FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Elyas tapped his boot on the pavement impatiently, looking up and down the cobblestone road that ran beneath his family's hilltop manor. He'd been standing out there for the better part of the morning and afternoon, enduring a summer heat that had long since become unbearable. He glanced over at the woman standing beside him, a towering Orc by the name of Azug--his personal bodyguard, love , and wielder of a cock that had to be seen to be believed. It was a strange coupling he found himself in, but he'd long since stopped being bothered by it. Not that he had told his family about the 'woman' he'd fallen into something of a steady relationship with. The mere idea of telling them made him simultaneously shudder and laugh. No, they could never know. No one could.

So, he had kept her dalliances with Azug a secret. They had been nearly caught more than a few times, usually as a result of his lover's climax-accompanying roar that shook the rafters of her bedroom.

_'Lover.' _

God, it felt strange to call her that. It felt strange to call anyone that. A few months ago, he had been desperate to lose his chastity to a woman--any woman. He had gotten his wish fulfilled in a fittingly Faustian fashion. Azug, having mistaken him for a brothel worker, had fucked him. Then, she came to work for his family--and fucked him again. She was always open to sucking him off or finishing him off with a handjob, but had steadfastly refused his attempts to fuck her. It was the one thing that ate at him these days. That, and his family's whispers of marriage. Part of him wanted to reveal his tryst just to shock them into silence, but that would likely backfire. They would fire Azug, and marry him off to the first 'real' woman they could find in an attempt to cure him of this degeneracy.

Sweat trickled down Elyas' brow, and he saw that he was no longer in Azug's cooling shadow. He took a step back, letting out a satisfied sigh as the warmth abated somewhat. She grunted in annoyance, shifting away so that the sun was back on him.

"What?" he snapped. "It doesn't hurt you."

Another grunt, and no explanation. Both of them darted around for a few moments, until finally he gave up and returned to scanning the road.

"If you don't want to wait here, you don't have to," he said to her.

A low rumble came from the Orc, one he had learned to associate with the slow workings of her alien thought process.

"Why you meeting this boy here?" she asked. "He will come up."

"Because I want to show confidence," he explained. "I refuse to hide behind my parents while they're fawning over Samuel. I'll greet him with a smile, then avoid him for the rest of his visit."

Azug gave him a mean grin of her own. "You jealous."

She wasn't wrong, but not for the reason she thought. Samuel had lived with Elyas for two long years, and in that time had managed to steal away every first love Elyas had allowed himself to invest a bit of his heart into. Girls' attraction to Samuel had always confused Elyas. His hair was too red, his skin too pale, and his build too thin. The other boy had treated it like a game, laughing it up while Elyas nurtured a growing hatred towards someone his family loved like another son. Mercifully, the political problems that had plagued Samuel's house abated, and he had left for home once more, with Elyas uncertain of whether or not he knew just how much injury Elyas wished on him.

Now, almost one year later, he was back. But why? To have a little bit of fun with his old victim? To seek refuge from renewed family disputes? Simply for old time's sake?

Elyas shook his head and returned his thoughts to reality. The reason didn't matter one bit. Samuel could fuck whatever girl he wanted. Elyas' heart was set firmly on the Orc to his right, a woman whom Elyas had kept his interest in a total secret. And, if by some bizarre circumstance, she did catch Samuel's interest, he wouldn't dare make a move on the frighteningly savage woman. That only left Azug herself as an unknown variable.

"You don't like red hair, do you?"

She gave him an impatient look. "What?"

"Nothing."

More minutes ticked by with nothing but a few rickshaws and carts passing by. Despite his family being at the center of the city's economy, their home was far removed from its commercial centers. The hustle and bustle of the city was loud enough to reach the hill they were perched on, but quiet enough that even the distant sound of the sea beating at the shoreline often overtook it.

That relative quiet allowed him to hear the beat of hooves on stone before he saw the horse they belonged to. A black stallion crested the slope hundreds of feet to his left, carrying a black-clad rider with neck-length red hair swept back over his forehead. He let out a shout and whipped the horse's reins, thumping his thigh-high boots into its flanks to drive it up the hill.

"That him?" Azug asked, a rare and obnoxious sense of fascination in her voice.

Elyas gritted his teeth. "Yes."

Despite telling himself that he was over past hurts and old hatreds, merely seeing his old nemesis awoke all the emotions he had thought dead and buried. Baseless jealous gripped him so firmly that his heart pounded and hands shook. Cold sweat rolled down his brow, and his nostrils flared with each shallow breath.

Samuel waved as he called for his horse to slow, and Elyas forced himself to wave back. He had resolved to come down here and put up a strong front, and still meant to do so. Two minutes, he told himself. Two minutes of smiling and reminiscing about the good old times, and then he could ignore Samuel for the rest of the week.

"You're drenched!" Samuel grinned and stopped his mount a dozen feet from Elyas, then swung a leg over the horse's back and hopped off. "Have you been waiting out here for me?"

There was something wrong with his voice. It was distinctly Samuel in its lyrical smoothness, but higher-pitched than Elyas remembered. His manner of dress had changed over the last year, too. He wore his usual black tunic and trousers, but with the addition of a shawl of black feathers that made him look like a raven. His pants were so tight that they clung to his thin thighs, and his usual ankle-length boots had been traded in for one's that went halfway to his knees.

Most surprising of all, though, were his breasts.

It took Elyas more than a few moments to process that fact. There they were, unmistakable in shape and contours, pushing out the fabric of Samuel's tunic. With that realization, a dozen more little changes revealed themselves. The softening of his features. The way he sashayed his hips when he walked. The curve of his waist. Even the way he - or rather, she - smelled was so feminine that Elyas simply couldn't register this person as the one he had known for so long.

Samuel stopped before him and nabbed him in the shoulder. "I asked how long you were waiting for me. You look ghastly."

Elyas was sure he did. He started at her stupidly for a moment, then finally managed to close his open mouth and find words that could express his confusion.

"Who are you?" he exclaimed, taking a step away from the genderbent imposter.

She clicked her tongue and closed the distance between them. "It's Sam! You can't tell me I look that different."

He had never called himself 'Sam' in his life, as far as Elyas knew. Yet more evidence that this was some doppelganger who didn't quite grasp imitation of the human body and the importance of sexual characteristics.

"I don't understand." He gave her another look over, as if that might help. It didn't - not one bit. The entire world took on a surreal quality, and he found himself caught between bursting out into laughter and fainting from shock.

"Let's go upstairs. It will be easier if I explain this once, in front of everyone."

Elyas nodded and murmured something resembling an acknowledgement, but in truth had barely even heard her. Samuel went back to take her horse by the reins, then brought it back to the manor entryway and tried to hand it off to Azug, who remained as still as a statue. Only then did Elyas remember she was still present, and only then did he spot the death glare she was giving their visitor.

Sam gave Elyas a concerned glance. "Does it speak our tongue?"

Azug snorted derisively. "Doesn't look like a boy."

"Ah, so you do." Sam thrust the reins into Azug's ample chest, but the Orc merely stared at them until they were withdrawn. "I suppose it's up to you, then." She handed them to Elyas, who took the leather straps without thinking, then turned and started up the winding cobble roadway towards the manor.

