to the witch-sorceress that broke my heart?"
"Broke your heart?" Aurora asks with an expression of utter confusion, "How has this girl hurt you?" And then she assumes a submissive position, "I am ready for punishment if that is what is required, master."
"Just," Kodyax says almost angrily then bites back his own bile, "Just come along, I'll ask the druids when we get there."
"Yes, master," Aurora replies mindlessly and follows along like a lost puppy girl.
Goodwill Grotto is a cavern with an underground lake that has some history behind it to those that serve the druid council. In some of the legends this was a place races fled to when the world was under siege and the surface would simply not support life. It is here that the druid council maintains a hostel and stronghold so that it is available should there be a need for such a shelter ever again.
Crystals of virtually every type exist here as well as mushrooms that will sustain life and an abundance of fish and crustaceans that never seems to deplete. Healers of every stripe make retreats to this location to learn their craft and retrain themselves in new methods of repairing the body, the mind and the spirit. It is here that Kodyax checks in with his superiors of the Druid Council and presents Aurora, a witch-sorceress that broke his heart when she left the bed he thought they had made for life to chase after some alligator berserker islander that caught her eye.
Crystal, Aurora's mother, comes crying to Kodyax later that evening as she leads her daughter to him. She is distraught because Aurora's will and spirit have been shattered at some point and the memory of what transpired after she left Kody's side is proving too traumatic to revisit without further damaging her now fragile psyche. Her knowledge of performing magic has largely been lost save for spells that she could cast to make her a better pleasure slave.
In her fractured mind, Kodyax to Aurora was a gentle master from whom she was stolen and went through several other, far more cruel, owners before she was found by Kodyax and reclaimed. As far as Aurora is concerned now, she is Kody's property and very happy to be back in his possession. Those who live and work here find this appalling but somewhere between when she left this area and when Kodyax found her and beat up the merchant to get her back she has been through such torture that nobody wants to know what she went except to help her get back to being the happy go lucky vixen sorceress she was prior to running away with an adventuring party on some joyride on a dimensional hopper.
As much as it pains Kodyax to do so, being treated as a sex slave to a gentle master is what Aurora needs right now and that is what he knows he has to be. Of course the fact that he has been missing her terribly in their bed doesn't help any. The druids have done as much as they can with her initially as she has suffered much abuse and a turtle hierophant asks Kodyax to get her pregnant if he can as they are hoping that motherhood will help repair what has become so terribly broken with her.
The request is not really much of an actual request and Kodyax knows it as after dinner he enters the forge with Aurora coming with him like a lost puppy. Kodyax intends to put his despair into his work forging new weapons and armor for himself and Aurora that he hopes will protect them better in the future. As he works at the forge concepts he thought were beyond him suddenly become all too clear as the sword blade tines of his forked sword-spear seem to sparkle with enchantment.
On a whim Kodyax has Aurora cast a spell to detect magic and she confirms that the weapon he just made is enchanted. Aurora was actually delighted to do that since Kodyax is not about to let her give him fellatio while he's working at the forge so she is a little bored just sitting around watching. Going somewhere else is out of the question for her but the worst part of it for her is that while he's working, she's left to her own thoughts.
In the back of her own mind she remembers vaguely that she had a relationship with Kodyax before she was in that cage and parts of her true history are starting to return and it frightens her. Remorse starts to enter her heart as she remembers that they argued bitterly before she left and that she had chosen someone that abused her over him. Memories of being beaten nearly to death by the gator for trivial matters starts to flood her mind and then the fact that he sold her into slavery one night over a gambling debt and left her without any remorse on his part come flooding back into her mind and remind her that leaving him was a bad idea.
Silently she sobs; feeling sorry for herself and looking over at Kodyax a little impatiently as she wants to make it up to him for the betrayal she perpetrated on him so long ago. Kodyax starts to pray over a set of goggles he's made that also take on a preternatural sheen to them which intrigues Aurora enough that she watches her lover to see what spells he could be casting but recognizes precious little as the spells he is using are mainly granted by the gods to rangers and few other types of casters.
An exhausted Kodyax then lumbers from his workshop table and beckons Aurora to follow which she does without saying a word but her smirk gives Kody the indication that she has something planned for him as they make their way to his cave. Agents of the Druid Council like Kodyax, and Aurora when her mind is working properly, are granted spacious cavern apartments in the cliff wall surrounding the grotto's underground lake. Inside the apartment are a pair of mattresses on the floor just big enough for the two of them to sleep intimately; something that suits Aurora and her mood just fine.
