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Down Where It's Wetter

• Chapter 10 of the Legends of the DragonRider

Anitra sighed contentedly as she lounged in the shallows, gentle waves lapping against her pregnant belly. Leaning her head backwards, she could catch an upside-down view of their little encampment, and share a smile with Blake who - now awake - watched over it all. Direza was busy cooking up a nice, solid breakfast that would hopefully keep them going through most of the day - they had a lot of swimming ahead of them, after all. Melora was collecting driftwood in order to top up their supply of firewood, albeit somewhat slowly.

The masochistic mare was walking rather clumsily, on account of the clear sphere that hung between her legs, getting noticeably in the way. She was also wincing and panting a fair bit, on much the same account, and occasionally had to stumble to a stop due to a shudder running up her spine. Anitra had to smile at the sight - it really was a tremendously creative bit of sadism on Blake's part. The clear sphere was a magical force-field, scaled down to the size of a fish-bowl, and attached to Melora's groin. It contained a few things, starting with a large, soft cock-and-balls arrangement, courtesy of the Ring of Priap in its 'non-erect' configuration. It was otherwise filled with warm salt-water, straight from the sea... making it a perfectly livable environment for the three small, red jellyfish that were floating around in there.

They'd been picked rather carefully, using a list copied from Drake the Obscene's book on underwater perversion. The kind whose tendrils left burning, smarting, painful stings, but didn't cause insanity or death or anything like that. As they undulated their way around their strange new home, their tendrils would regularly caress Melora's artificial - but fully-sensitive - tackle, generating steadily-rising pleasure for a pain-lover like her. She'd been walking around with it since they (and Blake) woke up, which wasn't so terribly long, but already her sack, shaft and soft, sensitive cockhead were covered in swollen stripes - indeed, the whole arrangement seemed to have swelled noticeably, which only served to bring the jellyfish into contact with it more often.

And just to cap it off, there was a small crab with rather large claws skittering about on the bottom of the sphere, seemingly rather unhappy with the quartering. Any time some part of Melora's dangly bits swung into his reach, he'd take a pinch at them - sometimes dangling from her ballsack or cockhead for a while before letting go. Sharp, cutting pain randomly mixed into the steadily-escalating burning of the jellyfish-stings... and add to that Blake's eyes, equal parts amused and aroused, following her around. No wonder she seemed to be panting steadily louder, her legs increasingly shaky - she had to be getting close to reaching an orgasm just from the torture.

Tipping her head back forwards, Anitra moaned in satisfaction, her legs twitching. Beyond the sight-blocking curve of her belly, she could just manage to spot a bunch of long, crimson locks flowing through the water like seaweed - and beyond that, a large fishtail covered in emerald-green scales writhed and twisted, whipping the water into foam. She couldn't see anything else, but she could certainly_feel_ that Ariel, their new mermaid friend, was steadily improving her cunnilingus-skills. Not too surprising, perhaps, considering her sheer, bubbly enthusiasm and endless energy, helped no doubt by the fact that the act was just as pleasurable to her as it was to the recipient - if not more so!

The eager little mermaid had shown up practically with the rising sun, despite that being quite painfully early at this time of year, and had been watching them with riveted attention ever since. Everything about their camp was fascinating to her - from the tents to the cooking-fire to the way they walked around and such. She had even - somewhat surprisingly - proven to be completely unafraid of Blake. When he lowered his great, horned-and-fanged head down to her height to introduce himself, she's simply greeted him with unbridled enthusiasm. For that matter, she'd been neither scared nor weirded out by him and Melora's masochistic games, being seemingly too innocent to recognize what was happening - heck, maybe she figured this was a regular thing on the to-her mysterious 'Surface'. Her only real reaction to Melora's current torment had been a restated interest in the odd properties of the Ring of Priap, which had only deepened when Blake helpfully explained its function to her.

"Oooh, what would happen if I put that ring on?" She'd asked, wide-eyed - but her mood had dropped noticeably when Blake had snorted dismissively. "Not a whole lot. By design, it will provide anyone who wears it with a set of male genitalia befitting their species. Since Mermen, as I understand it, don't _have_any such thing, it would presumably fail to make any noticeable difference." Well, she'd cheered up a bit when he'd promised that she could try it out anyway once Melora was 'done with it' - and more so yet when Anitra had offered her a chance to further practice the pussy-eating skills she'd first started to develop the previous day.

Anitra was perfectly happy to let Ariel 'practice' until the meal was ready - she wasn't about to cum from it, considering that she was used to either huge cocks or Direza's highly-polished oral skills, but it was rather pleasant nonetheless, and the crimson-haired mermaid was clearly enjoying herself a great deal. But alas, the attentions of the flighty little thing wasn't quite as riveted on Anitra's by-now saltwater-soaked pussy as she'd thought - as soon as Blake rumbled out "I believe Melora is just about done with the ring now...", the girl's head rose with eager interest, and she darted away. Sighing as the tingling in her loins faded, Anitra rolled over on the side to watch what her beloved had come up with_now_ to further torment his eager servant.

Melora looked strangely reluctant as, on his orders, she pulled the ring off her finger. Instantly, her cock disappeared, and with it whatever agonizing sensations she'd been feeling in it. This left the force-sphere dangling between her legs half-empty - but a second later, as Blake's eyes briefly narrowed in concentration, it shrank to suit this. And then a bit more, even, presumably pushing some of the seawater up inside Melora's slightly-gaping pussy, now that it wasn't covered by the summoned cock anymore. This made the sphere far less awkward to move around with - and also forced the sea-life inside it closer together, and closer to her groin.

Even as Melora handed the ring over to Ariel, who was nearly beaching herself in her eagerness to rise out of the water and grab it, a fight was starting between her legs. The jellyfish bumped up against each other, and their thread-like tentacles trashed in response. The crab snapped his claws, and they tried to swim away but had nowhere to go within their tiny container. The horse-girl gasped and stumbled as stinging tendrils brushed across her labia - and then fell to her knees altogether, cupping the now-tiny force-sphere with her hands, eyes wide. Just before her hands had covered it, Anitra had spotted one of the small, red jellyfish disappearing - its smooth, flexible body compacting itself as it fled in the only available direction.

Ariel, meanwhile, tried on the ring - and sighed with dejection as, sure enough, nothing seemed to change. The fish-tail that started from her waist seemed completely unaffected by the ring's magic. Blake gave her an apologetic sigh, most of his attention still fixated on his rapidly-breathing, shuddering submissive. "As I said... but don't feel too sad. Go give it to Anitra, and maybe she'll give you another chance to practice your skills on a human cock." As the mermaid perked up and swam back towards her, Blake licked his lips and looked down at Melora, his own draconic cock emerging from his loins, thick with desire.

"Well, my dear, you've well entertained me... indeed, you've earned a small reward, I'd say!" Dipping into the wet sand with his claws, he scooped up a hefty handful of it, laid it out and then straightened the surface with a brush - forming a long slanted bulge, kind of like a table missing two if its legs. "Now, my dear pet, sit down on this edge, lean back, and spread your legs..." he commanded in a sweet voice - and Melora, shuddering bodily, complied, for all that she clearly had a hard time making her legs cooperate while the stinging jellyfish still hid inside her pussy.

This command left her lying at an angle, with her groin above her head and her tail hanging over the edge of the sandy creation - and of course also flipped the tiny aquarium between her legs around. The increasingly upset crab now landed directly on her pussy, and even as his tiny, chitinous legs dug into the soft tissue, he let his displeasure be known by sinking his claws into the thick labia floating around him. Meanwhile, the bubble shrank a little bit more, pushing the jellyfish that remained even further down - and kicking up an inevitable battle between the two sea-creature, with Melora's sensitive bits caught in the crossfire. All while Blake deftly moved around to cover her body, aiming his thick cock at her readily-waiting ass without the benefit of any particular lubrication - save the thin layer of sheath-lubricant it had carried with it on the way out.

Anitra had to avert her eyes from the sadistic display for a bit as Ariel reached her and handed over the ring with an eagerly expectant expression. Rolling back onto her back, she slipped it onto her own finger and felt that familiar tingle in her loins as she suddenly sprouted a healthily-sized, perfectly-ordinary cock, fully erect and ready for action. The mermaid instantly dived down to stare at it with rapt fascination. "Oooh... it's bigger than the last one I saw..." she commented with naive insensitivity, the worlds sounding strangely distorted by the passage from water to air. "Well, go ahead and have a bit of fun with it... I can give you some pointers if you like..." Anitra answered, even as she once again bent her neck in order to keep an eye on Blake and Melora.

The magical fishbowl between Melora's legs wasn't visible anymore, what with Blake's bulk being in the way - but her tense legs certainly were, shaking and twitching as she received a rough, high-friction ass-fucking. Knowing the mare's masochistic tendencies, she'd probably cum the moment her beloved Master forced his slick cock in between her muscular buttocks, and was already working towards a second as the pleasure of the ass-reaming and the pain in her burning, swelling pussy came together. Had she been stung on the clit yet, Anitra wondered? If not, it was only a matter of time...

She allowed her attention to refocus on the increasingly pleasurable sensations radiating out from her own groin, and provided Ariel with a few choice pieces of advice - nothing too deep, just a "Careful with the head, it gets sensitive" here and a "Don't forget about the balls, either" there. It didn't really take much - after all, the girl clearly had ample experience blowing dolphins, so she really only needed to get used to the smaller size, the external testes and somewhat different shape. The drops of sage advice were occasionally interrupted by a moan of pleasure - she didn't really don the Ring of Priap all that often, so she was less jaded about the pleasures it could bring. And Ariel's eager tongue_did_ feel delightful as it curled around her cockhead...

Letting the unfamiliar pleasure and the mermaid's naked enthusiasm carry her away, she soon reached a hip-jerking orgasm, spewing magically-created sperm into Ariel's mouth. She could feel the tongue abandoning its previous post to swish the slimy fluid around, sampling it as if it was a fine wine - searching, perhaps, for subtle differences between that, the flavor of the human 'prince' she'd previously encountered, and the more familiar dolphins. Only then did she swallow, and resume the previous regimen of sucking and licking - albeit more gently now, showing that she was well familiar with the post-coital sensitivity-increase. Perhaps dolphins were susceptible to that particular condition too? If so, the pod they encountered yesterday certainly hadn't shown any signs of it... they had all been as rough and eager the third time as the first.

Anitra was still wondering if she should just let Ariel continue to play with her still-hard tool when Direza resolved the question by declaring breakfast ready. With an apologetic smile, she pushed the red-haired mermaid away from her groin, pulling off the Ring of Priap as the girl pouted. "We do need to get a move on if we're going to reach your city, you know..." Anitra declared, wagging her finger. "After all, we'll need to be back here by nightfall, and you said it was a bit of a swim." The reminder that they'd all soon be joining her on a trip to her home perked her up immediately, and while the three of them supped on Direza's flavorful creations, she merrily played in the shallows along with a large, tropical-looking fish that Anitra had concluded was the mermaid equivalent of a lap-dog.

Blake wasn't joining them for breakfast, though the scents that drifted from the meal seemed to stir his appetite - particularly the large omelet Direza had made with a mixture of plain old hen-eggs brought along from the Utopia's roosts and the eggs of seabirds scavenged from the nearby cliffs, giving it an exotic flavor-profile and attractively chewy texture. Piled on top of it were a variety of salted meats roast on rocks by the campfire, shellfish and shrimps fresh from the sea - all adding up to a salty tang reminiscent of the sea-breeze itself. There was even a corner garnished instead with flakes of dried seaweed, just for Melora who - though chiefly vegetarian - had no problem with milk or eggs. She seemed to enjoy the feast just as much as Anitra did, at least judging from the fact that she sat still through most of it - the magical 'fishbowl' and its residents had been removed from her genitals when the breakfast was announced, but her pussy had to be swollen and itchy, outside and in, and would stay so for hours at the very least. Regardless, while the omelet indubitably was the centerpiece of the meal, it was far from the only memorable part of it...

Certainly, there was enough food that even Melora and Anitra, eating for two, felt certain that they wouldn't soon grow hungry again - and meanwhile, Direza was beaming like an unusually short lighthouse as the two of them complimented her cooking-skills and merrily chowed down. When she couldn't eat another bite, Anitra grinned at her eager servant and patted her on the shoulder. "A feast worthy of a queen, indeed... I think, in view of your fine efforts here, I will have to reduce the punishment I spoke of yesterday. We'll just pretend you came in second in the contest, hmm?" In truth, she hadn't actually quite worked out how she'd punish the drow for her amused outburst at her mistress' expense - the creativity that Blake had displayed with Melora this morning made her feel the need to come up with something equally novel rather than fall back on the same old humiliations. At the very least, she didn't want to go back to the 'donkey'-well again... play that string too much, and it'd lose its impact!

Regardless, the gratified smile she got in return made it clear that she'd taken the right tack there. Canceling the promised 'punishment' altogether would've likely had a more lukewarm reception, but a 'light' punishment was just what Direza's perverted little heart desired: Humiliation, maybe a bit of pain, and the undivided attention of her beloved mistress. She really would have to come up with something suitable before they headed home...

With full bellies, the three of them waddled out to sea while Blake spread his wings behind them. "I think I'll do a quick fly-by of the area, check if there are any human travelers or ships nearby... and maybe catch some brunch." He declared. "Think there are any whales around? After smelling your feast earlier, I rather feel like trying some seafood myself..." It sounded like he was mostly joking, but Ariel - who had been eagerly swimming back and forth amongst the reefs just off the beach - clearly didn't take it as such, surfacing with a squeal. "Please don't eat the whales, some of them are friends of mine!" She begged, looking up at Blake with those huge, blue eyes, reminiscent of a particularly miserable puppy. Blake blinked, surprised perhaps at being taken seriously, but then chuckled and nodded. "Well, if you put it that way, I shall refrain - wouldn't do to be a poor guest, here on the borders of your domain. I'm sure I'll be able to find something edible further inland too..." The smile she flashed him in reply gave Direza's earlier display a real run for its money.

Then, without further ado, they were off. Diving under the waves and breathing seawater - after, of course, carefully consuming every drop of their respective water-breathing potions - came much easier this time, and soon they were floating buoyantly through the undersea realm once more. Well, 'floating' wasn't quite right - that was what they'd been doing yesterday, languidly taking in the sights as they moved about with no particular goal in mind. This time, though, they had places to go, people to meet - so they were putting the mobility-enhancing enchantments of their diving-bangles to full use.

Even with the layered spells cutting down water-resistance, invisible fins expanding from their feet, and all three of them being inhumanly fit - Direza perhaps least so, but seeing as she was also the only one not pregnant it all evened out - they still couldn't begin to keep up with Ariel once she really got going. She was swimming with her whole body, not just her tail, turning into an emerald blur in the water. It didn't take her long to adjust her pace to what her three guests could manage, but the pace clearly chafed at her - patience, it seemed, was not among her virtues.

Once they reached the deep water, however, a solution presented itself. A pod of dolphins appeared, squeeing and clicking at them, making Ariel grimace. "My father sent them to 'look after me'..." she translated with a pout. "All worried about me as usual. Really! It's not like I get mobbed by sharks every day..." Melora and Anitra exchanged a glance. They were already starting to form a fairly solid impression of their new friend's character. Looking at their new escort's sleek, silver-gray bodies, however, gave Anitra an idea. "Maybe they can help us get where we're going a bit faster?" She suggested casually. "I don't suppose we could_ride_ them, or anything, but..."

Ariel immediately brightened up and nodded. "Oh! Yes, that's right! Sometimes, they help wounded mermen to get home by dragging them along... you will help, won't you?" She was directing the last bit at the dolphins, who squeaked in an apparently-agreeable manner. Moving with an efficiency and coordination that many military officers would've envied, the pod split up - with two of their numbers lining up on either side of each of the three land-walkers floating in their midst. "Just grab their backfins, one hand on each..." Ariel helpfully supplied, though the three of them already were well on their way to doing just that. "Umm... will they be wanting... you know... a reward for this?" Direza somewhat hesitantly asked, prompting an amused smile from Anitra - who had, admittedly, found herself wondering the same thing. Not that the dolphin-orgy yesterday hadn't been a lot of fun, mind, but she was looking for new experiences today...

The mermaid, however, quickly shook her head, sending her bright-red hair whirling through the water. "Oh, no, not to worry... these are some of the same dolphins from yesterday, can't you tell? They're saying that they had a lot of fun, and that they don't mind helping you out for free this time..." Anitra absently nodded while eyeing the nearest dolphins. Short of one of them sporting a fresh scar that might match one of the injuries from yesterday's battle, there was really no way for her to know one dolphin from another, let alone recognize one she'd met before. "And besides," the mermaid continued absently as she turned around and began to flick her tail again, "they were chartered by the royal household this time, so if they did want payment, it'd be taken care of for us."

This gave Anitra a bit of pause, even as she undersea convoy started moving - the dolphins' powerful tails working together to pull the three women along, while they energetically flapped their own feet to help things along. Things were definitely going faster now, and the varrying oceanlife they came across not only zipped past with remarkable speed, it also often seemed to basically dash out of the way of what was, apparently, the merfolk equivalent of a military escort. Of course, considering the martial skill the dolphins had demonstrated yesterday, it made perfect sense that the merfolk government would have some of them on retainer. Did they have a staff of eager mermaids with skilled tongue whose sole job it was to 'pay' the horny sea-mammals? Regardless, if Ariel's dad had been able to call in a military escort for his wayward daughter, rather than just relying on the regular mercenaries, he had to be some kind of bigwig...

Which was, of course, promising! It had not evaded Anitra's notice that she might be in a good position to open up diplomatic relations between the elusive merfolk and the Dragon Utopia. She was no merchant, but it struck her as highly likely that there was great potential for trade, there. No doubt, the deep seas had lots of rare delicacies and unusual alchemical ingredients that the folks back home would be interested in - and there had to be a whole bunch of things that the merfolk, no matter how civilized, couldn't easily craft in their underwater kingdom. Could they even forge metals? How would an undersea forge even work? Of course, a lot depended on making a good first impression. Hopefully, the merfolk in general were just as ignorant of surface-dweller propriety as Ariel seemed to be, and thus wouldn't twig to the fact that three naked women, two of them heavily pregnant, did not an elegant diplomatic team make.

With the aid of the seemingly-tireless dolphins, they darted through the water non-stop for what had to be at least a couple of hours - occasionally resting their own legs for a bit to avoid cramping up. They went far past the point where they'd originally encountered Ariel and her pursuers, indicating that she'd been rather far from home to begin with. As Anitra had begun to suspect, it really did seem like Ariel was one of those eternally-curious, adventuresome youths who tended to give their parents no end of worries - and who, inevitably, chafed at whatever restraints such concerned parentage attempted to put in their way.

However wealthy or important her father was, there was little doubt that he was also thoroughly frazzled... and probably more than a bit frustrated with his daughter's obvious fascination with the surface world. Hopefully, his gratitude at Anitra & Co. having saved said daughter would overrule his very reasonable concern that their presence would serve to further strengthen this dangerous hobby, and erase whatever minimal fear she might still have of surface-dwellers. Many of whom would, indeed, be more than happy to take advantage of such a naive girl... well, more than Anitra herself already had, she privately admitted.

Anitra's speculations were interrupted by a marvelous sight, and she heard Melora and Direza draw in breath as well. "Finally, we're there!" Ariel declared, making a grand gesture at the city that spread out before them. Built into an ocean-trench and splendidly lit - whether by some form of magic, or natural bio-luminescence - it soared into the dark seas like a mirage. Great towers and spires rose as if grown rather than built, curling like conches and seashells, speckled with windows that doubled as doors for the masses of merfolk that swam between them. Below, vast coral domes spread over great areas, suggesting communal spaces or even some form of undersea manufactories. Cave-openings in the surrounding cliffs indicated that the city extended even further, into the seabed itself. Truly, a vast metropol of the undersea realm.

The centerpiece of the city soared even higher than the other spires - a vast collection of towers and halls, surrounded by grand statuary and connected by walkways that, at first, seemed rather pointless, until they got a bit closer and Anitra's sharp eyes began to make out the forms of various large crustaceans marching along them, carrying various burdens. Its sheer size and magnificence made it obvious that this was no mere mansion, but a palace - home, no doubt, to the royal family that Ariel had alluded to earlier.

Aaaaand they were swimming right towards it. A few things clicked into place in Anitra's mind. Of course... the flightly mermaid's 'daddy' wasn't just some wealthy noble with the pull necessary to dispatch official military dolphins to escort his daughter, but rather the guy they worked for in the first place. No wonder she had spoken so casually of the royal family, and been so entirely unsurprised by its involvement. Even for a high-ranking noble, pulling something like that would've required him to at least call in a favor or two, assuming merfolk politics worked anything like human ones, so it wouldn't be an everyday thing - but for a king to send soldiers, even if they happened to be dolphins, to protect his daughter? That was pretty much expected.

She quickly exchanged a silent glance with Melora and Direza, who both nodded - they'd caught on as well. Time to be on their best behavior, and hope that the king's daughter wouldn't feel inclined to share with her daddy exactly what they'd been getting up to together... then again, if the merfolk were accustomed to trading sexual favors with dolphins and could cum just from kissing, maybe they had more liberal sexual standards in general, and wouldn't consider anything that had passed offensive! Then again, considering the above it was also quite possible that they considered forcing a kiss on someone - as Anitra had done with Ariel during their first meeting - as equivalent to full-on rape. Probably best to do more listening than talking early on, at least until they had a better understanding of what kind of society they were walking - or rather swimming - into the middle of.

Well, for starters, they were clearly expected - and welcome, at least on the surface. As they entered an open space enfolded by the various spires and halls - what passed for the courtyard of this undersea palace, presumably - a small army of mermen emerged from nearby portals to form two neat, orderly rows. Each lifted a colorful conch to his lips, and together they emitted a droning hum that seemed to make the very water vibrate around them, rising and falling in an accelerating cadence - a glorious fanfare, adapted to the deep sea. At the end of this proverbial red carpet, a great, circular portal swung open, inviting them into a lit-up hall.

Within, two more rows awaited them - this time mermaids, presumably the palace waitstaff, who performed a perfectly-synchronized, strangely-sinuous forwards flip for them. An underwater bow? Best guess she could come up with. Then, with voices nearly as melodious as Ariel's, they intoned in unison "Welcome, saviors of the princess, to King Triton's palace!" This was enough to give Anitra a bit of a start, swiftly reflected by Melora and Direza as they, too, recalled the conversation they'd had with Blake a little over a week ago. Triton... that was what seafarers called the God of the Seas. Bad enough that they were about to meet a king unprepared, he was apparently also a god of some description?

Well, no reason to leap to conclusions, Anitra quickly reminded herself. Maybe the king was just named after the god - could be a local tradition. Or there might be some other strange connection, especially since Triton was a bit of an outliers as far as gods went. No way of saying at this point, really, so - no reason for her pulse to suddenly accelerate, no reason at all. Certainly, there was no reason to so vividly recall the last time she'd had an unexpected run-in with a god, or how close she'd come to dying, losing her baby, or losing Direza... who still carried the scars of that particular encounter, and probably felt a bit apprehensive too. Taking a deep breath, Anitra steadied herself and put on her most confident face, giving a quick nod to the drow elf who did, indeed, seem to have a bit of a panicky look in her eyes. "Don't worry. Trust your mistress. Whatever happens, I'm here and I'll handle it." That was a lot of words to pack into a single nod, but she thought she more or less managed - at the very least, the 'hunted animal' look disappeared from Direza's eyes, to be replaced with a more conservative wariness. Certainly, if anything DID go down, it wouldn't take but the blink of an eye for her to wrap her slender fingers around the enchanted symbol hanging from her neck and call upon the vast, clerical powers she possessed.