"Hey, wait!" Elyas shouted after her pleadingly, realizing after only a few tugs that the stallion he'd been handed had no intention of moving. He turned to ask Azug for help, but his companion was already trailing behind Sam, leaving him to deal with his task alone. History was repeating itself - first as tragedy, now as farce.

It took him twenty minutes and the help of two passing guards on patrol to get the horse up the roadway and tied up out front of the manor where a stable hand could go grab it. Elyas was happy to be rid of the thing, but dreaded going inside and participating in the sickly-sweet meeting between Sam and the rest of his family. Even from outside he could hear their surprised shouts change to joyous laughter as his old enemy's natural charisma smoothed over the shock of seeing a man having swapped genders like coats.

Elyas forced himself through the threshold and into the manor foyer, where his parents and sister were speaking animatedly with Sam among the bust-topped pedestals lining the room. Red floral patterns covered the walls, reminding him of that glamorous brothel he had first met Azug in. The mental connection probably should have been the other way around, but that experience had left so indelible a mark that everything else flowed around it.

"A magic spell?" his sister gasped. "How can that be?"

Carol was clearly having more trouble coming to terms with this new reality than their parents. As much as Elyas, even. She had a hopeless crush on Samuel for the entirety of his two-year stay with them, during which time he had made no attempts to encourage her infatuation. Whether that was out of respect for Elyas' parents, a lack of interest, or a desire to be the hunter rather than the hunted, Elyas never knew. Perhaps it was just because such a dalliance wouldn't fit within the confines of the torturous game he had loved to play with Elyas'.

"The downside to a life of adventure, I'm afraid." Sam's hand went to her chest and squeezed something just above her breasts, as if fingering a necklace. She finally noticed Elyas lingering at the room's entrance and waved him over, then launched into a recounting of what she had been up to for the past year. She spoke of family financial troubles, of desperate trade deals with distant lands meant to secure much-needed capital.

And how, in a sand-swept street in a sprawling city in one of those distant lands, she had run afoul of a magic-wielding shamaness and been cursed with the body of a woman.

"It's reversible, isn't it?" Carol picked up her dress and rushed towards Sam, then grabbed her by both shoulders. "Spells always have counterspells, or something of that sort! I read it in a book once."

Sam gives her an awkward smile and gently removes her hands. "I wish it were that easy."

"Oh, don't make such a fuss about it!" Elyas' mother put a comforting hand on her back. "I think he makes a terrific woman."

His father frowned and shook his head at the off-color joke, but Sam merely took it in stride and continued talking their ears off. It wasn't his parents' casual reactions to the change that were the strangest, but that of Sam herself.

"When did this happen?" Elyas cut in.

Everyone stopped talking and turned to face him.

"When did what happen?" asked Sam.

"This!" Elyas gestured up and down her body.

"Ah! Three weeks ago."

That was far more recent than Elyas would have assumed. Gone a year, and within three weeks of having his life turned upside down he suddenly decides now is a good time to visit. The conversation continued on with Sam being inundated with questions by Elyas' family until Elyas himself found an opportune moment to interject another niggling question.

"How long did it take to get here from Tarbanth?" Elyas asked.

Sam shrugged. "Two and a half weeks, with a few stops thrown in."

Carol gave her a puzzled look. "You were cursed and came straight here? Why not go home?"

At that pointed question, Sam's eyes went wide and she turned white as a sheet. Even her freckles seemed to be drained of their color.

"Oh, enough!" Elyas' mother went behind Sam and took her by the shoulders. "She's scared of what they'll say, the poor thing."

Sam lowered her gaze to the ground and gave a slow, solemn nod that Elyas simply couldn't accept as genuine worry, regardless of how well it was performed.

"You're welcome here as long as you like," said his father, turning his warm smile towards Elyas. "It will be just like old times."

---

Despite how much things had changed, 'just like old times' turned out to have been exactly right. Elyas' family sat down for an early dinner in their dining hall, with the small group confined to one end of a massive mahogany table that spanned the length of the room. It was piled high with fruits, meats, and vegetables from every civilized land, and even some which had yet to benefit from the guiding hand of commercial enterprise. Azug, who would normally not have left Elyas' side, was nowhere to be seen. Yet despite her conspicuous absence, he had the distinct impression that she was not far away.

"Tell me..." Sam leaned over the armrest of her chair and bent forward to look Elyas in the eye. "Did you ever manage to get a girlfriend after I left?"

All eyes were on him. Sam to his right, his parents to his left at the head of the table, and his sister across from him on the opposite side. Warmth flushed his face, partly from the wine, partly from embarrassment, and partly from fear that his muttered 'no' would get called out for the lie it was.

"Oh, not to worry." His father leaned back to loosen a belt that had been pushed to its limits by far too much venison and potatoes. "There's nothing gold can't solve. We'll arrange something."

Elyas' mother, who was clearly feeling the effects of one cup of wine too many, lurched forward with a mischievous grin plastered on her face. "And if all else fails, he can marry Samuel."

Carol gasped in shock and might have fallen from her chair if it weren't for the armrests on either side of her. Elyas' father groaned in exasperation at his wife's off-color humor, and Elyas himself stared at his empty plate in utter mortification. The dinner had been so awkward that he had eaten everything handed to him simply to occupy his attention, but had failed to save something for the most embarrassing moment of all.

The seconds ticked by, and no one said a word. Any moment now, Sam would come out with some suitably charming way to deflect the jest without making a single soul feel uncomfortable, as was her ability. It was only Elyas that she saw fit to make feel out of place, and then only on purpose. More time passed, and Sam made no noise other than to clear her throat. Elyas tore his eyes away from his fork to look at the woman next to him, whose eyes were as wide as the dinner plate she fixed them on. One hand tapped the table anxiously, while the other played at a fold in the fabric of her pants.

For once, Elyas longed for the young man who could charm the pants off anyone and turn any tense silence into a chorus of jubilant laughter. Anything it would be better than this.

And then, as if some higher power had finally saw fit to make reality conform to his wishes, he got the distraction he hoped for. The twin doors at the far end of the room swung open, smashing into the walls with a force that could only come from one of the Orcs hired as guards at the manor. Only one of whom was actually allowed within the manor itself.

"Careful!" Elyas' father shouted at Azug as she strode in. "That paneling is worth more than you make in a year!"

He wasn't exaggerating. Azug was paid a pittance, and Elyas could only assume that she stuck around in the job for lack of better options. He liked to think that he played a part in her desire to stay as well, whether from love or simply the fact that much of his allowance ended up in her coin purse, one way or another.

Azug drew close enough to be caught by the evening light streaming in through the courtyard-facing windows, and Elyas' winced with renewed embarrassment. She had discarded her usual brown leather tunic in favor of a far more revealing top whose black fabric began so low that her breasts looked poised to pop free with every step she took. The lack of a bra and thin material of her blouse made it abundantly clear just how close the top came to revealing her nipples. She wore uncharacteristically tight black pants instead of the baggy brown trousers that served to hide her massive endowment. thankfully, she had been smart enough to perform a tuck job beforehand. That knee-length cock crammed alongside her muscular thighs would have looked obscene beyond belief, and would have had his mother fainting alongside his sister.

