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Secrets of the Emperor's Tomb

• Chapter 14 of the Legends of the DragonRider

The Grand Bazaar of the Utopia was shaping up rather nicely, Anitra thought as she sauntered down the covered walkway that connected the sprawling building to the recently-perfected levitation-lift between the crater-rim and the surrounding plains. The route wasn't for the faint of heart, what with gently dropping through empty air - or being lifted through the same by magic, if you were going up - but its inventors were convinced that with time, people would grow used to it, and the sheer ease and convenience it offered compared to the winding footpath that was the main alternative for the un-winged would trump any lingering unease. Maybe they were even right!

Personally, Anitra suspected that the rainy season would be their truest ally - after all, the fertile region surrounding the Utopia was a_rain_forest, and for several months out of every year, it was lashed by torrents of soaking rain that could, at times, present a reasonable imitation of a waterfall. At that point, the covered walkways and magically-shielded levitation-lift would become a _much_more persuasive alternative to a long, wet trundle down an increasingly muddy and hazardous footpath. Proposals to have it paved had been repeatedly stalled in the Low Council, since the primary users - Equus and donkey-trains - all had hooves and thus preferred dirt to cobbles...

Of course, said footpath would be seeing rather less traffic from the later group now - which was part of the point of the Grand Bazaar. The marketplace that had sprung up organically in the castle's front courtyard, serviced by pack-donkeys that slowly but steadily ferried goods between it and the caravansary below, had never been particularly practical, after all - it had just happened. The Grand Bazaar, meanwhile, was a carefully-planned marvel of architecture and craftsmanship, which - when finished - would have plenty of room for visiting merchants and local craftsmen alike to show off their wares.

It was still only half-finished, but its future grandeur was already obvious to even the casual observer - with its tall, fluted columns sheathed in imported marble, its wide, breezy avenues with room for all but the largest of Reds and Bronzes to stride down, and its strategically-placed rest-nooks featuring soft seating, exotic plants in intricately-decorated pots, and bubbling water-fountains. It was also already being taken eagerly into use, with visiting merchants gratefully eschewing the trip up the crater-side to instead hawk their wares here, and thus earn the Utopia's nebulous currency.

Because of course the Utopia had a currency, Anitra thought sardonically as she stepped into the Bazaar proper and looked around at the eye-catchingly colorful display of the various stalls. She could immediately feel the eyes of all the stall-keepers on her - they could not shout and cry for her attention as they might elsewhere, since such things just weren't done here, but they were all ready to jump up and eagerly assist her with finding_anything whatsoever_ should she show even the slightest interest in their wares. After all, she had said currency in abundance.

The dragon's ideal of a currency-free society, where everyone merely took what they needed and gave what they could, was a beautiful one - but it had been doomed the moment they let humans inside, she'd long-since decided. They simply couldn't help but think in terms of money - and if they couldn't make exchanges in coins of silver and copper, well, they'd trade in favors and services instead. This tendency had grown steadily more pronounced over the past handful of years, as the Utopia's never-ending supply of gold, gems and other precious metals was gradually surpassed by the output of its expert craftsmen and enchanters in terms of value.

Considering their utility in enchanting and sheer decorative flair, gold and gems would probably never stop being valuable in the outside world, but the price had definitely dropped somewhat as the slowly-growing number of Utopia-approved merchants carted the bounty of its bottomless mines outside its borders year after year. Meanwhile, the Utopia's collection of thinkers, craftsmen, artists and mages - free to pursue their fancies and interests without having to worry about satisfying the arbitrary whims of wealthy patrons - had produced more and more wondrous items, making it more economic for the merchants to carry those back to the outside world rather than unworked metals and gemstones.

The result was a kind of... bartering-system with extra steps, with every merchant eager to make it clear that he had delivered items of equal value to the Utopia compared to the things he took with him when he left. The crucial fact, of course, was whether he had delivered enough value to the Utopia as a whole, rather than any individual 'customers' - so drawing the eyes of a highly respected researcher, or better yet the dragons themselves, was far preferable to just being frequented by a bunch of regular Equus or Rakshasa or whatnot. And the First DragonRider herself? Why, that was the equivalent of a royal princess stepping into your store, trailed by servants carrying heavy sacks of gold. If you could provide _her_with something useful, nobody would complain about what goods you chose to load your carts with on the way back.

So when Anitra paused in her idle stride, her gaze drawn to a strange sight in one of the booths, the eyes of the merchant manning it seemed to light up with a golden gleam. He was literally rubbing his hands with glee as she stepped up closer for a better look, her eyes riveted to a set of very fancy-looking robes of golden silk that hung in the back of his stall. Her peripheral vision, meanwhile, picked out the rest of the stall's contents - elegant porcelain goods, bolts of gleaming silk, and painted wall-scrolls in an exotic style bearing images of soaring mountain-peaks and tranquil forest-lakes. All treasures from some faraway land, no doubt, but the robe was the centerpiece - the gleam of the smooth fabric and the masterful craftsmanship that had gone into the tailoring marked it as a garment worthy of a king or an emperor. Although, that was not what had drawn Anitra's eye...

Rather, it was the delicate embroidery covering the robe's back that had caught her attention. It depicted something that could maybe be called a dragon, if one assumed that the artist knew of dragons only from overhearing a young child describing one from a half-remembered bedtime-story. It resembled some kind of snake - long and serpentine, with no clear distinction between neck, body and tail, and no wings. It did, however, have four powerful, five-taloned claws, a glorious mustache, and a pair of long whiskers trailing from its muzzle. It was also, notably, black - creating a very nice contrast with the golden surface it danced upon, an expression somewhere between fury and ecstasy on its strangely-adorned face.

"Quite a sight, isn't it madam?" The merchant queried, no longer able to stay silent as she gazed at his prize. She nodded, slowly shifting her eyes to him - though the look in said eyes suggested that a part of her attention was elsewhere. "It is indeed, my good man. I suppose it's intended to resemble a dragon?" This the merchant eagerly confirmed. "Like all of my goods, I obtained it from The Glorious Empire of Qinxiang! Perhaps you've heard of it? Not that I could blame you if you haven't, of course, madam - they are quite isolated, very much by choice. Nobody goes in or out, most of their borders are made up of impassable mountains, and all the passes are sealed by a truly magnificent wall..."

Now that he'd gotten started, decades of experience as a merchant overwhelmed the social mores of the Utopia, and the Soft Sell began. Qinxiang was a place of soaring mountains and grand cities lit by paper-lanterns, its citizens industrious and supremely skilled at the manufacture of porcelain and silk, as well as certain secretive magical arts not often seen in the outside world. Supremely self-important, they considered their own little empire to be the very center of the world - despite it being located rather far down in the south-eastern corner of the continent - and themselves the Chosen People. Hence, outsiders were not allowed within their Empire lest they pollute it with inferior ideas, and no-one ever left, since there was no reason to abandon the Greatest Empire in The World. (Relative to something like the expansive Remolian Empire, their lands were actually fairly limited - but it would not be wise to tell the Qin this, the merchant conspiratorially assured Anitra).

At least, that was how it had been for thousands of years... but gradually, over the centuries, a tiny number of truly stubborn explorers and adventurers had chipped away at this literal wall of isolationism, and managed to befriend the reclusive Qin. As a result, there now existed a small trade-enclave inside the walls of the Empire's primary frontier, where suitably-vetted merchants were allowed to briefly visit in order to barter with the locals - trading what few 'outsider goods' actually interested the Qin for their local crafts, which were highly valued by wealthy and cultured individuals throughout the rest of the world. The craftsmanship would show off your exquisite taste, and the sheer exclusivity of Qinxiang goods would show off the depths of your pockets.

"Local paintings and embroidery of dragons are particularly prized as curiosities for... well, obvious reasons." The merchant declared, gesturing towards the robe with an artfully-crafted smile. "Apparently, dragons just don't go there for some reason - nobody knows quite why - but in spite of, or perhaps _because_of this, dragons are nonetheless popular symbols of strength, power and majesty among them. Since nobody there has ever actually seen one, however, they have their own idiosyncratic ideas about what they look like..."

"But surely, there is more than that to this impressive robe..." Anitra interjected, not really sure why she felt so sure of this. Certainly, even just by what she'd heard so far, it would be well worth picking up - Blake would no doubt get a laugh out of the embroidery, and it would be a nice thing to wear on suitably fancy occasions when her armor wouldn't be appropriate. But there was just something about it - maybe just in the way the strange dragon's expression conveyed unrestrained and unchecked power... the way its embroidered eyes seemed to glare a challenge at any who would dare look at its master's back without lowering their eyes.

The merchant, for his part, seemed almost giddy with this obvious opening for further salesmanship, and leaned in with a hushed voice. "Oh yes, this is no ordinary robe..." he assured her, gesturing towards it with one hand while using the other to shield his mouth from presumably imaginary lip-readers. "The five-toed black dragon on its back is considered a sacred symbol in Qinxiang - the symbol and seal of their Immortal God-Emperor, Liu-Tang! Well, I say 'immortal', because that's what they say, but apparently he's been in his tomb for millenia already. Supposedly, he founded their empire, worked all kinds of miracles, built their capital city with his own two hands, and went on some grand journey into the 'outside world' in search of enlightenment or somesuch... well, regardless, they all fervently believe that he's just resting in his tomb and will one day rise to lead them to glory anew, so they've never had another emperor, at least not officially. Their 'First Minister' can always trace his bloodline back to one of the First Emperor's concubines, of course, and the Imperial Bureaucracy seems to run things just fine even without anyone sitting on the Obsidian Throne, but..."

Anitra wasn't really listening to the merchant's spiel anymore - only picking up bits and pieces with half an ear. The Imperial Residence stood empty but was kept prepared for Liu-Tang's return at all times, including a fully-stocked wardrobe, yadda-yadda-yadda, such imperial robes were very occasionally granted to worthy individuals by the First Minister as a special sign of Imperial Favor, and so on and so forth, naturally forbidden to export into the unworthy outside world, but a true merchant had his ways... none of it really mattered except in a purely tangential fashion. No, from the moment the merchant had mentioned the 'Immortal God-Emperor Liu-Tang', Anitra's brain had started churning like mad.

It wasn't that long ago that she'd started back in on her old investigation of the mysterious explorer Lutan. Dug out and dusted off her old notes, reacquainted herself with the Great Library and its towering but ever-friendly librarian, and started exercising her riddle-solving chops again. It wasn't as if she was expecting to get_anywhere with it, of course - not that the passage of a mere ten years and change had actually made a thousand-years-old trail grow all that much colder, really - but she just needed _something_to occupy her mind. 'Empty Nest Sorrows', the old dragonesses called it - that sense of emptiness that seemed to fill you when your hatchling, after so many years of being at the center of your life, finally takes to the wing and flies off to start a life by itself. She'd always known that her darling Jet would do so eventually, of course - all Dragonchildren were apparently possessed with an unquenchable wanderlust that made them inherently unable to stay in one place for very long, once they'd grown to maturity, but she hadn't expected it to set in so _early. Not that she should have been all that surprised, perhaps, considering that Jet had always been ahead of the curve when it came to maturity. But oh, how she wished he had not left so soon, or on such bad terms with his father!

Hence picking up a pointless investigation into the enigmatic explorer and wizard who had somehow created the Dragon Utopia's incredible wall of illusions, along with several other strange accomplishments. Not that she hadn't made some intriguing discoveries once she started pulling on threads and piecing together what little was known of him. The most notable of these was that he'd apparently faked his own death. In an anonymous, mid-sized city that had been more of a base than a home to him, Lutan the Explorer had seemingly expired from advanced age, and been cremated along with his diaries in accordance with the will he'd left in the care of the local solicitor... except for one very important diary which had subsequently fallen into the hands of an ambitious but unskilled would-be explorer named Cassius Novack. Then, roughly 200 years later, that very same Lutan had turned up at the Dragon Utopia for a second time - very much alive - seen the aftermath of a human invasion-attempt, and 'gifted' the dragons with the Wall of Illusion that had nearly become their sepulcher. That was the last anyone had heard of him, as far as Anitra had been able to discover, and the fact that the barrier's key had been scattered throughout various locations he'd previously explored just added an extra layer of inexplicably to the whole affair.

And yet, as the merchant droned on, it felt as if a huge piece of a previously unsolvable puzzle could have just fallen into place. Liu-Tang. Lutan. Great magical powers and miraculous accomplishments. Supposedly immortal. A journey into the 'outside world' looking for 'enlightenment'. A black dragon for a symbol. Hmm. She still wasn't quite sure where that last piece belonged, but the rest slotted into place rather neatly. "I'll take it!" She declared, interrupting the merchant who had been in the middle of explaining how, after smuggling this exceedingly rare piece out of Qinxiang at great personal risk, he had been dismayed at his inability to find anyone worthy to wear such a splendid garment - which was a very nice way of saying that there probably wasn't very many people in the world who could actually afford something so priceless, especially since displaying it publicly might cause some diplomatic trouble with the isolationist Qin. Unperturbed at the interruption, the merchant smiled broadly. "I will wrap it for you most carefully, madam..." No doubt, he would be leaving the Utopia with a wagonload of valuable - but more readily sold - goods and no complaints.

The Great Library, despite generally living up to its name, proved to have very little in it concerning Qinxiang - as far as most historians were concerned, it was just a geographic curiosity, a mountainous place in the southeast that seemed content to languish in self-imposed isolation indefinitely. However, once Anitra started to ask around, she soon found another, better source. The gradual loosening of the Qin's eons of isolationism, as it turned out, hadn't stopped with the creation of the trade-enclave within the walls - but it was thanks to that enclave that word of Qinxiang's unique strain of philosophy, of long-bearded men who sat on mountaintops and pondered the truth and meaning of reality, had slowly filtered into the outside world.

Since the arrival of Anitra and Blake had thrown open the gates of the Utopia, the dragons had been hoarding wisemen, thinkers, theologians and philosophers just as eagerly as their cousins elsewhere hoarded gold and gems, so of course they had not ignored the whispers of the enlightened discipline the Qin called 'Tao'. Invitations had thus been extended to some of Qinxiang's most notable philosophers, via a well-compensated merchant who'd managed to earn the approval of both Qinxiang and the Dragon Utopia - not too surprising, perhaps, since it likely took a similar skill-set to earn access to both places.

Most of the invitations had gone unanswered, but at last one of these 'enlightened ones' had not only replied, but also shamed several of his colleagues into changing their minds about this whole 'visiting the outside world' idea. They'd made quite the stir in the Utopia's eclectic philosophy-circles when they arrived, a year ago, albeit obviously not the kind of stir that Anitra or Blake had been likely to notice. Lao Tzu was his name, and once Anitra had sought and obtained an audience, he proved - as tended to be the case with philosophers - more than happy to answer her questions.

"Oh yes - I merely mentioned to my dear colleagues that if the Immortal God-Emperor Himself saw fit to get off His behind and brave the dangers of the outside world in the search for enlightenment, then any man who refused to make the same sacrifice, and ride on the back of an actual dragon in the process, was no true son of Qinxiang, let alone a true philosopher..." Lao Tzu declared in reply to her curious opening remark. His cotton-white beard was carried in an unusual, long-and-narrow style, the face behind it both heavily wrinkled and oddly yellowish in its color, while the eyes were oddly slanted. His speech was noticeably accented, but still quite impressive considering that he had known very little of the trade-tongue prior to his arrival just one year ago. Here in the Philosopher's Quarters, deep within the Utopia's grand castle, however, he fit right in - filled as it was with a myriad of different skin-colors, accents and styles of dress, not to mention thoughts and ideas from every corner of the continent.

As a learned man, he could readily provide her with the information she primarily sought - the time-frame for The Immortal Emperor's famous journey into the outside world, as well as its full ending. The Qinxiang used a unique calendar - because of course they did - which started with 'The Descent of the God-Emperor from The Heavens' as Year Zero, but it wasn't hard to convert the numbers. And sure enough, the approximate timing of His journey's beginning and end - a span of several hundred years - corresponded as closely to the career of Lutan the Explorer as one could expect of numbers that old.

"Yes, the stories say that when He returned from His journey, He was much-aged and weakened - something most of our scholars enjoy using to illustrate how terrible a place the world outside our borders must be..." Lao Tzu remarked lightly, after very carefully not asking her why she'd wanted to know the exact time during which his people's God-Emperor had been absent from His throne. Anitra suspected that this keen-eyed old man had a pretty good notion that she'd just connected the illustrious God-Emperor to a far more prosaic personage from the 'outside world', but had decided not to seek enlightenment on that particular point. Even a philosopher had his faith to contend with, after all. "...though personally, I like to remember that He never suggested that His journey had not been worth the price." Lao Tzu continued, nodding sagely. "Indeed, an account of His return that is all too often ignored states that, while He indeed said that the world beyond our walls had much danger and ugliness in it, He had hope that one day, it would reach a greater harmony. He did not specify whether He wished His chosen people to assist in finding that harmony, but I choose to believe that He would not have minded my own humble attempts in that direction."