Meanwhile, completely ignorant of the exchange happening behind her, Ariel huffed and put her hands on her piscine hips. "Really, just like daddy to make a big production out of it..." she complained, floating past the servant-girls without so much as a glance in their direction. Made sense, Anitra thought with a wry smile. No way she'd have been able to maintain that adorable naivete if she hadn't_grown up with a silver spoon in her mouth, protected and pampered every day. That was, presumably, what happened if you stopped kids from ever finding out that the world had sharp edges and pointy bits in unexpected places... a mistake _she certainly wouldn't be repeating, she reassured herself!

Melodic laughter resounded through the front hall as a handful of mermaids with elaborately done-up hair and well-crafted jewelry - pearls being much in appearance, unsurprisingly - swept in from a side-entrance. They all sported vividly colorful hair, though all of different shades. It didn't take a lot of deductive reasoning to conclude that they were, most likely, Ariel's sisters. "These are the humans who saved you?" One of them - sporting hair so azure, it seemed almost iridescent as it moved through the water - asked without preamble, peering at the three of them over the edge of what seemed to be some kind of fan made from slices of coral. Ariel nodded eagerly. "Yes, sister! They held the sharks at bay with some kind of magic until the dolphins could arrive! They're... not actually human, though, apparently..." She trailed off hesitantly, apparently suddenly remembering that in all her enthusiastic curiosity, she'd forgotten to ever really probe Anitra's original reply to the first question she'd asked them - "Are you humans?"

Anitra nodded politely and floated up closer, not trusting herself to attempt the strange twirl that apparently constituted a bow around here. "That is indeed accurate. Please, allow me to introduce myself and my companions - this is Melora of the Equus, a strong and hardy race that inhabits the great plains of the surface-world. She is a trusted servant of my husband's. This is Direza, of the Drow - her people live primarily in great caverns beneath the surface, though she abandoned them when she became my personal servant. And I am Anitra, a DragonRider - which essentially means that I'm mostly human, but have some dragon-blood in me as well."

The mer-princess seemed somewhat taken aback by this introduction, but slowly nodded. "I... see..." she replied, though Anitra felt rather sure that she did not, in fact. Meanwhile, another of the sisters was swimming curiously around them, inspecting them from every angle - her hair a bright-yellow that could hardly even be called blond. "Why are two of them so fat?" She casually asked, confirming Anitra's suspicion - based on Ariel's own reaction to their state - that obesity was too rare among the merfolk to have developed into a negative. They probably didn't recognize being called fat as any kind of insult. Ariel, however, winced and hissed up at her sister, currently floating above the trio. "They're not fat, they're pregnant! Like dolphins get, you know?"

The other mermaid wrinkled her brow and shrugged. "Dolphins don't get THAT fat, though..." No longer unable to restrain herself, Anitra laughed out loud. "I must admit, Ariel - when I first met you, I had not expected you to be the polite sister..." She didn't really consider the political implications of thus chastising the behavior of a pair of foreign princesses, but frankly, the whole scene - playing out in front of the still respectfully-waiting servant-staff of the castle - just struck her as too absurd to continuously ignore."

Fortunately, far from taking offense of becoming angry, the two sisters who had so far spoken blushed scarlet and darted back to the rest, clearly embarrassed - while a somewhat larger mermaid who'd been hovering silently in the back of the group joined in the laughter. "Well spoken!" she declared, her voice a touch deeper and more developed but just as melodious as the rest - an older sister, no doubt. She then wagged her finger at the two mermaids who had just returned to the fold. "You two are not acting as one should expect of the Daughters of Triton! Think of the stories these travelers might tell of you back home, and how that would reflect on all of the merfolk!"

"We're sorry..." the two of them mumbled in perfect tonal unison, and in Anitra's general direction at that. Their older sister, meanwhile, flashed her a smile. "I apologize for these two. They are simply curious about the drylands, but unlike our dear younger sister, Ariel, unwilling to admit to it..." Before the two of them could work up a suitable protest to this revelation, their older sibling clapped her hands with finality. "Now, enough floating about! Father is waiting in the throne-room to receive the travelers and formally welcome them to New Atlantica - and to thank them for saving Ariel, of course, which we also came to express our gratitude for..." The last bit was directed at the handful of mermaids floating about her, still casting curious glances at the exotically belegged visitors.

Apparently reminded by this cue, they all lined up and did that forward-twirl the servants had demonstrated earlier, intoning in melodic unison "Thank you for saving our little sister!" It felt a lot more impactful than any of the pomp and circumstance that had gone before - the soldiers outside and the servants inside, they were just following orders. These girls, though, had shown up and, despite their royal birth, bowed before a trio of strangers because they were genuinely grateful that their little sister's recklessness hadn't ended with her landing in a shark's belly. This, indeed, was what it felt like to be a hero. Taking a deep breath, Anitra let the sensation flutter through her for a moment, then smiled at them. "Think nothing of it. Your little sister was eminently worth saving. Did she tell you, I wonder, that when we first collided, she actually tried to lead the sharks away from us? Had no way of knowing that we had enchantments in place to defend against sharks, of course, so her first impulse was to protect us, even at the risk of her own life."

This detail had, as expected, slipped the young mermaid's mind when she returned to the palace with her story the previous evening - and now it was Ariel's turn to blush as her sisters turned wide eyes on her. "Umm... we really should go see daddy. He gets grouchy if people aren't on time!" She suddenly declared, with a respect for punctuality that seemed to have just manifested spontaneously. A powerful flick of her tail sent her off down a circular corridor leading away from the entrance-hall, forcing Anitra and the other two to follow suit at a slightly more sedate pace - with the gaggle of older princesses bringing up the rear, whispering to one another.

The passage soon emptied out into what was, undeniably, a throne-room - but like much of the design she'd seen so far, quite different from anything you'd see on land. Three-dimensional thinking at work as usual. In a normal, boring, flat human throne-room, the throne would simply be placed at the center of the back wall, to draw the eye towards it. Here, though, it stood in the actual center of a large, spherical room, surrounded by four vast, fluted pillars, mounted on a soaring pedestal that, like so much of the castle, seemed more grown than built. This went for the throne, too, which appeared to invoke an open oyster with its shape, and was rather wider and flatter than a human chair would be - another difference that made sense, what with the royalty seated upon it having a fish-tail instead of a nice, flat ass.

Enough said, it was hard to miss either the throne or the person sitting on it when you swam into this room. King Triton towered over his daughters, and every other merman they'd seen so far - and not just because his throne sat at the top of what somewhat resembled the crest of a wave, frozen in stone. He was easily a head and a half taller than any of the soldiers who'd met them outside, and far broader across the shoulders, as well - undressed, like every other merman, and sporting an impressively bulging musculature despite what appeared to be highly advanced age. Pure white hair fell to his shoulders, held back from his eyes by a rather spiky crown, made from some material she could not, immediately identify. Golden, but certainly not gold. His beard was just as white, and quite extensive to boot, hiding most of his chest. A golden trident, seemingly crafted from the same odd material as his crown, leaned on the throne - whether it was a personal weapon or some kind of ceremonial badge of office was unclear.

His eyes, like those of merfolk in general, were larger than human - making it easier to recognize his expressions even from a distance. When Ariel entered the room, just ahead of Anitra, they brightened up and smile-wrinkles appeared around the corners of his mouth - paternal adoration at its finest. Then, the towering King of the Seas composed himself, and seemed to gather breath for a suitably pompous speech as he watched the three not-quite-humans swim in behind Ariel. However, as his eyes fell on Anitra, they seemed to sharpen, then widen in shock. One of his hands, previously resting calmly on his throne's armrests, seemed to leap of its own accord towards the nearby trident, and Anitra's own muscles followed suit, sensing a threat. Her hand was already reaching towards the sword on her back when King Triton seemed to catch himself and get his face - and hands - back under control.

Whatever grandiose speech he'd been planning, however, seemed to have fled his mind, resulting in a rather brief, yet clearly heartfelt bit of ceremony. Rising from his throne to hover above it, Triton nodded at the three significantly-smaller visitors. "Welcome, travelers from above, to New Atlantica, and to my domain - the seas! I am indebted to you for rescuing my dearest daughter from those vicious sharks, and a suitable banquet is being prepared in your honor. If there is some reward you desire for your heroic deed, you need only say so..." he trailed off for a moment, seemingly thoughtful, while Ariel looked at him in not-displeased surprise.

Then, clearing his throat, he looked directly at Anitra. "I perceive that you are the leader of your little... band. Correct?" Careful not to let her own eyes narrow too much, Anitra nodded and half-bowed. "That I am, Your Highness." Triton then took a deep breath and made a sweeping gesture. "Very well, then. All of the rest of you, out! I would thank this woman in private. Ariel, my dear... perhaps you could show her servants your quarters, or introduce them to the rest of your sisters?" The red-haired mermaid blinked and slowly nodded. "Umm... sure, daddy, but why can't we stay?" Triton harrumphed and shook his head, white hair dancing. "Because I worry that if you hear me expound on just how much you mean to me, you will grow even less inclined to heed my orders. Like the one I vividly recall giving you, about bringing a dolphin escort any time you venture out of sight of this palace!"

Wincing slightly, the young princess chose - wisely, Anitra thought - to not pursue her curiosity further. Her sisters, hovering slightly further back, clearly also recognized that their father was In A Mood, and jumped in to pleasantly offer Melora and Direza a full tour of the whole wing of the palace where they and their sisters lived. The two of them glanced questioningly at Anitra, who gave a short, barely-perceivable nod. Neither a king nor a god could order them from her side without her consent, but in this case, there wasn't much point in withholding it. If Triton was planning to attack her, why would he arrange for them to be alone together? He had an army at his beg and call, ready to pile in and mob them if he called. And yet, there was obviously something going on. The whole 'thank her in private' bit didn't hold water - hah! - and there'd clearly been some kind of strange recognition when he saw her...

Still, nobody was going to argue with the king. Princesses, attendants and servants, and even the half-dozen merfolk soldiers who had been hovering at the entrance to various passages leading to and from the throne-room, cleared out of the room and closed the doors behind them. She was alone, there, with King Triton, who seemed increasingly likely to also be Triton, God of the Seas. Suppressing another surge of anxiety, she considered her possible approaches even as Triton himself silently regarded her from his throne, trident still close at hand but not in his hand. Finally, she settled on the one that would resolve things the quickest.

"So, what do you really want to talk to me about, your Highness?" she asked, carefully floating in place - wouldn't do to approach him_or_ appear to retreat. The oversized merman sighed and shifted his muscular body, leaning his head on one massive hand. "I assume, from that question, that you did not, in fact, come here to kill me... however belatedly." Anitra snorted with laughter. "I'm alone, heavily pregnant, and naked. That might not be that unusual around here, but generally when I go to kill someone, I wear armor." Not the fashion that kings or gods were accustomed to being talked to, no doubt, and it certainly made Triton blink in surprise - before he, too, snorted. "Yes, yes, fair enough... though I have little doubt that you are capable of being perfectly deadly even while naked, alone and pregnant. Especially considering that sword you have strapped to your back... I can smell the blood soaked into its blade from here. And I also know what those rings on your chest represent, and just what kind of creature would come knocking if you called for it."

Anitra could only shrug at that. He was right, after all. Shaking his head, Triton asked the next question, and she wasn't surprised by it. "But if you didn't come here for my life, why are you here... DragonRider?" Sighing, Anitra crossed her arms above her distended belly. "Your daughter invited me, that's why. I have no particular ulterior motives, nor did I have any idea you were even_here_. And, I might add, Ariel neglected to tell me exactly _who_her 'daddy' was when she invited me to meet him. You can ask her yourself if you don't believe me!"

Triton seemed to digest this for a moment, then exhaled heavily. "No need for that. Certainly sounds like something she'd do..." he admitted, then shrugged. "In the end, I suppose this is just fate playing its tricks on us all. After everything I did to escape that accursed war your creator started, a remnant of it just... floats right into my living-room by accident. Strange turns indeed..." Anitra could only nod at this, but finally allowed herself to slowly, non-threateningly, swim closer to the god-king's throne. "Actually..." she ventured. "You said something about a reward earlier. If you actually _meant_that, well, there's something I'd very much like..."

A haunted look flickered across the king's face, then he steeled himself and nodded. "Of course I meant it. Ariel is my most beloved daughter, and I have many. Whatever you may be, whatever your reasons for being there, you did save her. So by all means, tell me what your heart desires, DragonRider..." Anitra shrugged, and let her frustrations show on her face at last. "Information, if you please.Knowledge. You seem to know more about my origins than I do, and I've been working long and hard at learning more! You... _are_actually a god, aren't you?"

The last part was honestly driven mostly by curiosity. There was definitely a lot of things about King Triton that didn't match up with him being merely some merman of royal blood, but she didn't feel any of the awesome radiance that had been present when she'd found herself in the presence of an Avatar of Sargonnas. The subject of her curiosity, meanwhile, looked at her under knitted, snow-white brows for a moment, then slowly nodded. "Very well. I will tell you what I know, though you may still be disappointed. And to answer your last question, I am indeed the God of the Seas - such as it is. But tell me, what do you know? I would not waste your time by repetition..."

"Mostly, all I know is that my kind, the DragonRider - and the Black Dragons as well - were created by some ancient god... same one who created the humans, despite what numerous other gods are claiming today... and that he used us all to wage a war on the rest of the gods. Apparently, he lost, but some of the other gods still carry a grudge. Long memories, I suppose." Triton snorted. "Long indeed, which is why I'm still living down here... but I digress. I can, indeed, fill in some of the holes in that story."

Stroking his beard for a moment, Triton looked away from her, staring into space as he recalled events that had transpired before any still-living mortal had been born. "There was a war, all right. A great and terrible war. One god against many... it should have been easy. That's what my brethren thought at first, too. But they'd underestimated him - habitually, at that! Many gods fell to him, shattered into nonexistence or wounded into insanity. Entire races wiped out or enslaved. Thanks, in no small part, to the power and ferocity of the Black Dragons that flew in his service! Oh, I remember the sheer fury that radiated off of old Takharsis when she first saw them - her crowning creation, twisted and repurposed into a deadly weapon for another god!"

Shaking his head ruefully, Triton seemed unaware of the cold chill that was running down Anitra's spine as she heard of these antediluvian events and contemplated the effect they might still have on her future. He simply continued his tale - albeit in a rather grave voice. "Many of my brethren called on me to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with them, to fight against your creator - to stop him before he realized his terrible dream of standing as the lone remaining god, reigning forever over a world united under human rule! And I considered it - I did! I was not afraid to fall in battle... but still, I was a coward, and any god will tell you so! For when I saw what became of the races that were trampled under by the human armies, fear entered my heart."

She could hear it, even now, in his voice - a remembered terror, old as time, but to this ancient creature, it might as well have been yesterday. "Shattered, they were - scattered to the winds, if they survived at all. Or enslaved, the women raped, half-breed children born to be disposable shock-troops, their gods and names forgotten. I could not stomach the idea of this fate befalling my Merfolk. So I ran - I fled the divine conflict in the only way I could! And there, yes, is the answer to your question about my divinity. I was a god, powerful as any, able to bend the great seas to my whim! A creator, and a destroyer... but that day, I cast it all away. I incarnated - a path few gods have taken before me! I took the form of one of my own creations, clinging to only a slight fragment of my old power - enough to remain immortal, enough to wield_some_ power over the seas, but not even a shadow of what I once was..." his head drooped towards his chest, now, as if it had suddenly turned too heavy for him to carry. "I no longer even truly remember what it was like to be omnipotent. I think the memory itself was too great to fit in this diminutive frame."

Running a hand over his face, he then straightened again and finished his story as if this maudlin lapse had not taken place. "So, in this immortal form, I took up direct rule over my people, and led them away from the shores, away from the dryland - into the darkest depths of the oceans. I had confidence that as long as we remained thus hidden, he would not come for us, even if he won. He had no reason to particularly hate me, after all - I had not disrespected him as some did, before his rise. Indeed, when I created my own merfolk using his humans as part of the pattern, he clearly took it as the compliment it was!"

Well,that answered a question she hadn't actually thought to ask, Anitra reflected. Apparently, cribbing from each other's homework was as common in the Divine Sphere as it was in your average academy. "So... you don't know how the war ended?" She ventured when the silence had lasted for a few seconds. Triton shook his great head apologetically. "Indeed not. It was only several centuries later that I even dared to send a scout to the shorelands to find out how, or even whether, the war had ended. I was somewhat surprised at what that scout brought back! Not only was the war apparently over, nobody even seemed to remember that there had been_a war... and while _he had clearly fallen, and many of my old brethren remained - though changed, in some cases, by the lingering scars they bore - the humans were still there, still numerous, and still in control of most of the world!"

"I_had_ been wondering about that..." Anitra confessed. Humanity's creator had waged war, using humanity as a weapon, enslaving or even annihilating other races along the way. And yet, when said creator was brought low, the victorious alliance of gods just... left humanity where it was, as the dominant force on the continent? "I don't suppose asking the other gods is an option?" she then continued, and was answered by a raised eyebrow. Understanding the wordless reply just fine, she nodded. "Long memories. Gotcha."

With a shrug and a sigh, Triton sank deeper into his chair and made a dismissive wave with one frying-pan-sized hand. "That is all I know for certain. Beyond that, all I have is speculations. I assume that the sudden forgetfulness about the war must have been caused by some concerted action of the other gods - perhaps to pacify humanity after their god was slain, and thus no longer able to protect them from such an effect. It seems like many of them have actually adopted some segments of humanity to replace the very races that those humans originally wiped out! How they could stomach that, I shall never know..."

This was enough to lift one of Anitra's eyebrows. "But... you're rather emulating them, aren't you?" she asked - rather respectless, but it had worked so far so she doubt the demigod sitting before her was going to take offense now. "At least, going by what you hear in the port-towns these days." With a somewhat shamefaced shrug, Triton nodded. "Well... I suppose. But I don't have any particular reason to dislike humans, after all! And once I'd moved my people back into shallower waters, well, it just made sense to... reach out to those who were receptable. To lend an occasional hand to those who duly respected my old domain, you know?"

And perhaps the worship he was earning in return was ever-so-gradually restoring his old power? Anitra wasn't really sure if it worked that way. But even if it did... Triton seemed a decent sort, for a god, and clearly had no interest in picking a fight with her or Blake, so... no point pushing that point. "Why did you move back here, if you don't want to make contact with your former brethren?" she instead asked, deliberately changing the subject, and got another shrug. "Well, I figured it was fairly safe... and my people _are_more comfortable here, in the warmer seas. Food is easier to come by as well. And... I suppose I'm testing the waters, as it were. Gods have long memories... but some are longer than others, especially if suitable incentive exists."

Anitra nodded, a slow smile spreading across her lips. "Indeed? So, shall I take that to mean that you would be interested in establishing, say, a trade-relationship with a prosperous dryland kingdom that isn't beholden to any old friends of yours who may still carry a grudge about you leaving them... high and dry, if you'll forgive the expression?" Triton's eyes narrowed, and he straightened in his throne - looking suddenly less like a rather tired old demigod, and more like a keen-minded monarch eager to further the lot of his subjects. "Perhaps I would. Perhaps I would indeed..."

Both Direza and Melora were noticeably relieved when they were all reunited in the banquet-hall a short while later, and they had a few brief moments to catch up while Triton busied himself ordering around the crustacean servants who were carrying in the various dishes on their chitinous backs. Anitra gave the other two a highly abbreviated version of what she'd learned, prompting a thoughtful nod from Direza. "So he basically turned himself into a 'mere' demigod in order to sidestep a war between the gods? Sounds like a highly sensible fellow..." she commented with a sidelong glance at the bearded monarch in question.

"What about you two? Learn anything of interest?" She then queried, prompting a slight blush from Direza and an amused grin from Melora - who was also the one who actually answered. "Well, we found out a thing or two about their... social standards, I guess you'd call it." She rubbed her chin thoughtfully, giving the still-blushing Direza a bit of side-eye as she spoke. "You said earlier that kissing was basically the closest they get to sex around here, and I think you're right, but... they still don't treat it any more seriously than humans do kissing. Even less so, maybe - I'm not completely up to date on human norms. For example, is it normal for human girls to practice kissing with their sisters, or propositioning someone they've just met for similar games in the hopes of picking up some new tricks from them?"

Anitra snickered, and glanced over at the growing knot of mermaids with brightly-colored hair that was Ariel and her impressive array of sisters. "No, I don't think it is, on either count, since you ask... and I think it would be even less so if human girls were capable of reaching orgasm from such oral practice." She then archly raised an eyebrow at Direza. "So, anything you'd like to tell me, pet?" The drow squirmed for a moment, before finally speaking up. "Well... I figured it'd be in the interest of... diplomatic relations? I would have asked your permission, Mistress, but..."

Chuckling, she gave the submissive elf-girl a pat on the head. "But I wasn't there, so you had to act on your own best judgment. There's nothing wrong with that - much as you might wish it were otherwise, we aren't telepathically linked, after all! And I think you chose correctly, too. Like you said, we need to make a good impression! So, for the duration of our stay here, however long that may be, consider yourself under orders to put your extensive oral skills at the disposal of anyone who expresses curiosity about drylander kissing-techniques. And make sure you give a good accounting of yourself! Bringing every partner to at least one orgasm should be considered the bare minimum - you're flying the flag of the Dragon Utopia, after all!"

Direza nodded eagerly along to these commands, eyes bright as she licked her lips - despite it being fairly impossible for them to go dry down here. Melora, meanwhile, grinned again. "Oh, there's no worries on that account, in my private opinion. They were very_impressed with her earlier - that first mermaid must've cum at least three times in as many minutes..." Raising an eyebrow, Anitra nodded with a mock-serious expression. "Well, now! In that case, I expect she'll be given _plenty of chances to repeat the performance..."

"...what about you, though, Melora? No interest in your cute little muzzle?" She asked, then, mostly out of curiosity. Melora snorted and briefly touched the aforementioned muzzle. It was undeniably 'little', if one compared it to the snout of a horse, though 'cute' of course was subjective. "Oh, plenty. I told them that I was in a devoted relationship, however, and did not share kisses so freely - but that I would happily be at the disposal of anyone interested in learning about 'genitalia', of whichever type. If you feel this was in error, Lady Anitra, I will of course adjust my stance - no doubt, Ariel's sisters would be happy to hear that I'd changed my mind..."

Anitra nodded and made a dismissive gesture. "It's fine, I'm sure - better that Direza be our kissing-ambassador, anyway. I believe your experience in the field is a touch more limited anyway..." Her relationship with Melora was, in situations like these, a touch complicated. Certainly, the easygoing horse-girl would never hesitate to obey a direct order from Anitra - but this was because she knew that any such order inevitably would be backed by Blake. Nor would the devoted mare hesitate to sacrifice her own life to protect Anitra's - but, again, this was because she knew how greatly Blake loved her, and that she'd ultimately be giving her life in his_service. So while Direza stressed about how best to please her Mistress, Melora was perfectly happy to just go with her own best judgment - albeit always with an eye towards what _Blake would want, which usually just boiled down to keeping Anitra safe and happy.

They were called to the table in what turned out to be an almost disappointingly normal dining-hall. Apparently the merfolk - at least, the highborn kind - enjoyed eating in pretty much the same way humans did: Seated along the sides of a long table, which rested mundanely on the mostly-flat floor, probably for the convenience of the crustacean serving-crew. The only real difference was that the seats were wider and built lower to the ground. They proved to be fairly comfortable for the dryland visitors too, once they figured out how to just pretend their legs were a tail...