Azug stopped behind Elyas' chair and put her lips beside his ear. "You come to my room. Now."

The rest of the guests eyed the pair curiously, though thankfully none but Elyas could hear her.

"Were eating," Sam fired back, twisting in her chair to face the towering Orc before lowering her gaze to Elyas. "Do you let all your servants order you about? Or just this one?"

Elyas' hadn't thought the situation could deteriorate further, but he had been proven wrong already. Why not a second time? Here he had his inhuman secret lover ready to come to blows in front of his entire family, as well as his childhood tormentor who would love nothing more than to poke and prod the volatile Orc for no other reason than to cause trouble for Elyas. Doubly so if Sam could somehow sniff out just what exactly was going on between him and Azug, aside from their unconventionally lax Master-servant relationship. A dynamic which was often turned on its head within the confines of the bedroom.

"Oh, she's just excited for her language lessons." Elyas' mother slouched in her chair and flapped a bejeweled hand at Sam. "The beast is still too shy to try and speak to the rest of us, the poor thing. Elyas takes hours from his day to teach her. Isn't he generous?"

His parents had never treated Azug with the same respect they would have a human servant, but she always took it in remarkably good stride. With Sam, however, even that mild reproach had Azug's jaw and fists clenched so tightly that Elyas was sure this meal would end in violence. Yet as much ill-will as he had wished on Sam, he didn't want to see his head get snapped by an enraged Orc.

"Soon, alright?" Elyas twisted back in his chair and gave Azug a smile that was meant to be comforting, but surely looked more terrified and pleading than anything else. He put a hand atop hers on the armrest as well, hoping that small, covert gesture would calm her down a bit.

Azug let out a sharp breath through her nostrils, then turned her gaze from Sam to Elyas. "Now," she said again, a bit louder this time. She slid a hand into his lap and squeezed his crotch before stepping away from his chair. Elyas may have been the only one who could feel her strong grip making stress toys of his balls, but Sam had seen every bit of it.

"What the hell was that?" she exclaimed, mouth agape.

Azug gave her a smug, lopsided grin and left the table side. Elyas fingers remained locked to the ends of the armrests where he was fairly certain he'd gripped hard enough to leave permanent indentations. His family looked between all three concerned parties in confusion, and all he could picture was Sam revealing what had just transpired under the table, with his family then piecing together every other suspicious circumstance they'd somehow failed to take notice of. Every surreptitious glance and late-hour rendezvous between him and Azug would be laid bare for what it was - not a professional relationship with the addition of a few study sessions, but a full-blown love affair in which he routinely got fucked in every hole imaginable by a shemale Orc three times his size.

The thought of them finding out always wound his stomach up in knots, but here, where the danger was more real than ever, the threat of his sins being revealed stirred up his insides more terribly than Azug's monstrous length. Rational thought vanished, and raw panic became his new logic.

"I have to go!" he blurted out, shooting up from his chair with such speed that it tipped over backwards and slammed into the wood floor. Sam started to say something, either to him or his parents, but he had no intention of staying to listen. She would say what she wanted to, and all he could do was wait to suffer the consequences. The only thing on his mind in that moment was being as far from the consequences as possible, for as long as possible.

Elyas ran after Azug, trailing behind her all the way from the courtyard-adjacent dining hall to the city-facing bedrooms on the west side. His strides covered half the length of her own, and by the time he reached his quarters she had already disappeared. The door to her adjoining room was closed as it had been earlier, while his was now cracked open.

"Azug?" he whispered into the bedroom as he entered. The setting sun drenched everything in a warm orange glow, from his canopied bed to the balcony a few dozen feet past it. A door to his left connected his room to Azug's much smaller one, but that was closed as well. It wasn't a space that saw much use these days. He had invited Azug to sleep with him on a regular basis on the belief that it would take their relationship to some imagined next level, but all it had seemed to do was show both of them how difficult cohabitation could be. Their disagreements had grown more frequent, and Elyas nearly always ended up on the losing side. Sometimes that meant slinking off to her old bedroom to sleep under her coarse linen covers. He told himself that was because he, being of the more rational sex, should act as the conciliator during emotional times. In truth, his concessions came simply because of how damn scary she could be when worked up about something.

The balcony curtains fluttered. He walked across the room and drew them over, and found nothing but a stiff breeze coming from the sea to the north. Below him stretched an expanse of flowered garden, and past that a high stone wall that separated his family's estate from the city of Palina. He ran his eyes over the roadways to the docks, and calculated how long it would take him to find a captain to take him somewhere where neither family nor legal officials could lay hands on him for his crimes.

But had he committed any? Palina had no laws against sodomy, but his guilt and panic were ratcheted to such an intensity that he was certain guards would break into his bedroom at any moment to slap the cuffs on.

Someone grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him around to face back towards the bedroom. If the heavy touch wasn't clue enough as to the culprit's identity, than the green cleavage staring him in the face more than made things clear. Above those twin mounds, a scowling Azug glared down at him with a frustration he struggled to comprehend.

"Why did you do that?" He threw his hands outward in utter exasperation. "Right in front of everyone!"

Her nose twitched into a momentary sneer, and she thrust a finger into his chest. "You mean in front of her." Another sharp jab pushed him out onto the balcony, and he nearly careened straight into the railing. "Why you say she's a man when she's not?"

"She was a man!" Elyas said, taking a deep breath in and preparing to launch into the same outlandish tale Sam had told his family. "See, there was this curse..."

Azug snorted and waved a hand through the air. "I heard already."

"Then what's the problem? Do you think I'm going to fall in love with him just because he grew tits?"

Without answering, she walked back into the bedroom, and Elyas followed.

"We weren't even friends, you know! All he did was torment me."

Elyas hadn't bothered to delve into the specifics of that torment with Azug. It seemed a poor idea to lament lost loves with a jealousy-prone woman who had the strength to tear any number of body parts clean off his person.

Azug went all the way to the other end of the room and closed the door Elyas had entered through, then locked it. Then, she fell on him, tearing off his shirt and tanking down his pants so forcefully that buttons clattered to the floor all around him.

"What are you doing?" he shouted, lowering his voice to a high whisper halfway through the startled exclamation.

The Orc was beyond words. She grabbed his cock through his underwear and fondled it roughly, then yanked his head back by his hair and thrust her tongue into his mouth. Their meeting of lips was over too soon to call the act a kiss, and seemed to be more a simple demonstration of the fact that she could do what she wanted to him, and that he lacked the power to stop it.

"Will you knock it off?" He grabbed the waistline of his underwear to try and stop Azug from pulling it down, and for his efforts earned some rug burn on his fingertips when she pulled them down to his ankles in one go.

"Why? We do this every night." Azug fondled his ass even more roughly than she had his manhood, squeezing and kneading in circular motions with one hand while the other slid into the cleft between his cheeks.

Elyas grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her hand away. "It's not night."

"So?" She walked him towards the bed, forcing him to take stumbling steps backwards. "We gotta be secret? No one can know?"

They both knew full well why their dalliances had to be kept under wraps, but Azug wasn't one for well-reasoned arguments on the best of days. Now, she wasn't listening at all. She planted her mouth on Elyas' again, silencing his protests, then shoved him back-first onto his bed. He pushed himself up into a seated position to find himself face-to-face with the crotch of Azug's breeches, which she had already begun to unfasten.