One thing that clearly was well remembered was the fact that the Immortal God-Emperor had then retired to a grand tomb-complex and 'fallen into a deep and abiding slumber'. "Though I am afraid I can tell you no more of the Tomb..." Lao Tzu had then continued, rather sadly. "It is a taboo topic, and to speak of it to outsiders is strictly forbidden. Though some of my fellows consider me somewhat of a rebellious spirit, I came here with the blessing of the First Minister, and remain even now a loyal son of Qinxiang."

The next step was obvious, and made Anitra's pulse quicken in a delightfully familiar way. Obviously, if she wanted to get to the bottom of the connection between Lutan the Explorer - improbable architect of the Utopia's barrier of illusion - and Qinxiang's legendary Immortal God-Emperor, she'd need to go there herself to find out. It was time to saddle up again, and go on an _adventure!_Blake, too, perked up when she brought him the news. "Well, now... a chance to stretch my wings again, on something more than a local pleasure-flight? Count me in. I may not have your curiosity, my love, but I'm not going to turn down a trip to exotic... Kinshang, did you call it? I asked around, actually, since you seemed curious - the merchant wasn't lying, dragons really don't like the place. I talked to the Red who picked up your buddy Lawtu and his friends when they came here, a year back - just going near the borders made him feel 'icky', apparently. But I'll bet you, whatever it is won't work on a Black!"

That was decidedly more enthusiasm than he'd managed to show for most of her past expeditions - sure, he'd always been willing to go along with her various (literal) flights of fancy, but he'd also usually complained half the way and rolled his eyes the other half. It made her wonder if perhaps, despite his usual unflappable demeanor, that last argument with Jet bothered him more than he let on. Perhaps a distraction would be just as welcome for the towering, black-scaled beast she'd married as it was for her.

But alas, they weren't going to get away with her just saddling him up as she'd used to, and flying off on a southbound course tomorrow. Preparations would have to be made - a lot more of them this time around than on any past journey. For starters, if she wanted to actually be able to ask questions of anyone in Qinxiang, she'd need two things - firstly, 'Honored Visitor' status for the isolationist kingdom. Lao Tzu had been able to explain to her that, after a handful of explorers had managed to flatter their way inside, the practice had been codified by the Imperial Bureaucracy, ensuring that an outsider who showed 'suitable respect for the preeminent culture and customs of Qinxiang' could be allowed to visit it in order to see its wonders firsthand. Fortunately, as the aging philosophers earlier statement about visiting the Utopia with the blessings of the First Minister had hinted, he had enough connections within said bureaucracy - former students, general admirers and so on - to secure her just that.

She'd still have to prove her 'respect' before she'd be allowed entrance, however, and that would most definitely include the _second_thing she needed: The ability to speak the language. The Qin tongue was extremely alien, though also strangely poetic and sing-song in its tenor, compared to the general human trade-tongue that was spoken nearly everywhere else - nor did it resemble any of the more localized languages she was familiar with. Its letters - known as the Heavenly Script - were likewise unlike anything she'd ever seen before, and seemed to hover indecisively between the kind of letters she knew, and full-on pictograms. There were ways to magically grant yourself an understanding of unknown languages, but those wouldn't be allowed for the examination, and they mostly didn't help with reading or writing anyway... so Anitra had to do it the hard way, studying the spoken and written language of the Qin under Lao Tzu and some of his colleagues.

Meanwhile, Blake had to extricate himself from the various affairs of the Dragon Council. Over the past ten years, he'd grown more and more involved in the running of the Utopia - an almost inevitable process, considering the near-universal respect he held within it. Hence, now that he was preparing to fly off on another adventure, he had to make sure that everything he had been dealing with could be dealt with by somebody else, that there was no tidbit of important knowledge that only he knew of, and that no agents of the Utopia were reporting only to him. "You don't realize just how involved you are until you try to outvolve yourself..." he groused, followed by insisting that even if 'outvolve' hadn't been a word before, it certainly was now that he'd coined it!

As for more practical matters, there was the new saddle to consider. Neither Anitra nor Blake were happy to discard their old saddle - nor, indeed, did they, instead enshrining it in their chambers as a souvenir of many adventures. The leather had been worn shiny inside and out, the straps all pulled and deformed to make it as comfortable on Blake's back as if it had been tailored to him, and Anitra's own pussy-juices had soaked into the leather often enough to give it a vague, permanent scent of sex. But, in the end, it just wasn't big enough. It had barely managed to fit her and Direza, with Melora mostly sitting behind it and enjoying the feeling of Blake's back-ridges digging into her crotch - there was no way they could carry more than that.

And there was no real debate this time. While this was an 'adventure', to be sure, it didn't promise to be a particularly risky one, nor were there any children to consider anymore - thus, there was no reason not to bring the whole family along. Direza, indeed, had studied the Qin tongue and the Heavenly Script right alongside Anitra - and indeed picked it up noticeably faster than her - in preparation of playing her usual role as Anitra's handmaiden and body-servant. Her 'Honored Visitor' credentials would allow her to bring a single servant with her, and Direza was obviously a shoe-in for that role.

So, new saddle it was - elongated, custom-built, marvelous craftsmanship like virtually everything the Utopia produced... and, indeed, carefully enchanted like virtually everything the Utopia produced. Unlike the old, retrofitted horse-saddle, this one was built for a draconic frame, taking the movement of Blake's wings into consideration, including distributing the saddlebag holding-points for ideal weight-distribution. It even provided a central storage-compartment under his belly, enhanced with a modified 'Bag of Holding' enchantment - it could store several large suitcases worth of luggage without getting any bulkier or any heavier, which was handy when you needed to bring a couple of suits of plate-armor and some polearms along for the ride. It also comfortably seated four... or, with a few specially ordered 'add-ons', comfortably seated two and rather _un_comfortably seated two more.

Thus suitably prepared for the journey, they were finally ready to pack their bags and set off - none moreso than young Mel, who seemed possibly giddy with excitement. "Thisisgoingtobesogreat!" she gushed rapid-fire as she practically bounced in place, her long, blond mane flying despite her mother's best attempt to keep it gathered in a manageable ponytail. "After all the stories I've heard from mom and auntie Direza and Lady Anitra I'll finally get to go out and see the world and have adventures myself and ride on Master Blake's back andIjustcan'twait!" The fact that she'd just mentioned literally everybody else in the room made it abundantly obvious that she wasn't actually talking to anyone so much as just overflowing with sheer enthusiasm to the point where it was spilling out of her mouth. Anitra rolled her eyes with a tolerant smile as she watched the pinto-coated filly prance and leap around, checking and double-checking both her own and her mother's packs, her light-brown-and-white coat conspiring with her attitude to invoke the mental image of a deer-calf in springtime.

Melora, however, had a touch less patience with her daughter's exuberant energy and finally - with a weary sigh - stepped in and grabbed the younger Equus in mid-prance, pulling her into a tight and powerful hug. One of her strong hands wrapped around the back of the filly's head, pressing their muzzles together in a deep, intense, breath-taking tongue-kiss that left the young girl as putty in her mother's arms. "It's quite clear to me, my dear..." Melora sagely declared as she carried her daughter into the room they shared, "...that you will get no rest nor sleep tonight unless I help you burn off all that energy first! And I want you to be fully awake tomorrow, so that you can truly appreciate the first time your Master granted you the privilege of riding on his back."

Anitra smiled warmly as she watched the two of them retire - and at the mixture of moans, shrieks, groans and outright screams that emerged from their bedroom for several hours afterwards. Melora knew her daughter's body inside and out, and was every bit as familiar with her limits and preferences as Blake was with hers. There was no doubt that she'd do exactly what she set out to do - mixing pain and pleasure with fingers, teeth, tongue, toys and the Ring of Priap until the young filly passed out from a mixture of exhaustion and the sheer intensity of her repeated orgasms.

The relationship the two shared would have been considered depraved and taboo anywhere else - but it was easy for Anitra to see how genuine the maternal love underlying their shared sexuality was, and considering that Melora had spent the last several years training Mel in the sexual skills she'd need in order to eventually take her mother's place, it was probably inevitable that their relationship would wind up with such a sexual dynamic overlaying it. Also, it was just... really hot watching the two of them go at it, partially because it was one of the few situations where you'd get to witness Melora play the domme, but mostly because... well... they were mother and daughter! Sure, there was a little voice in the back of Anitra's head that sometimes reminded her that, based on what she'd once learned while studying certain dusty old notes that no longer existed, the development of that relationship _might_have been helped along somewhat by Blake's mere presence - but she'd grown quite adept at ignoring that voice over the years. These days, thusly, her enjoyment of their incestuous displays was only really hampered by the way it also served as a reminder of how much she missed her own son...

Regardless, it certainly worked - when they all gathered to take off the next day, Mel was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, able to fully enjoy the experience as she climbed into the saddle between her mother and Anitra, and they took to the air together. The experience stole her breath away and silenced her for a time. Melora was clearly happy too - while Blake and Anitra had taken the occasional pleasure-flight together, not far away but just to some clearing or other at the outskirts of the Utopia's jungle to nap, read or make love, it had been over a decade since the mare had ridden on her beloved Master's back.

They were in no particular hurry, of course - not this time. It was as much a leisure-trip and sorely-needed distraction as an adventure, after all. So they flew at a placid pace, and set down every four to six hours to relax, stretch their legs and let Blake rest - he _was_carrying somewhat more weight than usual, after all, and while he could certainly manage it, it clearly took something out of him. The first such rest was also when Blake unveiled the 'modifications' he'd had crafted for the saddle, having graciously decided that Mel and Melora should be allowed to fully enjoy the wonders of flight for the first leg of the journey. A wooden wedge in the style of the classic 'wooden horse' torture-device was thus affixed to the back of the saddle, with its harness adding a few handy attachment-points as well...

Mel and Melora were fastened to it facing one another, bodies close together, legs bent and ankles attached behind them, wrists likewise bound as they sat buck-naked upon their uncomfortable perch, shielded from the brunt of the cold wind only by a rudimentary enchantment. Their breasts were connected with chains that attached directly to Melora's artful nipple-piercings in one side and jag-toothed clamps closed painfully around Mel's nipples on the other, keeping them together even as Melora's bountiful chest was flattened against her daughter's smaller frame. A long, flexible, double-ended dildo was pushed down both their throats - young Mel had, after all, already benefited from the same alchemical draught that had enabled her mother to deep-throat endlessly without choking - and their heads then pushed together until their lips touched and fastened into place there. Nothing Melora wasn't used to, but a bit more of an ordeal for her daughter, who was still practicing her long-term deep-throating skills. Indeed, it didn't take long for the experienced mare to figure out that she could use her well-toned throat-muscles to slowly but steadily pull or push the dildo as she pleased, fucking her daughter's tight esophagus with it as their lips remained glued together.

The central feature of the setup, however, was literally in the center of the 'wooden horse' arrangement - a small wheel, covered in rounded knobs of polished wood. Through an arrangement of cogs and flywheels hidden within the wedge, the wheel would reciprocate with Blake's wingbeats, spinning back and forth - and thus running its knobs across the clits and inner labia of both mother and daughter, applying a fierce stimulation. It had been crafted by a Gnomish Engineer who'd joined the Utopia a few years back, the first of his race to be granted that honor. As far as anyone in the Free Lovers had been able to discover, the odd little man was entirely asexual, showing no interest in men or women of any size - but somewhat paradoxically, this had proven to make him highly effective at creating various clockwork devices of sexual gratification and torture, since he regarded them purely as engineering challenges, undistracted by their intended purposes.

It was hard to say which of the two would be more keenly affected by the endlessly spinning wheel, Anitra pondered as she helped tie them into place. At a glance, Mel's still-developing clit would seem to be a far easier target for the wheel's knobs, compared to Melora's which was not only far more seasoned, but also covered in a golden half-sphere of apparent armor. Of course, at a glance, you wouldn't know that said 'armor' was just the cap of a very long needle, which split into two a little ways in - effectively taking on a Y-shape that penetrated the entirety of Melora's clitoris, not just the tiny, visible tip, as it extended down around her vagina's internals like a tree-root. This split spike was furthermore covered in thorn-like barbs, locking it thoroughly in place, and ensuring that every blow to the golden clit-shield would send tremors all the way down through the pierced organ.

That 'clit-spike' was also a useful reminder that even the Utopia's superlative enchanters weren't perfect, and one more reason why Blake had sought out the Gnomish Engineer rather than the enchanters for his saddle add-ons. It was small and light, with multiple enchantments layered on top of each other and virtually no room to inscribe the kind of arcane symbols that most enchanters preferred to use in order to anchor complex magic. Of course, the truly skilled could manage without... and the spike's creators had been arrogant enough to believe that they could manage in this case too. At the end of the day, however, one of the spells had ultimately failed under the weight of the rest, fizzling out of existence. Specifically, the enchantment that would have made it possible to remove the spike again.

When it had been inserted - which had been quite the ritual all by itself - it had split from a single thick needle into two at the appropriate spot, and then sprouted barbs when in place in order to fully activate. At this point, the enchantment had simply popped out of existence like a soap-bubble in the breeze, and as long as the needle was embedded in Melora's living flesh, there was no way to reapply it. Hence, it was now a permanent fixture - there was no way to get it out without literally shredding Melora's clit to a point where even the strongest regeneration-spell would be hard pressed to put it back together again.

Melora, fortunately, did not mind - indeed, she seemed to treasure it, just as she had the enchanted, nipple-encircling rings that Blake had given her years earlier. As far as she was concerned, it was just one more thing that marked her as his, and she never wanted to remove it anyway. "Perhaps some day, when my time has come, it can be removed - and passed on to my descendants." She'd simply suggested, with a placid smile. Well, at least the _rest_of the enchantments had proven to be just as effective and reliable as advertised...

Buried so deeply in the nerve-filled organ, the spike could - at Blake's mental command - induce a level of soul-tearing agony that could send even the masochistic Melora to the ground, knees buckling, vomiting and convulsing from the pain. Or it could generate such all-absorbing pleasure that she instead collapsed into a state of continuous climax, emptying her bladder down her thighs as her eyes rolled back in her head, even foaming at the mouth. After these limits had been tested, she'd begged Blake to only use either_extreme as a punishment if she had seriously displeased him - including the 'maximum pleasure', which she feared could ultimately desensitize her to the point where she'd be unable to cum from her Master's cock alone. _Lesser applications of pain or pleasure, however, were far more welcome, and she seemed to greatly enjoy the fact that Blake could lift her into Heaven or cast her into Hell with a mere thought.

For now, though, she was only feeling the continuous impacts of the reciprocating wheel against the spike, while the wooden edge it sprung from dug into her pussy and ass, her throat straining against the thick dildo, her lips and eyes locked with her daughter's as they were both battered by the icy winds during the long flight. Not that they spent the entire journey like that, mind. The device within the wedge could be fitted with a few different wheels, including one with metallic studs that applied a mild shock with every impact, and one that replaced the knobs with harsh-bristled brushes - which could be quite agonizing on their own when applied to a clit already swollen and sore from being battered for hours beforehand. The double-ended dildo was also sometimes replaced with an 'intimacy harness' which simply locked their empty mouths together, heads tilted sideways so that their muzzles could interlock, sealing them into an hours-long kiss.

Of course, all that was beside the various fun and games they all enjoyed together during rest-stops and longer breaks. All of them were feeling extra feisty, enlivened by the indefinable air of being on the road again. Or, in Mel's case, being on her first-ever adventure! For both her and Blake, though, there was the added 'motivation' of her recently 'fully entering his service', which was just a slightly more subtle way of saying that she'd reached the point of being able to handle his huge cock in all of her available holes, something he eagerly took advantage of. Of course, just because she was able to handle his girth, thanks in no small part to the demanding training and practice she'd undergone with her mother, didn't mean she could do so comfortably.

In fact, every such penetration was an agonizing experience, her young flesh stretched to the very limit, nerves shrieking in protest, her mouth emitting more cries of pain than moans of pleasure... but since she was a well-schooled masochist just like her mother, and Blake a seasoned sadist, this was hardly an obstacle to him forcing his oversized cock into her vise-tight holes at every turn. While it couldn't quite be said that he was neglecting Melora in favor of her younger, tighter daughter, often using his control over her clit-spike to force her to experience convulsive pleasure while she watched her daughter be so brutally penetrated, Anitra nonetheless took it upon herself to spare some of her own attentions for the ever-loyal mare.

As for Direza, she and Anitra had recently reached an oddly relaxed plateau in their relationship. After piling humiliation after humiliation on the submissive drow over the past years, pushing her to overcome and surpass every limit, every stumbling-block, it had ultimately become abundantly clear to both of them that Direza could and would endure literally anything for her Mistress. From living off of nothing but cum and piss - and a little bit of pussy-juice if she'd been good - for a whole year, to spending a solid month living in a cave with a pack of wild dogs, serving and servicing each of them daily with pussy-lickings, blowjobs, ball-cleanings and rimjobs in addition to all her holes being available for their use whenever they liked, she had stomached it all.