The simple white cotton robe she was given as the druids and alchemists tried to get her back into her right of mind comes off exceptionally easily as Kodyax takes off his armor and gear slowly. Aurora helps him get undressed but only to a degree as once his pants are off she kneels before him and plunges her muzzle between his legs and starts to lick and suckle at his scrotum. He moans as he takes off his shirt tosses it in a bin where his pants are already sitting before he begins moving towards the bed with Aurora contentedly crawling with him.
Aurora has her eyes closed as a part of her is crying, she was never much into doing this when she was with him initially as she found it so awkward and demeaning, but now she to suckle him to climax and then keep sucking to make sure he keeps hard enough to fuck her. Her own mind has compartmentalized her feelings about herself and towards Kodyax and within her own head some fighting is taking place between the pars of her that never want to be touched sexually ever again because of what she went through and another part of her that wants to be the slave they trained her to be and especially n service to Kodyax in recompense for all the Hell she put him through. In the end her old feelings for the wolf-bear come flooding back and lend weight to the argument that she should be fucking him as she fucked him over and the lessons she learned to become a sex slave to whomever the merchant sold her too need to be used on him for their mutual pleasure.
She had planned to suck him off to climax, but he has other ideas as Kodyax takes Aurora's muzzle off his prick when she gets it hard enough and slides in her pussy while pinning her to the mattress whose sheets are brown and thermal with geometric shapes not unlike Native American patterns of those tribes living near Devil's Tower or the cliff cities of the mesas and canyons out west. Under breath Aurora prays "Gods know I am unworthy to receive you, but to you I readily submit" as she spreads herself in complete compliance of his wishes. Kodyax lowers his muzzle to lick and suckle at her tits which gets Aurora whimpering with pleasure and a kind of emotional pain.
In her own mind Aurora feels she has hurt him too badly to deserve to be treated so well by Kodyax. The pleasure she is receiving brings back memories of happier times when she was much younger and more headstrong. How many times has she done this with him she wonders and how many times was she just used as a piece of meat by those she was rented to as part of her training in becoming a pleasure slave.
But as much as she wants to cry, Aurora does her best to not shed a tear in front of Kodyax. Giving into her grief now would lead to questions she does not want to answer because the pain and misery she suffered in the past are events she wants desperately to forget ever happened to her. In her mind, this is where she belongs, in the territory of the Druid Council servicing its servants and in Kody's bed is where she wants to stay with his soft sword in her sheathe.
Kodyax for his part slides his shaft into and almost out of her box, doing his best to give her pleasure with each thrust and receding to near but never total egress before slamming back in her fully. The witch sorceress he fell in love with so long ago is back in his bed and submitting to the carnality of his desires upon her body. He is thankful for presence and prays silently to the Gods of Nature's power that he can keep her safe and happy with him as much as possible as the very act of lovemaking is something he offers for their approval in the hope that they will grant him his wish that Aurora has finally come to her senses and will stay with him.
She is property she keeps telling herself as she enjoys being used by the wolf-bear; specifically she is his property. The lupursyn is making his claim on her as his toy in her mind and that is how it should be is what she keeps reminding herself. Aurora is also praying; praying that she never sees that gator ever again and that Kodyax will let her serve him as slave; she does not deserve the mantle of witch that she abandoned so very long ago.
He howls as he climaxes within her, the knot inflated to keep his prick lodged in her pussy. She lay on top of him as he folds his arms around her to cuddle her like some living plush doll as he feels himself drifting off to sleep and she anxiously awaits this very moment for when he is sound asleep she allows herself to weep. The falling tears are of guilt and shame as well as joy that she has been rescued, at least for a little while.
Guilt she feels for shredding the oaths she swore as a witch in search of pleasure with one who only saw her as a conquest and when she no longer amused and aroused him, threw her away. A part of her wonders how long it will take for this male to tire of her even as she chastises herself for thinking this. In her shame she considers suicide to at least make an attempt at redeeming her soul for all the wrong she has done, but the lupursyn's embrace is too strong for her to escape and do much of anything other than lay in his arms and cry herself to sleep in self pity.