Azug slipped her fingers past the bush of wiry pubic hair peeking out of her pants and pulled up on the base of her cock until the first two inches of her flaccid length sat above her fly.

"Suck it."

She had always been as short in speech as she was in patience, but now there was a venomous undertone to her command that made Elyas afraid to do anything to stop what was about to happen.

Not that his fear mattered much after that first fateful breath. Her cock, as always, was positively rank. She knew how much a few days of poor washing down there left her stinking, but she _also _knew what that heady musk did to Elyas. It made him desperate, submissive, and pliable. Whenever she drew out that meaty length and lay it across his face, it only took a few moments for her scent and warmth to overcome whatever lingering reticence he might have held over being fucked raw by an Orc.

This time was no different, though Azug was far more insistent than usual. She slapped his trembling, hesitant hand away from her crotch and pulled her member out. With a few strokes she brought it to semi-hardness, then slapped it across his face and smeared precum across his forehead and the bridge of his nose.

"I know you want it," she growled. "Go on. Beg."

Elyas swallowed, careful to keep his lips closed lest some of that intoxicating elixir dripping from the head of her cock find its way into his mouth and render him further unable to think. He normally enjoyed the way her animal presence took away all the bothersome thoughts forced upon him by daily life, but not now. Now, he feared the inevitable moment her predations rendered him cock-hungry and cum-drunk. Azug might be little better than a wild beast when she took him into bed, but Elyas was reduced to something even lower than that.

He looked up at her with an expression he hoped she would find convincingly earnest. "I want to kiss you."

She gripped her cock firmly around the base and slapped the tip on his lips. "You can kiss this."

Azug lifted her cock slightly, allowing Elyas to loosen his pursed lips without risk of her member slipping into his mouth. After only a few moments' thought, he arched his back, straightened his neck, and planted a long, slow kiss on the underside of her foreskin-covered head. Not in spite of his fear, but because of it.

It wasn't only Azug's physicality and domineering personality that frightened him. It was the ever-present fear that if he were to fail to be exactly what she wanted in a lover, she would leave him. Was that truly an unreasonable fear? There were, after all, hundreds of young men like him within the city. Were he to put aside the fact of his wealth and station, that number ballooned into the thousands.

There _were _others like Azug within the city. Some of them even worked as guards at his family's manor, and he knew for a fact that some if not all of them shared her masculine endowment - the Orc women had a fondness of pissing against whichever wall they stood nearest, and couldn't be bothered to check for passers by first.

But he didn't want them. He wanted _her, _and she knew it. Azug had him wrapped around her cock, and not only in the literal sense.

"Enough kiss." Azug drew her hips back, then drove them forward, leaving a trail of slimy pre from Elyas' chin to hairline. Even the little bit that made it into his mouth and nostrils was enough to have his head swimming and cock hardening.

His hand still trembled as he reached for her cock, but not from fear. Her cock was heavy, warm, sticky, and pulsed with each beat of her heart. It took no encouragement from Azug for Elyas to slide his lips over the swollen glans of her cock, pushing back her foreskin until his tongue was free to sweep around the sweaty and cum-basted flesh underneath.

Azug gripped the back of his head with one hand, grabbed her cock with the other, and fed him inch after inch of veiny Orc flesh. Her dick pushed up against the back of his throat, then took a detour downwards, filling his throat and creating a palpable bulge in his neck. Elyas took slow, deliberate breaths through his nose as he dug his fingers into Azug's meaty hips, now skilled enough in sucking her off that he could do so with only a mild degree of panic.

"What was that?" Azug wrapped her fingers up in his hair and grinned down at him. "You ready for more?"

Ignoring the pleading look he cast up at her, she took his wet gurgling as an affirmative answer and continued sliding her cock down his throat. Once it passed his collarbone, he could no longer feel where the head of her cock lay. Only the thick shaft vanishing before his eyes told him just how much of her length remained.

After a few moments, all she had was buried firmly inside of him, stretching his jaw to painful dimensions and filling his mouth and throat so thoroughly that he could hardly breathe. Saliva pooled around the base of her shaft, tears welled in his eyes, thick black pubic hair tickled his nose, and the pungent odor of unwashed balls fucked with his brain and made him blissfully ignorant of just how much he'd be hurting when she was done with him.

Azug caressed his head with tender motions, but re-asserted her grip on his head with both hands when he tried to pull his lips away from her crotch.

"I change my mind. No sucking today."

Elyas' heart sank, and his hands slipped down her thighs. His early reticence was forgotten, overcome by a deep need to finish what he had started. Yet despite her apparent intent to cut short their depravities, Azug made sure to keep his face pressed to her groin.

Then, she relaxed. Her fingers spread out over his scalp, her buttocks unclenched, and she rolled her head back while letting out a long sigh. Her dick twitched in his mouth, then inflated slightly, as if even more blood were flowing into an organ that was already as hard as a rock.

Was she cumming, he wondered? Had she learned how to do so at will? The swell of her urethra and the growing warmth in his stomach led him to believe so. But as the flow of liquid continued, and as a strangely acrid taste worked its way up his windpipe, he came to realize just what it was she was depositing into his stomach.

Azug laughed as he dug his fingernails into her thighs and tried to push away.

"What you think that girl say if she see you like this?"

The flow of urine continued unabated, with Azug rocking forward on to her toes as Elyas recoiled in horrified shock. He didn't much care _what _Sam thought of him, but the idea of her having that sort of blackmail on him was enough to strike the fear of God into his heart.

"You want off?" Azug said in response to his pounding fists and scratching nails. "I pull out now and it's gonna go in your mouth. Breath gonna stink like piss and ale."

That made him settle down. Being force-fed her rancid swill was bad enough, but with it being shot straight into his stomach he could hardly taste it. That would change if she dragged her cock out through his mouth mid-piss and hit his tongue with a blast of the stuff.

"You smart..." Azug let out a low, dark laugh. "Or maybe you like it. Maybe I find you whenever I gotta piss."

Elyas shook his head from side to side, causing her cock head to slide up and down his throat. He would endure this to the end, but the last thing he wanted was for her to fall under the impression that he in any way enjoyed serving as her toilet. The weight and pressure in his stomach was growing nearly unbearable, and compounded the nausea he felt at the act itself. His stomach, already full from dinner, was now visibly bloated to the point that he looked like a pregnant woman just beginning to show.

Azug's member, which had begun to soften for lack of stimulation, gave a few more pulsating twitches within his throat before growing still. She gave a contented sigh, ran her hands over his head, then pushed him far back enough on her cock that he could stare up at her with bleary, tear-filled eyes. The look she gave as she spread her hands over the sides of his head spoke to all the sinful things she would do to ensure that he remained hers, and all the violent acts she would visit upon him if he ever strayed. There were times where Elyas might have found that sort of possessive desire comforting, but Azug's jealousy had been inflamed to such levels that he now genuinely feared what she might do to him.

"You wanna talk to other women? Look at other women?"

Azug shoved back on his forehead, causing her cock to drag up his throat and pop free of his lips. A splatter of urine hit his tongue, making him gag and sputter as he fell back onto the bed.

"She gonna _know _you're mine."