With the Utopia's relaxing standards of 'decency', she no longer even had anything to hide. Her depravity was on display for all to see, as her trips to the market were conducted wearing what Anitra called her 'slut-puppy' outfit - awkwardly high stiletto heels and black leather covering her legs up to the thighs and her arms to past the elbow, with the rest of her entirely exposed save for her collar and a minimalistic pair of black leather panties that were visibly holding a large pair of dildos in place. Of course, this also showed off the brand on her right butt-cheek wonderfully. Everybody in the Utopia now knew that she was a perverted sex-slave, and proud of it. And as a fringe-benefit, those who saw her like this tended to lose a lot of their ingrown fear and hatred of the Drow race!

Point was, by now she had nothing left to prove. The only kind of disgusting, humiliating acts that she hadn't conclusively proven that she could do without hesitation at this point were those that Anitra simply would rather she didn't - and even then, Anitra felt confident that if she ever changed her mind on those counts, Direza would happily submit to them, too. Hence, there was no real need for Anitra to command Direza to debase herself all the time - and conversely, the submissive drow felt a pure sense of fulfillment from the simple confidence in her Mistress' every order.

This was not to say that even the most casual observer would mistake their relationship for one of simple, sapphic love, of course. Granted, they did spend about as much time kissing, licking and fingering one another as one would expect of your average couple - but with Direza forbidden from wearing any 'unnecessary clothes' unless specifically ordered to, she could generally be found buck-naked at her Mistress arm, clad only in the collar that Anitra had given her as a gift on the ten-year anniversary of Direza entering her service. She was never without that, and could often be seen touching it dreamily during quiet times.

Then again, it was a very nice collar. Only the best for Anitra's precious little pissmop! Indeed, despite lacking any of the fancy jewelry one might find on the collar of some fussy empress' spoiled little puppy, it was probably the most expensive collar in the world, by outside-the-Utopia standards. Its material was quite exclusive, after all, having been crafted from the tanned wing-leather of a black dragon by Drewyn the Dragon-Forger himself. Specifically, it was made from some scraps of Slate's wings that the smith had collected after Blake shredded the other black's wings during their initial meeting - then stored alongside Drewyn's extensive collection of draconic body-parts while he waited for some suitably worthwhile project to come up that they could be used for. Now, they decorated Direza's slender neck - a virtually indestructible collar, hardened against magic, fire, and mundane damage, with a lock crafted from one of Blake's scales. Indeed, it was not merely symbolic, but a proper slave-collar - short of removing Direza's head first, the only way to get it off was to use the singular key that Anitra always carried with her. And of course, it had a nice little golden locket dangling from it, proclaiming that the wearer's name was Direza Slutpuppy Pissmop, and that if found she should be returned to her owner, Anitra DragonRider, Champion of the Utopia.

Despite the leisurely pace and the many relaxing stops along the way, the five traveling-companions eventually reached the borders of Qinxiang - at which point a certain amount of seriousness was required. Only Anitra and her - now decently-clad - servant, Direza, actually had permission to be in the country after all. Blake, Melora and Mel would sneak over the border under the cover of night, which wasn't particularly hard for a black dragon - and indeed, Blake could immediately report that he'd been right in his assumption: The odd aura that kept most dragons away from the mountainous region, whatever its source, had no effect upon him. Still, they'd only be available as backup, and would have to stick to the wilderness and avoid being seen, while Anitra and Direza did the investigating. Which, of course, meant that they'd mostly just be enjoying Qinxiang's starkly beautiful mountain vistas while Blake passed the hours by repeatedly pounding every available orifice on his two eager servants.

Part of this calculated deception also entailed Anitra and Direza entering the country 'legally', via one of the gates - an arduous process that, as warned, required Anitra to 'prove herself worthy' of her Honored Visitor status by sitting for what amounted to an examination. The narrow-eyed examiner quizzed her on Qinxiang's history, customs, laws and art, all in Qinxiang's strangely melodic language, and without Direza present to provide her with any kind of useful prompts. Alas, while she had learned the basics of custom and law, and attained basic mastery of the language, the vast array of trivia that the examiner demanded from her - clearly eager for any excuse to fail her - was a bit beyond what she'd bothered to memorize. Which, of course, just meant that she had to cheat in a different way.

The stuffy examination-room - which seemed to spend most of its time being the border-guard's interrogation-room - appeared to be magically insulated to prevent any kind of communication. Just a shame for its designers, then, that Anitra had been equipped by now with Drewyn's newest and most potent set of telepathic rings. Specifically designed to address her original complaint about easily-severed communications, these didn't simply have greater range and a stronger signal - and thus the ability to push through general magical interference more easily - compared to her original set, they were also loaded with specialized penetration-enchantments produced in cooperation with a number of the Utopia's finest enchanters.

Possibly due to being eager to prove their skills after a recent debacle involving a clit-spike and a failing enchantment, they'd outdone themselves. Blake and Anitra had tested the rings under a number of circumstances, and so far, while various types of blocking-spells could reduce the clarity and reach of the telepathic communications, nothing short of outright anti-magic nullification surrounding either endpoint could actually sever them. The enchantments lining the walls of the examination-room were not up to the task, in other words, and with Blake nestled in a nearby clearing with the scrolls and books she'd brought for 'study', feeding her answers while Melora and Mel helped keep track of the materials as best they were able, she passed the examination with flying colors - much to the examiner's poorly-hidden annoyance.

Indeed, the new rings had proven to be well worth the initial... discomfort_associated with the upgrade. The new nipple-rings were easily twice the size of the old ones, after all, both in terms of diameter, thickness, and weight. Made from some kind of carefully-measured gold/platinum alloy and just as intricately carved as the originals, they'd stretched her nipples painfully when they were first put in, and the sheer weight of them took some getting used to. Mind, the size of them actually _helped the illusion that they were part of her armor, since they simply looked too massive for anyone to assume 'nipple-piercings' at first glance. Still, she was glad that the clit-ring that complimented them was a bit smaller, closer to the size of the old nipple-rings. That was still plenty big enough to make it hard to fit it inside her tiny, tight, labia-hugging dragonscale panties, mind, and Drewyn had actually suggested just cutting them a notch lower, thus leaving her clit and the ring dangling over the top edge.

Appealingly slutty though that notion was, though, she'd had to nix it. The armor was supposed to be distractingly skimpy without being obviously_indecent, after all, and there was no way _anyone would mistake such a display as being part of her armor. So, instead, she had requested that he make her a new set of panties with room enough for her new piercing. The pervy dwarf had still had the last laugh, though, not that she really minded what he'd finally come up with. The new design featured a couple of hardened red dragon scales at the front, forming what was basically a cup around her vulva - providing room enough for the ring, as well as giving her added protection against any incidental groin-attacks. Is also left her ass completely bare, without making it obvious.

While the old panties had sported little more than a thin string running down between her buns, this set sported, in fact, nothing at all. The waistband, harder than the leathery texture of her old set, dipped down into the top of her crack and no further, while another narrow band went between her legs, across her taint... and stopped a bit shy of her sphincter. The thickness of her ass hid the fact that the two sections never met to the casual observer, and that the whole arrangement was in fact mostly attached to her skin with magic - hence, she could at any point bend over and spread her cheeks to reveal a ready-to-be-fucked asshole. Terribly convenient, as well as being quite arousing.

Of course, it wouldn't do to shock the natives too much, so as was often the case, she concealed most of her armor under an elegant cloak as she began her journey into the Glorious Empire of Qinxiang, alongside her similarly-attired 'handmaiden', Direza. Who, of course, was wearing nothing but collar and sandals under hers - after all, nothing else was necessary. They'd arrived in springtime, and the local temperatures were balmy - making the cloaks more needed for concealment than warmth, even for those who lacked a DragonRider's resistance to the elements.

They did not linger long in the Trade-Town that waited right beyond the towering, burnished gates of the Great Wall. Seen one dusty marketplace, seen 'em all! More to the point, while the trade-town was closely monitored and controlled by the Imperial Army, the very fact that they were there showed that anything that could be obtained there could be obtained outside the country, without the hassle of acquiring that vaunted 'Honored Visitor' status. Hence, they quickly moved on, traveling by carriage along the winding mountain-paths of Qinxiang, bound for the place where they'd be more likely to learn the truth about the 'Immortal God-Emperor', Liu-Tang - the Imperial Capital, Luoyang.

The capital proved an impressive sight - both for those who saw it first as their carriage came around a corner, the grand city emerging between the mountains as it sprawled throughout a vast and scenic valley, and for those who witnessed its appearance from between the clouds of the higher altitudes, gleaming in the light of sunrise before they sought shelter from that light at a nearby mountain-peak. Everything about Luoyang seemed delicate and beautiful, crafted to please the eye as much as to serve a purpose. This was where the Immortal God-Emperor had descended to the Chosen People, after all - no ugliness could be allowed to mar his home.

From the colorful rooftops, rife with decorations dangling from the eaves and jingling pleasantly in the breeze, to the many statues of both carved stone and cast bronze - frequently including strange-looking, serpentine 'dragons' in every color of the draconic spectrum save for black. Why, many doors and walls were seemingly crafted from delicate and intricately-painted _paper_of all things, making Luoyang an overwhelming and somewhat ephemeral sight for the visitors - leaving Anitra herself forced to admit that despite the locals' arrogance and self-importance, they clearly weren't all talk. Their isolated little pocket-empire truly _was_something special, at least in terms of appearance.

The first order of business there, however, wasn't sightseeing. As soon as they had dropped their luggage off in their assigned quarters within the Imperial Palace Guest-Wing, they were off for their audience with the First Minister, since ignoring this august personage would have been disrespectful. The head of the Imperial Bureaucracy, he was of course merely a seneschal, managing the Empire in the absence of the true Emperor, as his predecessors had done since the God-Emperor Liu-Tang had first embarked on his journey of Enlightenment into the dangerous Outside World. The fact that the First Minister had ruled Qinxiang for millenia now, and that virtually every individual who had occupied this post could trace their ancestry back to one of Liu-Tang's many concubines, was irrelevant. The Obsidian Throne stood empty, and the First Minister greeted his visitors in an ordinary office, rather than a throne-room.

Well, ordinary-ish. It was certainly opulently decorated, though opulence had little impact on someone used to living in a place where gold and gemstones were as common as dirt and pebbles. More importantly, the Imperial Seal was very much in appearance - the twisting, snakelike 'black dragon' with the funny mustache and no wings. From the wall-hangings to the lamps that dangled from the ceiling to the First Minister's exquisite silken robe, the decor certainly left no questions as to whom he was ruling in the stead of. Nor did he lack for imperial demeanor, needless to say...

Still, he was clearly quite pleased with the gift Anitra had brought. Not the advanced craftsmanship or enchantments of the Utopia, of course, since that would have required him to admit that there were worthwhile things in the outside world, and that wouldn't do at all- but rather the silken robe emblazoned with the Imperial Seal that had sent her off in this direction in the first place, 'purchased' from the exceedingly satisfied merchant. Naturally, she did not mention this merchant to the First Minister, but rather gushingly informed him that she had no idea what circuitous route it had taken to reach the Utopia, nor how many hands it might have passed through on the way - though of course, once she found it and learned that it should never have left Qinxiang in the first place, she had not been able to rest until she had restored it to its rightful place!

The First Minister was suitably impressed, praising her for her conscientiousness and the respect she had shown the sacred symbol of the Immortal God-Emperor. Which, of course, meant that he was happy to give her permission to interrogate the Empire's scholars and priests about said emperor, since she was obviously so keen to learn about him. "Your interest in our Glorious Emperor does you credit, Honored Visitor!" The First Minister declared. "I hope you, too, will come to recognize Him as the True and Immortal Leader of mankind, as you hear of His miraculous accomplishments..."

His words did not surprise Anitra in the least, though the fire in them did - she'd expected him to pay necessary lip service to the notion of the 'Immortal Emperor' while still making it clear that he_was in charge... which, after all, he _was. But it sounded, at least to her, as if he genuinely believed in every word he said. The religious indoctrination of the locals had to be remarkably thorough, she thought as she bowed her way out of the First Minister's office.

Once she started to question the Palace Scholars, however, she soon hit a wall - specifically, the subject of the Emperor's current resting-place. "The Emperor's Tomb is sacrosanct, and must not be seen by the eyes of outsiders, be they ever so Honored. Only the holiest of His priests may venture there during the annual festival celebrating His original ascension to the Obsidian Throne. It is illegal for anyone else to even know the location of the tomb, so I trust you will refrain from asking any further questions about it, Honored Visitor..." The scholar declared sternly, wrinkling his already rather wrinkly brow.

This was, of course, no surprise - Lao Tzu had said something similar, after all - but she wasn't about to give up that easily. Still, she clearly wasn't going to get any closer to that taboo topic while within the Imperial Palace itself. The most she was able to learn about it, mostly from tangential mentions, was that it had been built during the Immortal Emperor's reign, before he left on his Journey of Enlightenment, and that it had been filled with traps and magical wonders crafted by his own divine hand.

What she learned about Liu-Tang the Immortal God-Emperor in general, meanwhile, only served to reinforce her suspicion that he and Lutan the Explorer were one and the same. All the dates were thousands of years old, more myth than history, but still more specific than what Lau-Tzu - who was, after all, primarily a philosopher and not a_historian_ - had been able to provide her with... and it all matched up remarkably neatly with the rough timeline she'd managed to put together for Lutan's known movements. He'd appeared on the scene, albeit without raising much in the way of waves, not long after Emperor Liu-Tang had departed Qinxiang on his journey - and his eventual return and entombment more or less corresponded with his disappearance after erecting the Wall of Illusion around the Dragon Utopia.

She also received more confirmation for her initial assumption that she'd have to find this oh-so-forbidden Tomb somehow when a question about whether Emperor Liu-Tang had brought any records of his 'search for enlightenment' with him upon his return met with a strangely abbreviated reply. The scholar confirmed that he had returned with a number of scrolls and journals, but that these had proven to be indecipherable to any of Qinxiang's scholars. As for what had been done with these papers subsequently, the scholar refused to say - which was quite saying all by itself, of course.

Still, how would she go about this? The very location of the tomb was a closely-guarded secret, and the site itself presumably closely guarded in a more literal sense. Oh, and also, it was supposedly filled with fiendish traps both magical and mundane, crafted by the Immortal Emperor's own miraculous magic even, if the stories were to be believed. That last part didn't worry her quite so much, though - she'd dealt with trap-filled tombs before, after all, and magic wasn't much of a problem for a DragonRider. So yeah, finding the place and figuring out a way inside would be the main challenge. Blake had already begun to fly sweeps through the lands surrounding the capital under the cover of night, searching for any likely locations, but the mountainous terrain made it unlikely that he'd just stumble on the place. The tomb would almost certainly be built into the side of one of the conveniently-situated mountains, with very little to see of it from above.

It was while pondering this issue that she wandered across one of Luoyang's biggest public plazas, and found herself halted by an astonishing sight. On a raised platform, a beautiful woman who didn't look like a native of Qinxiang was locked into a set of stocks, bent at the waist, while a raised bar kept her hips elevated. She was naked, an impressive set of cans swinging from her chest, and a long, brown braid hanging from her scalp. Something about her - her athletic build, the defined muscles of her limbs, the faint scars marring her arms and legs and the weapon-callouses on her fingers - made Anitra identify her as a likely adventurer. Albeit one who'd clearly fallen on hard times, considering that half the population of Luoyang seemed to have turned up to either throw rotten fruit at her face and swaying tits, or line up behind her to rape her helplessly-exposed holes.

This kind of public display and 'availability' was, she knew from her studies of local customs, sometimes used as penance for women who had committed crimes against not an individual, but society as a whole. Thus, said society was not only given a chance to exact retribution, but she was also forced to provide a 'community service' for a while. However, this woman was clearly a foreigner, and she hadn't heard of anyone else being awarded Honored Visitor status recently. As she drew nearer, the woman in the stocks clearly recognized that she, too, wasn't from around there - their eyes meeting briefly as the woman desperately called out "Please, help me! I can pay!" over the baying of the crowd. She spoke in the human trade-tongue, notably - ensuring that Anitra and Direza were likely to be the only ones within earshot who could actually understand her words.

What to do, what to do... it seemed an unpleasant and humiliating punishment, of course, and the woman might very well be stuck in those stocks for days, even weeks, exposed to the elements and the crowd. Nor were the men lining up behind her particularly gentle. Her long braid was frequently used as a hand-hold as the neverending line of men pounded her rear holes with unrestrained force, scowling even as they approached orgasm - nevermind lovemaking, it didn't even look like any rape Anitra had seen, or participated in. It was hate-fucking, with every man placing as much emphasis on hurting and humiliating the woman as on seeking his own release. But hey, Anitra had dished out some humiliating punishments in her time as well, and this woman might very well have done something to richly deserve it. On the other hand... what might an experienced adventurer be doing in the very heart of Qinxiang, the sealed land? And what might she have been caught doing?