She awakens alone as Kodyax has gotten up before her to work at the forge again and Aurora finds eggs and sausage for her to eat that he had prepared earlier which causes her to start weeping again. Instead of eating she takes a dagger to her wrists and her throat and takes a running leap into the lake in hope of dying or drowning to erase the stain her mistake has brought to those she once called friends. Kodyax retrieves her unconscious form from the waters of the lake mere moments after she dives in and casts a healing spell to save her from dying.
When she awakens, Aurora finds herself restrained for her own safety as a distraught Kodyax is nearby deep in thought as she comes to.
"What did they do to you, Rory?" Kodyax asks as he sees she's conscious again with a look of pain and sorrow upon his face.
"Kody," Aurora starts to say something but chooses not to, "You...don't want to know. I don't want to remember what they did to me. Just let me die!"
"NO!" Kodyax thunders and hugs her. "I won't do that."
"I'm not the vixen I was," Aurora tries to reason, "And I can't be that woman you fall in love with again. I've endured so much, betrayed good people for my own survival. I don't deserve to live. I hurt too many people and allowed myself to be used so many times." They share a tear together. "I don't know if I can even have children from some of the things I've been through."
"We have magic here that can fix that," Kodyax reasons.
"I'm not sure if I deserve that!" Aurora screeches back before falling into a fit of crying both blurting out: "I just want to die! I've wasted my life. I don't deserve to have it back." She starts crying hysterically. "I don't deserve another chance. Just let me go, Kody, I don't deserve you between my legs, even as my master with me as your slave."
"You are not a slave!" Kodyax thunders. "Yeah, you hurt me, deeply, severely but not a day went by that I didn't miss having you in my arms since you left." He silently sobs as he hugs her. "Everyone deserves a second chance or more. How many chances it fucking takes to get back to where you want to be." He kisses her passionately before speaking again with her having her head down in shame. "If there was a way to restore your powers and make you a full fledged witch again," She gives him a look of despair and anger through a mat of hair over her face. "There are ways to reconnect if you want it. Ways to make amends."
"I've served as a pleasure puppet for the dark ones, dammit!" Aurora yells. "Things I knew were wrong I still did because I didn't care!"
"Do you care now?" Kodyax asks point blank and gets a confused look from her. "Do you regret what you've done"
"YES!" Aurora screams. "God and goddess, yes! I was fool, a thrice damned fool! If I thought I could I'd do what I could to expunge what I've done, what I've let my body become. I can still see them, horrors that I birthed as some dark living incubator for fiends." Kodyax gives her an incredulous look. "Why do you think I want to die so fucking badly? Why I let myself become some drug addled whore fucking gods know how many males." She starts crying uncontrollably. "I can hardly feel anymore, Kody, I feel so dead inside."
"You're back among friends, daughter," Crystal says to Aurora as she comes in, "I've prayed to the great mother for ears that you come home."
"Mother," Aurora says and starts crying all over again.
"Hush, child," Crystal commands and Aurora stops and just starts to breathe heavily as her mother cradles her to her breasts like a baby. "You always were a headstrong child. You caused me no end of grief over the years but you are still my daughter. I want to see you reinstated as the Witch you were born to be. Kodyax is going to be assigned as your Cowen." Aurora gives her mother a pained look and gets a stern glance back. "I will hear no arguments from you, Aurora. We'll do what has to be done to get you back to where you need to be but I want you to promise me something."
"What?" Aurora asks hopefully.
"You are going to be a good mate for Kodyax?" Crystal ask semi-rhetorically as Aurora does her best to just nod. "You will be a mother yet, child, if the goddess has any sense of humor you will go through what you put me through."
Aurora starts to laugh and cry at the same time as she is set free and collapses in Kody's arms. Kodyax carries the sleeping Aurora to a long box made of smoky quartz that is barely wide enough to fit her as Crystal pours water inside to get her floating within but not enough to drown her before she lights votive candles and places them on her daughter's body. Then the lid is placed over her and Kodyax goes back to the forge as Aurora slumbers with the crystal box in a kind of meditation to commune with the elements and nature itself in order to properly reconnect herself spiritually and heal the wounds within that come from living the lifestyle that eventually made her a pretty puppet in a gilded cage that Kodyax discovered and rescued her from.