Elyas' eyes, squeezed shut as he tried to spit out the awful taste in his mouth, shot open as a massive hand gripped his neck and a sharp pain worked its way from his neck to belly button. Azug was kneeling atop him on the bed, holding up the bloody nail she had just raked across his torso. She threw herself atop him, pinning him to the bed with twin breasts that were nearly spilling free of their leathery confines, then begin grinding her flaccid cock against his abdomen. Each twitch of her sinewy muscles was a reminder of how powerless he was to stop what was coming, and the teeth holding his ear a thinly-veiled threat of what would happen if he were to try and escape. It took only a few crushing undulations for her dick to grow hard again, during which time the space between them had grown slick with precum. She worked her way down his body, stopping only when her rigid member dropped between his thighs and their faces met.

The impossibly broad cockhead parting his clenched buttcheeks told him exactly _how _she planned to make her ownership of him known... and felt.

"Azug!" He pushed back on her chest with all the strength he could muster. Which, considering her sheer size and musculature, wasn't nearly enough to stop her from painting his unprepared anus in copious amounts of precum. Lube wasn't necessary considering the sheer amounts of the stuff she produced, but she seemed to have no intent of starting him off with a finger or two. With her endowment, going in unprepared meant serious bodily injury that would have him bedridden for the next week. Which, considering her furious scowl and the way she squeezed his neck, might have been exactly what she had in mind.

"We should stop." He winced and squirmed, trying to shift his buttocks away from her intruding member, but all he succeeded in doing was working her swollen head more firmly in between his cheeks.

Azug looked down at him, one hand supporting her bulk on the bed while the other remained wrapped around his neck. Not choking him, but remaining there as an ever-present reminder of the power she held over him.

"Make me," she said darkly, her eyes flashing with animal ferocity.

Her muscles tightened, her hand squeezed his neck, and she took a long breath inward as she began to push forward. Elyas' entrance tensed and spasmed against the massive invader trying to gain entry. He knew from experience that it was only a matter of time before it gave out. What would happen when it did? Would he scream? Would someone come rushing in to find the source of his horrible wailing, only to see him getting plowed up the ass by his inhuman bodyguard?

That would be the end of it. Azug would be fired - at the very least - and Elyas himself would be branded a pervert by everyone who came to know the depths of his depravity. His life, for all its short banality, would effectively be over, and the short-tempered woman who had made it exciting would be forced out of it.

"I said _stop _!"

Elyas swung a closed fist at Azug, catching her in the cheek. The blow was hard enough that her head turned with the force of the blow. When she turned back to Elyas, and her eyes opened, they were ablaze with a fury unlike any he had ever seen before. Azug rocked back into a kneeling position, then cocked her hand and swatted him across the face with the back of it. Stars exploded in his eyes, his head rang like a bell, and a sharp pain shot its way from forehead to cheek. It was only a slap across the face, but a slap from an Orc might as well have been a blow with a warhammer from the mightiest of knights.

Elyas shouted in pain and brought his hands up to his face, and kept them there long after his cry had turned to mumbled groans of pain. She had broken something, he was sure of that much. Blinking his left eye was an experience in pain, and he could barely see the palm he held over it.

Tentatively drawing a hand away from the uninjured side of his face, he leaned an elbow on the bed and dragged himself out from in between Azug's thighs. She tried to grab hold of him, but a sharp hiss through his teeth and a wave of his hand warded her off. He made it to the edge of the bed and rolled his feet off so that he was sitting upright, then took a moment to feel at his left eye. He could still see out of it, but it was tender to the touch and nearly swollen shut. Luckily, it didn't seem as if any bones had actually been broken.

A series of shifting movements on the bed told him Azug was making her way towards him. She placed her hands on his shoulders and gently slid them onto his chest, but Elyas pulled free of her and shot up from the bed.

"Get the fuck away from me," he snapped, pacing about the room aimlessly with a hand held to the throbbing left side of his face. A creak came from the bed as Azug eased herself up from it, and Elyas' one working eye fell on the door to her attached bedroom. He stormed over, threw the door open, and locked both doors to the room before resting his back against the door he came through and sliding down onto his buttocks. A heavy knock shook him to his feet.

"Go *away*!" he shouted. Another knock came, and this time he didn't say a word. More followed, growing weaker each time, and Elyas went over to the bed to sit down and massage his tender face.

Minutes turned into hours, and the orange glow bathing the room was overtaken by the silver shimmer of a moon free of clouds. Throughout that time, Elyas found his mind assaulted by all of the feverish fears and worrying that would normally be confined to that twilight between the waking and dream world. Love, friends, family - all those problems that had seemed so small earlier that day became insurmountable enemies, any one of which could derail a life which had never run smoothly.

Eventually, and a bit reluctantly, he picked himself up from the bed and opened the door to his room. It was dark and empty, and the door to the hallway was cracked open. He slipped inside and quietly shut the door to Azug's room. Unfortunately, the only lock was on her side. It wasn't something he'd considered a problem until tonight. To say he still feared her would be to overstate things, but he had no desire to see her, either.

Elyas threw aside his covers and slipped inside his bed. A stiff breeze swept through the open balcony, and no amount of bundling himself up allowed him to reach a comfortable warmth. Eventually, his growing discomfort forced him from bed and brought him over to the balcony curtains. Just as he prepared to draw the heavy curtains closed, something pattered across the floor beside him. He knelt down and ran his palm across the floor, and found a small pebble. One from the gardens, it looked like.

Pain exploded across his left temple. He dropped on to his buttocks, gasping in shock and feeling at the point of impact. A second rock, this one nearly the size of his fist, rattled on the ground between his spread legs.

Shock gave way to rage, and Elyas shot towards the balcony railing. "I see you down there! Come out now, or I'll send the guards to grab you!"

In truth, he couldn't see a thing. The labyrinth of hedges and stonework were a dark blur, with only the patch of grass right below him illuminated.

"Can guests not take a nighttime stroll?"

A shadowy figure emergeed from one of the canopied pathways and stopped just inside the better-lit area below Elyas. Sam looked up at him, her feather-trimmed coat shawl fluttering in the wind like the scruff of a raven. Her ever-present confident smirk was gone, replaced by a blank and inscrutable look that made Elyas more than a little nervous. How much did she know, and what did she want?

"Why the hostile look?" she called up to him. "Did I interrupt a wet dream?"

"You hit me in the face with a _rock," _he hissed at her.

Sam's cheeks bloated outward, and she broke into uproarious laughter which she quickly quieted down to rasping cackles.

"Yeah, yeah." Elyas leaned on the railing and rubbed his throbbing head. "What do you want?"

"I want you to invite me up, so we can talk."

Not a chance. The last thing he wanted was the two people he least wanted to see running into each other in the dead of night. If Azug returned, he would deal with her on his own.

"Tomorrow. I want to sleep."

Sam clasped her hands behind her back and rocked on her heels in a stance that matched her playful smile. "In front of your family? I would rather talk in private. So would you, I think."

Any illusions that Sam was not Samuel through and through were dashed in an instant. It was a classic move for her - to mock and threaten without explicitly doing so.

"Fine," Elyas snapped. "Stay there."

"Don't make me wait!" she sang after him as he turned from the balcony and returned to his bedroom.