Anitra had a sneaking suspicion - and, fortunately, there was an easy way to confirm or deny it. Approaching one of the handful of guards that surrounded the stocks, keeping an eye on things and presumably helping to ensure that the crowd didn't get too out of control, she bowed before him with suitable respect and questioned him, in her best Qinxiang, about what crimes the woman had committed to earn this no-doubt-entirely-justified punishment? The guard grudgingly returned the bow, unable to find anything to object to in her demeanor and clearly recognizing the emblem that she was currently wearing on her throat as a cloak-clasp - marking her as an Honored Visitor, and thus allowed to be there despite her obvious foreign-ness.

"She was caught breaking into the Emperor's Tomb." The guard replied with a vile grimace. "Heresy of the highest order, especially since she had no right to be in this nation in the first place. To think that the feet of some foreign whore dirtied the tiles of that sacred place..." He spat on the ground rather than finish the sentence, as if he felt that his mouth had been polluted by just_mentioning_ the crime. Putting on a suitably horrified face, Anitra gasped. "How horrid! Is not this punishment far too light for such a terrible crime?"

The guard's face brightened significantly at this, a vicious smile splitting his face. "Oh, certainly - this is only the first part. Three days and nights in the stocks - a chance for all the people of Luoyang to show their displeasure at her trespass. At sunrise tomorrow, she'll be done here, and her punishment will begin_properly!_ Soon, she will decorate the walls of the Temple of Justice like the rest of the heretics!" Based on the pleading look in the captured adventurer's eyes, she at least knew what, exactly, this entailed. Anitra did not, however, and curiously requested and received directions to the Temple of Justice.

Equal parts courtroom and church, the Temple of Justice was where the scholastic Priests of Justice dispensed judgment for serious crimes in the name of the Immortal God-Emperor. Minor crimes were handled by more local, mundane courts, but anything serious enough to be considered 'an offense to the Immortal God-Emperor' wound up there. This included murder, heresy, and of course 'saying bad things about the government', as tended to be the case in most places. The most severe punishment they could mete out was displayed front and center, presumably to 'scare straight' any passersby who were pondering a life of heresy and speaking-out-against-the-Imperial-Bureaucracy.

Lining the outer wall of the Temple was a series of 'candleholders'. Human torsos, arms and legs obviously severed and the stumps carefully healed at some point. Their tongues, noses, eyes and ears had also all been removed, their heads shaved bald and presumably treated with some alchemical potion to prevent new hair-growth, leaving their skulls almost alien in the lack of features. They hung upside down, bound by obviously permanent metallic clamps that glowed with magic in Anitra's eyes - her perceptions sharp enough by now to recognize them as 'benevolent' enchantments. Healing and sustaining... keeping these unfortunates alive despite endless hunger, thirst and exposure to the elements. Some were groaning quietly, though it didn't sound like any of them currently had the energy to scream properly - presumably, living near here was a real treat for the first few days after a new 'candleholder' got installed.

And, indeed, on each upturned groin, two thick wax candles could be found, burning steadily, scorching-hot wax running down their sides to cake around their 'holders'. The women had one each in pussy and ass, while the men instead had the former fastened atop their ballsack. How long might they last, like that, candles burning down, extinguishing themselves on already-burned flesh, before being replaced by a fresh set while the wounds healed? Judging by the strength of the sustaining enchantments, probably quite a while. Years, even decades. Some of the 'sconces' looked old enough to have spent more time on that wall than off it, their empty mouths hanging open, drooling, their minds long-since gone. If she knew of this... no wonder the adventuress was so eager to escape.

Well, it was ultimately irrelevant, as was the question of whether she could actually 'pay' as promised. If nothing else, she obviously knew_where_ the Emperor's Tomb was, and indeed had hard-earned, first-hand knowledge of how it was guarded. That made her valuable to Anitra. The trip to see the Temple of Justice was really just a way to pass time until nightfall. It wouldn't do to break her 'cover' as an Honored Guest, after all - so if the unfortunate woman in the stocks was to be rescued, it'd have to be under the cover of darkness.

Indeed, Anitra soon came up with a suitably adventurous plan, and telepathically outlined it to Blake while pacing around in the luxurious room they'd been assigned in the palace guest-wing - safe in the knowledge that the inevitable, sharp-eared spies listening in on any conversation that took place there wouldn't be able to overhear. Tonight, in the small hours, when the crowd is gone and the guards are sleepy... that's when I'll strike! She explained eagerly. _I'll sneak into the plaza from the nearby back-alleys and approach the guards one at a time from a blind angle, disabling them with silent chokeholds or a quick blow to the back of the neck!_She mimed the appropriate motions, easily knocking out a chunk of empty air in front of her while Direza watched from her seat, with just the faintest hint of veiled amusement in her eyes.

You'll be my eye in the sky, relating their positions and movements to me, ensuring that none of the takedowns are seen by the other guards, and letting me know if any of them start to move. She continued, vividly picturing the scenario before her eyes - the darkened and empty plaza, the sleepy guards scattered about, keeping an eye on the prisoner rather than each other. As long as I do it in the right order, I bet I'll be able to knock them all out without any of them being the wiser... they'll wake up the next day with a headache and no clue, impotently wondering how they were so _ thoroughly _outwitted!

Blake did not immediately reply, seeming to chew on it for a few moments while digesting both her words and the payload of emotions and mental images they'd carried along. Then he sighed telepathically. I can certainly see why this plan appeals to you, my love... it would be great fun indeed, and I'd much enjoy watching your work from above. But alas, much as I delight in your renewed spirit of adventure, I fear I will have to play the voice of reason here. A single misstep, even a tiny mistake when disabling a single guard, and the whole plan turns to disaster. Your cover as an Honored Visitor will be gone for good, and we'd probably have to flee the entire nation without any chance to further investigate the Emperor's Tomb.

Anitra winced - both physically and mentally - at this. She'd been so preoccupied with what a rush it'd be if everything went right, she'd not really thought much how quickly it could go wrong or how hard it would be to recover from it. She probably should - after all, despite all her inhuman advantages and the frequent training-sessions with her 'sisters', she probably was a touch rusty after more than ten years of dedicating her time mainly to parenting, community-building and depraved sexual games. In view of that, I have an alternate solution in mind... Blake continued blithely. Less _ interesting , but also less risky _. Still the same basic idea, mind...

Thus, when the darkness of the night deepened, and only a short handful of tottering drunks remained near the stocks to take advantage of the captive's available orifices, it was Blake who swooped into action, rather than remaining merely an observer. Floating on silent wings high in the sky, carefully keeping a cloud to his back lest he be outlined against the stars for anyone looking up, he unleashed a powerful sleep-spell that blanketed the entire plaza. The drunks, the guards and the woman alike immediately fell into a deep slumber, with the guards collapsing where they stood. In the shadows of a nearby alleyway, Direza saw this and took action as planned - with one hand on the Arcane Focus that hung beneath her collar, she summoned up the dark powers of Lolth... literally. Spheres of focused darkness coalesced around the torches that still burned on the platform, keeping the woman there exposed and visible - effectively snuffing them out. Immediately, the whole center of the plaza sank into a deep, but natural darkness, ensuring that no errant eyes would notice the collapsed guards.

Only then did Anitra and Direza enter the plaza, their respective eyes penetrating the gloom with equal ease. Approaching the stocks, Anitra paused to take a closer look at the woman they were rescuing. She looked quite a bit worse for wear, though not as much as she'd feared. She was well-tanned, enough so that three days exposed to the sun hadn't given her back any visible sunburn, and there were only a handful of significant bruises across her pretty face and heavy tits, suggesting that few among the crowds had mixed rocks into their selection of hurled fruits. Probably more as a courtesy to those availing themselves of her orifices than anything else, she figured - after all, if you didn't have a lot of confidence in your throwing-arm you risked hitting one of them, and it was a lot easier to apologize your way out of an errant piece of fruit than a bruising rock.

The look behind her was rather more dire. Her pussy and ass alike gaped noticeably, labia and sphincter red and ragged with wear and tear. Cum was oozing steadily from both as well, dripping into a basin that had been thoughtfully built into the platform itself, which seemed to be draining steadily down into the sewers beneath the street. Very thorough. Had any precautions even been taken against pregnancy, though? Well, presumably, the torture she was expected to soon endure at the hands of the Judge-Priests was expected to deal with any... growing issues in that regard. But since she _wasn't_going to wind up as a limbless, upside-down torso nailed to a wall after all, she might be in need of some additional measures once she'd recovered.

Looking at the worn-out holes, which had probably been hate-fucked by hundreds if not thousands of angry citizens over the course of the past three days, an amusing thought occurred to her, and she grabbed Direza - who was hovering nearby, every obedient. "We can't have her trailing slime everywhere we take her, like some sort of snail..." she whispered to the drow. "Go lick her clean while I cut her out of the stocks!" Direza's prompt, unhesitating compliance was a delight to see, as always.

They didn't really have time to entertain themselves, but on the other hand, they also weren't in any dreadful hurry. Blake was still in the air, keeping an eye out for any approaching patrols or other dangers, ready to lay down another sleep-spell if anyone headed towards the platform to investigate why the torches had suddenly gone out. So Anitra took her time carefully cutting through the stock's lock and hinges with BlackFire's keen edge, watching Direza work in the meantime - her face buried in the sleeping woman's ass, licking and sucking the cum of hundred of anonymous strangers out of both holes.

The drow's agile tongue moved swiftly and without hesitation, lapping it all up while soothing the ragged edges of the twin orifices. There was no pause, no grimace or reluctance, as she sucked every bit of body-warmed jizz she could out of an asshole that likely hadn't been cleaned since the three-day ordeal began. Occasionally, her tongue-stud flashed in the starlight, making Anitra smile - if they hadn't been in such a hurry, the Drow could've swapped it for one of the enchanted studs she carried around in her little jewelry-box - specifically, the one that let her change the texture of her tongue to being thickly ribbed would've greatly sped up her progress.

As she nonetheless managed to finish up, Anitra flashed Direza a warm smile and whispered "Well done, my pet..." - causing her to glow with delight despite the numerous cum-stains glistening on her face. In the meantime, Anitra had scraped the worst of the rotten fruit off of the woman's skin, and together they laid her out on her back, there on the platform. Now all that remained was to wake her up and hope that she was still able to walk, since carrying her around seemed likely to draw rather more suspicion from any incidental witnesses. The magical sleep was heavy, but not absolute - a strong enough stimuli would do the trick.

This was accomplished by Anitra carefully placing one hand over the woman's mouth to prevent her from crying out too loudly, and reaching down to her bared, freshly-cleaned groin with the other. Her fingers easily located the clitoral hood, and wrapped tightly around the sensitive little nub. Then it was just a matter of squeezing and twisting until the slumbering body under her fingers stirred and sprang awake with a start, emitting a muffled cry into her other hand. Releasing the tormented clit, Anitra shushed her. "Quiet. You're being rescued. Just like you asked for." She whispered. "Had to wake you from magical sleep - wide-range spell. Can you walk?"

The woman squinted, no doubt struggling to penetrate the darkness with her merely human eyes, and as Anitra removed her hand, she quietly replied "Let's find out, shall we?" Her hushed, subdued tone honestly seemed likely to carry less far than Anitra's own whispers, suggesting some experience with stealthy operations, and once no hands were in the way any more, she rolled forwards onto her feet with remarkable agility. Then she staggered, for a moment, her legs trembling, before she straightened up - showing no particular embarrassment at her nakedness. "I won't be doing acrobatics for a bit, but I should be able to manage a brisk walk." She finally concluded, looking around, apparently getting her bearings from the lights visible in nearby buildings. Her presence of mind was quite impressive, Anitra decided - indeed, she seemed largely untraumatized by the plight she'd just been rescued from, and now that she wasn't shouting desperately to be heard over an angry mob, her voice had a smooth, educated finish to it, the kind you usually associated with young nobles freshly polished by their overpriced, personal tutors.

"Good. Then put this on, keep your head down, and follow me." Still unable to see much of anything, the woman had to have 'this' - an elegant full-length cloak identical to those worn by Anitra and Direza - pressed directly into her hands, but at that point she wasted not time pulling it on and following close behind her two rescuers as they fled the platform and disappeared into the nearby side-streets. Moments after they'd left, Direza canceled the spell she'd been maintaining so far - the spheres of darkness winked out of existence, and the light of the torches again spread warmly across the snoring guards, the drooling drunks, and the empty stocks. Eventually, someone would notice - but by then, they'd be well away.

Not that getting out of Luoyang with a fugitive in tow was simple, per se. The gates were closed during the night, after all. Still, they could be opened again, if a suitably Honored Visitor approached it in a suitably respectful fashion, carrying a suitably heavy 'tip' for the hardworking guards stationed there. Of course, if the guards saw her leave with more servants than she'd arrived with, it was just possible that they'd be a touch suspicious! Fortunately, they did not. After all, it would not do for an Honored Visitor to go traipsing all over the sprawl of Luoyang on her feet like some sort of peasant - so not long after arriving, she had rented a suitably magnificent means of conveyance.

It was a palanquin - which was something she was well accustomed to traveling in, of course. This one hadn't been made for a dragon's back, however, but rather was a more customary model, designed to be carried by a couple of burly human servants, doing the walking so their noble lords wouldn't have to. Plenty of such palanquins made their plodding way around Luoyang night and day, showing varying levels of wealth and influence in their decorations, maintenance, and the dress of the carriers. For those who really wanted to show off, though - or who were just particularly keen on his carriers not gossiping about exactly where he got carried off to and who met him there - there was an alternative.

The palanquin that Anitra had hired was thus transported swiftly and tirelessly through the streets of Luoyang by a pair of towering clay golems, guaranteed to never speak a word to anyone about their day-job. Intricately decorated, the golems' baked clay exterior had been carved to make them resemble a pair of oversized, armored bodyguards, clad in classical mail, even sporting completely useless clay swords attached to their belts. It was all about the look, obviously, and she couldn't deny that they cut a magnificent figure. More importantly, they also didn't protest when three people piled into the palanquin, nor flinch in the slightest when they turned a corner a short while later, coming across another golem-carried palanquin exactly like their own, which then promptly disappeared into thin air. Nor did they whisper any warnings about any such details when they stopped before the closed gates and the ranking guard leaned in to inspect the interior of the palanquin.

What he saw was the same foreign Honored Visitor he'd seen arrive a few days earlier, sporting the symbol of her status on her throat, while her servant sat across from her, seemingly sleepy at the late hour, head bowed and covered by her deep hood. Servants, of course, weren't really worth looking at, so he paid her little mind, only nodding along without visibly rolling his eyes as the Honored Visitor gushingly explained her intention to observe the lights of a nighttime Luoyang from a nearby mountainside, since she had heard that it was a truly poetic sight.

A small purse changed hands - not a bribe, of course, but simply a show of appreciation for a hardworking civil servant - and the gate was opened a crack to let the two expressionless clay golems carry the palanquin out, where they then stomped away into the darkness without hesitation. Only once they were out of sight of the gate did Direza emerge somewhat reluctantly from where she'd been hiding - scrunched together between Anitra's legs, hidden within the cloak, her small frame and thin limbs allowing her to compact herself into the limited space far more effectively than the more muscular woman who'd taken her place in the meantime.

All of them breathed more easily now that their planned escape was successfully accomplished, and after leaning out of the palanquin to glance up at the stars and the surrounding mountain-peaks - which was apparently enough for her to figure out exactly where they were - the newly-rescued adventuress smoothly suggested that they should make their way towards a hidden campsite she'd established outside the city walls, where she kept spare clothes and equipment as well as enough gold to compensate her saviors suitably. Anitra agreed, impressed by this apparent foresight, and provided the golems with the required instructions to get them moving in the right direction.

Then, as they stomped along, it was finally time for some introductions. "I'm Anitra, and this is my faithful servant and dear friend, Direza..." the DragonRider declared with an appropriate gesture towards the slim drow by her side - prompting a luminescent blush on the dark-gray cheeks and a barely-disguised squirm. Despite most of her attention being focused on what she should and shouldn't reveal to their 'guest', Anitra couldn't help but grin just a bit at this reaction. She could hand her favorite little pet a frothing mug of donkey-cum liberally mixed with horse-piss, and she'd down it without a moment's hesitation or the slightest flinch... but give any hint of the genuine love and friendship that had blossomed between them over the year, and Direza would act as if she was sitting on a hot-plate. In truth, it was probably more tragic than funny, since it hinted that somewhere deep inside, the dark elf still couldn't quite believe that she was worthy of anything other than vicious humiliation and magnanimous disdain from her dearly beloved mistress...

Meanwhile, the newly-rescued woman, still dressed in Direza's borrowed robe, calmly nodded along to the introduction. Her sharp, amber eyes were clearly taking in both Anitra's own unusual peepers and Direza's Drow nature, but she commented on neither. "Charmed, ladies..." she instead replied, her tone still smooth, polished, and somehow just inherently snooty. "I'm Lara - Lara Croft. Adventurer and explorer, specializing in retrieving valuable trinkets, old bric-a-brac, magical artifacts and whatnot from ancient ruins, dungeons and so on. Traps, monsters and wild animals no obstacle, but human guards may be an occasional pain in the arse."