The feast, fortunately, was largely a formality - Triton had reassured her of as much when they made their way to the banquet-hall together. The guests were welcome to eat, but not expected to - which was rather fortunate considering that, to the great surprise of exactly none of them, the merfolk cuisine heavily figured raw fish, raw shellfish, and various seaweed-based dishes. Melora actually chowed down on some of the later and judged them "Very exotic, not bad at all!" But even she didn't have much of an appetite - they had, after all, eaten breakfast with an eye towards lasting through most of the day without further nourishment.

Anitra was seriously considering trying at least a small morsel of the desert, which looked absolutely delicious - restrained mostly by the fact that she hadn't the faintest idea what it actually_was_. It looked like some kind of... jelly? With some kind of cream? It couldn't actually be made from jellyfish, could it? Oh, who was she kidding, it totally could and probably was. What the final conclusion of this duel between her eyes and her brains would have been remains uncertain, however, since the banquet was interrupted at this point.

A small, red crab emerged from one of the entrances and bubbled down the length of the table with remarkable speed, past the various merfolk nobles and members of the royal household (which mostly meant Triton's various concubines and daughters - why, exactly, he seemed to have no sons was one thing she hadn't gotten around to asking him) to the king himself. Several eyes followed the small red critter, and many of those seated near the king stiffened as the crab emitted a string of strange, bubbly sounds. Anitra had never heard a crab make any kind of sound before, but based on the reactions - particularly the metaphorical thundercloud that had suddenly covered Triton's face - she gathered that this was their equivalent of speech, and the merfolk could clearly understand it just fine. They did not, however, welcome the news - that much was _also_clear.

King Triton, (demi)God of the Seas, rose from his seat with all the furious inevitability of a tidal-wave rearing over a oceanside city. "I knew it!" he declared, reaching out his right hand. The golden bracer that surrounded his wrist glowed, and with a flash his trident appeared in his hand. "I should've dealt with that vile sea-witch centuries ago, but by the darkest depths, this time she has gone too far!" The small, red crab, meanwhile, was clinging to the king's wildly-swaying beard, making more bubbly noises. Ariel, who had been seated at her father's right hand - with Anitra on his left, currently looking up at the clearly-furious demigod with some consternation - rose from her own chair to wrap her arms around the trident-wielding arm. "Please, daddy, don't!" she cried. "Listen to Sebastian!"

For a moment, he struggled half-heartedly against her grip even as the crab clinging to his beard continue to bubble and blurb. Then he seemed to master himself, and took a deep breath before, with a quick wave of his hand, making the trident disappear once again. "Fine. You are right. No cause to make a scene in front of our guests. This can be dealt with... later." His voice sounded like he was chewing broken glass as he sank back down to his seat, shaking himself like an angry dog. As Ariel and the crab alike relinquished their respective grips on him, he gave Anitra an awkwardly apologetic nod. "My apologies for this little... scene. I just received some disturbing news, is all." Then he speared a piece of octopus-tentacle from one of the nearby plates with quite a bit more violence than the dish seemed to have deserved, and began to chew it - thoroughly.

Ariel's large eyes were still filled with worry, and Anitra found herself suddenly wishing she spoke crab. What was this about a 'sea-witch', and what had gotten Triton, who'd seemed so remarkably even-tempered until then, into such a tizzy? She didn't really know Ariel well enough to pull off the same kind of nonverbal communication she routinely shared with Direza and Melora, but she managed to catch the young mermaid's eyes and put an even mix of inquisitiveness and concern into her own. Hopefully, the message came across.

The king's violent outburst had managed to more or less kill the conversation around the table, leaving the various guests to eat their desert in silence - which, fortuitously enough, meant that the dishes were emptied quite a bit faster than they normally might have been. Once he had ascertained that everyone had finished, Triton once again rose from his seat, curtly thanked them all for coming and restated his gratitude towards Anitra, Direza and Melora, before declaring that 'matters of state' required his attention and sailing majestically away.

As the banquet-hall cleared out, the various guests forming into small, mobile knots of quiet gossip, Anitra almost immediately found herself pulled aside into a discreet corner by Ariel - just as she'd hoped. "Care to fill me in on what's going on?" She immediately asked, before the mermaid could even open her mouth. "I didn't exactly catch what that crab was going on about." The young redhead blinked in confusion, then seemingly reminded herself that drylanders could not, in fact, understand the language of ocean-life like she could. "Oh... it was about the shark-attack yesterday, actually. I don't suppose you'd know, but sharks aren't normally that aggressive! These days, they rarely prey on merfolk at all, really."

Anitra nodded, gesturing for Ariel to continue. She didn't really feel like correcting the girl and informing her that yes, she had in fact noticed that the sharks yesterday had been behaving in a thoroughly aberrant manner. It was probably best, she decided, to let the girl assume that she was ignorant about all things undersea - that way, she was less likely to assume that she knew something very important that she most definitely did not. "So there was some foul play involved, then?" she asked when Ariel hesitated to proceed.

"Well... maybe..." she rather lamely admitted, wringing her hands. "Sebastian has been talking to the dolphins who were in the fight. Some of them claimed to recognize a couple of the sharks - particularly the big one. They... said that they'd seen them swimming around Ursula's cavern recently, even though there isn't much prey to be had there. So of course, daddy immediately decided that they all had to have been sent by Ursula to kill me! He's probably getting his soldiers ready even now, so that he can go punish her as soon as you've left. He doesn't want to make a spectacle in front of visitors."

A bubbling noise caused Anitra to turn her head a bit and spot a small, shiny red shape that had intruded on their private conversation. She still couldn't exactly tell all these animals apart, but she felt fairly confident that this was 'Sebastian' - apparently some sort of servant or adjutant of Triton's. Perhaps the old demigod had used his power to grant the small crustacean higher intelligence? Regardless, she still couldn't understand the sounds he was producing, and had to again look to Ariel for a translation. The mermaid proved a touch reluctant, there, wincing at something the crab was saying, before finally passing it on.

"Sebastian is saying that daddy has pretty good reasons for thinking Ursula might be targeting me, because... well... she has before. But not like that! She's never tried to kill me, Sebastian!" This bit of editorializing was directed at the crab who... possibly reacted with begrudging acknowledgment of the point? It was rather hard to read the expression and body-language if a tiny crab, of all things. Taking a much-needed breath, Ariel rapidly explained. "She's offered to help me before - with her magic. She said she could let me walk on land if I wanted to! But daddy and Sebastian both say that she was just trying to trick me, to use me against daddy. Daddy thinks she wants to steal his power and his throne."

'Sebastian' burbled. Whatever he said, Ariel didn't seem to agree. "She was offering me powerful magic! Of course there'd be a... price, right? That's how the world works, at least for people who aren't royalty. I mean... sure, she was asking for some strange things, but... I can't expect her to just help me for free, can I?" Based on the context, Anitra felt fairly sure that she had at least a vague idea what the crab's interjection had consisted of - probably something along the lines of "Honest traders don't offer that kind of sordid deal!" Had this supposed 'sea-witch' been bargaining for souls? Or maybe firstborns? That was a well-worn old saw indeed...

Turning her huge, devastatingly blue eyes back on Anitra, she floated even closer - hands grasped in front of her seashell-covered chest. This, the DragonRider realized belatedly, was the troublesome side of being recognized as a 'hero': People just automatically expected you to help them with all their other problems, too. "Please... I know you've already done a lot for me, but I don't know who else to ask... could you go talk to Ursula, and find out what's going on? If daddy goes, he'll definitely stab first and not ask any questions... and if I go, he'll panic and do the same, only with more stabbing."

Anitra gave it some thought, while the crab bubbled. Once again reluctant, Ariel nonetheless translated - apparently at the crab's own insistence. "Oh... and Sebastian thinks that the whole thing is a trap. That Ursula figured that an attack on me would make daddy come running recklessly into her lair, and that she's then going to somehow trap him and steal his power. Which is also a good reason to get there first, but I really think everybody's being terribly unfair to that poor old woman!" Anitra shot the crab a look of respect - that was some pretty sound tactical thinking - and she thought he... might be looking back at her pleadingly? Maybe? Kind of hard to tell what with the... eyestalks.

With a sigh, Anitra nodded her assent. Nevermind the intoxicating sensation of being regarded as a 'hero', there were practical considerations at work here too. Triton had proven to be a rather reasonable fellow, and was shaping up to be a potential trading-partner and useful source of extremely esoteric information. If Sebastian was right, and this 'sea-witch' wound up usurping him, that all came crashing down. And if Ariel was right, then the king was about to head out to execute an innocent woman based on some pretty damn circumstantial evidence - something Anitra felt compelled to prevent on general principle.

"Look... I don't mind helping, but I'm not sure exactly what you expect me to_do..." Anitra commented even as Ariel's eyes glowed with happiness just at her basic agreement. "Well... just talk to her?" was the mermaid's hesitant reply. "Try to find out why those sharks were floating around her cavern in the first place. Maybe if _you brought back some evidence, daddy would listen - he seems to respect you. And if you can't... at least warn her that daddy is coming. Maybe she could hide somewhere until he's calmed down some?"

Not a terrible plan, really, as far as it went... and though Anitra had a feeling things weren't likely to work that smoothly, she nodded again. "I guess I'll give it a try. I'll grab Melora and Direza and head to... where exactly is this 'sea-witch', anyway? I gather she lives in a cavern somewhere?" Ariel bit her lip, and seemed to think intensely for a moment. Then she brightened, and grabbed the colorful, tropical fish that had been floating quietly by her side since the banquet broke up. "I know! Flounder will show you the way! I'll cover for you in the meantime - I'll... umm... I'll tell daddy I'm showing you around the city! That should buy you enough time."

Anitra glanced skeptically at the fish, whose bulging-eyed expression failed to inspire much confidence in its intelligence. The way it immediately darted behind Ariel to hide in her long, flowing locks didn't help either. Ariel, however, pulled it back out and wagged a finger at it while holding it by the tail. "Flounder! That's hardly polite. I know you don't like Ursula, but you're the only one who can do this... it's not like you need to go inside her cavern or anything, okay? Just show these nice people the way there, and then wait for them nearby so you can guide them back to me afterwards." Slowly, hesitantly, the fish nodded, and swam over to hover at Anitra's shoulder, apparently ready to play guide. With a sigh, she shrugged. Being guided to a sea-witch's cavern by a fish? All in a day's work.

She then had to search around for her two companions for a bit - neither were in the banquet-hall anymore. They hadn't gone far, though - following the sound of giggles and moans, she located them both in some of the neighboring chambers, surrounded by a large gaggle of mermaids... surely they couldn't all be Triton's daughters? Well, he'd apparently had at least a couple thousand years to work with, and assuming a half-share of demigod-blood still provided an increased lifespan... who knew?

Regardless of their parentage, these mermaids seemed just as curious about drylanders as Ariel had been - and just as adventurous. Direza seemed deep in her 'ambassadorial duties', being passed from the arms of one mermaid to the next, barely able to take a breath between each before her lips were glued to yet another shapely mouth. Having clearly taken Anitra's orders to heart, the water around her was filled with bubbles from mermaid-tails thrashing about in the throes of pleasure. Melora, meanwhile, had found her own offer taken up as well - and had donned the Ring of Priap, presumably on request. Half a dozen mermaids were floating around her hard rod, caressing it with their lips and tongues, occasionally emitting appreciative moans. "It's so... hard, and yet soft, and smooth, and warm..." one of them commented gushingly before attempting - and failing - to wrap her lips around the full circumference of Melora's flared cockhead.

She watched for a moment, before reminding herself that she was somewhat on the clock and loudly clearing her throat. "Sorry to break up the festivities, girls, but Ariel's taking us on a guided tour of the city..." A chorus of 'Awwww...'s answered her, but Direza and Melora immediately complied, extricating themselves from their admirers - an easier task for Melora, who simply removed the Ring of Priap from her finger, causing the subject of the mermaids' fascination to vanish into thin air... or, thin seawater, as it were. Direza found it a touch harder to shake off the hungry embraces of the fish-tailed girls swirling around her, but with her mistress waiting impatiently before her, she was more than a little motivated. As several hands tried to hold her back, she finally grimaced and put her own hand on the enchanted symbol hanging from her neck. A brief, whispered prayer, and the mermaids were whirling backwards through the water with surprised cries, as if thrown by an invisible force.

Chuckling, Anitra wagged a finger at the mermaids as they straightened up in the water again, eyes wide. "You all should know better. Nobody likes a clingy girl." With that final salvo, she swam for the exit flanked by Melora and Direza. Ariel's fishy pet had hovered nervously outside the door, waiting for them, and now ranged out in front, colorful tail working furiously as it led them through the labyrinthine palace. Soon, they emerged from one of the many portals that lined its spires, and got to once again take in the sight of New Atlantica as a whole - a pearl, gleaming against the backdrop of the dark seafloor.

The fish, however, was soon leading them well clear of that welcoming glow - into darker, more desolate reaches of the ocean-trench that harbored the bright city. Along the way, Anitra took the time to pull out her hourglass and check how much time they actually had left. The plan was to be back on shore by nightfall at latest. They'd set out early, and reached New Atlantica before noon. The meeting with Triton and the subsequent banquet had eaten up a fair bit of time, so somewhere up above the waves the sun would have passed its apex and begun its slow journey back towards the horizon. Considering that it'd likely take just as long to swim back as the outwards leg - something that, itself, assumed that they'd be able to obtain dolphin-support for that journey - they really didn't have a lot of time to work with. Hopefully, it the 'sea-witch' wasn't _too_far away...

It did not seem that she was. A subtle change was affecting the seafloor, and sensing the disquiet of her companions - not to mention the highly-visible shivers running through their piscine guide - Anitra knew she wasn't the only one who'd noticed. They weren't seeing a lot of fish anymore - though mollusks and jellyfish still roved - and the seaweed and coral growths were becoming increasingly strange and twisted. It reminded her of the kind of magical contamination you sometimes saw near academies of magic, nature twisted by the pollution of countless failed alchemy-experiments... or perhaps a milder version of the Blasted Lands.

If nothing else, this told Anitra that the 'sea-witch' Ursula wasn't just some misunderstood wise-woman - she clearly had some real magic at her disposal. Reason enough to give Blake a heads-up by way of telepathy. The connection was vague - they were close to the limits of their range - but she could still feel his concern when she explained the situation. I don't like it. You were just supposed to relax and enjoy yourself as an undersea tourist... not swim directly into the lair of a potentially-dangerous magic-wielder.You're in no condition to be getting into fights!

She did what she could to calm him, of course, for all that she, too, had to wonder if this was really a good idea. Even without my armor, I have little to fear from magic. I still have BlackFire with me too, remember? And Direza's got all her divine power on hand, with no baby-belly to get in her way. Heck, even if this 'witch' proves to be unreasonably belligerent, all we'll really need to do is beat a hasty retreat and let Triton deal with her... This, at last, made Blake reluctantly agree - though she had to outright promise him that she wouldn't do anything except escape if the meeting turned to conflict. I'll take a swing out over the area you're in... he rumbled threateningly. I've got a couple of spells that should be able to penetrate all the way to the seabed if necessary. Just say the word and give me a target...

Finally, they reached their goal. A cave-opening emerged from the seabed, surrounded by some particularly twisted and mutated undersea flora, and there was no savory sea-life to be seen - save for their colorful guide who, after waving its fins at the dark entrance for a moment, turned and fled with remarkable speed for its rather chubby body. Direza, who had clearly been thinking along the same lines as Anitra, shuddered at the sight of the altered seaweed. "This is definitely a witch's den..." she commented, one hand on her foci. "Please be careful, Mistress. Witchcraft is nothing to sneeze at..."

Something about the way she said it made Anitra hesitate. "Witchcraft, specifically? I always figured that 'witch' was just a word people used to describe female magic-users they disapproved of..." She felt a touch awkward displaying such apparent ignorance before her ardent submissive, but Melora blessedly softened the impact by nodding along. "Me too... is it really a unique kind of magic?" Much like when they'd started planning this whole affair in the first place, they were once again reminded that Direza, as the former High Priestess of Lolth, commanded a centuries-long education in all manners of dark and esoteric arts, including many facets of the Arcane.

She did not, however, seem particularly perturbed about her beloved mistress - or good friend - lacking these same insights, and instead quickly explained. "It is, somewhat. Or... more like a unique blend of magecraft and alchemy. It is in somewhat common usage among the Drow - partially because it seems to be an art that only women can command, for some reason, which... gels well with their matriarchal society." Nodding, Anitra quickly moved the subject along - she knew well how depressing it was for Direza to discuss her erstwhile peers. "Magecraft and alchemy... that's not that unusual a combo, is it? They both use reagents, so from what I've seen about the Utopia, it's pretty common to combine the two studies..."

Direza nodded, a shade of gratitude in her eyes as she recognized Anitra's diplomatic focusing of the conversation. "That's true - but generally, the two subjects are simply considered as... two independent subjects, that can simply be combined with some ease due to some shared traits and requiring much the same ingredients. Witchcraft genuinely fuses them. A witch can employ alchemy to craft a custom-made reagent for a specific spell, which - among other things - enables her to apply the effects of an alchemical concoction to the spell's target. Thus, breaking the regular rules governing arcane magic's limitations..."

This made Anitra whistle quietly - or at least, she tried to. It proved pretty hard to whistle underwater, and mostly just produced a string of bubbles. "I remember this part. Bodily alterations and such. Wait... so that's why witches are so popularly said to turn their enemies into frogs or slugs or whatever?" Direza nodded quickly, casting another nervous glance towards the looming cave-mouth of the nearby witch's den. "Indeed. A wizard might be able to convince you that you were a frog with mind-magic, and make you _look_like one with illusions... and an alchemist could turn you _into_one if he managed to get the right potion into your body either through imbibing or through something like a poisoned dart. But only a witch can literally just wave her hand at someone and transform his entire body with a spell."

Anitra nodded slowly, then knitted her brow. "Okay, that sounds REALLY useful, so why haven't I seen any witches around the Utopia?" Direza could only shrug at this. "Presumably because none have been invited. The... regular schools of magic tend to dislike them. They offend their sense of neatness. The methods they employ cannot be easily explained or codified. Theoretically, using an alchemically-crafted potion as a spell-reagent should be nearly impossible - a sufficiently skilled mage could do it, but he'd need to employ incredible precision in the crafting of the potion, and run through several pages of complex calculations in order to get the spell right. Every time. Witches just... do it, apparently using some kind of intuitive understanding of their ingredients."

Gesturing towards the desolation around them, she threw in a half-smile. "Also, witches tend to live quite... isolated. People usually avoid them unless desperate. Since they don't have an official education - at best, they may have apprenticed with an older witch for some time - they lack the kind of connections that might normally get them an invitation to the Utopia. So, even if the dragons know about Witchcraft in the first place, which is hardly a given since it tends to be left out of most books about magic - I'm sure you can guess why - they likely don't know how to find any..."

"Interesting..." Anitra commented thoughtfully, narrowing her eyes. A lot depended on what kind of reception they'd get when they finally stopped floating about here, like recalcitrant jellyfish, and entered the cave... but she now knew what kind of resolution she'd be aiming for. "Regardless, seeing as I'm resistant to both alchemical potions and magic, I shouldn't have too much to worry about. You two might want to stay behind me for the most part. As long as they're spells, I don't think BlackFire cares much what kind of caster is behind them, either..." She patted the hilt of the sword strapped to her back even as the other two women shook their heads in unison.

"Master Blake would never forgive me if I let you take the lead...." Melora declared firmly. "If nothing else, it's entirely possible that there are purely mundane traps in there. Direza was, if anything, even more ardent. "Please, let me take the lead, Mistress! I am the only one here who remains... unimpeded, and I'll confidently pit my own, divine magic against any kind of witchcraft!" Sighing, Anitra rubbed her face. Their protests were... not unexpected, though she was a bit astounded that Direza would dare to so directly contradict her dear 'mistress'. She didn't have the heart to blame her for it, though... all things considered.

"Fine, then. We go in shoulder to shoulder. The entrance is wide enough for it!" She finally said, her voice making it clear that this was as much of a compromise as she was in the mood for. It was not that she could really object to their obvious willingness to put themselves between her and any possible harm - she was just tired of being coddled. Sure, she was increasingly pregnant, completely unarmored, and in an unfamiliar element - but she was still a_DragonRider_, dammit! She could look after herself, and BlackFire's hilt still felt comfortingly familiar in her grip.

And so, three abreast, they swam into the dark cave-opening. The passage beyond continued steadily down, into the very bedrock of the continental shelf. It was less dark than they'd expected, not that they'd have any trouble seeing regardless - with even Melora's normally-limited eyes being supplemented by the enchantments of her diving-bracelet. Frankly, relying on the various kinds of enhanced vision available to them would have been preferable to the light-source that was present... patches of strange, twitching fungus, growing in beds along the side of the cavern, giving off a sickly, green glow. Anitra imagined that she could almost hear the fungus moan, and not in a sexy way either...

Still, none of them were liable to be deterred by a creepy cavern. Deeper and deeper they went, the path twisting and winding like the inside of a great conch-shell. Anitra had sword in hand, Direza her holy symbol tightly-gripped and a prayer on her tongue, while poor Melora could do nothing more than tighten her (admittedly significant) muscles. She was probably wishing that she'd settled on a lighter, more portable weapon, Anitra thought... or maybe she was just thinking about how the unarmed battle-techniques she'd mastered could be applied to the semi-weightless conditions of undersea combat? Either way, the mare seemed quite focused...

Ahead, the tunnel seemed to open up into a wider cavern, but the lights did not extend that far. There were signs of movement in the murk... but before Anitra's sharp eyes could make out what it was, something flashed in front of her. Symbols etched into the walls of the tunnel had started to glow, creating a wall of shimmering light in front of her. "A trap. Not unexpected." Direza declared, looking over her shoulder. Anitra followed her eyes, and sure enough, a second wall of light had popped up right behind them, effectively trapping them in a short segment of the tunnel.

A chuckle echoed from the cavern ahead, closely followed by a broad shadow. The creature that now swam into view did not resemble any of the merfolk they'd seen so far - for starters, rather than a fish-tail, this one had the lower body of an octopus, sporting a set of flailing, night-dark tentacles. The skin above was a slightly purple shade of gray rather than the more ordinary pinkish coloration that the other merfolk had shown, too, an as her face emerged into the light, so did a mop of snow-white hair. That was not to say that they were facing an ancient, withered crone, though, as Anitra had halfway expected based on all the talk of 'witches' - rather, this mermaid, if that was the right word, resembled a woman in her thirties or forties. She was heavily built, whether as a trait of her species or just plain old obesity, and wore what had to be deliberately-layered and rather flamboyant makeup.

"Well, well, well... an unannounced visitor, is it?" She was laughing, painted lips split in a wide, villainous smile... until she got a good look, and her expression shifted into a scowl. "Wait - who on the seafloor are you? Humans? No, not quite..." Her eyes darted from Direza to Melora, while Anitra sighed and ran a hand down her face. "I'm getting a bit tired of this... there ARE other creatures on the surface than humans, you know!" She declared, and then quickly pointed left and right. "Drow Elf. Equus. And I'm a half-dragon. Well, one-third-dragon, really, but who's counting?"

With a skeptical expression, the sea-which - it had to be her - put her hands on her octopoid hips. "I see. And just what are YOU doing all the way down here, barging into my living-room without an appointment?" Holding up a finger, Anitra tightened her other hand's grip on her sword, and grinned. "Ah, I'll tell you in just a moment... I just need to establish something first." Floating down a bit, she put the tip of BlackFire against the strange, glowing symbols etched into the bottom of the tunnel. Ursula snorted dismissively. "You're wasting your time, darling... I made those to stand up to... _ WHAT _?!" The last bit was an exclamation of anger and surprise as Anitra simply ran BlackFire's tip across the runes, causing them to immediately wink out - followed by the glowing wall before them disappearing like a popped bubble.