Elyas fumbled through his wardrobe in the moonlit room, grabbing an embroidered tunic and loose pair of pants - he couldn't see the color of either. After slipping on his boots, he made his way quietly through the halls of the manor, exiting out through the kitchens into the edges of the gardens. A cool wind whipped through the air just as it had on the balcony.

The hedge maze ran around the main structure, and he traced the edge of the mansion with stucco walls to his right and gardens to his left until he was right below his bedroom balcony. Sam was nowhere to be seen, and the only movement within the gardens beside him was the slow trickle of a fountain some groundsman had forgotten to switch off.

A hand touched Elyas' cheek. He gasped, spun around, saw only a window looking into his sister's salon room, then shouted in surprise when another hand tapped the opposite side of his face. Giggling laughter came from his right, and he whirled about to see Sam standing beside him, very much amused with his jumpiness.

"Are you still afraid of the dark?"

Elyas glared at her from the corner of his eye and took a deep breath in to steady his over excited nerves. "I was never afraid of the dark."

She tapped her chin in an exaggerated display of thoughtfulness. "As I recall, you used to be afraid of everything."

"What do you want?" he said, hardly giving her a chance to finish her biting remark. Both were surprised by the venom in his words.

"As I said, I want to talk. It would help if you would look at me." Sam circled around until her back was to the hedges, and Elyas could no longer hide the left side of his face from her without appearing absurdly suspicious. Her jaw dropped open and she tried to grab at his face to examine it more closely, but Elyas stepped away.

"What in the hell happened?" she blurted out, just a bit too loud for his liking. The walls behind them were thick, but the weather cool enough that the servants would leave many of the windows open.

"I told you." Elyas pushes her hands away and moved away from the lamps illuminating the stone pathway behind Sam. "You hit me with a rock."

Sam scoffed. "Sure, a little pebble! That looks like..." She trailed off, her expression swiftly changing from bewilderment to anger. "Did someone hit you? Your father?"

"What? Never!"

Not for quite a few years, anyway. And even then, only when he had really deserved it.

"That Orc! That one hanging around you this morning!"

Elyas turned away from her with a roll of the eyes and a shake of the head, but he was too much of an open book to hide his flash of recognition from someone as sharp as Sam.

"I'm right, aren't I? What sort of bodyguard hits their charge?"

Elyas began walking away from her at a swift pace, and Sam gave chase.

"Did you tell your parents?" She grabbed hold of his wrist, digging her heels into sod to drag him to a halt.

Elyas tore his hand away and spun about to face her. "Why can't you leave me alone? What did I ever do to you?"

The ferocity of his outburst cowed Sam into silence, and she shrunk into herself like a small animal seeking to make itself smaller in the face of a predator. Were this anyone else, Elyas would have felt ashamed. But Sam had made him feel small so often over the years that he couldn't help but enjoy the reversal.

"I just want to help," she said. Her voice was impossibly small.

"Really?" Elyas returned her look of fright with a mad grin. "And that's why everything goes to shit the day you come back?"

No reply came. The ensuing silence sapped Elyas of his righteous anger, until the tension of the moment grew too much for him to bear and shame came flooding in like a tidal wave.

"I'm going to bed."

He started to leave, but Sam was already upon him, her boldness returned in an instant. "We don't have to talk about that! I called you down about another matter."

"What?" he sighed, feeling utterly exhausted with the situation as a whole. It was too late an hour to endure the gamut of emotions Sam was putting him through.

"Let's sit down." Sam gestured at a stone bench just inside the garden pathway, and led a reticent Elyas towards it before sitting down alongside him. They were further removed from the lamplight than before, making the black-clad Sam looked like a thin specter of smoke and shadow. Elyas could see well enough to know that she was staring at him, expecting him to be the one to show interest in whatever topic she had in mind, but he wasn't about to be toyed with again. If she wanted something, she would have to come out and say it.

"We haven't had time to talk," said Sam. "Just you and I."

That had been his goal since before her arrival. Unfortunately, her sheer persistence had rendered it impossible.

"Why do _we _need to talk?" he asked her. It was an innocent enough question, but the choice of emphasis gave it a sharper edge.

Sam tilted her head and flashed a shaky smile. "About this." She ran a hand over her chest, exaggerating the slight swell of her breasts with a flowing rise and dip. "You haven't said a word about my... accident. Well, with the exception of stammering like a mental invalid."

"I've already heard the whole story. Dark tombs and ancient curses." He started to rise from the bench, but a surprisingly strong tug on the arm from Sam brought him back down.

"Why are you being so difficult?" she said.

He glared at her and shook her hand from his arm. "Because I don't know why you're here! What is it that you _want _from me?"

She leaned away, seeming genuinely hurt by his biting question. When she next opened her mouth to speak, Elyas was quick to put a stop to any attempts at playing the hurt victim.

"And don't say you just wanted to see me _that _badly."

Sam glanced off to the side, drew her shoulders up, and sighed. "There's an artifact that can help me. That can turn me into what I _should _be."

"And you think _I _know where it is?"

For a few moments, she didn't answer. But the growing silence and Elyas' demanding stare gradually coaxed the answer from her.

"I know where it is, but I have no way of getting there. It's weeks from here, and I've already run out of funds."

So that's what it ultimately came down to - money. The fact that Elyas was being used like a piggy bank should have offended him, but there was something strangely comforting about this old tormentor of his having such straightforward motives for once.

"Why in God's name would I care to help you?"

Rather than seeming hurt, Sam gave him a sheepish grin. "Because we're the best of friends?"

Elyas raised his eyebrows and said nothing. Sam grew thoughtful, tapping her chin in mock concentration, then held a finger up and opened her mouth wide, as if struck by the finest idea imaginable.

"I'll let you touch my breasts."

It wasn't the proposition he was expecting, but it was the one that perfectly suited her new body and old modus operandi. Brash, manipulative, and designed to set you off-balance for any future manipulation. The remainder of the night's negotiations played out in Elyas' mind's eye, and ended with him poorer in both purse and confidence. It was a strange variation on a scene that had played out plenty of times before, each one having ended with him the loser. So, this time, he did the one thing neither him nor Sam expected - he took the bait.

Elyas reached out, placed his hand on Sam's left breast, and squeezed. With a sharp intake of breath and a full-bodied shudder, Sam drew herself inward and turned her body away from him.

"What in the hell was that?" she hissed.

His heart pounded and hand trembled from the bold move, but he did his best to feign nonchalance. "I was taking you up on your offer."

"I said _touch, _not _brutalize. _That hurt!" Sam grimaced as she held a hand to her chest, but gradually her expression eased and she turned back to him. "I'd be willing to let you try again, if you promised to be gentle."

"I'll pass."

Sam affected a slight smile, one broken by the lingering shock of the prior moment.

"You don't want to see what it feels like? What it _really _feels like? You might never get this chance again."

He bit his lip and reluctantly tore his gaze away from her chest. Two buttons had come undone when he groped her, leaving one of her breasts exposed enough that he could just make out the pink of her areola.

"I've touched a breast before."

Sam scoffed. "That Orc? She's not a _real _woman."

"Neither are you."