Curious - and not wanting to start pressing her about the Emperor's Tomb quite yet - Anitra instead poked at her apparently polished education, and received a reply that made her wonder whether she ought to be impressed or disdainful. Apparently, the good Miss Croft wasn't adventuring to make ends meet like most of her colleagues and, in fact was independently wealthy, being the scion of an old noble family. Hardly as affluent or as influential as it once was, it nonetheless still had plenty of resources left to keep its last remaining member fully-equipped with a mansion, a staff of servants, and a healthy maintenance-budget. Rather than simply live the idle life of an heiress, however, Lara had somehow been bitten by the adventuring-bug, and thus spent most of her time traveling the world and getting into scrapes. Not to make money, but mostly just for the fun of it - and sometimes to keep powerful, magical artifacts out of the wrong hands. Of course, instead they usually just wound up gathering dust in her trophy-room back home... which struck Anitra as a pretty risky approach. If someone robbed that, they could wind up with a lot of dangerous toys! Still, not her problem.

Soon, they arrived at the campsite - well-hidden behind a rocky outcropping partway up a mountainside, ensuring that a bonfire lit there wouldn't be visible from the city below. Dried wood had been stored there, and was swiftly lit by Direza's magic, while Lara recovered the packs she'd concealed there. Her 'clothes' turned out to consist mostly of a sleeveless, teal shirt that hugged her impressive chest remarkably tightly, and an equally-short pair of doehide shorts. No armor in sight, suggesting that she was the kind of adventurer who subscribed to the old 'the best defense is not getting hit in the first place' adage, and thus dressed for maximum agility and flexibility.

The packs also contained a fair amount of gold and silver coin, which she offered to Anitra with a smile. "You really got me out of a bind, back there - literally. I'd say you've earned it!" But of course, Anitra refused the gift with a smile. "Like yourself, I'm not exactly living hand to mouth. How about a collaboration instead? I've got my own interest in the Emperor's Tomb, which I gather is what you're here to raid. Why not work together on that? All we're after are some old scrolls and documents that appear to have been stored there somewhere, so you can have whatever fancy artifact you were looking for, no arguments."

Lara did not immediately agree, but pondered it for a minute before finally nodding. "All right - you have a deal. Honestly, I usually prefer to work alone, and certainly not with someone I don't know I can trust... but I suppose I'll have to give you the benefit of the doubt after you saved my sorry hide, don't I? So, is that 'we' just the two of you, then?" Which was as good of an excuse as she was going to get for introducing Lara to Blake, who'd been shadowing them in the air throughout, Mel and Melora perched on his back. Now, he descended from the night sky on silent wings, causing Lara to leap up in shock and reach for a pair of compact hand-crossbows that dangled from her belt, glowing with all the usual automatic-reloading enchantments.

Fortunately, the situation didn't escalate beyond that, and soon the necessary introductions and explanations had been made. Once again, Lara seemed to take it all remarkably in stride, ultimately shrugging and declaring "I've never gone tomb-exploring with a dragon before, but based on the old architectural plans I... borrowed in preparation for my previous expedition, that place should be big enough that you can fit in there - so, why not? You're gonna have to be careful where you put those big feet of yours, though, unless you wanna set off every trap in the place. I know from experience those scales you've got are tough - but not invincible." Blake looked a bit curiously at her, then snorted and assured her that he was quite the dab hand at spotting traps himself - at least, any trap that actually stood a chance of hurting him.

There's a curse on her... His mental voice then informed Anitra. I wonder if she's even aware. It's quite subtle. I barely spotted it myself. Subtle indeed - even knowing it was there, Anitra herself couldn't see any trace of it no matter how she strained her eyes. Lara, however, clearly noticed her sudden curiosity - until then, she had been watching as Direza, Melora and Mel efficiently expanded her small campsite with some help from the supplies in Blake's magically spacious storage-compartment, making it expansive enough for four of them to rest there for a while - only Anitra and Direza would be returning to Luoyang, after all. Turning her head, she lifted an inquisitive eyebrow at Anitra, who fumbled briefly for an explanation before picking something obvious.

"You seem to be doing well, all things considered..." she thus commented, shrugging. "You sure you're okay? Most women would probably be a touch traumatized by an experience like what you just went through." Lara barked a laugh, and sat down on a convenient rock to gaze out across the stark Qinxiang vista. "You would think so, wouldn't you?" She replied, shaking her head. "But the truth is, I've... kind of gotten used to it by now. Things like that just seems to happen to me all the bloody time. If anything, a three-day gang-rape is rather mild compared to some of the things I've gone through. Not that I'm not terribly grateful that you saved me from there, mind - after all, they had something quite a lot worse planned for me if you hadn't!"

Sighing, she shrugged and continued. "Honestly, I sometimes wonder if one of the first artifacts I found didn't leave me stuck with some kind of curse - no matter where I go, it's mind-control spells, horny natives, rapey guards, fertility-rituals... or several of those in combination! Heck, I've wound up being 'imbued' with a dick more than once... but that's probably too much information, isn't it? Apologies." Laughing, Anitra joined her on the rock. "Don't worry about my delicate sensibilities - I know exactly what you're talking about. Let me tell you about this one time I had a necromancer raise the ghost of an infamous womanizer so I could interrogate him..."

Finding in each other an unexpected kindred spirit, the two women spent the next few hours swapping tales of past adventures, with Anitra sharing more of her and Blake's true nature than she'd really planned_to, including letting on that her and Blake weren't just steed and rider, but husband and wife. Lara, for her part, shared tales of such depravity and eroticism that even Anitra had to blush. "...but the _worst was probably the time I found the Collar of Submission. It wasn't even what I'd been looking for in that ruin, you know? I had no idea what it even was. It just looked like a thin leather collar lined with tiny metal cones, so I picked it up to get a better look... next thing I knew, I was completely overcome with submissive lust for the horse I rode there."

Anitra nodded along eagerly, fingers creeping towards her panties as Lara expounded on how the horse, which had clearly been just as strongly affected by the magical collar, had pounded her every hole right to the root while her own ability to resist his desires rapidly disintegrated. By the end, she'd licked his cock clean after he battered her ass bloody, practically bathed in his cum, and ultimately strapped the collar around her own neck - despite an earlier attempt to use it as an improvised cock-ring to prevent overly deep penetrations, which had failed spectacularly and instead given her sphincter an agonizing pounding.

"It took me nearly a week to break free of the collar's control - and another month for either of my holes to recover, even with the help of some very well-paid healers! What an ordeal..." she finished with a sigh. Anitra's nostrils, however, were flaring as they picked up a familiar scent. Somewhere down in Lara's tight shorts, a sweet fluid was being produced. Perhaps she did not resent the consequences of her 'curse' quite as much as she pretended to - or perhaps Blake's proximity was merely forcing her to reassess those past experiences in a new light, Anitra thought with a sting of regret.

Certainly, Anitra couldn't deny her own rising desires. "You've certainly been through a lot..." she commented, a bit breathily. "I hope you haven't let those experiences stop you from enjoying, ah, more consensual pleasures. After all, there's nothing wrong with sharing the bliss of sexual ecstasy with a trusted and loved partner, whatever the details of one's... personal preferences, right?" This was a somewhat pertinent issue since, while they talked, the expansion of the campsite had been completed, freeing Melora and her daughter up for other tasks.

Blake, too, had overheard Lara's tales, after all, and wasted no time calling upon his servants to help deal with the resulting hard-on. Now that they weren't caught up in their respective stories, both of them turned in unison to see where the very appropriate background-noise was coming from, and found Melora and Mel in a passionate embrace, tongues intertwining, tits mashed flat against each other's. Melora was on top, and wearing her own Ring of Priap, her hefty horsecock buried in her daughter's tight snatch, as Mel spread her legs wide to welcome her. Above them, Blake had _his_cock deeply embedded in Melora's well-worn ass, setting the pace of their lovemaking with his own bone-shaking thrusts.

"Why do I get the feeling that you lot are more than just traveling-companions?" Lara asked, biting her lip. Anitra just grinned, glad to see Melora get some attention from Blake's cock again. "Probably because we are. I mean... I already admitted that me and Blake are a couple, but it's a rather _open_relationship, as you can see. Melora and Mel mostly serve him, and dear Direza mostly serve me, but honestly, we all get up to all kinds of things together. Like I said, nothing wrong with that, right?" Lara did not seem to have any counter-arguments for that, especially not when Direza obeyed Anitra's quick hand-signal and shed her cloak, revealing her beautiful, slim, naked body.

As Anitra rose and discarded her own robe in turn, swiftly followed by the armor she'd been wearing underneath, she heard Lara whistle in surprise, and possibly something more. Well, she had made sure to maintain an angle that'd give the female adventurer a good luck while she stripped off the black scales. "That's some quite impressive jewelry you've got there..." Lara commented, with some of the usual polish leaving her tone. "I can't remember the last time I saw rings that size. How do they not make your tits sag?" Giggling slightly, Anitra curved her spine backwards in a stretch that was carefully designed to show off both the hefty nipple-rings and the smaller platinum ring that dangled from her clitoral hood. "Dark and unholy magical powers being put to good use..." she said jokingly - though, one could argue that her draconic vitality was pretty unholy, considering what the god who had provided it had been like.

Now naked, she stepped forwards to embrace her eagerly waiting servant, while throwing an inviting glance back at Lara. "If you just want to sit back and watch, that's fine too... but don't hold back if you feel like joining in. Just think of it as a way to... unwind_after the stress of the escape." Biting her lip, Lara seemed to hesitate for a moment - then she sighed and rose from her seat, pulling off her tight teal top. "Well, it _has been a while since I was last with a girl... might make for a nice palate-cleanser after all those peckers!" She declared, and stepped forwards into Anitra and Direza's arms.

Soon, the three of them were intertwined alongside the rivaling trio of Melora, Mel and Blake - indulging in the usual sapphic amusements. Wet tongues and lips found their way to nipples, clits, pussies, assholes and occasionally their counterparts, while fingers lightly caressed, viciously dug into various sensitive bits of warm and tender flesh or tugged playfully on oversized rings. Lara proved a skilled lover, suggesting that recently or not, she had indeed found her way between the legs of more than a few female lovers somewhere along the way.

She'd also apparently meant the 'palette-cleanser' quite literally, and after going through a few other positions, Anitra found herself standing - somewhat shakily - while Lara and Direza knelt before and behind her. While Direza's tongue hungrily explored her asshole, as enthusiastic now as the first time she'd been allowed to do so, Lara's lips glued themselves to Anitra's labia, her tongue lapping up the free-flowing love-juices from between them, her teeth occasionally gripping the clitoral ring above to twist and tug at it. Digging her fingers into Lara's brown hair, she came over and over, moaning out her pleasure.

Mind, in all honesty, Direza was probably carrying more than her fair share - she'd seemingly had the time to swap out her tongue-stud at some point while helping to set up camp, clearly anticipating that she'd soon get to use it. It was the one that vibrated as she licked, its frequency going up and down in time with the elf-girl's rapid heartbeat - one of the first enchanted tongue-studs she'd acquired, and still a perennial favorite. That type, in particular, had turned into a minor fashion-movement among the Free Lovers in the Utopia, no doubt as a result of Tiffany visiting one day and getting to experience it for herself.

The two trios did not remain separate for long, however - soon they collapsed into one another, mixing and matching, the addition of a new participant escalating their usual sexual antics into a full-on six-person orgy. With two Rings of Priap in circulation - though one of them, of course, could only jump between Melora and Mel - there were a great many possible ways for the six individuals to come together in pleasurable ways, and even as the level of depravity ratcheted up a notch or two, Lara made no move to excuse herself from the scrum... though, based on her past experiences, perhaps there wasn't anything particularly outrageous about the way every cock that had guested an ass was soon licked clean, be it by the same person who dirtied it or some other, nearby tongue - Lara's included. Or the way Direza's thirsty lips were called upon whenever anyone needed to relieve themselves without leaving the embrace of the orgy, eventually including Lara herself, who'd clearly spotted the pattern.

Anitra eventually found herself stuffed with cock from every angle - lying atop Melora, with the horse-girl's thick cock lodged all the way up her womb, while above her, Blake's massive bulk loomed as he pounded her asshole with long, smooth strokes. Her lips, meanwhile, were wrapped around a human-sized, but still satisfyingly thick, cock - the result of Lara donning the other Ring of Priap. She was squatting atop Melora's equine face as she enjoyed both the blowjob and a wide, soft, horse-tongue digging into her asshole. Mel was nowhere to be seen, but slobbery sounds from behind her suggested that the filly was once again showing off her signature party-trick - using her small frame and well-toned limbs to cling to the underside of Blake's tail, her lips glued to his tailhole, tonguing it even as he steadily fucked Anitra. She had not been able to tell where Direza was at that time, but only figured it out a while after the fact - squatting behind her, eagerly licking Blake's shaft as it emerged from her Mistress' asshole, keeping it clean and well-lubricated for the task.

The orgy continued clear through the night, with the rising sun finding an exhausted, sweaty, cum-stained pile of women resting against Blake's broad flank. Everyone involved were quite ready to sleep through the day at that point, but alas, Anitra and Direza had to tiredly climb back into the palanquin - whose golem carriers had watched the entire orgy with stony stoicism - so that they could be transported back to the city and their room in the Palace Guest-Wing. They'd need another day or two to wrap things up there - wouldn't do for the Honored Visitor to just skip town on a whim, after all - while Lara, Blake and the rest continued to camp out in the wilderness.

Part of the idea was to give Lara time to recover from her ordeal, of course, though considering the stamina - sexual and mundane - she'd just displayed, Anitra wasn't sure how much recovery-time she really needed. Or, considering that she'd be sharing the camp with Blake, Melora and Mel, how much she'd really get - so she supposed it all worked out neatly enough in the final reckoning. Still, before she left, she gave the yawning Lara a warning. "Don't take this as jealousy - like I said, we've got a very open relationship - but don't fuck Blake. He should know better than to do so anyway, but... well, human or dragon, men tend to think with their dicks when they're horny, as you well know."

She'd noticed the adventuress throwing a few speculative glances at Blake's huge tool during the orgy, and considering her past experiences with horses - with the events she'd recounted to Anitra being, by her own account, just one of several - it wasn't unthinkable that she'd be both willing and able to handle his size. She hadn't tried to go for it during the orgy, but given a day or two of boredom and her curiosity might get the better of her. "And why not, if you're not jealous?" She asked, eyes straying back to Blake, who was already starting to doze off.

Anitra sighed and shook her head. "Because it'd likely make your pussy catch on fire - in a bad way. Or your ass. Y'know, whichever. Unlike the rest of us, you're human. And human blood reacts rather violently with the bodily fluids of black dragons - cum included. So if he tears you just a bit, then cums inside you... well, I've seen the results before. Third-degree burns are never fun, but even less so when they're inside your cunt." Swallowing, the mental image apparently chasing away some of her sleepiness, Lara nodded - looking at Blake with a different expression now. "I'll... ah... keep that in mind..." she conceded. Waving goodbye to friends old and new, Anitra then clambered into the palanquin to join Direza, who was already snoozing in the corner. Time to head back to Luoyang and do boring, non-sexy stuff for a bit!

It wound up taking a full two days to wrap things up in Luoyang. There were several pre-arranged meetings with priests, scholars and historians that she couldn't cancel without raising suspicion, as well as the usual selection of official meetings, dinners, and a full-on ball at the First Minister's residence, which wasn't something anyone would dare to refuse an invitation to, least of all an Honored Visitor. The dinner, at least, was interesting - Qinxiang cuisine was so utterly alien compared to anything she was familiar with that she couldn't even really tell whether she _enjoyed_the food or not, but it was definitely an experience worth having.

The only bit of actual excitement, however, was getting investigated by the Imperial Guard for possible involvement in the disappearance of a certain heretic outsider... and even that was less exciting than it sounded. By the time she'd even returned to Luoyang, the city had already been embroiled in a massive man-hunt - or woman-hunt, rather - for the missing Lara Croft, with soldiers searching high and low and harsh checkpoints on every gate. The assumption seemed to be that she was still in the city, having been freed from the stocks by some unknown, sorcerous accomplice, since the gates had been closed for the night and the Imperial Guard had clamped down on every possible exit by the time they opened in the morning.

Anitra was questioned, thus - and very politely at that - as one of the dozen or so people who'd left the city after the gates had closed. She did not seem to be under any particularly intense scrutiny, however, since her story seemed to check out just fine. The gate-guards could confirm that her palanquin had left the city with only her and her servant aboard, and returned in the morning with the exact same number of people. Her explanation about heading up a nearby mountainside to admire the sight of a lamp-lit nighttime Luoyang and drink a bottle of fine rice-wine - a strong drink much favored by the locals - only to ultimately doze off there and eventually wake up to the sunrise seemed to be considered perfectly plausible. Had she seen any suspicious people, foreigners in particular, during her trip through the city? Gone anywhere near the plaza where the prisoner had been kept? Of course she hadn't - not during the night, at least! She had been by there earlier in the day and seen the criminal on display, certainly - but the nighttime trip had been entirely uneventful. Indeed, it had been a _lovely_trip, unmarred by any encounters with desperate fugitives or heretics!