As Anitra advanced, sword in hand and a confident smile on her face, flanked by Direza and Melora, the sea-witch hissed and darted back into the cavern behind her with far more speed and agility than one would've expected from her rather dumpy body. As they pursued her, they emerged into what was clearly a magical workshop - filled with cabinets and drawers, tubes and flasks, all built around the centerpiece: A vast cauldron, currently emitting a nauseatingly pink light. Hovering above it was Ursula herself and a variety of bottles - inside which strange things squirmed and bubbled - grasped in several of her tentacles... while her eyes glared, narrow and intent.

Violence hovered in the air... or, rather, water. Somewhere above, Blake - who was quite a bit closer now than he had been before - apparently sensed her quickening pulse. Ready to lay down the law on your word... He declared telepathically, and she could feel his eagerness to do terrible violence on anyone who threatened his pregnant lover. Taking a deep breath of refreshing seawater, however, Anitra noted that however guarded, the sea-witch had not yet begun throwing the various reagents into her cauldron. She was ready, but not actually cooking up dread magics yet. With a sigh, Anitra put her sword back in the sheath on her back and held up her hands placatingly. "Easy there, Ursula... I just wanted to make it clear that we are not your prisoners. We talk as equals - or not at all."

Eyes narrow and thoughtful, the sea-witch seemed to relax just a notch too. Her tentacles still gripped the various reagents, but they weren't flailing and shifting so much anymore. "Hrmph. And you know my name too... ordinarily, I would suspect you of being sent by Triton, but if he's started hiring surface-dwelling mercenaries to do his dirty-work, I'll eat my own tentacles!" There was real venom in her otherwise surprisingly-melodic, if rather throaty, voice when she mentioned Triton's name - enough to make it obvious to Anitra that this wasn't just a simple matter of a power-hungry individual targeting the nearest throne. This was... personal somehow.

Anitra nodded, and flashed a sarcastic smile. "You'd be right about that. In fact, we were sent by none other than his darling daughter Ariel, to sort out this 'misunderstanding' and stop her 'daddy' from attacking some poor, innocent woman who really isn't nearly as bad as everyone says..." This made Ursula break out into an outright fit of laughter as she floated down to drape herself around her cauldron instead of hovering menacingly above it. "Oh, that sweet, sweet girl really is a treasure..." the sea-which giggled, wiping her eyes. "No wonder Triton loves her so much. She's a right chip off the old block when it comes to turning your back on reality!"

Then her face hardened. "YOU do not seem so naive, though... so I rather doubt my time would be well spent trying to argue my innocence. So I suppose the question becomes, why are _you_involving yourself in merfolk politics, and... just what do you hope to gain, darling? Because I might have a few things to offer myself..." The reagents she'd previously held menacingly at the ready, she now shook in front of them like a fisherman bobbing a lure in front of a hungry fish. Anitra grinned. She was getting a pretty solid impression of what made this woman tick. Maybe things would work out for the best after all...

Then she sighed and shook her head. "Let me ask you something first, if you don't mind... would you say that a fearless man is also a courageous one?" Ursula blinked dumbly, face twisting into a confused grimace - then she darted up closer with a flick of her tentacles. "What, you came all the way here to discuss philosophy with me?" She asked, eyebrow raised in disbelief. Anitra just waved her hand dismissively. "Please, humor me. Or is it too hard a question for the infamous sea-witch?" Harrumphing, the octopoid mermaid floated a bit backwards and crossed her arms. "Oh, that's how it is, is it? Fine, I'll play along for a bit. No, I would not call a fearless man courageous - courage is doing something despite being afraid. If you feel no fear in the first place, you are just reckless."

Anitra nodded, smile widening. "I agree. So, a follow-up question, then: Suppose a man has a strong conscience, and was raised with a strict moral code. He knows right from wrong at a glance, and anytime he does something the least bit wrong, he is assailed by terrible pangs of guilt and pursued by paranoid fear that everyone knows of his vile deeds. Thus, he lives a virtuous life throughout, always doing right and never doing wrong. Is he a good man?" Ursula sighed, and ran a hand through her rather short mop of white hair. "You really DO want to talk philosophy, huh? Hrm." Thoughtful, she rubbed her chops, and then finally shook her head. "I suppose the answer's no. That man would just be acting on his nature - doing the only thing it will allow him to. Being evil is not really an option for him, so he never choose to be good - hence, he is not. Now where the sea-devil are you going with this?"

Grinning, Anitra swam up closer to the sea-witch, whose tentacles twitched only slightly as this move. "My point, darling, is that you and I are a lot alike. You're trying to steal Triton's throne and power, and using his innocent daughter as a pawn in your game. I doubt you feel bad about it, either. Haven't lost a moment of sleep, have you? Well, I'm the same way..." Ursula did not immediately answer, merely pointing a skeptical look at Anitra, who held out an open hand and spoke with more passion than she'd thought she really had in her. "Listen to me. I used to hurt a lot of people. I killed, I raped, I stole, and I never felt the least pang of conscience about any of it. I simply pursued my own goals single-mindedly, and whoever got in my way got trampled under. I took whatever I wanted, casually destroying others for my own amusement. And even now... remembering this brings me no pain."

Eyes sharpening, voice intent, she placed her hand on her chest. "But eventually, I realized... the fact that I feel no compunctions about doing evil is no excuse. I still have the capacity to do good. To be a hero. Simply by choosing it. I can help people, or at least reach my goals without hurting others in the process..." sighing, she thought back and shook her head. "And it's not just about that warm-and-fuzzy feeling you get when people look at you with admiration instead of fear, calling you a hero and thinking the world of you. Take it from me - the evil that you do always comes back to haunt you, sooner or later. Those you wrong seek revenge, those you kill will have loved ones who do the same. But if you help people... they'll remember you fondly, and might help you when you need it the most."

Snorting, Ursula propelled herself backwards, putting some distance between herself and Anitra. "So what's your point?" She asked, voice thick with sarcasm. "Because I can do evil, I also have the ability to choose good! So all I have to do is give up on my revenge and turn myself into a lovely little sea-angel, and then suddenly everyone in Atlantica will love me and welcome me back with open arms? Hah. Why don't you pull the other one, sister - it's got bells on it." Raising an eyebrow at this not-entirely-unexpected reaction, Anitra sighed and shook her head. "Just what did Triton do to tick you off so badly, anyway?" She was getting a bit curious by now, and besides, maybe if she knew what had started it all.

Ursula seemed to pause, floating in the water for a moment. Then she shrugged. "Looking to hear my sob-story, are you? Well, fine, whatever gets you out of my hair... I'm going to need to redo those runes you just broke before the bearded wonder gets here, after all!" Anitra just smiled and waited. Give people a chance to talk about themselves - and especially about their grievances - and they'll usually do so with great enthusiasm. Apparently, this rule held true as much under the sea as above it. Feeling increasingly confident that, at the very least, the sea-witch would not try to prevent them from leaving if she ultimately failed to talk some sense into her, she briefly directed a thought upwards. _If you're still circling up there, you can stop now - head back to shore and rest your wings, love. It doesn't seem like we'll come to blows down here._A mental grunt - perhaps dissatisfaction that he hadn't had the opportunity to show off his strength - was the only reply, followed by the sense of his presence beginning to slowly decline.

Meanwhile, leaning on her cauldron with both elbows, Ursula affected a seductive mien as she started to tell her story. "Now, you might find this hard to believe, but Triton and me, we used to be quite the item! I was younger, then, of course... and so was he. Oh, the things_we got up to could _redden your ears, girlie! You surface-dwellers may think we merfolk have been short-changed, what with not having those fancy genitals you're all waving about, but we make do, believe you me... and in many creative ways!" Anitra, for her part, rather doubted that any story the sea-witch could tell would actually be able to embarrass her, but the bit about the merfolk finding ways to make the most of what they had?That, she could easily believe...

Ursula sighed, and a scowl began to sneak up on her face as she continued. "Now, even back then, he was rather... embarrassed about it, I suppose. Worried about the things we did getting out, about his dear subjects losing respect for him if they learned what kind of perversions he enjoyed in the bedroom. Men, am I right sisters? Always so concerned about their oh-so-fragile self-images..." She glanced around at the three women who floated nearby, causing them to exchange half-amused glances. Two of them had, after all, fallen in love with a dragon whose strongest feature was his complete and unshakable self-confidence - while the last had instead fallen for a woman. Still, it was not as if any of them hadn't seen plenty of examples of the kind of thing she was talking about...

The grimace on the sea-witch's face was steadily deepening, meanwhile. "I suppose I must shoulder some of the blame for not realizing just how much it worried him..." she continued. "But only a_tiny_ bit. It wasn't as if it ever impacted his... enthusiasm_in the bedroom, after all!" A coarse laugh turned into another scowl. "Then, though... he started talking about expanding things. Adding more 'concubines'. Having _kids. Pah. I never cared for kids, you know - terrible, noisy little monsters! Though I'm sure yours will be just wonderful, darlings!" The last bit was delivered with an insincere smile towards Anitra and Melora, both of whom had been giving her some rather sharp looks - showing that she, at least, was familiar enough with the surface-world to recognize pregnancy when she saw it.

Dismissing that minor faux pas with a wave, she finally reached the meat of her little story with an increasingly thunderous scowl. "Well, I wasn't having it. And I told him in no uncertain terms! If he wanted to bring in a bevvy of vapid young things, that was his business - but he'd be doing it without me on his arm! Of course he reassured me that I'd always be his first - offered to make me his official queen, even! But even then, I knew better. Hand a boy a shiny new toy, and he'll soon forget his battered old favorites." A cutting motion of her hand demonstrated the finality of the decision she'd made back then. "I turned him down flat, and gave him a final ultimatum. If he really wanted to go ahead with it, I was leaving - and I reminded him that none of them would be able to make him feel the way I had..."

Anitra winced. She could already see where this was going. "That might_not have been the best way to put it..." she said cautiously, causing Ursula to sneer back at her. "Well, of _course_not. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, isn't it? But I was young and foolish and in love. It hadn't occurred to me that he'd think I was trying to _blackmail him or anything! I would've left, sure enough, but it wasn't as if I was going to tell everyone about his little perversions just out of sheer pettiness!"

Sighing, she sank down over her cauldron again, head bowed so that her hair nearly dipped into the strangely-glowing, bubbly substance that filled it. "Well, you probably guessed how well that went over. Before I could swim off, he threw me out - banished me from Atlantica altogether, actually. Made me an outcast, and cooked up some ridiculous story about me trying to bewitch him and steal his throne just to make sure nobody would listen to anything I said. He even tried to take back the immortality he'd once given me... though, hah, some gifts are harder to reclaim than others! I have my own little tricks, as he soon learned..."

Nodding, Anitra thoughtfully stroked her chin. A few missing pieces were beginning to fall into place. From the sound of it, Ursula had to be well over a thousand years old, maybe close to two thousand - she'd have to have been around back when Triton first descended from the Divine Realm to lead his people more directly. She'd probably looked a bit different back then, based on what she'd seen of Triton's tastes back in the palace - with his attempts to remove the gift of immortality and her reluctance to part with it presumably resulting in her suffering some amount of age-based decay, if still only a tiny fraction of what she should have felt.

Snorting with anger, Ursula ended her story with a shake of her closed fist. "So there you have it. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, or so they say - and I felt rather scorned indeed! But you know what else they say? 'Don't get mad - get even'. And after some reflection, I decided that the perfect way to get even would be to do exactly what he had accused me of in the first place - taking his throne, his crown, his precious trident and all his oh-so-divine power, leaving him helpless and begging at my tentacles... just like old times." A vicious grin was creasing her broad mouth at this point, and Anitra found herself wondering if that final hint about the exact nature of the 'perversions' that Triton had so feared her leaking to his subjects had been deliberate, or just a slip of the tongue.

Regardless, she could only shake her head and sigh sadly. "You know, I have to agree that Triton acted pretty scummy back then. Hardly a way to treat a lady! But in view of that... don't you think it's about time you got over him?" Blinking, the sea-witch - who had been staring into her cauldron as she made her final declaration, as if dreaming up new ways to put her clearly-significant witchcraft to the task of stealing Triton's power out from under him - looked up at Anitra. "Ex_cuse_ me? I've spent the past millennium or so trying to dethrone him by any means necessary! How much more 'over him' can you get?" She demanded, swaying her hips provocatively as she rose from her cauldron and crossed her arms across her rather ample chest.

Direza and Melora exchanged a knowing glance - they, too, had seen what was going on. But it was up to Anitra to make Ursula see it. "You mentioned a couple of things 'they' like to say earlier..." she began, raising one finger. "Well, here's another: The opposite of love isn't hatred - it's indifference. And you are anything but_indifferent to Triton. All that anger, that lust for vengeance - that's just you carrying a torch for him still. I mean, come on - you followed him all the way from the old Atlantica to _this place, clear across the oceans, like some kind of lovesick puppy!" Suddenly hesitating, Anitra blinked. "...wait, do you use that expression down here too? Carrying a torch, I mean... I guess you don't have torches here..."

Hands on her hips and an acerbic expression on her face, Ursula answered and then some. "First of all, we DO have torches, they just don't use fire. Second of all, unlike Triton and his bevvy of isolationist yes-men, I've spent some time learning about the surface, especially since moving to this highly-convenient location, so I'd know what you meant even if we didn't. And third of all, that's ridiculous. I can't exactly just 'move on' and act like he doesn't exist - he rules the seas. He turned his entire populace against me! Where, exactly, am I supposed to 'move on' to?"

Anitra grinned, seizing on the offered opening in an instant. "How about to a lake? Triton is the God of the Seas, not the God of All Bodies of Water. I could even recommend you one - there's a lake near where I live that's said to have a truly spectacular bottom..." This, at last, gave Ursula pause. Raising a hand to her rather chubby chin, she stroked it thoughtfully. "Hrm... well... I don't know..." she said hesitatingly. "Freshwater is a lot harder on the skin than saltwater, you know..." A rather lame objection, and one Anitra quickly waved aside. "Oh, please. If the mighty sea-witch can't come up with an alchemical solution for_that_ herself, certainly one of the Utopia's learned residents can..."

"The... Utopia, you say?" Ursula asked inquisitively, eyes narrowing, and Anitra happily explained - at some length - what the Utopia was and what it stood for. "And... you want me to move there, and join the brightest minds and most learned mages of the surface-world?" was Ursula's wide-eyed reply. Anitra nodded. "If_you can stay on the straight and narrow and _if you're really as skilled a witch as you seem to think, you would be most welcome, yes. Honestly, an opportunity like this doesn't come along often - turn it down, and you may as well just admit to yourself that you still haven't been able to get over Triton."

The internal conflict was visible on Ursula's face as she seemed to mull it over for a moment. Then her previous confidence seemed to return, and she grinned. "I'll pretend I didn't hear that last bit, girlie... hah. The straight and narrow, well, that might be a fun new thing to try. But as for my skill, oh, you better believe it's the real thing!" Grabbing one of the bottles that had been left leaning against her cauldron during the conversation, she shook it in Anitra's direction. "Maybe a demonstration is in order, hmmm?"

Her intentions were fairly obvious - she was playing for time, trying to make up her mind without seeming uncertain of herself. But, well, that was fine, really... and besides, Anitra was a bit curious about what Witchcraft could really do, after the way Direza had explained it earlier. Magecraft and alchemy, two disciplines that_both_ offered a very real chance of your work blowing up in your face, combined into a harmonious and stable whole by some kind of intuitive understanding of the various reagents? She still didn't know enough about magic to really understand exactly how impressive that was, but she knew enough to be interested. "I wouldn't mind seeing an example of your abilities..." She thus replied with a shrug.

Smiling broadly - clearly eager to focus on her craft for a bit, rather than the dilemma Anitra had placed before her - Ursula reared up in the water and imperiously clapped her hands. "Flotsam! Jetsam! Come give mummy a hand - it's time to brew..." Behind her, she heard Direza and Melora make sudden, surprised exclamations. Spinning around in the water, she watched with a raised eyebrows as two large, nasty-looking moray-eels suddenly emerged from previously-unnoticed crevices in the cavern's wall - right behind them, where they'd have been perfectly positioned for a flesh-tearing ambush if things had turned hostile.

She'd read about morays while studying up on sealife before her trip, and had spotted one from a distance during the undersea sight-seeing of the first day. Nasty creatures, even at the best of time - known for inflicting terrible wounds on divers who incautiously got near the mouth of the narrow tunnels they normally lived in. But these two looked... twisted, even by those standards - their maws seemed elongated and their teeth larger, and there was something off about their beady little eyes. Certainly, the way they were moving to Ursula's command now, hissing at her in whatever fishy language they used, suggested that they had been altered somehow - presumably by her witchcraft. Bigger, nastier, smarter - a handy pair of pets, no doubt, and the sea-witch genuinely seemed to care for them, based on the way she stroked their slimy sides as they swam adoringly up to her.

Apparently acting on some unspoken command from her, the twin morays were now ferrying some of the bottles Ursula had left so carelessly strewn by the side of the cauldron back to the various shelves and cupboards that lined the cavern. Other bottles, each carefully stoppered to prevent its contents from seeping out into the surrounding seawater, were brought to her hands instead even as she stroked her broad chin with one finger, glancing thoughtfully over at her three visitors as she considered the selection of strange, twisted reagents before her.

"You know, it's rather sad, really, the way you storm in here acting like I'm some kind of villain..." she finally intoned, rather melodramatically, with one palm suddenly resting tragically against her forehead. "Talking to me about swimming the straight and narrow... I'll have you know, other than my perfectly justified_vengeance against Triton, why, I've practically been a saint all my days! I have _devoted myself to helping anyone who comes to me, asking my aid... for a price, of course, but still!" To which Anitra could only respond with a rather skeptical "Uh-huh..."

Apparently undeterred by her attitude, Ursula nodded eagerly, leaning over her cauldron with a bottle in each hand and a broad, clearly-fake smile plastered to her face. "Oh yes! Anytime some poor, unfortunate soul comes to my cave, despite all the mean things Triton might have told them about me, I receive them with a smile - and help them to the best of my ability! Of course... you'd have to be_quite_ desperate to seek the aid of the dread sea-witch Ursula!" She broke off for a moment, chuckling - or perhaps rather cackling - at the memory of her past 'customers'.

"I've seen all kinds, loves... merfolk filled with the very_darkest_ desires, the most burning jealousy... seeking love-potions, deadly curses, or even more twisted things..." Her eyes seemed to pan, for some reason, to Direza as she talked - dropping the bottles she held into the cauldron as she continued, rather than simply emptying them. When they reached the bubbling, pink surface of the brew within, the bottles themselves simply disappeared, leaving their content to be swiftly absorbed - and bit by bit, the color of the brew shifted. The 'bottles', Anitra belatedly realized, had not been made from glass at all, but rather had been some kind of magically-shaped and -preserved bubbles. An ingenious solution to the problem of how to pour something while under water...

Direza, meanwhile, twitched under the intensity of Ursula's sudden scrutiny. She and Melora had stayed silent throughout the discussion, simply hovering in the background, ready to aid their mistress if she required it. What had drawn the eyes of the sea-witch to her?"Is there a point you're trying to get at, or are you just reminiscing?" Anitra asked, glancing sideways to make it clear that she hadn't failed to notice where Ursula's attention was focused. The octopoid mermaid chuckled and shrugged, rolling her broad shoulders. "Oh, I think I may have a point or two that I'm getting to... you remember, I hope, that I've taken some time to study the surface-world, hmm?"

"Yes. And?" Anitra asked, somewhat annoyed by now. Ursula's smile only widened. "And unlike Triton and his isolationist lot, I_do_ know that on the surface, it is customary to wear clothes_on most occasions. Especially ones covering those precious _legs_of yours, and what's between them!" Anitra snorted, shaking her head. "It's called 'skinny-dipping', and I think you will find it's not all that unusual among us drylanders..." The sea-witch, however, was not so easily dismissed. "Indeed? Even when meeting_royalty?"

To this, Anitra could only shrug, conceding the victory. Cackling again, Ursula swam up above her cauldron, approaching the three of them and dropping two more bottles into the brew as she moved - delivered to her tentacles by her two loyal morays. "Oh, stop playing games with me, girl... I've seen too many twisted, perverted men and_women not to know them by scent and sight! I know what attraction looks like, and I _definitely know what obsession looks like. That slip of a girl with the black skin and the white hair... she is completely devoted to you, body and soul, is she not? Every glance she throws your way is filled with love, and merely being in your presence sets her loins aflame with desire..."

Somewhat amused at the way Ursula was posing this as some great revelation, Anitra looked over at Direza with a raised eyebrow. "Well, my pet?" she demanded. "Would you say that her assessment is correct?" The drow, not missing a beat, bowed - as well as she was able to, floating there in the water. "On a fundamental level, I deny the possibility that words exist that could fully encompass my feelings for and devotion to you, Mistress..." she declared, smooth as honey and with the weight of conviction behind every word. "However, within those limitations... the Sea-Witch does not speak lies."

Grinning, Anitra returned her gaze to Ursula. "Well, there you have it. Any other questions?" Laughing out loud, the sea-witch floated backwards to hover once again above her cauldron, her tentacles collecting a couple of bottles from the twin morays before glancing briefly at them, giving them a bit of a shake, and then sending them back to the shelves with a click of her tongue. "Just as I thought... a ripe pair of perverts!" she declared, face drawn into a theatrical expression of scandalized shock. Chuckling, Anitra crossed her arms between her free-floating breasts and her bulging belly. "Takes one to know one... is another one of those things 'they' like to say, isn't it?"

Returning Anitra's grin, Ursula pantomimed a coquettish pose, even pulling out a coral-slice fan from somewhere to complete the look. "Oh, I have no idea what you may be talking about, my sweet... no idea whatsoever. But may I safely assume that little miss slim-dark-and-pretty would welcome any opportunity to get... _closer_to her dear 'mistress', hmm?" Almost immediately, Direza - who, other than her earlier proclamation, had floated passively behind Anitra - leaned forwards with an intent, hungry look in her eyes. It was only when she spotted her mistress' raised eyebrow that she winced and pulled back, resuming her stoic mask.

Sighing, Anitra shook her head. If nothing else, Ursula certainly was_skilled at identifying marks - spotting those who held strong, unanswered desires, and offering them exactly what they wanted. That, alone, was dangerous enough. If her witchcraft indeed enabled her to_fulfill wishes that would be impossible even for other spellcasters... then it was all the more intimidating. "Perhaps she would be interested, assuming there were no... hidden costs attached." Anitra answered for Direza, turning her gaze back on Ursula who sighed and shook her head dejectedly. "Everyone's always looking to get something for nothing... well, just this time, I suppose I'll throw in a free sample. A working girl's gotta know how to advertise!"

A few more bottles made their way into the cauldron. It was a creepy thing in the first place, showing indication of being grown more than carved like many other things down here. Cracks could be seen around its base, hinting that it was likely heated by an undersea volcanic vent. Wasn't there something about that adding a bit of extra oomph to spells, due to natural magical energy found in magma? She knew that enchanters could put more energy into items that had been forged with unusual heat-sources such as natural volcanism or dragonfire, but was the same true for alchemical brewing? Maybe. Probably. Whatever. Regardless, it seemed like Ursula's spell was nearing completion. The cauldron was bubbling merrily, its contents having shifted through several hues to arrive at pitch-black. It seethed and roiled rather than merely bubbling. All in all, it certainly made for a suitably arcane image - especially the way the black brew seemed to somehow illuminate Ursula's face as she hovered closely above it with with an eager grin on her face.