Never before had Elyas been hit with such certainty that he'd set exactly the wrong thing. The air between them seemed to grow electric, and Sam shook with a rage that Elyas could feel when she grabbed his tunic and yanked him close.

"And you're not a real man!" she hissed, clearly struggling to contain her voice below a shout. "Letting that... _thing _fuck you? Disgusting! Pathetic!"

Elyas' anger grew to match hers. He grabbed her wrist and tore her hand from his shirt, then squeezed for all he was worth as he loomed over her. The urge to do something to show how strong he'd grown and how weak she'd become was nearly overpowering. He wanted to shout her down, or slap her, or simply hold her there to make his superiority known.

Some distant rationality within him managed to push down those urges, and Elyas slowly eased his grip on her. Those dark instincts might provide some momentary satisfaction, but he knew that more than anything what he wanted - and needed - was to get away from her. He wanted to sleep.

"I'm looking forward to the day you leave," said Elyas.

He rose from the bench and turned to leave. A dumbstruck Sam stood up in his wake, and stammered nonsense for a few moments before finally finding her voice moments before he walked out of earshot.

"I-I'll tell!"

Her voice cracked and wavered, and she was forced to draw in a shuddering breath before speaking further.

"If you don't help me, I'll tell your parents what you've been doing with your servant."

Elyas stopped midstep, boots grinding in the gravel as he slowly turned to face her. The urge to throttle her was stronger than ever. This time, only the sheer distance between them kept him from giving in. His jaw clenched, his hands tightened into fists, and a warm itch worked its way up his back. Righteous anger seeped from his every pore. The years hadn't softened Sam's callous manipulations. Rather, they'd sharpened her barbs into true weapons.

"I'll help you," said Elyas.

Sam clutched one hand to her chest, pulling her shirt closed as she rocked forward on her feet in expectation of more words to come. The trembling of her arms told Elyas that she knew full well they would not be kind ones.

"After that, I never want to see you again."

Elyas turned back towards the manor, and for a sliver of a moment caught the look of cold horror dawning on Sam's face. It was an expression he would never forget, and one he wondered about as he made his way back into the manor. Why did she make that sort of face, when she had gotten exactly what she wanted?

He needed to talk to someone - to hold someone. When he was a child, that person would have been his mother. Now, it was his girlfriend - or at least, that's what _he _considered her. Sam's passing shot about her peculiar endowment shouldn't have bothered him as much as it did, but her words stuck in his mind as thoroughly as her tortured expression.

Was this a relationship that he intended to continue indefinitely? It wasn't a question he'd seriously pondered. Hell, did _Azug _even intend that? Despite Elyas' attempts to advance their relationship, it never seemed to move beyond the physical. Azug would routinely push the boundaries of what depravities Elyas was willing to subject himself to, but then refuse any attempts at couples activities that didn't involve her laying on top of him.

And as for him _fucking _her?

Forget it. The most he had gotten were blowjobs with only the barest hint of emotion behind them. Yet when _she _fucked _him _, it was with a bestial desire that made him feel wanted and owned in a way words couldn't encapsulate. Was that the only way they would ever make love? What did that say about him as a man?

Despite being so lost in his own thoughts, his feet managed to lead him towards his bedroom, but stopped one door short of his intended destination. The door to Azug's room was cracked, and a peak inside revealed that she was still gone. He entered the room, quietly closed the door behind him, then fumbled his way through the dark and sat down on her bed.

Terror gripped him as he considered the possibility that she had left the manor - and him - for good. She'd done it before, after all. It was during their first encounter that she'd confided in him that false rape charges had led her to flee her former home. Getting to know her better had only increased his worries that those charges weren't as trumped up as she had made them seem.

Yet all he could think about in that moment was the fact that her travelling leathers weren't sloppily draped over her clothes rack, as they usually were. He shot up from her bed and strode from the room, heart pounding and fingers twitching anxiously. Was this how it all ended?

---

Elyas knew the habits of the manor's servants as well as he did its halls, making it easy to avoid the old maids shuffling about the corridors like midnight wraiths. Azug was nowhere to be seen, though he truthfully couldn't think of where to search for her other than her room. Normally, if she weren't there, she would be by his side.

Despite having only known her for just over a month, the vacuum she left was so unsettling that Elyas was near to panic when he finally found her. She sat at a long wooden table that ran down the center of the palace, hunched over a tankard that seemed to capture the entirety of her attention. Her brow, always heavy and often furrowed, was creased with such thoughtful intensity that she was sure to get a few new lines etched into her forehead.

Azug muttered something into her drink. Elyas edged closer, and gradually became able to make out her words.

"Cunt," she spat. "Fucking bitch."

So she could swear in a human tongue, now. That was new. The cursing went on like that until she finally became aware of his presence. She glanced over at him, stopped muttering under her breath, and returned her gaze downward. His desire to approach her was tempered by the sight of those thick muscles rippling underneath her leathers, and the all-too-fresh knowledge of what she could do if she was in the mood to lash out again.

"Have fun?" she grunted at him.

Elyas frowned. Nothing about tonight had been fun, and the way this conversation was starting out lead him to believe that it wasn't going to get any better.

"Fun with what?"

"Talking," she snapped, as if the word were another swear. "Talking to woman at night, in the garden."

Elyas scowled at her. "A man _trapped in a woman's body... _and I can talk to whoever I want!"

Azug brought the mug up to her lips, then, finding it empty, slammed it down onto the table hard enough to make Elyas jump. That was sure to have woken a few of the lighter sleepers.

"Maybe I should talk to people, too. Your sister like me... always laughing, touching, smiling..."

She turned to face him, a cruel smile spread across her face as her head tipped slightly from side to side and she wobbled uneasily on the stool. She was drunk. Rather than excuse her threats, it made it frighteningly likely that she might try to follow through on them.

"You stay the hell away from her!" He thrust a finger at her and took a few steps forward, careful to manage his volume better than the Orc.

"Why?" she bellowed, banging her mug again for emphasis. "You wanna talk to whoever you want? Maybe I fuck whoever I want! Someone who don't tell me 'no'. Someone who isn't asking me to let them fuck me."

So there it was. This drunken tirade wasn't just about him talking to an old acquaintance for whom he held not the slightest romantic feeling. It was about Elyas having the gall to insist on being something more than a hole for Azug to fuck whenever the mood struck her. The 'relationship' he thought they'd created was an illusion. A black eye and a drunken fit were the sole fruits of his labors.

"Fuck whoever you want outside of these walls. You're done here, and I'm done with you."

And with that, he turned and left. The moment he passed the kitchen threshold, the room erupted in a roar of angry shouts and broken wood. Not wanting to be noticed by whichever poor bastards came to investigate the ruckus, he sped up his walk and took a different route back to his room, one which was less likely to have him passing any guards. As he passed the moonlit windows, a plan began to form in his mind. Azug's drunken rage would see her fired, and if she tried to tell anyone about the two of them, he would simply shrug and say she was lying.

It was such a beautiful plan in its simplicity. Why had he ever been worried?

His heart sped up as he walked the outer halls of the manor, less out of fear of the future and more from a strange sense of freedom. It was exhilarating, being free of the worries that had plagued him endlessly over the last month. No more worry about getting caught in the throes of coitus, or wracking his brain in a futile attempt to figure out how to turn a perverse indulgence into something moral and meaningful.