Direza, of course, told the exact same story - not that the interrogator seemed inclined to waste much time on a mere servant. It was actually kind of refreshing to see how lightly they dismissed her, Anitra thought - Qinxiang was so isolated that to them, Drow were just one more kind of 'outsider', no more worthy of note than the rest. Of course, it probably also helped that the horde of spies that had been glued to her backside since she first entered Luoyang were backing up her story. They were really terribly unsubtle, Anitra privately thought - probably used to moving among obedient citizens too polite to notice them. Hence, last night, they had spent a couple of hours following an illusory palanquin as it took the scenic route towards the west gates, then briefly losing sight of it as it moved through one of the covered streets around the night-dark market-square - never noticing as it was replaced by the real one. The time Blake had spent learning the finer points of illusion-magic from the best of the Rakshasa's practitioners had paid impressive dividends - and not just in terms of lonely Rakshasi women who proved amenable to the occasional tryst with the Utopia's much-respected Champion...

Still, she couldn't help but wonder if she might not have come under a lot more intense scrutiny - and less polite questioning - as the only other known foreigner in Luoyang at the time of the heretic's disappearance, if she hadn't done such a fine job of charming the First Minister and winning his obvious approval.

The retrieval of the missing Imperial Robes had obviously helped a lot, but he also seemed to have seized on her description of the Dragon Utopia as another isolated island of enlightenment surrounded by lesser kingdoms, seeking in Qinxiang a worthy match. Nor was he, as it turned out, entirely uninterested in making nice with a place that overflowed with gold, gems and dragons. Qinxiang did not have any traveling merchants of their own, obviously, nor did they sign trade-agreements in the traditional sense - but all the same, there were bargains that could be struck, arrangements that could be made. After all, there were at least a couple of traders who traveled to both Qinxiang and the Utopia, and thus could carry goods back and forth... the silks and porcelain that Qinxiang was famous for elsewhere likely wouldn't interest the dragons greatly, but the Glorious Empire's isolation had given rise to some rather unique magical and alchemical practices that would interest the various researchers living there, as would the writings of the empire's legendary philosophers and thinkers. None of those were on the list of things approved to be sold to outsiders, but... arrangements could be made, and lists revised, when one had the ear of the First Minister and a sack full of gemstones.

Enough said, by the time Anitra headed back out of Luoyang with Direza in tow, she felt satisfied that no matter what they would ultimately find in the Emperor's Tomb, the journey would not have been in vain. The Utopia's interests, at the very least, had been well served. Of course, the agreements now made could easily fall apart if she was, say, caught consorting with a known heretic, or trespassing on sacred ground... but, hopefully, with two days to familiarize herself with the abilities of Blake and Anitra's group and combine them with her own hard-earned experiences, Lara Croft had by now prepared a plan to avoid that eventuality.

Assuming, of course, that she'd gotten any work done at all, Anitra thought with some exasperation as she and Direza arrived at the camp-site to find Mel and Melora busy with some of their usual training - in this case, a ruthless flogging of Mel's taut young pussy-mound designed to heighten her pain-threshold and sharpen her masochistic tendencies - while Lara moaned underneath Blake, his scaly hips swaying as he steadily pounded her. Because of course. Running a hand over her face, she stepped up to them and tapped her foot.

Blake grinned down at her, clearly impenitent. "I'll be done in a couple of minutes, my dear. Surely, we are not in such a hurry that I need be interrupted in mid-thrust?" he rumbled. "Well, that depends on whether our guide is going to be in one piece by the time you've finished..." she replied, rather more harshly than she usually spoke to the dragon she loved and, most days, gleefully submitted to. But she had reminded him, telepathically, that getting it on with Lara would be far too risky, and he had_heard her, and had _neglected to mention during their conversations over the past couple of days that he'd seen fit to ignore her on that count.

Grunting, he bend his legs a bit more and begun to pump his hips harder and faster, redoubling the moans of pleasure that were emerging from underneath him. "She was after all the other times..." he said curtly, before focusing fully on what he was doing. Sighing again, Anitra turned away and wandered over to watch Mel's training while she waited. The young filly seemed to be doing quite well - despite Melora's strong arms swinging the flogger with fearsome force, every blow falling onto her labia with a loud, snapping noise, she was continuing to steadily hold her pose, bent backwards over a rock, thighs spread but unbound. Her horse-like legs were barely vibrating, showing no sign of the shakiness one would expect as they instinctively struggled to close and cross in order to protect the sensitive spot between them from the continued assault. A worthy successor indeed!

How long the flogging had already continued was unclear, but judging by the state of Mel's pussy - hugely swollen and bruised near-purple - it had been quite a while. The duration was somewhat hinted at, however, when a strangled roar behind her heralded a simultaneous end to both Lara's risky rendezvous with Blake, and the ongoing flogging. As Melora lovingly kissed her daughter, praising her for her growing endurance and tenderly spreading a healing balm on her bruised labia, Anitra turned her back on them and returned to confront Blake and Lara.

Lara, like Blake, proved unconcerned once she'd recovered from her last orgasm, crawled out from under Blake, and poured a couple of gallons worth of his cum out of her gaping asshole. There was, somehow, no sign that she'd been burned by it. "I told you I'd keep it in mind, and I did!" She declared nonchalantly. "Honestly, you shouldn't be surprised. In case my whole deal hadn't clued you in, I'm a bit of an adrenaline-junkie. Being an adventurer is risky- delving into trap-filled tombs, fighting monsters and ferocious beasts, avoiding angry natives... it's the risk that makes it fun. So how could I pass up a chance to enjoy a good porking with such a delicious edge of risk attached to it?"

It hadn't actually been as risky as all that, though, as it turned out. "I'm not really that irresponsible, you know..." Blake declared, sounding mildly hurt. As it turned out, Lara's repeated run-in with rapey guards, natives, animals and monsters had led her to take precautions of a particular sort. Namely, acquiring a Potion of Permanent Elasticity. From the sound of it, it was the same potion that Anitra had toyed with a temporary variant of on occasion - straight out of the Library of the Perverse. At some point, the potion had apparently made its way out of the Utopia, directly or as a recipe, and into the hands of a wealthy young heiress who was rather worried about winding up rupturing something during her 'adventures'. "I would hardly have survived that whole thing with the horse I told you about otherwise!" Lara declared, rolling her eyes. "The damn thing was balls-deep inside me. Any longer, and I swear his knob would've just popped right out of my mouth."

Thanks to the supernatural elasticity provided by that potion, she could handle even Blake's huge cock, vaginally or anally, without suffering the kind of bleeding tears that would enable a dangerous reaction between her blood and his sperm. Well, mostly. Even the alchemically-induced elasticity had its limits, and Blake was very_strong and more than a bit _rough. So there'd still been some risk involved - enough to make the act even more appealing to the danger-loving Lara. The subject of risk reminded Anitra of another matter she'd meant to raise with Lara after watching her have unprotected sex with half of Luoyang - but the wealth and connections afforded to Miss Croft by her noble birth had handled_that_ issue long ago, as it turned out. A rather expensive - and entirely revertible - alchemical concoction had altered her womb, sparing her the pains of a monthly period and removing any risk of pregnancy. Which, not incidentally, closed off the last possible way that blood could've gotten involved in her sessions with Blake. Very neat, Anitra had to admit.

Fortunately, she hadn't spent the entirety of the past few days having risky sex with Blake. A plan for breaching the Emperor's Tomb had, indeed, been hatched. Rolling out an age-yellowed map on the ground and weighing the corners down with stones, Lara quickly explained what she knew of its defenses. "Secrecy is the first line of defense, of course... and one we've already breached." She declared, pointing at the map which did, indeed, show the location - at what appeared to be a mountain not too far from the capital. "The tomb proper is built into the mountain itself, appears to be roughly the size of a small city, and extends several floors down into the bedrock. There's only one way in or out - a small temple built around the entrance, commonly referred to as the Mausoleum."

She indicated it on the map - a relatively small place, as temples went, and with the many shrines that dotted the mountains and peaks of Qinxiang, quite easy to miss if you didn't know what you were looking for. "Now, keep in mind that the tomb itself is considered to be terribly holy by the locals..." Lara drawled as she continued. "Even the priests are only allowed to step foot inside once a year, during an annual festival celebrating the Immortal Emperor's descent from the Heavens. Then they go inside the first level of the tomb and perform various rituals and sacrifices and stuff. For anyone else, and at any other time, the Mausoleum is as far as you go. Those who are honored with special permission to step foot on the Holy Ground - usually for some worthy deed or display of exceptional faith - are allowed to go there on a pilgrimage, and the wealthy can pay the priests to bring offerings there for them. Frankly, it'd be a worthwhile target all by itself, considering how many 'Imperial Gifts' must be piled up in there!"

Neither of them actually had any particular interest in those riches, however - their goal lay beyond the door that the Mausoleum had been built to protect. A duty it seemed to observe quite thoroughly. "Priests aside - and some of them study those fancy local fist-fighting arts, so don't count them as harmless either - the Mausoleum is staffed with the Temple-Guard. They're fanatical, hand-picked from the finest warriors of the Imperial Army, and outfitted with enchanted armor and weapons. _Heavily_enchanted..." Her eyes panned to Blake, who sighed. "Yes, yes, I heard you the first time. A direct attack is not a good idea, even for yours truly." He said dryly.

Nor would magic help in that regard. "The whole Mausoleum is covered in an anti-magic field. The advanced kind, even - one-way shield. People inside it can use spells and magical gear, but anything thrown from outside will fizzle on impact. So you can forget about throwing some high-end spell at the Mausoleum and calling it a day." This was some pretty complex, high-tier magic in its own right, and apparently maintained by an enchanted crystal located somewhere in the Mausoleum's eastern wing, based on what she'd overheard during her own, ill-fated infiltration-attempt. Either way, the place was certainly ready to face any kind of siege, be it mundane or magical.

What about sneaking in, then? Not easy either, as Lara herself had discovered to her misfortune. Everything entering the Mausoleum was carefully inspected, any crate, jar or box large enough to hold even a halfling was opened and directly checked, and everything_heading inside was scanned for active spells. Including _people, which had caught Lara off guard when she tried to infiltrate disguised as a newly-arrived Temple-Guard, using a helmet enchanted with an illusion-spell to make her look like a local. She'd hoped that it would slip through, since the Temple-Guard's armor was enchanted as a matter of course, but the sophisticated wands the gate-guards utilized had picked out the illusion all the same, forcing her to switch to plan B: Fight and sneak her way through the Mausoleum to the tomb-gates, beyond which the fanatical Temple-Guard wouldn't be willing to follow.

Needless to say, it hadn't worked out. Despite giving them the slip once or twice, and overhearing a few useful details during those periods, she'd ultimately been hunted down and surrounded - forced to surrender or face death at their hands. So - how did you get past a miniature fortress staffed with heavily-equipped, highly-skilled, utterly fanatical guards, protected by an anti-magic field and boasting extensive security versus any attempts at magical infiltration? Lara had an idea about that, inspired - as it turned out - by the tricks that Anitra and Direza had used to spring her after her first attempt went sour. Anitra didn't much like it when she heard it, but Direza was enthusiastic, and all the necessary tools were already available. Blake, of course, had the last word. "Let's steal ourselves a Mausoleum!" he grandly declared - and with that, the plan was on.

Pao Zheng. Occupation: Imperial Army Auxiliary - Delivery driver. His ox-cart transports food, goods and supplies to a number of military bases and state-run temples in the general vicinity of Luoyang. Pao Zheng is quite proud of the contribution he makes, however humble, to the continued greatness of Qinxiang and the Imperial Army that The Immortal Emperor established to guard and protect it. His faith in the God-Emperor is unwavering and well-known, his Temple-record flawless. He maintains his daily observances regardless of weather, personal health and all other factors. Due to this, he has been trusted with a secret that fills his heart with pride - albeit tainted a bit by regret that he cannot rub it in the face of his peers. Secretly, entirely off the record, his delivery-route includes the hidden Mausoleum that guards the entrance to the Emperor's Tomb. A weekly pilgrimage - what true believer could fail to be filled with joy at such a prospect?

As he makes his way through a bamboo forest, eager to once again reach this holy destination with his precious cargo, however, he feels suddenly very drowsy. His twin oxen, likewise, stumble to a halt, their heads dropping as they fall asleep still on their feet, leaning heavily on each other as their harnesses creak. As his chin hits his chest and a nasal snore emerges from his nose, two creatures that would have had him rubbing his eyes in disbelief emerge from the dense bamboo - half woman, half horse, he would not have been able to identify them as 'Equus', or even the older, less polite 'horse-women'... though that term, at least, might have occurred to him organically.

Between them, they carry a small, wooden crate, dutifully marked with an Imperial Army stamp. The crate is lifted over the back of the cart, and carefully lowered down to rest among several other similar crates of varying size. Then, the two hoofed women swiftly disappear back among the bamboo. Seconds later, Pao Zheng awakens with a snort and looks around, annoyed with himself for having dozed off on the job and concerned that someone might have seen it. Fortunately, he finds himself entirely alone, save for his twin oxen - both of them already taking advantage of his momentary lapse to sup on the roadside grass. With a snap of their harness and a few swift whacks from the guide-rod, however, he quickly gets them moving again. He'd only been out for a handful of seconds, but all the same, he needed to pick up the pace if he wanted to ensure that he was, as always, _perfectly_on time!

Lao Ran. Occupation: Imperial Army Elite, Temple Guard, Mausoleum Detachment. Currently on duty at the outer gates. Relatively new to his elite status, he lacks his older comrade's stoic ability to shrug off the delivery-driver's self-important demeanor as the weekly supplies arrive. But he knows his duty, and carries it out with unwavering determination while leaving the tiresome task of talking to the driver to his fellow. All of the larger crates need to be directly inspected! Especially now, so soon after an Outsider breached the Mausoleum. Two particularly large ones, which seems to him could possibly contain a human being, appear particularly threatening in his eyes.

Opening them both in turn, he confirms that they, indeed, both contain human beings... or at least some things that once were human beings. Two torsos, the scars where their limbs were once attached aged and faded, heads bare of any feature, mouths empty and drooling mindlessly, skin weathered and aged by constant exposure to the elements. A man and a woman. The skin around rectum and genitals on both are caked with many layers of wax, remnant of their duties. Each of them had spent twenty years on the outer wall of the Temple of Justice, carrying out their penance for the grave crime of Heresy, reminding all who passed by what penalty awaited the unfaithful.

"Two more, huh?" His fellow guard comments, peering over his shoulder. "Guess the embalmer will be busy over the next couple of weeks." Lao Ran nods absently, and replaced the lids on the crates. Soon, the contents will be suitably mummified and ready to join the rest of the Heretics in the Mausoleum's store-room, waiting for the most sacred of days - the Day of Revelation! On that day, the year's supply of spent 'candleholders' will be carried into the Sacred Tomb by the reverent priests, to be hung on the walls therein as a sacrifice to the Immortal Emperor - providing proof that His justice was still being done, and done right.

A few more crates are torn open, revealing food, fresh bedding for the barracks, and the new delivery of armor-polish they'd been promised. Lao Ran's conscientious eyes scan the rest. Too small, all, to hide a person. One of them does look a touch bigger than the rest, though... maybe even big enough to..? Naahh, impossible. Even one of the de-limbed torsos he'd just been inspecting wouldn't have fit in there. All the same, he lifts it up, just to take a closer look, and huffs. "Damn heavy... what even is this?" He grunts. His fellow guard leans over again, scanning the stamp on the wood. "New kitchenware for the cook! Pots and pans of good iron, I expect." Sweeping the wand in his hand across it, he shrugs. "No trace of magic. Don't waste your time, just leave it with the rest - you know how the Captain gets if we take too long checking the supplies."

Lao Ran sighs and nods. Personally, he's in favor of checking _everything_that is allowed entry into the holy Mausoleum, regardless of size - but the Captain apparently felt that the time of a Temple-Guard could be better spent training, exercising and maintaining his gear rather than manually checking dozens of boxes that would barely have room for a mid-sized cat in the first place. He'd been chewed out for 'wasting time' on that account before. Thus, the cargo is allowed through the front gates, into the courtyard, where it is quickly unloaded, distributed, and stored in various appropriate storerooms.

In a dusty storeroom, surrounded by barrels of dried fruit, bushels of rice, and tall jars of pickled plums, a small crate has been deposited. The cook will be around to check his newly-arrived kitchenware eventually, but he is busy doing his actual _job_right now, so it won't be soon - and, besides, he doesn't actually recall ordering any new pots or pans, and will be quite surprised when Lao Ran eventually mentions seeing them in the day's delivery. The storeroom, thus, is empty - save for a spider, sitting in its web high in one corner, snacking on a well-preserved fly. Its dim, instinct-driven consciousness, barely worth calling a 'mind', pays no attention to the strange presence brushing against it, reaching for its eight eyes, looking through them, confirming that the room is empty. Neither does any of the spiders in the hallway outside, who find themselves suddenly looking around for approaching humans rather than their usual diet of flies and gnats, care much about the temporary imposition.