Experimentally, she ran the tip of her little finger over the top of the brew, picking up a small, shuddering dollop of the thick substance and bringing it to her lips to delicately suck it down. Her expression was every bit that of the master chef tasting his latest, experimental creation. "Hmm... could do with a bit more salt. But it'll do!" She then declared, and raised her head with a wide, eager grin. A wave of her hand, and the roiling stew seemed to expand explosively, sublimating into a dark, greasy smoke that coiled into the water above - following the motions of her hand. Anitra's draconic eyes widened as she watched the magic at work. Until then, it had all been coming from the cauldron - the Alchemist's art. But now, Ursula herself was adding the final touch, magic glowing throughout her octopoid body.

She was perhaps not the most powerful spellcaster Anitra had ever seen - but then, she'd seen some of the most fearsome masters of the arcane arts the surface had to offer, like Lezard Valeth and Raistlin Majere. But this ancient sea-witch had a... twist to her magic. A sense of subtlety. Compared to those mages and wizards she'd seen before, it was like... the difference between a stonemason and a gardener. They all seemed to carve their spells into the substance of the arcane, shaping it to their will. Ursula was... growing it, coaxing it, luring it, trimming it at most. She was achieving similar results with far less effort, from the looks of it.

As Anitra watched, the black smoke surged forth and surrounded Direza, coiling tightly around her like a snake. In a split second, she was completely gone from view. Anitra's body tightened. Surely, Ursula would not be foolish enough to play some kind of tiresome trick here? She had nothing to gain by hurting a member of her retinue. Binding her in some way, using her as a hostage... perhaps. But if she did so, she'd soon learn the folly of such an approach - Blake was not so far away that he could not swiftly turn around again.

There were no screams from within the smoke, however. Only a gasp of surprise and a strange, bubbling noise. When the darkness gradually cleared, however, there was no sign of the dark elf who had floated in that spot before... she was simply gone. Except... there was something else floating in her place. Something quite small, and black. Had she simply... shrunk? Curious, Anitra swam closer, and reached out for the object, handling it with great care as she pulled it in for a closer inspection. The basic shape was... immediately recognizable. It took her a few moments to put two and two together, at which point she genuinely couldn't decide whether to be weirded out, amused, or disgusted.

It was quite clearly a dildo. Not a terribly big one - around human average, in her learned opinion, though a bit longer and a bit thinner. In other words, pretty much the same size as the dick Direza occasionally sported when under the influence of the Ring of Priap. It was smooth and black - or rather, ash-gray, the same exact shade as Direza's skin. The base was sheathed in a silvery metal - apparently platinum, the same thing that Direza's foci was made from. And at the very tip was seated a single gemstone, a ruby - its dark-red shade an exact match for Direza's eyes.

"You... have turned her into a dildo?" Anitra sputtered, while Melora swam up for a closer look herself - her wide-eyed expression suggesting that she was likewise split between laughter and concern for her friend. Ursula, meanwhile, chuckled triumphantly. "And a really good one at that, sweetie... for starters, it's alive. Touch the skin - can't you feel her heart beat underneath it?" She could indeed - a faint, but rapid pulse. Anitra whistled quietly - or at least, as well as she could manage underwater - while the sea-witch continued to proudly announce the many features of her creation. "The whole surface is just one big sensory organ. She can both feel and taste through the lot of it. And the tip's a working eye, all set to see sights that no other could hope for!"

Anitra tore her own eyes away from the fascinating tool in her hand - and her mind away from the fascinating possibilities now darting through it - to direct a piercing gaze at the sea-witch and ask the all-important question. "I trust you can turn her back?" Ursula shrugged, leaning one elbow on the rim of her cauldron, seemingly a touch exhausted from her performance. "Of course - any time. It'll wear off on its own, too... though, not for another three days." Anitra nodded slowly, running her fingers gently over the black surface of the toy in her hands. She could feel it trembling slightly at her touch. "And you just happened_to have a spell on hand for turning a person into a _dildo?"_The sea-witch cackled, and threw her arms wide. "Well of _course_I do, sweetie... I already told you, didn't I? The most twisted and perverted offshoots of society have always come to little old _me_for the spells to solve their problems. That one... hah. The young fellow who requested it actually wanted to make it _permanent. He was rather obsessed with a pretty young thing who'd sworn off men_and_ women alike, you see, after getting burned once too often. Sated her needs with toys alone. When he couldn't convince her to do otherwise, he decided to just become one of those toys instead..."

Anitra was already nodding in half-fascinated, half-repulsed understanding, when a thought occurred to her and made her eyes narrow. "Wait... merfolk don't use dildos, do they? They don't have genitals in the first place..." But Ursula just chuckled and waved the objection aside. "Oh, dear... did I ever said it was a merman who'd requested it? I told you I've been getting to know the surface-world..." With a shrug, Anitra conceded the point - foolish of her to leap to assumptions, really. There certainly was no shortage of humans who'd happily traffic with a creepy half-octopus witch if it meant realizing their darkest desires. Speaking of darkest desires... "You say she can feel and taste through the entire surface of the toy... but can she hear?" This, Ursula also confirmed with the off-hand gesture of a master craftsman. "Of course. The base picks up sounds - works both underwater and above. I don't miss beats, honey... it just isn't_professional._"

Nodding offhandedly, her eyes not leaving the slender tool in her hand, she lifted it to her face and grinned at the small, ruby-like gemstone seated in the tip. "Well, isn't this convenient..." she declared. "Here I was, wondering how to suitably punish you for your lapse yesterday, and this opportunity just floats along. Today, you will serve your Mistress in an entirely new way..." She could feel it trembling between her fingers - throbbing, almost, with eagerness and desire as she pronounced the sentence. Lowering it, she then glanced over at Ursula, who was smiling knowingly. "Hmph. Well, considering that we're all perverts here, I don't suppose there's much call for decorum."

With no immediate protest coming from the sea-witch whose parlor she had invaded, she ran the dildo down her body, across her pregnant belly, to the slit beneath. Saying that her pussy was wet was rather meaningless, considering that they were, after all, underwater- but she was certainly aroused. She could feel the dildo's throbbing accelerate as she pushed it slowly into her snatch, elastic labia parting easily for its smooth, ash-gray surface. Her advanced pregnancy may have disallowed any larger-than-human cocks, but there was still plenty of room for a slender toy like this.

It slipped all the way inside, leaving the cold metal of the base to caress her cunt-lips. The whole thing was shaking steadily, now. Was Direza cumming, somehow, despite her new form? Fully embedded inside her beloved, tasting every inch of her pussy - including depths her tongue could never have reached before. Could her single ruby eye see Anitra's womb, up there? The cervix tightly closed and sealed as he son grew within... did it look different from a human one? Did it bear signs of the stretching it had endured in the past, allowing passage from Blake's cock and several other large members? She rather wished she could see it herself...

Just as swiftly and smoothly as it had gone in, she pulled it out - taking a moment to regard it. It was shaking steadily still, reminding her somewhat of the shuddering chest of a girl still in the breathless throes of post-orgasmic bliss. Her own lubricating juices stuck to it, hovering around the slender shaft like little, glassy tentacles, thicker and stickier than the water that surrounded them. Satisfied with the sight, she moved it behind her and let the ruby eye catch a brief glimpse of where it was going before she thrust it inside.

Her sphincter mounted, if anything, even less resistance than her labia. Sure, she'd never exactly shied away from anal sex, but in the last month or so, it'd been virtually the only kind she got... and considering her hormone-fueled horniness, she'd been getting a _lot_of it. Her naturally accelerated healing and elasticity, combined with frequent quickenings, was the only thing that had prevented her ass from devolving into a swollen, permanently-gaped crater - and even all of that hadn't been able to stop her from growing just a bit less tight than usual back there.

So the Direza-Dildo slid inside easily, disappearing entirely between her ass-cheeks - the push of a finger, and even the platinum-covered base vanished. Her well-trained internal musculature ensured that she'd be able to push it back out later, easily enough, and in the meantime the submissive drow got to find out what it was like to see_and_ taste the deepest depths of her mistress' asshole. Based on the pleasing vibrations flowing from the hard rod now nestled deep in her guts, she was likely enjoying the experience. Reduced to a mere object, and tasting Anitra's ass with every inch of her new body? Yeah, that'd do it for the humiliation-happy elf...

Pleasure beginning to slowly flow through her as the dildo throbbed and shivered, Anitra shifted her attention outwards again - glancing speculatively over at Ursula, who seemed to be doing her best to look nonchalant right now. She was leaning on the rim of her cauldron with one hand, while seemingly inspecting her (pointed, dark-red-painted) nails. But something told Anitra that it was just a facade - something in the way her hand was squeezing the cauldron-edge, something in the way her eyes occasionally flickered towards her guests under half-closed lids.

It wasn't as if reading the sea-witch's feelings required any particular mastery of facial analysis, nor a deep understanding of half-octopus body-language. After all, Ursula had already shared her 'sob-story', making it clear that for the past many centuries, she'd been isolated from her people - visited only by the desperate, seeking magical solutions for problems they didn't even dare _tell_anyone else about. Many of those problems would be relationship-related, no doubt - and so, Ursula had been stuck 'helping' others with their love-troubles (in the cruelest way possible, no doubt, but still) while she herself continued to smolder with anger over Triton's betrayal, unable to move on. Obviously, she was terribly lonely. Who wouldn't be, in her place? Her only real company seemed to be her pet moray-eels, which might explain why she seemed to be treating them more as her children than anything else.

Floating closer without really thinking about it, Anitra started looking over the octopus-mermaid with new eyes. Since swimming into the den, she'd considered her from a purely utilitarian perspective - was she a threat? Was she a potential asset? Was she genuinely considering turning over a new leaf, or just playing tricks? How valuable would she be to the Utopia, exactly, if she could be convinced to change her way? But now, it was a different sort of assessments she was making.

The sea-witch was, by no means, the same kind of wasp-waisted 'traditional beauty' that she'd seen so many of back in Triton's palace - his concubines, his daughters, even his maids had all been the kind of slender beauties that one could so easily imagine seducing lonely sailors straight from the decks of their ships and to their death in the waves below. Ursula... not so much. While far from being dangerously obese, she was undeniably fat - thick-bodied, wide-hipped and broad-necked. But... there was something else to her. A crackling energy, a kind of dark charisma that only seemed to be enhanced by the obvious fact that she didn't much care what anyone thought of her weight.

She was wearing the merfolk equivalent of a slinky little black dress, backless and strapless to boot - blending into the dark hide of her lower body and rising to cover her belly and her chest, though little else. Apparently, despite their otherwise liberal attitudes, mermaids habitually covered their chests... which belatedly made Anitra wonder if perhaps their nipples, like their lips, were inhumanly sensitive. And also whether some of the looks they'd been getting back in Atlantica hadn't been related to their legs after all, but rather their fully-exposed breasts.

Regardless, it was obvious that Ursula was comfortable in her own skin. She wasn't trying to hide who she was. Her poise made it clear that if someone thought she should slim down, or that her dress and makeup were inappropriate, well, they were welcome to try and tell her... assuming they wanted to spend the rest of their lives as sea-cucumbers, that was. This self-confidence, maintained despite centuries of isolation, was rather impressive - and, ultimately, not a little sexy. Anitra, herself, was anything but shallow. Heck, she'd had sex with an Umber Hulk once - a giant, hideous, bright-orange insectoid monster - and while she hadn't exactly been in her right mind when it started, she'd happily repeated the performance later, with a clear mind. It had been fun, and quite pleasurable. And then there was that time with the camel, which had been... _less_fun, but still an interesting experience that had tickled some of her submissive tendencies and proven helpful later on when she'd had to devise humiliating scenarios for Direza. She'd also met some very pretty people who'd been thoroughly hateful and detestable. Beauty, in the end, was only skin-deep...

Seeing her floating closer and closer with a widening smile on her face, Ursula recoiled a bit. "What? You have some complaint about my spellwork?" She demanded. Anitra grinned and shook her head. "Not at all - in fact, I'm quite impressed. I think you'll fit right in at the Utopia, as long as you leave your revenge at the door. Though... I feel I should warn you, the Utopia has some very liberal sexual mores. They used to curtail those particular activities out of respect for their human visitors, but they've steadily been getting them used to it too of late, so things are fairly... open, these days."

As expected, the sea-witch laughed loudly and made a grandiose gesture of dismissal, throwing her arms wide. "Oh please, darling... like I'm going to be scandalized by mmMMPHH!" Her words were cut off as Anitra pushed herself across the last bit of distance and closed Ursula's mouth with a kiss, throwing her arms around the older woman's neck to hold herself in place why she pushed their lips together with insistent force. The reaction - eyes widening in surprise, only to then soften in pleasure - made it clear that whether the tail was fishy or octopoid, the lips were the same on all mermaids.

How long had this woman lived like this, she wondered - isolated from intimacy, cut off from society, visited only by the desperate and the greedy? Helping others with their relationship-problem - albeit probably in a rather twisted way most of the time - while she remained alone, still stuck on the man who had so brutally dismissed her. Long enough, it seemed, that it took a couple of minutes for the sea-witch to marshal her self-discipline and raise her powerful tentacles, wrapping them around Anitra's limbs and pulling her back and away. "Just what do you think you're doing, you silly girl..." Ursula mumbled, her eyes both haunted and yearning. "Don't you have some prince to be going home to, in your shape?"

Anitra laughed, hanging unresistant in the strong grip of the purplish-black tentacles - recalling, suddenly, the amusing interlude she'd watched between Direza and a regular old octopus the previous day. "Oh, he's much more than a prince - but as I thought you'd gathered from my rather... close relationship to my dear servant Direza, our relationship is of a rather open nature. There's nothing wrong with a casual exchange of pleasure... especially not with someone who is so clearly and obviously not in a relationship herself, nor hung up on any past one!"

Ursula grimaced, then laughed herself. "Oh, you've got a smart mouth on you, darling! You shouldn't tease a lady like that, though - she's liable to get ideas..." One of her hands had strayed to her lips as she talked, though, touching them lightly - were they still buzzing, Anitra wondered? She didn't really know exactly how_sensitive mermaid-lips were, beyond them clearly being erogenous zones on par with a human pussy. Still, the eyes were the important thing - the way they strayed, now, to Anitra's own feminine body. Species aside, it _had been entirely possible that the octopoid mermaid would prove to be genuinely repulsed by the thought of a lesbian tryst - probably not unfamiliar with such things, what with her work, but perhaps not at all interested in engaging in anything like it herself. That, however, did not seem to be the case...

And so, Anitra once again leaned in, letting her fingers lightly caress the tentacles that current grasped her wrists. "Giving you ideas was the whole idea... and here's another one: I find your tentacles rather... intriguing. I encountered a tentacled creature some time ago, under some... rather negative circumstances. I don't want that to be my last and only experience with such... flexible instruments. Perhaps you could help me wipe away those memories? I mean, isn't that what you do? Aiding poor, unfortunate souls who come to you for help?"

Even as she spoke, she realized that there was something to it - something more than just baiting the lonesome old mermaid into a bit of quick fun. Throughout her adventures, on the occasions where she'd been rendered genuinely helpless - when 'rape' hadn't just been a bit of quick deception, luring a male adversary into fueling her Quickening and bringing about his own doom - she'd later taken whatever was done to her, and made it her own. Her holes had been stretched dangerously and painfully by the likes of the Tauros in the Valley of Wonder and the griffon-breeding wizard Urkanzar - but later, she had greatly enjoyed similar, bone-creaking penetrations from an elephant in Mirage City, and more than one Red Dragon in the Utopia. Her urethra had been gradually stretched to unnatural proportions by a pencil-dicked centaur during her lengthy captivity amongst them, but later she'd enjoyed the intense stimulation of peehole-fucking, particularly with Direza wearing the Ring of Priap... something that was, on reflection, rather an interesting thought - considering the present situation.

There was, of course, her even more torturous captivity in Commoragh, the dark city of the Drow... but frankly, she barely remembered those days and weeks, so it hardly counted. Still, if she ever somehow ran into a friendly giant, intelligent, talking spider or something like that, she might still give it a go just for the sake of it. Regardless, the experience she'd suffered through at the hands of the extraplanar horror that Sharanaman had summoned with the help of his infernal patron Legion, remained the worst of the lot - not so much because of what it had done to her body, though that had been extreme enough on its own, but because it had altered her mind and turned her against the dragon she loved more than life itself. Sharanaman had paid the price then and there - and Legion had but recently joined him. But the memories remained - slippery, gray-green tentacles, rising from a rift in reality itself, clutching her limbs, violating her body and mind alike.

Compared to that thing, Ursula was essentially a beauty-queen and a saint rolled into one. She was also, apparently, interested - and capable of recovering her equilibrium with remarkable speed. Power of experience, presumably. With a theatrical sigh, she threw her head back with one arm dramatically draped across her forehead. "Oh, so in the end, you are only after my tentacles! So shallow... and suppose you expect me to help you for free once again!" It was obvious that she was just playing - clearly, she enjoyed theatrics - and the tentacles holding Anitra's arms were easing their grip. "You might as well get used to it - in the Utopia,everything is free." She quipped "Wouldn't be much of a Utopia otherwise, would it?"

This gave Ursula a momentary pause - then she shrugged and released Anitra's arms altogether. "What a novel idea. I'm rather_looking forwards to seeing how well _that works out in the long term. Fine, then - I may be a touch out of practice, but I do have my pride as an Octopid! I'll show those intriguing orifices of yours just how much fun a few tentacles can be..." As she talked, her smile widened into a decidedly predatory one, and Anitra felt a familiar chill run down her spine. The sea-witch's sheer force of personality and overwhelming intensity gave her a naturally dominant mien, and while Anitra rarely subbed for anyone but her beloved Blake (on purpose, anyway), he had been a rather light touch since she became pregnant. For all that her recent sojourn into the Nether Planes had been an ordeal, she had immensely enjoyed being 'forced' to submit to the various demonettes she worked with there... and had missed the sensation since her return.

Now, she was feeling it again - the sensation of being sexually overpowered. A strong arm reached forwards to grab her by the back of the head and pull her forwards into another intense kiss - this one forced on her rather than the other way around - and meanwhile the sea-witch's eight powerful tentacles went to work further down. Her legs, already grabbed when Ursula had first pulled her away, were now completely encircled in the spiraling grip of two of the tentacles - pulled apart with irresistible force to provide free access to her groin. The other tentacles were reaching into the gap, their tips already dancing teasingly across her labia, her buttocks, and even her pregnant belly.

She was panting when her lips finally parted from Ursula's after several minutes of intense tongue-wrestling, her submissive desires rising rapidly and threatening to sweep away all sense - as usual. Before that happened, though, she needed to do something. Tentacle-tips were already digging into her, squeezing past sphincter and labia alike. "Wait... before you go any further..." she gasped "Could you pull Direza out of... umm... me? I'll put her somewhere she won't be in your way..." Ursula raised one elegantly manicured eyebrow. "Indeed? Sounds intriguing... do show me where that is..." The breath caught in Anitra's throat as the tentacle that had been previously teasing her sphincter suddenly drilled into her with remarkable force. There was no lubrication save the omnipresent seawater, but the tentacle was smooth and slick in the extreme - save for the suckers lining the bottom. These were generating significant amounts of stimulation as they muscled their way past her sphincter, and together with the internal friction generated as the tentacle dug deeper inside her, she could already tell that an anal orgasm was approaching.

Deep inside her, she felt it - the tentacle-tip reaching and wrapping around something thin, hard and shivering. The motions of her intestines had apparently carried Direza about as deep as she could go without passing around the bend - hopefully, the humiliation-happy elf-girl had been enjoying the sights, sensations and tastes up there. Now, however, she was coming back into the light as the tentacle withdrew even faster than it had entered. The suction-cups were playing across her sphincter like a pianist running his finger down the length of the keyboard, and just to complete the simile, Anitra's moan rose steadily in pitch. She convulsed orgasmically as the tentacle finally left her body, emerging with the Direza-Dildo clutched in its grip - her sphincter gaping and sucking in sea-water for a few seconds before snapping shut again. Normally, she wasn't quite that quick on the trigger, but the only pleasure she'd had today was from Ariel's inexpert cunnilingus and far-more-experienced cock-sucking early this morning - so she was just a _bit_starved for attention.

As she recovered, she found the slim, black dildo with the ruby tip dangling in front of her eyes, while behind it, Ursula watched with a raised eyebrow - curious, apparently, to see what she was planning to do with it. Not wanting to disappoint, she quickly reached up and grabbed the metallic base, watching the slimy covering that the slim tool had picked up deep inside her ass stick stubbornly to the slick surface despite the surrounding ocean-water. Without much thought, she deep-throated it in one smooth movement, her lips closing around the base and her own fingers as she sucked forcefully on it. She could feel it vibrating and throbbing in her mouth, tickling her palate - apparently, Direza was enjoying this unusually intimate kiss too. The familiar taste of her own ass, meanwhile, was rather diluted by the overall saltiness - alas. But the important thing was that she got it nice and clean - carefully tonguing the length of the toy, top and bottom, to remove all trace of its previous residency. She didn't want to risk an infection - there were curatives back at the Utopia that could handle such things, but she hadn't brought any, so...

Pulling the dildo from her lips, she briefly watched the barely-visible coating of sticky saliva undulate around it in the eddies, gradually dissolving into the seawater, before quickly reaching down to her pussy and spreading her labia with two fingers of her free hands. It took her a moment to find her mark with the cool, ruby-like tip of the toy - it was, after all, rather diminutive. Her urethra parted only reluctantly before the intrusion as she pushed it inwards - she hadn't done any preliminary stretching with her fingers like she normally would, after all. But that was fine - she was in a hurry, and rather in the mood for a bit of pain anyway.

Anitra's body - particularly her various orifices - were supernaturally elastic, thanks to her DragonRider heritage. Despite the numerous oversized cocks, arms, toys and other paraphernalia she'd had stuffed up her pussy and ass over the years, both remained neat, pretty and tight. But that was not to say that she'd been left _unchanged_by her many experiences. Rather, the repeated stretching had toned and trained the muscles surrounding her various holes, enabling them to stretch wider, easier, with less pain - even though they would subsequently snap back into their previous, virgin-like shape. This applied to her peehole, too. The lengthy treatment she'd endures while a 'guest' at a nomadic Centaur-encampment hadn't noticeably affected her ability to, say, hold her piss - but it _had_taught the tiny hole how to stretch open, and shown her bladder how to shift and deform around a long intrusion. Those lessons had never been forgotten - with her occasional forays into that particular bit of kink ensuring that they stuck.

And now, once again, she shuddered in that particularly rare flavor of pleasure. Her urethra was being stretched open by the hard, yet smooth intrusion, sending strange and conflicting signals to her brain as the tiny orifice struggled to make sense of the purpose it was now being put to. This sensation was more than redoubled by the repeated shudders and shivers running through the slim toy in her hand - Direza, it seemed, was more than a little aroused at the sight of her new residence. In and in it went, inch by inch, until she felt the tapered head push against the inner sphincter, the entrance to the bladder. This, too, was well-schooled, and parted with relative ease before her insistent pushing - though not without a sting of burning pain.

The pain was well worth it, though. If she'd widened herself up first, the contents of her bladder would inevitably have leaked out. Doing it this way - going straight from tight urethra to inch-wide fuckhole - kept it corked inside. Thus, Direza's ruby 'eye' now emerged into a bladder that was, from what Anitra could feel, at least half-full. The tremors running down the shaft redoubled, rising to a crescendo before easing back down for a bit, like it was taking a breather. An orgasm, no doubt - and Anitra wasn't far from getting one of her own, just from the forceful stimulation of her peehole, aided by the way the vibrations were spreading up to her clit and down to her pussy proper.