Halfway back to his bedroom, a muffled whimpering broke the tranquility of the night air, which had grown quiet of Azug's rampage. With each door he passed he listened, finding that the horrid sound cast a weight on his shoulders that grew heavier with every second he listened. Finally, at the third door, a grand oaken thing that led into a guest bedroom nicer than his own, he found the source of the shuddering anguish. The woman inside was crying - sobbing, even. The only reason her grief did not reach the adjacent bedrooms was that she seemed to be muffling it with a pillow. With his ear pressed to the door, though, Elyas could hear every choking sob produced by his family's unwanted guest.

He tore himself away from Sam's bedroom and continued down the hall, walking with a lurching step and heavy legs that felt as if they had weights tied to them. His heart, which once leapt with a frightful exuberance that placed it in his throat, sunk deep into his stomach. Hope turned to despair, righteous anger warped into cold guilt, and he slunk back to his room with his head hung low.

---

Elyas did not sleep that night. He tried to, yes, but a few hours spent laying in bed and being assaulted by the memory of Sam's bawling led him to conclude that he would enjoy no peace while the moon still shone. So he got out of bed, went to his balcony, and thought. He thought about a great many things - of past, present, and future. Of how he and Sam had once been something close to friends. Of how old, childish hurts plagued him into young adulthood. Of what sort of man he would become if he let them continue to do so.

And as he turned away from the night sky and left his room, he thought of how thoroughly he was sure to regret what he was about to do.

The next morning came quickly, bringing with it the sun and the noise of commerce from the nearby city. Elyas had concluded his hasty preparations, and sat on the driver's bench of his borrowed wagon, reins in hand and head bowed with the weight of utter exhaustion. He had filled water skins, loaded the vehicle with supplies, and hitched the horses, all without the aid of the servants who had, up until an hour ago, been fast asleep. Pride and a sense of accomplishment had softened the mental pain of dull labor - it was the most he'd ever used his hands - but weren't helping fight back physical exhaustion.

One of the nearby horses brayed. Not one of the two hitched to the wagon's front, but the one tethered to the back. Sam's black stallion pulled at it's rope, trying to run towards its owner as she slinked out from one of the manor's side exits. A set of saddlebags were slung over her shoulders, full of those few belongings she had brought with her. It took only a few steps for her to spot Elyas atop the loaded wagon and stumble back in slack-jawed surprise.

"I've been waiting all morning," said Elyas. "Are we doing this, or not?"

Sam eyed him in disbelief for a few moments, then hardened her expression and cast her gaze towards the ground before making her way slowly to the rear of the wagon. It wasn't the enthusiastic start to a grand quest that he had envisioned in his sleep-deprived delirium, but the shifting of the wagon as she clambered in told him that she had at least accepted his gesture of apology.

Anything more would have to come later.

Just as Elyas clicked his tongue at the horses and prepared to give the reins a light whip, the wagon rocked again and Sam ran past him towards the household.

"I'm leaving a note!" she shouted back at him. "For your parents!"

---

When Azug awoke, her world was one of unending pain. The sun shone down on her from directly overhead, causing her to snap her eyes shut a moment after she'd opened them. A dull ache throbbed in her head with each beat of her heart, and the soft chirp of birds was like listening to steel blades grind against smooth stone. The bush she lay in scratched at every inch of exposed flesh, and the boot she'd lost had left one foot open to the night air, leaving it numb with the early stages of frostbite.

With a shuddering groan she rolled over onto all fours, then pulled herself from the flattened bush she'd collapsed in early that morning. The manor wall towered to her back, and flowering hedges hid her from view of the rest of the grounds. As she considered her present situation, the past came flooding back in full force. The prior evening was shrouded in a drunken haze, but she remembered enough to know that she had said things which, even then, she knew would only make matters worse.

So why had she said them?

Because they were the truth. Because Elyas had forced her into anger by cozying up to that stick-woman and demanding Azug do things she didn't want to do. He wants to fuck? Then he can fuck his own hand, and be happy she allows him to kiss her feet. Let him try and find another Orc so strong, and beautiful, and hung.

Azug roared in frustration and stripped off her remaining boot, then flung it over the wall. Raw fury cleared away the worst of her hangover, and she stomped her way through the manor gardens to go see just what sort of damage Elyas had made her do. When she sees him, she won't speak to him. If he gives her the cold shoulder, then she will pretend he doesn't even exist. And if he speaks to the stick-woman again, then Azug will bring someone back to her room and fuck them so loud that he'll be driven mad next door.

As she enters the manor's side door and makes her bleary-eyed way through the halls, she considers what sort of fucktoy would best make him jealous. A woman, or a man? Yet as she ponders her method of justice, her mind turns again to Elyas' pained expression that night prior, and she wonders just what sort of revenge _he _might be planning.

Azug picks up her pace with each step, until she's careening through the household on a mad rush to Elyas' room. She throws open the door and races over to his bed, burying her face in his sheets and drawing in a deep breath through her nose. There's no sign of that woman's stench, nor any smell other than Elyas' sweet scent.

That much is comforting, but as Azug rises to her feet and takes a good look at the room around her, she realizes something that has her heart pounding hard enough to turn her headache into a full-blown migraine. His wall-spanning closet, once full of more clothes than Azug had ever owned in the entirety of her life, was now nearly empty. Only a few lonely garments remained. The rest was... where?

In a flash of horrifying inspiration, she went back into the hall, barreling past startled maids and awestruck guards as she made her way to the room the stick-woman was staying in. There, she found not what she feared - that Elyas had moved his belongings in with her. Rather, she discovered something even worse. Open closets, a freshly-made bed, and a room that still bears the scent of the woman who left it behind, taking Elyas with her.

The strength drained from Azug's legs, and she wobbled perilously before leaning on the oaken desk beside her to support herself. Her hand met a folded piece of paper, and she eyed it curiously for a moment before picking it up and opening it.

Thank you for letting me stay with you for these past few days. Your family's generosity means the world to me. I am sorry I could not remain longer, but my quest calls. I hope you don't mind me stealing Elyas from you.

The words were hard to read, and harder still to understand. Her language lessons, though frequent, had focused more on speaking than reading. It didn't help that her teacher was too demanding, too impatient, and a traitorous bastard with an unfaithful heart.

"Stealing... Elyas."

Azug sounded out the words over and over, her vision drifting upwards as realization struck her for the final time. Her lover, not run off, but kidnapped. Not seduced, but stolen. Not having betrayed her, but having _been _betrayed by a woman who Azug knew was a snake from the moment she laid eyes on her.

She squeezed the note in her fist and dropped it to the floor, then turned and marched out into the hall. On her way to the other side of the manor, and the horse stalls, she passed the kitchens, where a group of humorless servants were busy cleaning up a mess unlike any Azug had ever seen. Pots and pans lay everywhere, food covered the walls, and the waist-high table running down the middle of the long room was broken clean through at the halfway point.

She dimly remembered playing a part in that the night before, but gave the matter little thought as she shoved aside the furious chef who screamed at her to explain herself. He ran off, swearing to tell the house's masters who would have her fired, and Azug continued out towards the stables.

None of this was her fault, but she would make it right anyway.