The coast is clear. The small, wooden crate suddenly begins to hiss slightly, its fresh wood growing more dry and pale every second, showing tell-tale signs of dry-rot... only, it is happening in mere moments. With a dull crack, the suddenly-aged wood falls apart, now nothing more than splinters and crumbling dust, and from this rises a thin, dark figure, eagerly taking a deep yet tremulous breath. Her limbs crack unpleasantly as she wrenches various joints back into place, whispering a weak healing-spell to undo whatever damage the compression and dislocation might have caused to her ligaments.

It took Direza less than five minutes to fully recover from the ordeal. Stuffing herself into the tiny crate hadn't been pleasant - the darkness within had reminded her painfully of a certain barrel, a long time ago - but she'd been through worse. Her dear Mistress had once kept her, naked of course, in a cage so small she could barely wiggle her toes for three whole days. Every meal was spoon-fed to her through the bars, and every emptying of her bladder drenching her feet in foul-smelling piss. The Mistress, at least, had mercifully wiped her ass for her after every bowel-movement, cleaning up after her as one might a pet not yet house-broken. With the bars of her tiny cage digging into her back, her shoulders, her legs and her ass, she had dutifully licked her Mistress' feet and sucked her toes through the bars, as well as serving as a compact and highly portable toilet and fuckhole.

Compared to that, a mere hour in a small box was nothing. Her elven metabolism was far slower than human to begin with, and with a bit of concentration she could slow her heart-rate to the point where she could hold her breath for periods of time that seemed impossible to humans. Indeed, she would have been fine even without the tiny crack that had been carefully wedged open between two of the boards on the crate's bottoms, and had indeed argued in favor of not making such a crack since it increased the risk of detection. But the Mistress had insisted, and this obvious show of concern made Direza's heart feel like it could burst any moment.

She knew, by now, that however little she deserved it, she had somehow earned her Mistress love. Her love! Nothing in the whole wide universe, not even the power of the gods themselves, could be more valuable than that. It mattered not that she stood as, at best, third_in the Mistress' esteem - after her honored husband, Lord Blake, and her son, the Young Lord Jet. She knew very well that she wasn't worthy of even the _tiniest fraction of what her generous Mistress had given her all the same. She would lay down her life a thousand times over for the sake of her - her dear, beloved, beautiful Anitra. And now, with this mission, she finally had the chance to prove it. She would not fail.

Already, she was extending her reach through the entire Mausoleum, reaching for each set of arachnid eyes she could find. It was a fine hunting-ground for spiders, and many a hard-to-reach corner held a carefully-built web. Through hundreds of eyes, she saw the Temple-Guard, the priests and the servants moving around the Mausoleum, and mapped out its layout. The Arcane Focus glistened silvery around her throat. Its power was entirely passive and dormant until she actually used it to cast a spell - enabling it to slip past the magic-detectors at the entrance.

All the same, she felt... disturbingly naked. Not because she wasn't wearing a shred of clothes, mind - she was used to that. Replacing her enchanted tongue-stud with a mundane one for a while wasn't that unusual either. But she'd had to leave her collar behind, since the enchantments bound up in it likely would have been detected. Losing that familiar sense of pressure around her throat, that constant reminder that she was the Mistress' loyal slave, her_property_, was distinctly unpleasant. But she'd just have to soldier on! She had a mission to complete, after all.

Out of the storeroom she thus snuck, and off through the empty hallways she went. With her many spidery agents, she could plot a course around any patrols or incidental wanderers, staying out of sight in a fashion that Lara, lacking her magical talents, hadn't been able to. If crossing paths with someone proved unavoidable, she'd simply shrink into a shadowy corner, behind a pillar or a plinth, and cover herself in magical darkness - becoming nothing more than just a slightly-deeper-than-usual shadow. Even if she should be caught unaware, without enough time to cast the darkness-spell, she stood a pretty decent chance of blending in all by herself - her skin, after all, was a nice, deep gray, while her normally white hair had been dyed black. Pubic hair included.

A shadow among shadows, she thus moved perfectly undetected, the fanatical Temple-Knights blissfully unaware of the infiltrator in their midst. Her target was in the eastern wing of the complex - a circular room that housed one of the Mausoleum's primary defenses. A great, natural quartz-crystal, pulsing a steady blue glow, like a magical heartbeat. Enchanted by a long-dead Archwizard, it projected a constant, one-way anti-magical field... for now. Direza could see it, from where she stood hidden in the shadows. She could also, however, see the two bored-looking guards flanking the gate.

There was no apparent way to get close to the crystal without walking right between them. This presented her with a few... options. Technically, her mission was complete the moment that crystal stopped performing its duty. So, she could just hit both of the sentinels with a deadly spell of the silent sort. 'Decay' was always a good choice - when their bodies suddenly started aging towards decrepitude, their flesh turning to dust between breaths, they wouldn't be able to produce much more than a few dry wheezes and coughs. Or even just a pair of Dark Hands, closing around their throat, slowly choking them to death while denying them the air required to scream. Their armor was heavily enchanted, sure, but mostly to meet more _direct_threats - she had a dozen different ways to bypass it in her arsenal, each more insidious than the last.

But... that would be an imperfect solution. Sooner or later, whether she left them as rapidly-cooling corpses or rusted and pitted armor filled with grave-dust, their remains would be discovered. Far too late to make any difference, perhaps, but then again, perhaps not. In the end, this was a stealth-mission - she was supposed to get the job done without being seen, and without leaving any trace of her passing, if possible. And surely, she could manage to get past these two guards, bored stiff by yet another uneventful shift, while leaving them none the wiser - right?

Yes. Yes she could. First step... a handy Inflict Disease spell. Very flexible spell, really. She could cause anything from a mild sniffles to a raging case of the Bubonic Plague with it. In this case... hmm... dysentery, perhaps? No, that would be overkill. A garden-variety case of food-poisoning was the way to go. One of the guards looked a bit older than the other - that made him the best target, most likely to react the way she wanted. With a whispered prayer and the appropriate gestures, she unleashed the spell on her unsuspecting victim.

Seconds later, the guard's stomach growled and gurgled loudly enough that both she and the other guard could hear it quite clearly, and the man groaned as he leaned on the wall. "What the hell did I eat..." he mumbled, grimacing. His partner looked at him with some concern, but if he was about to say anything, it was interrupted by yet another loud gurgle and accompanying groan. "Urgh... can't be helped..." the guard gasped, clutching his armored stomach. "I need to run to the lavatory! You're going to have to hold down the fort without me for a few minutes!"

The guard was already shambling down the hallway, halfway doubled over, when the other guard replied. "But... there's always supposed to be two of us at this post! Shouldn't you wait 'till we're relieved?" The other, older guard glanced back at him, grimacing in annoyance. "Should, but can't. Look, sticking to the rules is all well and good, but sometimes you need to show a bit of flexibility, all right? Urghhhh... and right now, that means manning this post by your self for just a little while. I think you're old enough to manage that, don't you?"

Ears burning, the remaining Temple-Guard made no further complaints as his fellow continued to drag himself towards the dubious sanctuary of the lavatories. Just as she'd suspected - even within an order of fanatical elites, a pecking-order remained. The 'senior' members could get away with bending the rules when it suited them, and the 'junior' didn't dare protest too loudly. This left a single guard on post for the moment, looking around in annoyance for a bit, then sighing and shrugging as he admitted to himself that, heck, it probably didn't matter that he was manning the post alone for a while. After all, important though the Guardian Crystal was, there was surely no way any attacker could get here without alerting countless other guards along the way.

Direza, meanwhile, prepared a fresh spell - a Dark Hand, albeit for a different purpose than she'd originally contemplated. The shadowy extremity floated silently along the ceiling on her command, before descending behind the guardsman's helmet - entirely unnoticed, but ready to do her bidding the moment she ordered it. Next, a small sacrifice was required. A little spider - just a young house-spider, one of many she had recruited to be her eyes within the Mausoleum - would do the trick. Its usual instincts overridden by her will, it answered the Call of Lolth, blissfully unaware that it was serving only an apostate ex-servant of the Spider-Goddess.

On a thread of spidersilk, the tiny arachnid lowered itself from the ceiling above the guard, just as the Dark Hand had done moments earlier. Landing on the polished helmet, its eight legs skidded across the smooth finish as it deliberately slipped down the front - emerging right before the man's suddenly-widening and crossing eyes as it landed on his nose and then rapidly dashed sideways across his face. Reacting as humans usually do when they unexpectedly find a spider dancing a merry jig on their faces, he shrieked in surprise and slapped randomly at his own head, managing to daze himself a bit with his armored gauntlets in the process. The spider was, indeed, squished - but as he slapped himself, the Dark Hand leaped into action, gripping the back of his helmet and neatly spinning it around, blinding him.

As the dazed guard fumbled with the helmet, his curses resonating with a metallic timbre, obviously assuming that he'd spun it around himself during his assault on the spider, Direza made her move - dashing out of the shadow, past the swearing, blinded guard on silent, bare feet, and into the crystal-chamber. She hid, then, just beyond the gate, for a handful of seconds as the guard recovered his equilibrium - setting his helmet straight, wiping the remnants of the spider off his face and gauntlet, and looking around nervously to make sure no-one had seen his momentary loss of composure. He wouldn't be in any hurry to tell anyone about his encounter with the spider, obviously.

Once he was again leaning against the wall with a relaxed demeanor, waiting for his partner to return from the lavatories - something which would, according to the resident spider, take a fair while yet - she finally stepped up to the crystal, silent but contemplative. If she wanted to disable it silently... hmm. Good thing she'd spent a fair bit of her free time over the last decade studying the more_arcane_ magics, hoping that it might help her serve her Mistress better some day. Those golden bands around the crystal were clearly control-rings. And that was definitely the symbol for 'nil'. So, if she spun both of them - carefully, quietly - so that said symbol lined up with the mark... yes! The blue glow at the crystal's core was dulling! It was shutting down, without fuss or noise! An immense sense of accomplishment and satisfaction surged through her - followed, quite suddenly, by an overwhelming fatigue.

Anitra grinned as she strapped another of Drewyn's masterpieces onto her left arm. The small, triangular buckler gleamed beautifully in the moonlight, its surface ivory-white but marbled with veins of gold. Its rim was lined with sharp, curving spikes all around, each of them pure-white, their size slightly varied so that the largest lined the tip of the triangle, closest to her fist. It was attached to her bracer using a modified version of the same enchantment that bound her sheath to the back of her breastplate - the modification mainly being that if she swung her fist, the buckler would lash forwards to arrive at the destination before her squishy fingers did, delivering a swift, powerful, flesh-tearing haymaker.

The eye-catching piece of gear had been nothing more than a wall-decoration in the Champion's Quarters for several years, and Anitra was pleased to finally get to put it to real use - it seems a waste to just let it gather dust, especially considering the rarity of the materials that had gone into it. The buckler itself had been created by carving lengthwise 'slices' from a Gold Dragon's severed horns and fitting them tightly together, while the 'spikes' lining the edge were dragon-fangs - a whole mouthful of them, even.

The provenance of those horns would not be questioned - that was part of the agreement under which Drewyn had added his immeasurable skills to the Utopia's collection, arriving with a significant store of draconic body-parts that various past 'customers' of his had delivered to him as offerings, tribute, or gestures of thanks. Their usefulness as crafting-materials ensured that he hadn't questioned those black dragons on the exact way they'd claimed those parts - simply choosing to assume that it had probably been self-defense, since most dragons were inclined to be hostile towards blacks. The dragons of the Utopia had accepted this reasoning, and a handful had even made arrangements to have their usable remains added to his stockpile when and if they died, "So that they may be useful to the Utopia even in death!" More grandstanding than realistic contribution, really, considering the peacefulness of the Utopia and the fact that nobody had yet seen a dragon die from old age - though it was anyone's guess how long it would take before old Elekrastor became the first...

Anitra, however, knew exactly where those horns had come from - they had been sawed from the skull of the young gold once named Aurelia, now known only as 'Slut', decade-long winner of the unofficial 'Most Sexually Depraved Dragon in the Utopia' title. Indeed, the teeth were from the exact same source, maximizing the buckler's potential for enchantment - as well as serving as the spur for its creation. A handful of months after Aurelia had become 'Slut', she'd apparently realized that some of her 'visitors' - particularly the smaller, squishier ones - were reluctant to make use of the many oral services she so eagerly provided due to the impressive selection of razor-sharp fangs that lined said orifice. Between that, and hearing some of her draconic visitors gossip with one another as they used her, about how delightful the soft lips of their Equus servants felt on their cocks or other relevant body-parts, she'd swiftly reached a conclusion and acted upon it.

Drewyn, one of the few equipped for such a task, had reluctantly agreed - on the condition that he'd get to keep them - to pull every last tooth from her maw, leaving her with a set of pain-wracked, bleeding gums that, once they healed up, vastly upped her oral-game. Nobody was likely to fear her maw any more, and if anyone had retained any doubt as to her dedication to being a 24-7 no-limit publicly-available fucktoy, they certainly didn't anymore. Her diet, of course, had also been reduced to stuff like soups, porridge and ripe fruit, far from the roasted or raw meat that dragons generally preferred - but considering that she got most of her protein from a steady diet of cum anyway, that clearly didn't worry her.

Dragons_were_ able to regrow lost fangs, since such occasional casualties were inevitable in the dangerous duels that the fearsome beasts outside the Utopia often fought over the ownership of valuable hoards or plain old pecking-order. It took years, however, and nobody had ever seen a dragon loose all of its fangs - perhaps explaining why, so far, Slut's mouth had remained soft and inviting, without any trace of regrowth. Some scholars with an interest in draconic physiology had theorized that the vital magic that normally regrew a dragon's fang over the course of 3-5 years, had been spread too thin by the simultaneous loss of her entire denture, suggesting that it might take centuries before a new set even started to appear. Of course, a few of them had taken to make regular 'study-trips' to whatever corner or store-room she was currently servicing her guests in, just to... y'know... check.

Either way, Drewyn was a perceptive old dwarf, and had apparently realized 'Slut's true nature while performing the operation. Not inclined to tattle, fortunately, he had instead approached Blake to ask if, perhaps, when Anitra had roused him in the middle of the night not so long ago to borrow his diamond saw, it had been in order to remove a_Gold Dragon's_ horns? And if so, did he still have those horns? He did, of course, and they'd mostly just gathered dust at the bottom of a chest for the past few months - trophy though they were, it wasn't one he could risk displaying publicly. So when Drewyn revealed that he'd been struck with a sudden surge of artistic inspiration, to combine the horns and the fangs into a shield of unsurpassed provenance, Blake was happy to hand them over in return for a trophy he could show off - and since the dwarf, like his master before him, was dedicated to seeking true mastery of his craft rather than simple utility, it did not concern him overly that its owner wasn't actively adventuring anymore...

Anitra was pulled from her retrospection when Blake suddenly stirred nearby, raising his head and blinking his reptilian eyes. "She did it!" He declared, smiling broadly. "That servant of yours is_good for more than just being a living toilet, apparently." With his draconic eyes, he could actually _see the undulating sphere of anti-magic surrounding the Mausoleum shrink and waver, before finally popping out of existence altogether. Wasting no time - after all, they had no idea what circumstances the crystal had been disabled under - he immediately began to weave the spell, drawing the requisite sigil in the air with a few quick jerks of his talons while pouring as much energy into the magic as it would take.

It was definitely the most powerful sleep-spell he'd ever cast - dwarfing the one he'd cast on the Luoyang plaza just a few days ago. Even Anitra, who'd run up beside him to stare eagerly towards the Mausoleum, as if she'd be able to see Direza's success directly if she just looked hard enough, staggered a bit for a moment as she caught some of the spell's backwash. But it was the Mausoleum, now defenseless, that was the proper target. Within, every living soul - Temple-Guards, priests, servants, animals, even insects - immediately found themselves collapsing into a deep slumber. This would, of course, include Direza - there was no easy way to exclude her from the spell - but that hardly mattered. They'd just have to collect and awaken her now that they had the run of the Mausoleum.

This approach, while perhaps not ideal, was ultimately the only option they had if they didn't want to leave Blake behind - as Anitra had done on so many occasions during her earlier adventures. According to the old schematics Lara had acquired, the main passageways of the immense tomb were big enough for him and then some - but the only way he'd get inside was to squeeze through the center of the Mausoleum, where a wide, easily-monitored passage went straight from the main gates to the tomb proper. This broad avenue was used for the stately procession that entered the tomb every year on the Day of Revelation, and for a black dragon to walk through there unnoticed was genuinely impossible. Unless, of course, the whole Mausoleum suddenly fell asleep on their posts...

The main gates swung open on well-oiled hinges, pushed by Melora and Mel's equine muscle. Beside it, the two gate-guards leaned against the wall, snoring in unison, magic-detecting wands dangling uselessly from their belts. Blake strode inside like he owned the place, head held high, grinning as he beheld his work. While the two Equus remained close by his side, Anitra and Lara dashed into the smaller side-passages, searching for the crystal-chamber that Lara had only a vague idea where was located. Fortunately, as soon as they drew close, Anitra's eyes were able to perceive the magical glow of the heavily-enchanted crystal despite its current dormancy, even through the relatively thin internal walls of the Mausoleum.