Breathing heavily, she focused her will on keeping her hands steady for the last bit. She pushed it deeper and deeper, another inch and one more - until the back of her bladder was deforming under the pressure, forcing the small, balloon-like organ into a new and more oblong shape. Then, finally, the cold, metallic edge of the dildo's base disappeared into her urethra as well, stretching it just a (very noticeable) millimeter wider. With shuddering breath, she pushed it the last bit of the way inside, using just one finger - then removed her hand. Her urethral sphincter gaped wide, the metallic base digging into it from the inside, driven by the pressure of her deformed bladder - making the whole thing bulge out from her pussy a bit. But it held - the dildo, Direza, was solidly lodged inside her peehole and bladder now, the upper half swimming in urine while the lower half was tightly enfolded in the narrow orifice's embrace.

Looking up, her eyes no doubt clouded by lust and her pupils wide with the rapidly-approaching orgasm she'd been building up to while forcing the toy into her peehole, she grinned vaguely at Ursula - who was showing a rather impressed expression. "There... out of your way. If it starts to slip out, just... push it back inside." Scratching her tuft of white hair, Ursula sighed. "Liberal social mores indeed... right. I guess I have something to top, then!" With a grin that clearly showed her eagerness to meet that particular challenge, she once again lashed out her tentacles - and apparently, she no longer felt like just teasing.

Squirming tentacles pushed into her pussy and ass alike, simultaneously and with remarkable force. The orgasm that had been hovering over her instantly exploded into reality as the nobbly suction-cups rippled across two separate patches of sensitive tissue. This pleasurable climax, however, proved to be a different beast than usual - even as Anitra shuddered in orgasm, new sources of stimulation joined the existing ones, redoubling the pleasure, pushing her to new heights of ecstasy. Two tentacles wrapped around her breasts, squeezing and fondling, flicking her nipples. The ones holding her legs began to whip her buttocks with their tips, delivering stinging blows despite the relatively short windup they had available. One focused on the top of her pussy, alternating between prodding and tickling her clit, and pushing on the disc of platinum visible through her gaping urethra, forcing the Direza-dildo against the back of her bladder. Meanwhile, powerful arms gripped her back and her head, pulling her again into a lusty kiss - and while her lips weren't erogenous zones on par with the mermaids', they could certainly still contribute to the symphony.

No peak could last forever, however, and despite the continued stimulation of her every orifice, she gradually descended on the other side - some degree of sensibility returning to her pleasure-fogged mind. It was then that she noticed that her arms remained free, and recalled her earlier speculations about the reason why mermaids saw fit to cover their chests. Her fingers, still shaky with post-orgasmic tremors, wandered and searched, finding Ursula's generous assets and tracing the upper edge of the dress that hid them. A slight shudder went through the sea-witch - and thus through the tentacles buried deep in Anitra's various holes, with pleasurable results - as she pulled those edges down, and sought the peaks of the now-liberated mounds.

Fortunately, she'd spent enough time with Direza - in various configurations - to keep her fingers and tongue running on autopilot even as repeated orgasms shook her body and brain. The tentacles pumped, twisted and writhed inside her, poking and slapping the outside, frequently switching up and changing tack to keep the stimulation fresh. The last, eight tentacle - which her pleasure-fogged mind hadn't even realized was missing - soon turned up too. The tentacle-tips that had been steadily reddening her ass-cheeks suddenly stopped and instead grabbed on to them, suckers attaching to smooth skin with a strange sensation, and then pulling to the sides. Her buttocks were spread wide, and the hole between them followed suit - creating gaps around the edges of the tentacle that was already exploring those depths. There, the final tentacle appeared - squeezing its tip into one of the gaps, intertwining with the one that was already there, and drilling steadily deeper while stretching her sphincter around their combined, steadily-growing girth.

All told, Anitra could only hope that mermaid lips and nipples were SEVERAL time more sensitive than human ones - otherwise, there was no way she was giving as good as she got. Alas, that didn't seem likely, considering that the sea-witch was keeping up her well-coordinated barrage despite everything Anitra's tongue and fingers could do. Still, she was definitely having an impact, as she repeatedly pinched, pulled and twirled Ursula's nipples, tongue-wrestling tirelessly with her even as the sea-witch's powerful arms forcibly mashed their lips together. The movement of the tentacles were growing a bit jerkier, a bit more erratic - and the grip on the back of her head, more insistent.

Finally, a powerful shudder ran through Ursula's heavyset body, and the tentacles stopped moving. Gasping and panting, she pulled back from the kiss, eyes closed, seemingly struggling to regain her breath. "Oooh... I missed that. Been way too long..." she slurred as she slowly recovered, her body floating steadily towards the cave floor until she regained her senses and pushed herself back up to the central position she'd previously been occupying - carrying Anitra with her in both cases, still enfolded in and impaled on her tentacles.

As her eyes refocused, she grinned at Anitra. "Very nice, lovely... ready for round two?" Anitra nodded with undisguised eagerness. Those tentacles were still inside her, all thick and squirmy and alive, yet... restrained. For all the energy Ursula had been pouring into her body, the tentacle in her pussy had never gone beyond lightly caressing her sealed-shut cervix, and her swaying belly had been carefully kept clear of any possible bumps or squeezes. It was a level of physical sophistication that none of her regular lovers back in the Utopia could have pulled off. The flexibility and power of tentacles, applied with an expert's touch.

The sea-witch grinned broader yet, and seemed about to lean in for another intense and pleasurable kiss, when she hesitated and glanced over Anitra's shoulder. Pulling close, she spoke in a hushed whisper behind a theatrically-raised hand. "What's the deal with that horse-like girl, though? She's just been hovering back there all along, kind of... smiling a bit, like none of this affects her. It's a little bit creepy, if I am to be honest." Following her gaze, Anitra looked over her shoulder - sure enough, Melora seemed content to just float by the exit, waiting for Anitra and Direza to finish their perverted games.

Smiling fondly, Anitra turned back to the sea-witch, and replied in likewise whispers. "She's just happy that her friends are having a good time. The one she loves isn't here, so I guess she just doesn't care, really." Ursula nodded slowly, her eyes scanning the young mare hoof to mane in an assessing sort of way, as if she was trying to read her darkest desires the way she had done with Direza earlier. Apparently, she couldn't get past Melora's pleasant pokerface, though. "So what's she into?" She finally asked, still whispering.

With the tentacles unmoving within her, the orgasms had stopped flowing, and Anitra was thinking mostly clearly by then. Thus, she was able to carefully consider her answer. There were more than one possible explanation for the sea-witch's sudden curiosity, some more likely than others... and she could just restate that the subject of Melora's adoration wasn't around, and leave it at that. However... it_did_ seem a bit sad that the horse-girl was stuck 'on the bench', as it were, while Direza was experiencing new humiliations and she was learning of new pleasures. And she rather suspected that the resourceful sea-witch would have something on hand that would fall within the masochistic mare's tastes.

"She likes pain." she thus whispered back, curious to see how Ursula would react. "Lot of it, too. Last time I saw her get her fill, it took three days of nonstop sadistic torture. Mind, she mostly seems to enjoy it when it's being performed by a specific person... that is, my darling husband." If she'd been hoping this would shock the jaded sea-witch, though, she was disappointed. Ursula just chuckled, her expression shifting into a knowing smile as she looked over at Melora again - the mare's brow wrinkling slightly as she noticed the intensity of the scrutiny. "Oh, she's one of those, is she? Well, then, the right context is going to be important..."

Shifting her tentacles, she pulled Anitra slightly out of her way - making her moan as the flexible limbs still lodged inside her various orifices shifted and coiled as well - so that she could gesture to Melora. "You! You serve a powerful lord at this 'Utopia' place, don't you?" The horse-girl hesitantly nodded, eyes narrowing as the subject suddenly shifted to one she actually cared about. Ursula grinned, meanwhile, and waved her fingers - causing the two moray-eels that had been quietly floating about the dark corners of the cavern since finishing their duties as lab-assistants earlier to swim back into sight. "Splendid! Since I will apparently be moving there, I'd rather be on good terms with the local movers and shakers... so I'd like to give you a gift for him." As she spoke, the eels moved on her wordless command, fetching something from one of the reagent-lockers and bringing it to her hands.

Curious, Melora swam closer, even as Ursula showed off the item. It looked like... a small ball of really long, sharp spikes, halfway embedded in what seemed to be a sea-sponge. Needless to say, Ursula was rather carefully holding on to the sponge-part. "Now, this spiky little darling is a particular kind of sea-urchin..." the sea-witch explained, smile widening as Melora entered her arm's reach. "I think it could come in quite handy for a leader. For punishing disobedient minions, or interrogating captured spies, for instance. You see, the venom held in the needles of this tiny little ball cause absolutely excruciating agony wherever it is injected. It won't kill anyone, oh no - that's the great part... it doesn't really do any damage, per se. Won't stop your heart, freeze your lungs, or tighten your pretty little throat. Might make you wish you were dead, at most!"

While she talked, Ursula had plucked a needle from the sea-urchin with great care and delicacy, and was now holding it up in front of her. "Of course... I wouldn't expect a powerful man such as your lord to just take my word for it. But maybe if the gift was conveyed to him along with the personal experience of a trusted servant, hmm?" Melora's eyes had been fixated on the tiny needle held between the sea-witch's fingers ever since she'd said the words 'excruciating agony', and now she licked her lips - as if there was any way for them to dry out down here! Glancing sideways, Anitra thought she could almost see the gears turn in the mare's mind, lining up just so - a chance to feed her masochistic tendencies an all-new sort of pain, and call it a service for Blake? Not something she was likely to pass up. Ursula, it seemed, really was terribly - or even terrifyingly - good at figuring out what people _really_wanted, and then giving it to them... usually at a terrible _cost_too, no doubt.

"I... ah... I will convey your gift to Lord Blake with your compliments, of course..." Melora finally replied, and a shudder went through her. "I am... sure he would appreciate a first-hand account of its effectiveness too, of course..." Ursula nodded eagerly, her smile outright sadistic at this point, and suddenly the eels were there again - wrapping themselves around Melora's arms, pulling them back, seemingly tying her wrists behind her waist with their own bodies. No doubt, the powerful horse-girl could have easily torn herself loose if she'd used her full strength, but she did not seem inclined to do so - merely watching wide-eyed as Ursula waved the needle back and forth in front of her thoughtfully for a second.

Then, her hand snapped forth with the speed of a serpent - or perhaps a pouncing moray-eel - planting the needle directly in the middle of Melora's right nipple. With unerring precision, it penetrated the tiny nub, right in the center of the electrum-ring that surrounded it, apparently avoiding the invisible spikes that extended from it to hold it in place. The mare made only a slight wince - she was used to having needles jammed into various sensitive parts of her anatomy, after all. Moving with celerity, Ursula plucked a second needle from the sea-urchin and embedded it with similar speed and precision in the remaining nipple.

Finally, having apparently gauged Melora's level of masochism and experience with various tortures from her general lack of reaction, she plucked one more needle and aimed it lower. The horse-girl's clit was far larger than a human one - when fully erect, it was like a little fingertip, poking out from under its thick hood... something Blake had taken advantage of on more than one occasion, such as surrounding it with a 'ring' carved from a hot chili-pepper during their trip to Ganarãjya. Now, the needle held in Ursula's hand pierced that thick hood with ease, embedding itself deep in the highly-sensitive nub beneath. This, at least, send a small shudder through Melora...

...followed by a second, stronger one as her eyes widened. Ursula giggled. "Takes a moment for the toxin to kick in, doesn't it? On the other hand, it can last for nearly an hour at that point, if the needles are left in there to deliver the full dosage. Make sure to pay full attention to the effects so that you can recount them to your lord later!" Melora didn't answer - her whole body was shaking by now, even as the two eels wrapped around her arms shepherded her back and away, to a place near the tunnel where her thrashing wouldn't damage anything. Her lips were pulled back from her teeth in an agonized grimace, and her eyes were starting to roll back in her head as her legs moved spastically beneath her.

"You know, I once talked to a merman who'd accidentally gotten stung on the finger by one of these..." Ursula said conversationally as she released the sponge-embedded sea-urching and let it float down to the bottom of the case, turning her attention back on Anitra. "He said afterwards that it felt like he'd stuck his whole hand into a lava-flow. Was downright surprised that he had anything left except a carbonized stump when it wore off!" Anitra shuddered, averting her eyes from the convulsing mare. She had her own masochistic tendencies, but that kind of pain was a bridge too far for her. Probably right up Melora's agony-loving alley, though...

She didn't have much more time to ponder such things, though. Apparently satisfied that Melora was no longer 'creepily' hanging around in the background, watching and smiling, Ursula returned her attention to Anitra and once again pulled her into a forceful embrace while getting her tentacled moving again. The orgasms did not take long to resume either. Truly, she marveled between the brain-shaking climaxes, tentacles were a marvelously flexible tool. The two that were intertwined in her ass, for example, could switch between 'perfectly smooth' and 'painfully bumpy' just by twisting around so that either their backs or their suction-cup covered bottoms were on the outside. They did this frequently, using long, smooth, powerful strokes while slick, and short, violent thrusts while knobbly - providing two wildly different kinds of stimulation.

The tentacles teasing her breasts, meanwhile, regularly swapped between focusing their attention on her nipples alone, flicking and tickling them, and instead wrapping tightly around the main tits to squeeze and pull - virtually milking her. Considering her advancing pregnancy, it wouldn't have surprised Anitra to learn that at least a few drops of milk actually did get squeezed out of her in the process - but with her face constantly busy with lengthy makeouts, kisses and tongue-wrestling sessions, she didn't have a chance to see it, especially since the milk swiftly dissolved into the surrounding water.

Somewhere along the way, Ursula seemed to achieve another orgasm - sending a shudder through each and every one of her tentacles. This time, though, she did not let it disrupt proceedings - instead, she merely took it as her cue to switch things up a bit. The entangled double-tentacle emerged suddenly from Anitra's ass, and before the resulting gape could close, they unwound themselves. One of the tentacles darted right back inside, but rather than simply pound her asshole like the double-set had done before, this one went... deeper, using its flexible tip to push around the bend deep within Anitra, just like a certain other tentacle had done some time ago. This time, however, she was actually in a position to enjoy this impossibly-deep penetration - and with her ass freshly stretched open by twin tentacles, the singleton had no problem pushing deeper and deeper, every inch a little bit thicker than the last.

The now freed-up tentacle wasn't going to lie idle, though. With impressive dexterity, it inserted itself into the gap above the one that was still twisting and flexing inside Anitra's pussy - draping its tip around her still-distended urethra. Attaching itself solidly to the well-lubricated surface by way of its suction-cups, it was able to pull back on the tissue - stretching open the tiny, already-strained orifice enough to let the Direza-dildo slip out, propelled by the force of the deformed bladder its tip was poking against the back of. Halfway out, however, its base was intercepted by the other tentacle - the one that had been teasing and playing with that area all along. With its very tip, it shoved the dildo back inside - all the way and then some, until the first half-inch of the tentacle was buried inside the tender peehole as well, and her bladder stretched even longer than before. Then it pulled back, and with its companion once again pulling the urethra open, the dildo swiftly followed... only to be shoved inside again.

The tiny, sensitive orifice was thus assaulted with steadily-escalating force, frequency and stroke-length - it was unlikely that Ursula had ever done anything quite like that, but as she grew more comfortable with the movements involved, she steadily pushed everything further and further. Compared to Anitra's past experiences in that department... she was far more forceful than Direza herself had ever been, when she'd been commanded to stimulate that particular hole with the help of the Ring of Priap, and thanks to the reach of the tentacles, the penetration was going deeper as well. It wasn't quite as deep, still, as when she'd been originally 'tutored' by the under-equipped centaur - indeed, penetration of such magnitude was likely impossible for her right now, what with her growing womb being in the way - and save for the first inch or so, where the heavily-tapered tentacle itself was stretching things open, the girth was less too... however, the centaur had never reached this kind of stroke-length, nor been able to thrust so smoothly or with such a perfect angle.

Enough said, with this rare level of stimulation radiating out from every hole, Anitra's pleasure-levels skyrocketed - or perhaps surface-rocketed, considering. With every orgasm, her orifices grew more sensitive, and her brain more frazzled. Her own tongue and fingers moved with more manic strength and tireless endurance than well-practiced skill at this point, but the sea-witch didn't seem inclined to complain about the growing passion of their entanglement. She was almost insensible when things shifted one last time, and she found herself pulled away from Ursula's mouth and tits.

She was surrounded by tentacles, now - her legs stretched out in front of her and held there, rather than dangling beneath her. Inside her, something squirmed indescribably. She'd taken one of the tentacles up her ass right to the root - to the point where her buttocks were flat against the octopoid mermaid's lower body. She could feel it moving and twisting - filling her entire colon, though it wasn't quite long enough to reach beyond that. Several feet of mostly-virgin intestine had been stretched to new proportions by the thick, slippery tentacle, creating a feeling of internal tension that almost reminded her of the night when Blake had first stretched open her ass.

Meanwhile, the other points of stimulation were still going strong - if anything, they'd redoubled. The dildo in her urethra practically left its confines on every outstroke, propelled by her internal elasticity, before being smashed back inside, escorted by a conical tentacle-tip that had to be nearly two inches across at the widest point of penetration. Beneath it, the tentacle exploring her pussy had turned itself double - pushing back along its own length, with the suction-cup-covered underside on the outside. It was pulling in and out steadily in this fashion, moving despite never being anything less than a full penetration - and teasing every part of her insides with its knobbly surface as it did so.

Her breasts were now being continuously milked by a single tentacle that, thanks to her now being far closer to its source, was able to wrap around both of them in a figure-eight fashion. This left a free tentacle once more - and during one of her numerous moans and cries, it had darted between her lips and forced its way into her mouth. Now it was going deeper, into her gullet and throat, forcing her jaws steadily further apart and catching her tired tongue against the bottom of her mouth. It felt slick against her tongue, and the taste was vaguely familiar - albeit saltier than usual: Ass-slime, clinging to the edges of the suction-cups in particular.

If Anitra had been a bit more alert, she would likely have realized that this, then, had to be the tentacle that had occupied her ass alongside its current resident during the 'intertwined double-tentacle pounding' phase earlier. The same one that had then switched to holding open her urethra and thus enabling the steady bladder-pounding she was now enduring. However, dazed as she was by the repeated orgasms and the constant sensory assault, she hadn't even really noticed that her urethra was growing loose from the constant thrusting and, particularly, the repeated stretching the outer sphincter was receiving from the tentacle-tip every time it pushed the dildo all the way inside her. Loose enough that it no longer tried to snap shut around the base of the dildo, but let it pass unhindered - freeing up that tentacle to move to her mouth. And this, of course, left one more tentacle unaccounted for...

She also wasn't too aware of her actual position. Buoyed by the water, gravity had little hold on her - so while she was vaguely aware that she'd been pulled away from her previous position right in front of Ursula's face, she hadn't fully grasped that she was now floating upside-down beneath her, entangled in her tentacles, her back towards the tunnel-entrance where Melora was still convulsing in erotically-charged agony. Her pussy and tits were thus within easy reach for the remaining tentacles - and her ass-cheeks, divided by the thick tentacle lodged between them, were mostly exposed. This much, at least, she was made aware of when the final tentacle made its presence known - by beginning to fall on them like a particularly broad and muscular whip.

The fleshy limb made a low-pitched noise as it whizzed through the water and slammed into first one cheek, then the other, then back again. Somehow, it seemed to combine the features of a paddle and a whip, with either being dominant depending on whether it hit her exposed and rapidly-reddening ass with the very tip or the broader parts further down. Now, Anitra didn't have Melora's extreme masochism, but she did enjoy a bit of pain as spice for her pleasure - and a nice, solid spanking was just about the perfect level for her, especially when combined with some internal stretching-pains. If there was one thing that she rather regretted about having a dragon for a lover, it was that he couldn't really spank her - he just wasn't equipped for it - but on the bright side, his scaly loins tended to function as a built-in paddle whenever he forcefully bottomed out in her ass. Something he had, alas, been reluctant to do of late...

So this steady spanking hit the spot just right, and with no apparent need to continue focusing on pleasing anybody else, she allowed herself to be carried away by the mindless, blinding pleasure. Pussy, urethra, tits, ass - inside AND outside - mouth, throat... every part of her was being stimulated with violent forcefulness. She couldn't tell where her orgasms were coming from - anal orgasms, vaginal, clitoral, urethral, it all flowed together into a massive peak, topped by the input from her breasts, buttocks and mouth.

Eventually, she regained her senses and found herself floating languidly, looking up at the cave's ceiling. It really was terribly convenient being underwater like this, she thought to herself - you didn't have to worry about finding a reasonably soft place to lie down for a post-coital nap, you could just float about wherever. Then, with a grunt and some awkward arm-waving, she straightened herself in the water and took stock of herself and her surroundings. Her insides still felt funny, like they hadn't quite managed to snap back into shape after being invaded by the thick tentacle, but her sphincter had returned to its normal shape. So had the one closing her urethra - nonwithstanding the fact that, if she wasn't mistaken, Direza-the-dildo was still lodged up there, pushing her bladder out of shape. The lengthy pounding had apparently deformed it sufficiently that the whole thing could fit inside her, without the urethral sphincter gaping around the metallic base. Now and again, a tremor ran through it, sending little shocks of pleasure through her tired nerves - presumably, Direza was exhausted too.

Meanwhile, nearby, Ursula seemed to be packing - pulling various things, some recognizable and some not, from her various cupboards and lockers and throwing them into something that resembled an undersea valise, with eager help from her twin pet morays. This concerned Anitra a bit since, despite grandly making the offer, she hadn't exactly worked out how to transport the aquatic witch to the Utopia... but then again, despite all Ariel could do to delay him, Triton WAS bound to come knocking relatively soon, so perhaps it was a fairly good idea for Ursula to get out of her cave on the double, even if it was just to relocate to some other nearby hideout for now.

She then glanced over at the tunnel-entrance and winced. Melora was still there, but no longer floating freely - rather, she was entangled in some kind of large, seaweed-like plant, which seemed to be pretty strong considering the way she was struggling. Anitra's sharp dragon-eyes picked out at least six or seven tiny needles poking out of each of her breasts at various points, mostly around the areola - and what looked like a solid three, tightly clustered, rammed into her clitoral hood. Between her constantly-thrashing legs, more needles could be seen lining her labia, though there was too much motion to tell exactly how many. The masochistic mare's eyes were completely blank, her mouth emitted a steady stream of stifled whinnies, groans and shrieks, and she seemed to be literally frothing at the mouth - hard to tell, exactly, what with the water everywhere.

Clearing her throat to draw attention - harder than expected, probably due to the stretching her throat had been undergoing recently - Anitra gestured towards this torturous display. "Well, this_rather broke my afterglow... care to tell me what's going on over there, Ursula?" The sea-witch looked up from her packing and shrugged, grinning. "Oh, her? Once I'd pleasured you into insensibility, I swam on over to her to ask if _she'd had enough yet. Offered her some antitoxin to take the edge off. She asked for more needles instead. What can I say? I aim to please... I just needed to make sure she didn't break anything while enjoying the effects. Some of my supplies are both fragile and rather...valuable." She caressed a bubble-bottle as she spoke, looking at it fondly. Inside was something... strange, slug-like, writhing... with large, googly eyes that seemed to look round at the cave with interest. Anitra winced again.

Then she sighed and shook her head. "Fun is fun - but you don't offer a drug-addict another hit while she's still high off the last one. Give me that antitoxin you mentioned. I need to see to my friend..." Accepting the rebuke with a grunt and a grimace, Ursula collected a small tub made from an empty clam-shell and chucked it at Anitra, who deftly picked it out of the water. "It seems I'm going to need some more practice at this whole 'being good' thing..." the sea-witch commented with a shrug as she turned back to her packing. Anitra flashed her a presumably-unseen grin as she started swimming towards the entangled Melora. "No doubt. It's not as easy as it looks! Anyway, aside from that - thanks. That was fun..." Ursula's back seemed to stiffen for a moment, then relax. "Of course it was. I'm good at everything I put my hands to... and I suppose you're not a bad kisser yourself." The last bit was escorted by a quick, flirty wink over her shoulder. Anitra got the feeling that she was rather unused to being thanked for her services...

Reaching Melora, she turned her full attention on the moaning, thrashing mare. With the way she was moving, and how deeply they were nestled, pulling the needles out of the horse-girl's various sensitive bits was rather challenging, but with her inhumanly-sharp eyes and dexterous, well-toned fingers, she managed to remove them one by one. Unsure of whether they might still hold some of their agonizing venom, she carefully stuck each one into the sponge-like knot of vegetation that the entangling seaweed was emerging from, figuring that the plant probably wouldn't be susceptible regardless. Removing the needles, alas, had no noticeable effect on Melora - they'd obviously already delivered most, if not all, of their payload.

Opening the clamshell she'd received from Ursula, she found that it contained a thick, greasy salve, almost buttery in its consistency. Little oily pearls hung in the seawater around it, slowly leeching out of the salve. Covering her fingers in it, she carefully applied it to Melora's nipples and groin, slathering it across the labia before pushing her fingertips partway inside the clitoral hood to apply it to the clit itself. Finally, she applied a thin layer to the rest of the bouncing tits - trying to focus on the places where she recalled pulling needles out, but unable to remember in too great detail exactly where each of them had been. As she worked, the horse-girl gradually seemed to calm down, her breathing steadying and her struggling limbs growing still. Certainly, it could not be denied that the sea-witch's concoctions were effective...

A few moments after Anitra had finished the application, Melora closed her previously-white eyes and took several deep breaths, sucking in large lungfuls of seawater. She'd relaxed her limbs completely, and the seaweed, seemingly in reply, had disentangled itself to leave her floating freely. When her eyes opened again, they looked more normal - albeit still with enlarged pupils. Groaning, she cleared her throat. "Thank you, Lady Anitra. That was getting to be a... bit much, even for me." There was a vaguely dreamy look in her eyes that suggested that despite everything, it had indeed still only been at the 'getting to be' stage. Anitra grinned and clapped a hand on one of the mare's broad shoulders. "Think nothing of it. As Blake's wife, it is my duty to look after his favorite servant when he isn't around."

Melora blushed slightly, a smile curving her broad, equine mouth at the 'favorite servant' bit - and she failed to flinch even slightly at the reminder that it was Anitra, and not her, who stood first and foremost in Blake's mind and heart. Well, it probably helped that Blake had poured lots and lots of attention on her of late - ever since their trip to Ganarãjya, he'd been quite careful to tend to her 'needs' on a regular basis, never leaving her to feel neglected or ignored for long. Of course, the way Anitra's advancing pregnancy had curtailed their activities had probably helped to forcibly shift some of his attention too, particularly the more sadistic bits of it... after all, while Melora was equally pregnant, she was far less hampered by it.

Glancing down, she floated down to the base of the seaweed-like plant, and carefully picked up an object that had, rather carelessly, been left sitting there. The sponge with the sea-urchin embedded in it. "Do you... think Lord Blake will be pleased with it?" She asked hesitantly, regarding the fist-sized ball of spikes with a strange mixture of apprehension, fear and desire. Anitra grinned in reply. "If it's half as agonizing as you made it look, I rather think he will. His magic is powerful, but as you know, it's designed to kill and destroy - not to inflict pain without harm. He's been getting better at modulating it lately, but I think he'll still be quite happy to have such a convenient method available." Melora nodded with a slight shudder. "It was, indeed, excruciating. After she put in the additional needles... I do not think I have ever experienced something so painful." Considering some of the things Anitra knew Melora had gone through, that was enough to raise an eyebrow - resulting in an awkward shrug. "But, it was different - like I could tell, on some level, that the damage wasn't real. Kind of like those... chilies from Ganarãjya?" And not like that other thing from Ganarãjya where she had her breasts cut clean from her chest. She didn't say that bit out loud, but it hung in the air nonetheless... or, rather, in the water. Anitra nodded at both the spoken and unspoken bit, and pointed at the sea-urchin. "I see... well, just be damned careful with that thing. I think I'll check if Ursula doesn't have something you can carry it in a bit more safely..."

Ursula did, indeed - and with half her inventory already floating around in the water as she carefully and methodically layered them into the valise, she didn't have a hard time finding it, either. Her bubble-based bottles obviously weren't suited for something so... spiky, and the various shell-based containers were generally too small, but she manage to find a sizable pouch made from something resembling eel-skin. It was both big and sturdy enough to serve, and the sea-witch handed it over with a shrug. "I'll let you _borrow_it, mind - I'm rather fond of it, really. You can hand it back later - apparently, we're going to be neighbors, after all!"

Anitra sucked seawater in through her teeth as she took the pouch from her. "Yeah, about that... my invitation certainly stands, but it might take a little while to arrange transport for you. Especially since some kind of... giant aquarium or something will need to be devised, I suppose." Ursula laughed and spun around in the water to face her, reaching up one long-nailed hand to fondle the golden seasnail-shell that hung around her neck. "Oh, you needn't go so far out of your way for little old me... I can make my own way. I always have." The shell glowed, and in a flash, the octopoid sea-witch was gone.

Floating in her place was a human woman - a pretty brunette, to be specific. Easy on the eyes, but not some kind of blinding beauty - clad in a simple, white dress that suggested neither poverty nor spectacular wealth, but still managed to flatter her curves. There were still traces of Ursula's features in the wide mouth with the red-painted lips, and the large eyes narrowed in a calculating gaze, but all in all, she was the sort who could pass mostly unnoticed through virtually any human city, finding passage on caravans or coaches without too much trouble. The most unusual thing about her, really, was the fact that she was currently deep underwater, yet seemed disinclined to drown.

Rubbing her chin speculatively, Anitra swam around her, looking her up and down assessingly. When she focused her eyes just right, she could see the magical glow of the transformation - indeed, she could almost make out Ursula's true form overlaying it, like a looming, purple-black shadow - but eyes such as hers were rather a rarity, so unless the sea-witch managed to draw the attention of a skilled magic-user of some description, she'd almost certainly be able to flawlessly pass for human. "I guess you really have been putting some effort into studying the surface-world..." she commented, duly impressed. She still wasn't exactly a magical scholar, but recent events had taught her enough to realize that few creatures possessed the skill to so effectively pass for human.

The brunette laughed, clearly enjoying the admiration. Her voice was noticeably more highly-pitched and less rough compared to normally. "I told you as much! Why, I've even managed to create a new identity for myself. You are looking at 'Vanessa', a young but talented traveling alchemist who occasionally appears in various nearby harbor-towns to peddle her wares. She even takes special_orders, for those who ask nicely... and are willing to pay the price." She swayed her hips saucily as if to underline the last bit, but then gasped in surprise when Anitra - who had floated around to her back in the meantime - suddenly darted down and grabbed her from behind, squeezing her now much smaller and perkier breasts. "Oh, I'm sure..." she commented airily, pushing her face through the floating tangles of 'Vanessa's' long, brown hair. "And I'm a bit disappointed, honestly. Here I thought I'd given you the first pleasure you'd felt in ages, but really, walking around up on land looking like this... I bet you've had _plenty of fun!"

Vanessa giggled, then moaned slightly as Anitra massaged her tits. "Oh,well, if you put it that way, perhaps I have... but a proper mermaid-orgasm, brought on purely by the feeling of lips against mine and maybe a bit of... mmm... that..." she curved her spine there, pushing her chest into Anitra's fingers "...is a very different beast to anything you can get with these admittedly intriguing orifices your legs come packaged with. And I rather_had_ missed that..." This made Anitra contemplate just how sensitive mermaid-lips really were, and just how different such an orgasm could be - after all, she knew perfectly well that an anal orgasm felt noticeably different from a vaginal one - but as she gazed over Vanessa's shoulder and saw that Melora had recovered enough from her ordeal to swim in for a closer look at Ursula's transformation, a different idea entered her mind.

She wrapped herself tighter around the slim brunette in her grip, taking advantage of the fact that for now, Ursula was just a simple human woman with the ability to breathe under water, while she was a supernaturally-endowed DragonRider - albeit a rather pregnant one. She had to push herself down lower and stretch out her arms while curving her spine to make room for her large belly - damnably awkward, but doable - before her legs could reach Vanessa's. Hooking her feet around the other woman's legs, she forced them apart - making her simple dress ride higher even as one of Anitra's hands left the breasts and strayed lower, grabbing the hem and hitching it the rest of the way up. "You know..." she commented as she continued the tit-massage with her remaining hand "...mermaid orgasms may be unique, but I do think quantity has a quality all its own, and I believe you gave me rather more than I was able to return. Puts me in a bit of a debt... and I always repay my debts." Well, she did when they involved sex, anyway!

Vanessa giggled again, still not struggling against Anitra's grip. She had a feeling that this was just how her current form translated her normally-frequent cackling. "Oh? And how were you planning to pay me back, then?" The white dress had been bunched around the brunette's slim waist by now, revealing... some rather simple, cottony underwear, fully in keeping with her generally nondescript appearance. The fabric may have been created by Ursula's magic as part of the transformation-spell and clearly possessed an unnaturally waterproof quality, having failed to absorb any of the surrounding seawater, but other than that it was perfectly mundane - and no more able to stand up to Anitra's inhuman strength than any other such pair of undies. A quick yank and the cotton tore easily, leaving it floating in the water nearby - while Vanessa gasped at the sensation.

Most likely, the magically-disguised sea-witch had expected her to set to work with fingers and tongues by then... but that wasn't quite what she had planned. Ursula had shown off a lot of magical tricks earlier, but Anitra still had a few things up her sleeve.... or, in this case, her friends did. "Come, Melora!" She called. "You rather enjoyed Ursula's gift earlier, didn't you? You should help me repay her, then. 'Vanessa' here seems to have a bit of experience with drylanders, but I think we could still show her a thing or two, don't you?" The mare nodded eagerly, and a ring emerged from a pouch on one of the belts criss-crossing her chest. A simple iron band inset with a ruby and some diamond shards - an unusual combination, but apparently particularly suited for the specific enchantments embedded in it.

Vanessa regarded it with some curiosity until it was seated on Melora's finger - then her expression turned to one of dawning horror as the massive, equine erection suddenly emerged from the horse-girl's loins, as hard as the iron the ring was made from. "You must_be joking!" She declared, now finally struggling against Anitra's grip - and finding it quite firm and inescapable. "Just because I'm a touch adventurous and have spent some time on the surface, doesn't mean I have dallied with _stallions before!" Anitra just grinned and took the opportunity to lightly bite a nearby earlobe as the shaking of Vanessa's head brought it within reach. Having moved the dress and removed the underwear, her hands had returned their full attention to the chest-region, and were now once again massaging the two perky mounds through the thin fabric of the dress. "There's a first time for everything..." she mumbled.

Whether she was angry at Ursula's irresponsible approach to her masochistic tendencies and eager for payback, or just wanted to follow up the earlier flood of pain with some simple pleasures, Melora seemed unusually fired up and driven. Her powerful hands quickly locked down Vanessa's flailing arms, and despite the awkwardness inherent in precise underwater motion, she was soon able to position her hips appropriately. With Anitra's legs wrapped around hers and spread wide, her perfectly ordinary, human-looking pussy certainly made an easy - and inviting - target... "S...stop it!" Vanessa declared, eyes locked to the thick, equine meat-rod now rubbing against her outer labia. "There's no way that thing will fit inside me!"

She was, Anitra reflected, being overly dramatic - not that that was surprising, considering the theatrics Ursula was so fond of. Certainly, one could not argue that Melora wasn't literally 'hung like a horse' - but it was still a rather human-sized horse. If she'd had the tackle of a full-sized stallion, it would have looked absolutely ridiculous - and she likely wouldn't have been able to stand up straight, much less walk, while on dry land. Rather, what she did have was something that would've been fairly at home on a pony, or perhaps a donkey - and Anitra had first-hand testimony that even a much younger and less experienced girl than 'Vanessa' could handle those kinds of tools, if not, perhaps, without some discomfort.

Sure enough, as Melora thrust her hips forwards, Vanessa's labia parted - somewhat reluctantly - before the meaty battering-ram, and her thick, veiny shaft followed the broad, flat head inside. The brunette groaned and shuddered, though she wasn't outright struggling to free herself anymore. "Gods that's big... I can't believe it all fits..." she mumbled, still looking down past her tits (which were still getting worked over by Anitra's powerful hands) to watch inch after inch of the long column disappear inside her. That second claim proved to be prophetic - to the marginal surprise of both Anitra and Melora herself, it did, indeed, all fit. As she pushed deeper and deeper, Vanessa's labia got to feel the thick bulge of the radial ring push past them, followed by the rougher sheath-skin. In the end, she truly went balls-deep, her rough hide grinding against the seemingly-human girl's clit as their hips collided.

This was well past what Direza had ever managed - and, indeed, much more than Anitra herself could do in her present state. It did not seem likely that Vanessa was capable of accepting a penetration of such magnitude into her womb - indeed, a regular human wouldn't be able to handle any kind of cervix-penetration without extensive training and practice. Which left another possibility... "That human-act is only skin-deep, huh?" Anitra commented, grinning. "Underneath it, you're still a mollusk - with no need for such a thing as a womb. Hey, Melora, don't just float there looking surprised - the lady's given herself an orifice suited for a full-sized horse-cock! It'd be downright rude not to make the most of it - don't hold back, just go all out!"

Vanessa gaped as Melora returned the grin, nodded, and began to pump her hips. Despite the inhuman depth, the pussy wrapped around her cock was still incredibly tight - practically following her out as she pulled back, the inner labia clinging tightly to her shaft. "N..no... it's not like that!" The brunette protested. "I just didn't know exactly what humans were... equipped with, so I erred on the side of caution, that's all!" If she'd been planning to make any further explanations, these were cut off by a drawn-out groan as Melora thrust back into her - a good deal faster this time, flexing her powerful hips without restraint. Normally, she had to hold back somewhat - particularly when she was with Direza - to avoid giving her partner a bruised cervix or perhaps a ruptured intestine. Since she had failed to hit any barrier even at full penetration this time... there was no such need here.

Looking at Melora, you wouldn't think this was only the second time she attempted an underwater mating. Clearly, she'd already mastered the basics when she used the Ring of Priap during the dolphin-orgy the previous day, and by now she was adapting more fully - using the details of the specific situation to apply more leverage than she otherwise could have. Since Vanessa had stopped struggling, she'd moved her hands to the girl's waist and was now clinging tightly to it as she essentially swung her lower body back and forwards. In fact, she would have been hard-pressed to duplicate her current performance on land - she couldn't possibly have flexed her hips that far while standing in a single spot. With her legs waving back and forth in the water, however, she was free to deliver full-length strokes, alternating between grinding her hips against Vanessa's and pulling back far enough that her already-flared cockhead pulled her inner labia visibly outwards.

As she became more comfortable with this undersea-specific approach, her thrusts steadily grew faster and more powerful, the water churned into foam by her fast-moving hips. Anitra could feel the power of the thrusts herself, against her breasts and belly, as she continued to cling to Vanessa from behind. Meanwhile, the not-quite-human girl hadn't said anything else coherent - she just emitted steadily more high-pitched moans and groans as her breathing and pulse visibly quickened. Soon, she was cumming - and by now, far from struggling, she was clinging to Melora with her own hands, gripping the mare's shoulders, holding her tight.

While Melora pounded the transformed sea-witch with long, powerful strokes, Anitra had little to do except hang on and count the orgasms that wracked the slim body while continuing her fondling of the two pleasantly-soft handfuls that crowned her chest. She's pulled the top of the strapless dress down by then, and was massaging the smooth-skinned mounds directly - but even so, she felt a bit detached from the main event. Though, at least it left her clear-headed enough to consider how different 'Vanessa' felt compared to Ursula. Perhaps it was simply because most Ursula's overpowering charisma came from her confidence - the sure knowledge that she was the master of her domain, wielding power and experience that threatened even the God of the Seas himself. Vanessa, meanwhile, was a form she used when she explored the surface-world - a place where she was far less experienced, far less knowledgeable, and thus far less confident.

This naturally made Vanessa far more pliable and flexible... which wasn't a bad thing when you were exploring an unfamiliar world and trying to blend in, really. How pliable, though? Well, that was worth finding out. Shifting her grip, she abandoned her ongoing breast-massage, reasoning that by that point, Vanessa was too busy cumming copiously from the sensation of Melora's two-foot horse-sausage pounding her pussy to really appreciate her efforts anyway. She maintained her current position by wrapping one arm around the brunette's slim waist - noting that she could actually feel a fast-moving bulge there whenever Melora thrust into her - and thus freed up her other hand to reach for the pouches hanging from her belt.

The waterproof, lubricating oil she'd brought had proven quite useful during yesterday's dolphin-orgy, and now she put it to use again - transferring it to her other hand so that it could squeeze some of the greasy liquid out onto her free hand, getting it nice and oily. Her admittedly-awkward current position conveniently left a gap between her belly, her hips, and Vanessa's shapely rear - a gap that she now worked her oiled-up hand into. After caressing the smooth skin of the plump buttocks for a moment, her fingers strayed into the crack between them, finding and teasing the tiny, puckered asshole they concealed. Vanessa groaned, but made no protestation - not that she seemed capable of coherent speech or even thought at the moment.

It was fairly easy for Anitra to work first one, then two fingers into the tight little hole - easy enough that she felt quite confident that she wasn't the first one there. No doubt, Vanessa had experimented somewhat with both of her new orifices. At three fingers, she began to meet some resistance, but she wasn't deterred - pumping and twisting her strong digits, she gradually loosened the hole enough to wrap her little finger and thumb into the arrangement. Bit by bit, she stretched the sphincter, pushing it to take just one more millimeter of her currently cone-shaped hand - and then another, and another...

Vanessa yelped when Anitra's hand finally slipped all the way inside, her sphincter stretching around the hilt before squeezing down on the wrist a moment later. She still didn't seem to have anything coherent to say, though, so Anitra continued her explorations - abandoning her previous position to slide her body down lower, further back and to the side. She was still steadying herself with an arm around Vanessa's waist, but her other arm now had a lot more room to work with - and though this of course meant that she was no longer pinning the brunette's legs, it didn't seem to matter much. Whatever reluctance Melora's size might have initially sparked, the slim woman was clearly enjoying herself now, and thus had no desire to close her thighs.

Now armed with both leverage and room to maneuver, Anitra pushed steadily deeper into Vanessa's ass - pulling back far enough to tease the sphincter with the hilt of her hand once again, before shoving her fist further and further up inside the hot, tight hole. Inside, she could feel Melora's continued labors in a whole new way - and was thus able to gradually make out the shape of the 'pussy' that the sea-witch had engineered for herself. It seemed to basically be a diagonal hole going clear from her groin to somewhere around the midpoint of her spine - passing through a gap in the intestines somewhere along the way, presumably. Anitra wasn't able to conclusively ascertain this, though, since the ass she was now plumbing proved to be depressingly mundane - just a plain old human digestive-system, exit-region. Once she'd worked a couple of inches worth of forearm inside along with her fist, she found herself coming up against a sharp bend, just as one would expect...

With this discovery under her belt, she switched to pumping her hand in and out - forcing the sphincter that had stretched for her once to do so repeatedly and thus gradually loosening. Through her arm around Vanessa's waist and her sharp ears, she stayed alert for the results - more groans mixed in with the moans, for starters, and also the way her ass clamped down on Anitra's hand and wrist whenever Melora's ongoing efforts sparked another orgasm. Soon enough, she got the result she was hoping for - a climax that made Vanessa convulse more vigorously than previous ones, combined with a significantly more emphatic tightening of the anus. Whether by accident or design, Ursula had clearly provided herself with a human body capable of experiencing anal orgasms...

Vanessa's ass emitted a sloppy-sounding plop as Anitra finally withdrew her hand for it. Giving one of the ass-cheeks a fond - if rather greasy - pat, she leaned around the brunette's narrow waist and grinned up at Melora. "All right, I've gotten her all warmed up and stretched out for you now... spin her around and show her what you can really_do!" Pleasure-dazed as she was, Vanessa seemingly didn't quite manage to figure out what Anitra meant before Melora had obediently pulled her off the horse-cock that had previously impaled her pussy, spun her around so that they were back-to-chest instead, and finally pulled her down sharply. At least, Anitra had a feeling that if she_had, she'd have tried to lodge some kind of incoherent objection...

Instead, she merely emitted a gurgling groan, legs dancing in the water as Melora forcefully penetrated her ass. The mare's magically-hardened dick was roughly as thick as the hilt of Anitra's hand - every last inch of it, with the flared head being close to another inch in diameter. For all that Anitra had been working it over for several minutes, it was still being stretched in all-new ways now - and Melora, clearly still fired up, didn't seem inclined to take it easy and let the 'girl' adapt to her girth before starting her thrusts. Based on the gooey strings that had clung to her cockhead when she pulled out, it seemed like she'd reached an orgasm at some point - but of course, her magically-summoned equipment wasn't going to soften just for that, and she seemed more than ready to go another round or two, or three...

Initially, she had one muscular arm wrapped around Vanessa's waist and the other hand resting on her shoulder as she pumped her hips in short, sharp jabs, holding the flailing brunette in place - not able to do the same kind of impossibly-long thrusts as before, she'd instead settled on substituting speed and force. Spotting an alternative, however, Anitra quickly pulled the pair along with her through the water, before pushing them towards a particular part of the cave's walls, one that was lined with some kind of coral outgrowth in places. Vanessa herself found herself mashed face-first into a bare, flat part of the wall - but growths above and below allowed Melora convenient hand- and toe-holds, letting her attach herself to the wall. With this newfound leverage, she redoubled her efforts - fucking Vanessa up against the wall with a series of loud, slapping noises... and a series of rapidly-escalating moans from her 'victim'.

Somewhat belatedly, Anitra realized that she'd managed to neatly write herself out of the fun and games - she could hardly even see Vanessa, save for her flailing legs, covered as she was by Melora's bulkier body. The mare was, as usual, seemingly unaffected by her own advancing pregnancy. Her belly had to be basically pinning Vanessa's torso to the wall, but you wouldn't know it from looking at the session from behind! Glancing around the cavern, she pondered what to do next. The two moray-eels were still working on the packing, and seemed unconcerned by their mistress' current fate - suggesting that despite any protestations she might have made (or failed to make),they at least recognized that she was ultimately enjoying herself. No ideas there, though...

That strange seaweed-looking plant Ursula had summoned earlier was still sitting there, waving about leafily. She could grab a couple of lengths of that... tie Vanessa's ankles to Melora's, and her arms behind the mare's back. She'd be properly caught, then, bent backwards around Melora's belly while the mare could continue to pound her ass even while swimming around... but no, that'd just lengthen this already-lengthy session a lot further, and they really didn't have that kind of time. If anything, she should look for a way to speed things up...

Aaaaand there it was... the sea-urchin in its spongy holder. They'd never actually gotten around to stuffing it into the pouch Ursula had found for it. Grinning, she swam down to pick it up, and from there to a point right behind and below the two lovers at the wall. "Oh, Melora..." she called playfully "By my count, we still owe her twelve orgasms. Once you've given her that many, you may remove your ring..." Then, before the mare could reply, she picked a needle from the urchin and pushed it into one of the mare's swaying testicles. After about a millimeter, she met some resistance - but with a firm grip, she was able to push it all the way in, leaving it as a mere speck on the smooth orb. Melora whinnied in pain even as Anitra repeated the performance on the other ball - and then jabbed a final, third needle into the far-soft tissue above and between them.

Usually, it would be Blake doling out this kind of torture for the masochistic Melora - but he wasn't there, so she'd see to it for him. It was practically her duty as his wife! Certainly, it got the mare fired up even more - the muscles on her hips bunching and vibrating as the agonizing toxin took effect. If she'd been going at it before, _now_she seemed to be trying to fuck Vanessa straight through the bedrock that surrounded them. Vanessa's insides had to be getting the pounding of a lifetime - a proper, full-sized stallion might have been able to fuck her harder, but not by very much and not for nearly as long.

Melora's hips were virtually a blur, creating their own miniature sea-current as they displaced the water with incredible speed and force. Looking at it - and the equine tail that danced and swayed atop it - Anitra licked her lips and realized that there was still one way she could involve herself in the games. She did it to Blake often enough... though rarely anyone else, at least not when she was in her right mind and had a choice in the matter. But she'd been doing it quite a bit during her trip to Hell, and had realized that even beyond the thrill of pleasuring her beloved dragon in such a dirty way, she just rather... enjoyed the act on its own. She didn't have Melora's taste for pain, nor Direza's love of humiliation - but as with the spanking, she could greatly enjoy just a bit of either... and besides, it seemed likely to speed things along at least a little bit!

Floating down lower, she darted forwards and lodged her face underneath Melora's tail, squeezing her chin in between the muscular buttocks. It wasn't as hard as she had feared, considering the rapid back-and-forth motion said rear end was going through - the fact that she was floating freely in the water helped a lot, and Melora's sheer strength helped more. Once she'd grabbed on to the mare's wide hips, she found herself effortlessly moving with the thrusts, her body rotation a bit in the water with every movement. Melora whinnied in surprise when she felt Anitra's soft lips caress her asshole, and then her powerful tongue digging inside - but she certainly did not seem to mind...

It was an interesting experience for Anitra, too. She'd rimmed a fair number of assholes in her time - some human-like, some not - but never one that was so thoroughly marked by its past activities. Blake had favored his submissive horse-girl's ass over her pussy even before her pregnancy made the choice for him, after all - and since Melora didn't possess Anitra's supernatural elasticity or regeneration, there had been consequences. Again and again, Blake's huge cock had plundered this ass with violent force - leaving what had probably once been a neat little brown star as, instead, a scrunched-up, wrinkled bulge that offered less than no resistance when Anitra pushed her tongue into it. She could feel rough patches here and there, tiny scars that served as souvenirs of past rips and tears... some of them might very well be from when Blake had first mounted the then-inexperienced horse-girl in a small dell near her home village.

For all of that, it did not seem to have lost its sensitivity - as Anitra dug in eagerly, moving her tongue with both skill and superhuman strength, shudders went through both the flexing orifice itself and the hips attached to it. Indeed, if she really wanted to justify her current activities beyond "I just felt like eating some nice, fresh ass!", she could call it part of the torture - she was clearly pushing Melora rapidly towards an orgasm of her own, and considering the current state of her cock and balls, that would likely be an agonizing experience.

Mashing her face deeper into the ass-crack, feeling Melora's rough coat tickling her cheeks, she sucked the flexible sphincter partially into her mouth for an intensely perverted kiss - pushing her tongue as deep as it could go, flexing it around and tasting the bitterness of the anal secretions. There was no other, darker flavors to intrude - Melora was, after all, not a particular fan of humiliation, so while she dutifully cleaned her master's cock whenever he'd used her ass, she clearly took steps to avoid this task turning more disgusting than it had to be, cleaning herself carefully even while they were, as now, 'roughing it' on the beach.

Anitra sucked, licked, and thoroughly rimmed Melora's ass. Melora pumped and thrust with maniacal strength, cumming painfully twice or thrice, blasting deluges of hot jizz into the depths of Vanessa's overstretched asshole as she pounded the slim brunette into submission. And Vanessa, caught between a cock and a hard place, reached orgasm after orgasm as she shuddered and moaned, overwhelmed by the sensations radiating out from her battered groin, her straining sphincter and her cum-filled intestines. Perhaps she even came twelve times or so - it was hard to say exactly - but as with the dolphin-orgy, the numbers weren't really important. They were just an excuse, and would 'turn out' however Anitra said they did.

Thus, once Anitra had had her fill of Melora's puckered, stretchy asshole, she pulled away from it with a contented sigh - reflecting that she ought to do this more often, preferably right after Blake had shot a load into it, and with Direza watching while forbidden from pleasuring herself. "That should do it, Melora... our debt is repaid. You may remove the ring now." The horse-girl stopped her thrusts and shakily nodded, her body still twitching. Releasing her grip on the wall, she pulled off the Ring of Priap even as she started to float away from it - and in an instant, her equine cock was gone, leaving Vanessa's ass to gape widely in its sudden absence, affording Anitra a fine view right up the battered tunnel for a second or two. But the three needles were floating in the water now, all by their lonesome - sinking slowly towards the bottom - and she had to refocus her eyes on those tiny things in order to deftly pick them out of the water. They'd presumably unleashed their full dose of toxin already, but one never knew, so probably best to handle them with care.

By the time she'd disposed of the needles - same as last time - both Melora and Vanessa had largely recovered. Indeed, the sturdy mare had bounced back almost instantly, not that this was surprising - if the toxic needles had been applied anywhere else, it would have taken a dose of the antidote and some time for it to work before the pain went away, but once the Ring of Priap left her finger, her cock had simply disappeared - along with the poison suffusing its tissue and all of its shrieking, overworked nerves. She flashed Anitra a wide smile as she picked up the discarded sea-urchin and swam towards the eelskin-pouch with it. "Thank you for the encouragement, Lady Anitra... you are truly a generous soul. I can see why Lord Blake loved you so..." She sounded strangely coquettish, and for some reason, Anitra felt her cheeks heat up a little bit. Melora was Blake's personal servant and fucktoy, just like Direza was hers, but... well, there was no reason she couldn't help Blake 'punish' the pain-hungry mare now and then, was there? For that matter, Blake could probably lay humiliations on Direza that she couldn't, come to that. And married couples were supposed to share everything, right?

Well, it wasn't as if they were technically married, when it came right down to it, she briefly reflected as she watched Vanessa push herself away from the wall, taking deep breaths and apparently trying to get her still-shaky limbs under control. There had never been a ceremony, with a priest and an altar and whatnot, like the ones she'd occasionally watched from a distance back in Karistad when she was younger. She remembered well that evening, right after Blake had rescued her from a lengthy captivity at the hands of the Centaurs, where she'd brought up the subject, and he'd agreed that he would happily marry her - if they could find a priest crazy enough to wed them! Since then, she'd thought of herself as his wife, and he her husband - and that was likely as far as they'd ever get. Especially with what she knew now - considering what the gods in general clearly thought of Black Dragons, she rather doubted that any of them would be inclined to bless such a union, after all! But, they were married in their hearts, and that was what really mattered...

Vanessa winced, reached for the golden snail-shell that hung from her neck, and in a flash - seized to exist. Ursula, the octopoid sea-witch, floated there in her stead, looking rather bedraggled. "I get the feeling that using that form around you girls is rather risky... and that I've signed up for some very interesting neighbors!" she commented tiredly and rotated her shoulders, apparently trying to work up the kinks that had built up while she was flat against the wall. Anitra grinned. "I suppose so! We'll be on the floor above you, so feel free to come knocking if we're being too noisy..."

There wasn't much more room for conversation, flirty or otherwise, though. Ursula glanced at a strange, aquatic hourglass, filled with two different kinds of colored liquid, and winced before dashing back to her packing with a forceful wave of her tentacles. "How long do you suppose we have before dear old Triton comes knocking?" She asked over her shoulder while throwing the various things her pet morays had collected into her valise somewhat more haphazardly than before. Anitra shrugged. "Not sure. He managed to restrain himself because he didn't want to leave a 'bad impression' on his dryland visitors, and right now Ariel is covering for us - supposedly 'showing us around' in New Atlantica. So... I guess we have until he gets suspicious about the length of the guided tour, realizes that we're gone, and comes storming here after all."

Ursula scowled and glanced towards the shimmering wall that still sealed the entrance-tunnel - the 'back' of her original trap. Anitra followed suit and squinted. It looked... shaky. Ragged around the edges. The trap had been carefully designed - it wasn't just two separate walls. Indeed, it had probably been designed to neutralize Triton's power while he was caught in the middle. Regardless, once Anitra had brought down one side of it, what remained was rather vestigial, and probably about as sturdy as a soap-bubble. "Did you absolutely_have_ to do all that while I was busy packing?" Ursula complained, going back to stuffing random, often creepy, objects into her surprisingly-spacious valise. Anitra just grinned again. "Why, yes, as a matter of fact I did. Do you really wish we _hadn't?"_Considering it for a moment, Ursula cackled. "Not really! If nothing else, your servant certainly has a leg up on your average lonely sailor... a third leg, that is!"

Having provided Ursula with the necessary directions and passwords for entering the Utopia, Anitra and Melora were about ready to leave at that point - the three of them agreeing that rather than help Ursula pack, the best thing they could do was hurry back to New Atlantica before Triton got suspicious of their absence, and then just... 'be present' for a while, forcing him to delay his attack on his octopoid nemesis-slash-ex for a while longer. Before then, though, there _was_one more order of business...

Anitra grimaced a bit as she worked her internal muscles, contracting her bladder - forcing the dildo that was lodged deep inside it outwards, stretching her urethra open once more. Once the first half-inch of the polished metal base had emerged from the tiny hole, she was able to breathe again - and grab it with her fingertips to pull it the rest of the way out. The tiny orifice gaped wide in its absence, and the seawater around her groin took on a decidedly yellowish tint, but within minutes it had pulled itself back to its former shape - demonstrating once again the advantages of being a DragonRider.

She left it floating in the water and nodded at Ursula, who took a moment away from her packing to grin. "Are you sure you don't want to just leave her like that for the three-day duration? She won't get hungry or thirsty while she's like that, you know - nor will she need sleep..." The idea of leaving Direza - shuddering and vibrating with pleasure - lodged inside her bladder or deep inside her ass for three whole days was a bit tempting, but... "She isn't_just_ a toy, you know. She's my maidservant, and my friend as well. It's fun to play around with something like this for a bit, but I rather prefer to have her by my side rather than just inside of me."

It apparently only took a snap of Ursula's red-painted fingertips to undo the transformation - in a flash, the dark-gray dildo was gone, and the gray-skinned drow-maiden Direza was floating there instead, tears in her eyes. Anitra took one look at her, and then opened her arms, inviting the slightly-built elf into her embrace. She had forgotten, for a moment, that Direza had been capable of not merely seeing, feeling and tasting while in her dildo-form, but hearing too - somehow, despite her lack of anything resembling ears - and honestly felt a bit embarrassed about speaking so frankly in her presence. She generally tried to remain aloof around Direza, knowing how much the drow loved squirming under her heel, but... well, maybe this was fine too. Certainly, it did not appear that she had _lost_any of Direza's affections.

The drow-girl sobbed into Anitra's shoulder for a while before she was able to quiet her weeping and speak coherently - and all through it, Anitra just stroked her hair and made little, comforting, shushing noises, like you might with a skittish animal or a scared toddler. "I'm... so happy... you think of me like that..." Direza finally managed to hiccup out. Anitra smiled, and continued to pet her. "Of course I do. When I treat you coldly or harshly, it's only because I know you love it. It doesn't change the fact that you're my dearest friend, and that... I love you. Perhaps not as much as I love my Blake, but still. Would you... like me to start treating you as such all the time?"

It occurred to her that she had never really asked that question before. Their very first meeting had been a high-stakes game of submission and domination, and when they'd met again many long months later, the drow had only been too eager to throw herself at Anitra's feet - and kiss them, for that matter. Their servant-and-master relationship had grown as a matter of course, especially since the title of her 'lover' had already been taken, but... well, just like Blake, she'd been forced to face the fact that she cared about her submissive servant, and quite a lot at that. If Direza genuinely wanted a more tender, loving relationship, well...

Direza had, predictably, turned to goo in her arms when she used the 'L-word', and it took her several minutes to pull herself together enough to reply. Even then, it took her a moment to answer - and when she did, it was through tears. "It would be... lovely. If we could be together like that. But I couldn't handle it. I'd feel guilty, all the time, every day. Even now... I... when you hold me so tenderly, speak to me like that, I feel like I don't belong... I don't deserve such words. Someone as sullied as me, I... being your servant, being punished and humiliated, dedicating my body, my soul, my very life to you, my mistress - that is my place." Her shaky voice grew firmer towards the end, and with a final, deep breath, she nodded. "Please, mistress. Keep punishing me. Let me continue to be your servant, your toy, your toilet... I will obey any order without fail, for as long as I still draw breath."

Anitra sighed and nodded. "So be it." It did not strike her as terribly healthy - submitting because of such massive guilt that you felt unworthy to be anything but a lowly servant, frequently humiliated and treated roughly, but perhaps it was better than simply being swallowed by self-loathing. She generally tried to avoid thinking about Direza's past life - about the number of sacrifices she'd presided over, the number of humans and others who had been tortured, raped and murdered on her orders, in her name... for centuries and centuries... but presumably, it was rather hard for Direza herself to not think about. If squirming under Anitra's heel was the only way she could put all that behind her, well... so be it, indeed.

Pushing the still-shaky elf away, she put on her best coldly-superior smile. "So what did you think of your punishment, hmm, my dear little pet? Becoming nothing more than an item, a toy, to be used for my amusement..." Direza smiled, and wiped the last tears from her eyes - not that she really needed to, considering how quickly they dissolved into the surrounding water. "It was hardly a punishment at all, Mistress! I was honored to have such an opportunity to see, feel and taste parts of you I never had the chance to reach before..."

With mock sadness, Anitra shook her head and sighed. "Such a dirty_girl I've got for a servant... I leave her pickling in my piss for half an hour, and she _enjoys it! Well, so be it... since Ursula will be moving into the Utopia soon, perhaps she can perform that spell for us again sometime... when you've earned a reward, that is." Indeed, Anitra was already speculating on other ways that particular transformation could be used - including some things that Direza was calculated to enjoy rather less - but this was hardly the time. So with a final goodbye and see-you-later to Ursula - who just waved them away with a grunt as she continued to squeeze fragile-seeming bubble-bottles into her luggage - she ordered both the fondly-smiling Melora and the still-somewhat-shaky Direza to heel, and headed out of the cave. As for the barrier that still stood in their way, she brushed it aside with a wave of her sword as if it had been merely a bothersome cobweb...

Once they'd left the cavern, they soon encountered a familiar-looking tropical fish - who, obedient to its master, had apparently not run_all_ that far away after guiding them to Ursula's den. "It was... Flounder, right?" Anitra said, trying to recall Ariel's interaction with the fish. It seemed like the merfolk were able to inspire sealife with unusual intelligence, as well as understanding whatever passed for 'language' among them. But Ariel had talked to the fish, as well as that little crab, in a perfectly ordinary tongue. "We're done here - can you show us the way back to your owner?" The fish seemed to hesitate for a bit, bubbling - perhaps trying to communicate - but then it set off, darting through the water, challenging them to keep up.

Guided by the colorful fish, they soon reached the outskirts of Atlantica, where a number of merfolk were apparently working on expanding the city, growing mounds of coral and oversized conch-shells alike using some kind of strange undersea magic. Behind a construction-yard that contained rather more seashells than any on the surface would, they were reunited with a rather worried-looking Ariel. The plumb, tropical fish swam right into her arm, where she petted it fondly. "You did great, Flounder, thank you... yes, of course you're my friend! Don't ask such silly questions..." The mermaid giggled, while the fish seemed to glare triumphantly at Anitra. She, for her part, suppressed a giggle of her own. She'd never had an overfed tropical fish try to stare her down before, and frankly, it was too hilarious a sight for her to feel at all offended.

Pushing the affectionate fish aside, the red-haired mermaid then approached them with a worried expression. "Did you find out what happened? Will Ursula be all right?" Anitra nodded gravely - she'd considered how to answer Ariel since she left the cavern, and had settled on the old 'tell the truth, but only technically' approach. "We warned her that Triton might come for her soon. She wasn't surprised - apparently, he has a long history of thinking the worst of her. So after some discussion, she decided that it was time to move, since he seems to so disapprove of her presence. We've offered her sanctuary in our homeland for now, and when we left she was busy packing. As long as we can continue to delay Triton for another hour or two, she should be long gone by the time he actually make it there."

Ariel was obviously relieved, and entirely on board with the plan. With their (supposedly very thorough) tour of New Atlantica completed, they thus returned to the royal palace for a bit more diplomacy - meeting a rather antsy-looking Triton in order to discuss the possibility of returning several times over the next few days. They needed time to discuss long-term diplomatic relations, trade and so on and so forth, after all! Despite Triton's obvious eagerness to just nod and call everything fair so that they'd get our of his hair and/or beard, his small, red crustacean attendant seemingly kept entreating him to carefully consider such far-ranging subjects before making replies, which enabled the discussion to drag out splendidly. In the end, Anitra herself cut things short, declaring that they needed to return to shore before the potions that enabled them to breathe underwater wore off - but at that point, they had at the very least hashed out a plan covering the next couple of days.

The trip back to their beach-camp was as swift as the trip out, thanks to the helpful dolphins, giving Anitra just enough time to bring Blake up to speed via their telepathic link as they traveled. The sun had already disappeared behind the towering cliffs to the west by the time they tiredly walked onto the shore - though the golden flow suffusing the waves further out suggested that it hadn't _quite_sunk beneath the horizon proper. All three of them were starving - having had nothing to eat since breakfast save for some of the more palatable snacks offered at the merfolk feast - and were happy to see that Blake had thoughtfully lit the fire for them already. Direza wasted no time getting started on dinner, while Melora hunted for more driftwood to feed the bonfire.

Anitra, meanwhile, leaned against Blake's flanks with a tired, yet contended sigh. It had been a good day - she'd had some interesting new sexual experiences, made a new... ally, at least, if not exactly_friend_... and opened up some potentially valuable connections for the Utopia. And through it all, she'd floated along near-weightless, hardly troubled by her heavy belly except for when it physically got in the way of her movements! Blake, meanwhile, was a bit grumbly and dissatisfied. He was well aware that they'd been having a lot of fun in Ursula's cavern, while he'd waited alone on the beach... You better believe I've got plans for tomorrow morning... for both you _ and _ _my dear Melora!_He declared over their link, presumably so as not to tip off the later.

He then busied himself for a bit, sending magical messages back to the Utopia - alerting them to the fact that they'd soon have a sea-witch in residence, requesting that a few Silvers set to work preparing a suitable abode for her on the lake-bottom, and requesting decisions concerning possible relations with the undersea kingdom. Soon, Anitra had received an official 'carte blanche' for negotiating with Triton and his merfolk 'for whatever ends are judged beneficial for the Utopia'. She wasn't entirely surprised, considering both the veneration that the dragons still had for her as one of the two 'heroes' who'd saved them from enforced isolation, and the fact that her last 'diplomatic trip' had proven so profitable despite it ostensibly being nothing more than a cover. Ganarãjyan chilies had become an overnight sensation in the Utopia, with dragons of every color finding their flavor and 'burn' delightful - they'd become a staple snack-food, and any feast or celebration was considered severely lacking if it didn't involve a heaping platter of the fiery little things. Needless to say, the caravans were rolling in steadily, providing ample cover for the Rakshasa who were still arriving at the jungle-settlement on the crater's edge in drips and drops.

Once they'd eaten, and settled down to watch the stars for a bit before seeking their bedrolls, however, Anitra witnessed a strangely tender moment. Blake, with a sharp gesture, called Melora over, and she was by his side in a moment. For a second, he was silent, then he nodded at no-one in particular. "Anitra told me about all that passed in the cavern... and I am, indeed, quite happy with the gift that the sea-witch asked you to convey to me! From your account, it sounds to be a fascinating little toy... though, considering my claws, I'd probably be hard-pressed to pick needles from it, nevermind placing them with any kind of accuracy. So you may have to wield them on my behalf..." Melora nodded eagerly, a shiver running through her body as she presumably contemplated planting those torturous needles in her own tender flesh, simply because she had been ordered to do so.

Then, however, the subject changed rather radically. "Anitra also mentioned the... conversation she had with Direza. It made me think." Melora said nothing, merely waiting by his side, attentive, obedient as ever. Sighing, he scratched his chin, and finally turned his large head to look directly into her eyes. "I believe I already know the answer, but there is something to be said for clarity and certainty, so... Melora. I value your company and loyalty greatly. If you wish to remain by my side without the servitude, the torture and so on, I am entirely agreeable."

The sturdy young mare blushed slightly at the compliment, but she didn't dissolve into tears the way Direza had done. Instead, she actually...laughed. Then she shook her head. "Please, Master, you should not speak like that. I am quite content with the way things are. In truth, I could not be happier. There was a time when I fiercely wished to be first in your regard, but... I do not even harbor that ambition anymore - Lady Anitra is an incredible woman, someone I could never hope to replace. All I wish is to spend what few years the gods have accorded me being of use to you _and_her... and if I can enjoy many interesting flavors of pleasure and pain along the way, so much the better."

Blake nodded, satisfied, and turned his head back to the stars. "As I figured. Well, enough about such matters. You should seek your bed soon, pet. Morning will come sooner than you think..." Melora bowed deeply in acknowledgment, then headed towards her tent without another word. Anitra, who had watched - and listened - from a distance, however, felt a sting of regret. It was lovely that Melora was so happy with her lot, but there'd been a painful reminder in there. Anitra's life was tied to Blake's - barring a violent death, she would be able to enjoy eternal youth for as long as Blake himself lived, which seemed likely to be at least a thousand years or so. Direza was an elf, and while she already had a couple of centuries behind her, there was still five hundred good years - or so - left in her. But Melora...

Anitra hadn't exactly sought the knowledge deliberately, but she'd heard and seen enough during her trip to what was now the Kingdom of Equus to know that the horse-people had rather brief lives. Seventy years, if they were lucky - making them even more short-lived than the orcs, nevermind humans. Melora was still rather young - she'd been 12 when she encountered Blake, though that still made her an adult by Equus standards - but in as little as 50 years, the strong, vibrant mare would begin to crumble into an aged crone. It was a sobering thought, and also created an interesting dichotomy. Direza had sworn to devote the rest of her life to Anitra - half a millennium worth of time. Melora, however, had a life as brief as a spark, and had virtually stepped directly from infancy to Blake's service, with no intent of ever leaving it. Whose devotion, then, was truly greater?

With a grimace, Anitra pushed those dark thoughts aside and retreated to the tent she shared with Direza, hoping that those morose contemplations wouldn't color her dreams. She didn't know exactly what Blake had planned for her and Melora tomorrow, but she rather suspected that she'd need her beauty-sleep... especially if she was seriously going to head back to New Atlantica to play diplomat later in the day. "A DragonRider's job is never done..." she mumbled as she cast a final glance back at the starlit ocean before letting the tent-flap fall shut.

THE END

All right, that's enough vacationing - get back to work already! The next chapter awaits back at the Utopia - Put A Ring On It!