Finding Direza slumbering peacefully on the floor before the dull, deactivated crystal with a guard still manning his post right outside, snoozing as he leaned on the wall, Anitra whistled quietly. She'd known that of all of them, Direza was the best suited for a stealthy infiltration and sabotage mission, of course, even beside her hard-earned ability to squeeze into remarkably small spaces. Her abilities as a healer, while impressive in their own right, were ultimately her acting against type - her arsenal of spells was, after all, still colored by the predilections, preferences and purviews of Lolth, the shadowy and insidious spider-goddess. Even so, for her to have made it all the way to her target without leaving any trace was quite impressive! She'd have to come up with some suitable reward for her dear little servant later...

A firm slap to the face caused the sleeping drow to stir, but not awaken. Blake had cranked the sleep-spell up to max, after all, to ensure that he'd be able to punch through any residual defenses as well as the Temple-Guard's strong discipline, while still covering the entire Mausoleum. Direza was, thus, sleeping VERY soundly. Lara didn't seem inclined to help wake her, either - she was busy studying the currently-defunct crystal closely, making notes in her journal while muttering to herself.

Sighing, Anitra straightened up, looking down at her favorite servant - stretched out on her back, legs slightly spread, deliciously naked, face peaceful in sleep. Licking her lips, she stomped down firmly on Direza's exposed pussy, grinding her sandal into labia and clit alike with a vicious twist and significant force. Moaning in her sleep, Direza twitched - and her hips rose off the floor, pushing her sensitive groin into Anitra's food even harder. Apparently, she'd gotten sufficiently used to offering up her pussy for anything her Mistress desired to do with it that she'd even do it in her sleep - but her eyes remained closed, and her breathing, if anything, grew slower and heavier. Anitra delivered a few more stomps and kicks, but the results remained the same - Direza would moan and spread her legs eagerly for more of the same, but still stubbornly refuse to awaken.

With a shake of her head, Anitra gave up and bent down to lift the sleeping drow in her arms. She hardly weighed a thing, anyway. "You're going to be so sorry you missed this..." she mumbled down at the slumbering form, grinning mischievously. Certainly, being carried in such an intimate fashion would have set the devoted drow's heart racing at any other time - and even now, fast asleep, she happily nuzzled up to Anitra's chest like a baby, cherubic smile widening on her face. "Come on, Lara! We need to catch up to Blake and the others!" She called, as she began to carry her supposed servant through the sleeping Mausoleum.

"Coming!" Lara replied, stepping away from the large crystal at last, even as it began to hum quietly and glow. As they jogged back towards the central passage, Anitra lifted a quizzical eyebrow at her fellow adventurer. "Did you just activate the anti-magic crystal again?" She asked, prompting a satisfied nod from Lara. "Indeed. Figure we might as well leave 'em guessing as to what happened, especially since your darling servant proved so stealthy at getting there. If we wind up leaving the same way we came, we'll be coming from inside the bubble, so it won't hamper us any - hence, why not?" Anitra couldn't think of any argument to counter that, and indeed found the idea of the Mausoleum's various defenders being left entirely clueless as to what had transpired to be quite amusing...

Blake, meanwhile, clicked his tongue when he saw his dear wife return with Direza still sleeping soundly in her arms. "I was afraid of that..." he confessed. "I tuned that spell to penetrate the enchanted armor and mental discipline of the Temple-Guards, after all, and she lacked those defenses. Still, it should start to wear off when I end the spell's duration, I suppose - throw her onto my saddle in the meantime." With the snoring Direza thus draped over his back, Blake continued to lead the procession through the Mausoleum - all the way to the Inner Sanctum. There, a full dozen guards stood arrayed around a vast, golden door, carved with dramatized scenes of the Immortal Emperor's descent from the Heavens, with the multitudes of Qinxiang gathering worshipfully at his feet. The guards, of course, were sleeping soundly, leaning on ornately-carved pillars or their own spears in a fashion that suggested that they just might have found themselves napping while on guard-duty a few times before.

Beyond the golden doors, only priests and pilgrims could normally tread - there, an altar to the God-Emperor stood, with offerings piled around and on top of it, and the walls painted with vivid scenes of the Immortal Emperor's supposed accomplishments during his centuries-long reign. Blake carefully stepped over the altar, while the others circled around it - all of them ignoring the wealth piled in every corner, offerings and sacrifices for the dead god who rested beyond. Their eyes were glued to the vast gates before them, the door to the_true_ tomb.

They were huge, big enough that Blake would be able to walk through them without ducking his head or tucking in his wings. Carved from what appeared to be a single slab of obsidian, they were inlaid with gold and ivory - showing the contours of one of the local's weirdly distorted, wingless, snake-like 'dragons', curled up and spanning the entire gate. The Imperial Seal of the Immortal God-Emperor, Liu-Tang. To the eyes of Blake and Anitra, it glowed brightly with some_frighteningly_ powerful enchantments - the stone had clearly been hardened to the point where breaking through it by brute force would be a fool's errand.

It also seemed passingly likely that it might be locked, all things considered - but since none of them had laid eyes on the gate before, they hadn't been able to really plan for it, only counting on their combined ability to improvise when they got there. Scaly lips pursed, Blake this strode up to the gleaming obsidian surface and tapped it with a talon. "My breath should be able to burn through those reinforcing enchantments, though it might take a few... huh!" His half-voiced suggestion was interrupted when the gate simply creaked open before him, revealing a broad passageway carved out of the mountain itself. Regularly-spaced torches on both sides suddenly flared into life, two at a time, descending into the darkness - their flames burning a chill and clearly unnatural blue.

"On the one hand, that's not at all ominous..." Anitra commented dryly. "On the other, hey, we wanted to get inside, so we can hardly complain if it turns out to be easier than expected." Blake, meanwhile, sighed and shook his head - not so much in disagreement as in disappointment. "Why would someone go to the trouble of reinforcing a gate that much and then just leave it unlocked? Humans, I swear..." he groused. Then he glanced over at Lara, who had been studying the golden, imperial seal of the gate, and was now looking into the blue-tinted darkness of the tomb with a look of eagerness on her face. "No offense."

"None taken." She replied airily, then strode forwards into the tomb a step or two ahead of him. Once the entire procession had traveled a few yards inside - with Melora and Mel watchfully bringing up the rear - the huge, obsidian portal slammed shut behind them with a booming sound, making Anitra jump slightly and glance over her shoulder, wondering if they maybe should've thought about their exit-strategy a bit more. "Don't sweat it. That _always_happens..." Lara commented in the meantime, not even bothering to look back.

Blake, too, threw a look over his scaly shoulder at the now-closed gate, before shrugging. "Might as well end the spell now, I suppose..." he said thoughtfully. "I noticed you activated the anti-magic field again, and we'll leave its reach shortly - at that point, my magic won't be able to affect any of the people inside it anymore, anyway." His glance shifted slightly, to the snoring drow draped across his saddle, and he flashed a lopsided grin. "Meanwhile, this piece of cargo on my back would still be affected, and I'd like to see her back on her feet and protecting my mate sooner rather than later. It's probably going to take a bit for it to wear off even so..."

Sure enough, even after Blake terminated the sleep-spell, Direza failed to immediately stir - though for the moment, she wasn't missing much. The corridor terminated in a decent-sized room, that seemed a lot smaller than it really was thanks to the clutter. This was, after all, the only part of the tomb that the priests ever actually_entered_, so predictably it was filled with millenia worth of accumulated sacrifices and offerings. Spreading out from a central altar, both larger and grander than the one they'd stepped around in the preceding 'inner sanctum', a mess of jewelry, silken robes, intricately-painted porcelain teacups, clay figurines, and many other odd articles could be seen all jumbled together.

More than these messy piles, the wall-decor rather jumped out at them. Mummified torsos hung at regular intervals, lining every wall - upside-down, with a magical, ever-burning torch rising from their groins. They had known to expect this, of course - Lara had told them about the last stage of the local punishment for heresy, after all. But Anitra's eyes still widened when she noticed several of them shifting and twitching. "Wait... are they still alive?"_she asked breathlessly. Blake swung his head around, running his eyes over the impressive number of 'sconces' - in some places, they were lined up above one another in two rows - and made a sound of disgust. "Not as such. Undead. Reanimated. Such utter foolishness... they mean to make these 'heretics' continue to suffer even in death, their undead flesh constantly scorched yet regrowing. But as anyone with even a _sliver of necromantic knowledge can tell you, these kinds of revenants are simply mindless automatons, empowered by their creator, driven by a combination of animalistic instinct and direct orders. Whoever these people once were - their minds, souls, selves - are long gone." Shaking his head, he sighed. "At least the earlier parts of the punishment had a certain, sadistic flair to it..."

Still, the display certainly did manage to be disconcerting, so they served that much purpose at least. Fortunately, it would not continue beyond this room which - other than the altar, the piled-up offerings, and the wall-decor - contained nothing but a broad ramp leading down at the back. The ramp was sealed off by nothing more imposing than a long, thick rope, tied in the center with an over-elaborate knot and festooned with talismans of warning. Blake and Anitra's eyes, however, could easily confirm that the talismans were entirely mundane - containing no power, be it magical or holy... just words on paper. The rope parted silently before a swipe of Blake's claws, and they began their descent.

"City-sized, you said?" Blake rumbled, rolling his eyes. "That first floor was barely house-sized..." Lara glanced up at him as she continued to stride steadily downwards beside him. "Did you not see the architectural drawings I displayed earlier?" She demanded. "Each floor of the tomb is bigger than the previous, like a pyramid carved from the heart of the mountain. You'll have plenty of room to spread your wings further down, I expect." Blake glared at Lara with some annoyance, while behind him, the Meloras stared daggers at her - none of them accustomed to anyone save perhaps Anitra addressing him in such a cavalier fashion. After a moment, however, Blake grinned and shrugged. "Perhaps I was concerning myself with different matters at the time, such as preparing a way to actually get in here without winding up, I don't know... captured, locked in a set of stocks in a public plaza, and getting railed by half the capital's male population?" Lara barked a laugh, and waved airily. "You got me there, big guy!"

The second floor actually proved to be rather more claustrophobic than the first, however. A single passageway, regularly turning with a right-angled corner, again and again, until it became clear that they were walking a squared spiral outwards from their point of arrival. Also, virtually every yard of the passageway was festooned with traps, some magical, some mundane. Lara's expertise and experience as a tomb-raider proved quite helpful at detecting the later, while Blake's draconic eyes easily spotted the former - making the traps rather less threatening than they were likely supposed to be.

Hence, despite Melora's protestation, Blake ultimately wound up walking at the front of the line, with the sharp-eyed Lara close behind - his reasoning being that he couldn't possibly miss any enchanted_trap, while the merely _mundane couldn't hope to actually damage his impenetrable scales. This left the silently disapproving Meloras carrying the still-slumbering Direza several paces behind him, lest her sleeping form wind up caught in a trap that couldn't hurt him, but certainly could her.

As for clearing the traps, the method used would probably have made your average dungeon-dweller goggle somewhat. Blake, in fact, simply stomped forwards, clearing his path with regularly-spaced breaths of dragonfire. Each such burst would invariably either dissolve or activate any magical trap, or indeed any mundane trap that used magical components in its triggering-mechanism. Heck, even perfectly magic-free tripwires and similarly sensitive arrangements would be destroyed by the heat alone. The leftovers - mostly pressure-sensitive floor-tiles and the like - would invariably unleash purely physical traps, such as barrages of arrows launched from suddenly-appearing slits in the walls, spikes spearing up from below, or even the ceiling suddenly slamming down from above. The last of those was the only one that even managed to temporarily inconvenience the impenetrably-armored dragon, as well as abundantly illustrating why he wasn't carrying Direza anymore.

The trap's designer - or, more likely_,_ designer_s_, since Anitra simply couldn't believe that any one man could possibly have devised such a startling variety of murderous devices, no matter what the Qinxiang myths said - seemed to grow steadily more clever as they proceeded, though. Such as, it turned out, including_time-delayed_ triggers in their designs. Hence, it was only after Blake had already stomped through a 'cleared' section of the passage with Lara close behind him - stomping flat a trio of razor-sharp sawblades that had emerged from the floor and made a gallant, yet doomed attempt to chew through the scales that covered his claws - that the trap struck, just as Anitra, Melora and Mel walked by.

Panels on both sides of the passage suddenly swung up, revealing compartments behind them that housed two hefty rams, tipped by ornately-sculpted iron heads, already in motion as they swung forwards and downwards in their woven-rope slings, their mass turned to sheer, crushing power by gravity. Lara, clearly used to such things, rolled forwards the moment the panels began to shift, quite unnecessarily considering that she was already ahead of it, but proof of her well-honed reflexes. Anitra could have done the same, thanks to her inhumanly-fast reflexes and dexterity... but walking beside her, in the middle of their formation, was Melora, with Direza's limp form slung over her shoulder, who most certainly couldn't. Even if she hadn't been weighed down by her currently slumbering fellow servant, honestly, the heavy plate-armor she wore likely would've prevented the requisite swiftness anyway.

So Anitra didn't move, and on Melora's other side, neither did young Mel, whose youthful vibrancy - and the energetic way she'd been constantly looking in every direction at once ever since they entered the tomb - meant that she, too, had seen the rams be revealed in time to react. In the second she had to move before the hefty weapon arrived, she responded just as she had been drilled to do during the years of combat-training she'd endured alongside other, more_interesting_ types of training: She turned her back towards her mother, squared her shoulders, dug in her hooves, and lifted the enchanted glaive she carried - a slightly-smaller twin to her mother's - in a diagonal guard-position.

Her mother's one free hand landed heavily on the back of her breastplate just as the ram hit her weapon with a thunderous impact, providing her with the last bit of support she needed. The magically-reinforced haft of the glaive held where simple wood would have splintered, bending under the blow even as Mel's arms followed suit, absorbing and spreading out the impact-force. Meanwhile, her mother's powerful, comforting arm did the same thing - bending gradually, eating up the forces even as Mel skidded a couple of inches backwards across the floor. Then, it was over - the glaive's haft straightened out again, even as the ram anemically bounced off of it a couple of more times, like a poor loser refusing to acknowledge a clear defeat.

On the other side of Melora, however, things had ended rather less dramatically. Anitra had simply raised her buckler - an easy task since the ram was coming in from her left - and met the bone-crushing weapon with it. The impact created exactly the kind of hollow, booming sound you'd expect from a hefty, blunt weapon hitting a plate of carved animal horn... and absolutely nothing else. Anitra's arm moved not a hair from the impact, nor did the ram bounce off it. It just swung there, quietly, at an equilibrium as it dangled from its ropes, anchored in the former wall-panels now flush with the ceiling.

"Nice shield you got there..." Lara declared appreciatively as she picked herself up from the ground, the moment of furious activity over. Anitra grinned in response and waved the shiny triangle in the air. "What, this old thing?" She replied lazily as the three of them - four with Direza, who'd snoozed through the whole thing without stirring for even a moment, slung over Melora's left shoulder - stepped past the now-harmless trap while Blake peered worriedly back at them from where he'd paused, several yards ahead, as he heard the trap trigger. "It's just a trinket I was given some years ago, to compensate for my armor's main shortcoming... it's practically impenetrable and really unencumbering, but it's pretty useless at absorbing blunt impacts. This shield, though, is remarkably good at it, wouldn't you say?"

Indeed, Anitra knew that it could absorb far great blows than what it had just endured - she'd tested it out before they left, after all, and even a swipe from one of the biggest Red's tail, which would normally send a human-sized target flying through the air like a pebble from a slingshot, shield or no shield, simply stopped when it hit the tiny buckler. She had no idea how Drewyn had pulled it off, of course - he never seemed to mind explaining his craft, but those explanations could be understood only by a short handful of the most gifted enchanters and craftsmen in the Utopia. In this case, apparently, the secret was in some kind of really rare metal that was bound to the underside of the horn-plates? Eh, whatever, it worked, and worked well.

However, that clever trap was only a hint of things to come - several more similar time-delay tricks were spotted as they continued forwards with less speed and more caution, until - a few corners later - Blake paused and narrowed his eyes. "These traps are starting to get really nasty..." he commented, moving his neck side to side as if trying to get a better look at something. Anitra could see it too, now, if she focused her eyes just right. Something just ahead was glowing rather more strongly than any of the magical traps they'd passed so far. "Anti-magic of some kind?" She ventured as she tried to decipher the color of the glow. Blake nodded. "An Anti-Magic Charge, I believe - and a fiercely powerful one. It's going to wipe out any magic within its area of effect once it goes off, and I'm pretty sure my breath would not only trigger it but make it worse. Huge area, well back here, and it wouldn't just erase ongoing spells - enchanted gear, magical scrolls, even potions will be rendered inert."

Considering the number of powerful enchanted items and general magical gear virtually all of them were carrying, this trap was the first one that caused some real hesitation. Neither Blake nor Lara could see any way to disarm it, though, and after a few minutes, Blake shrugged. "I suppose someone could just leave all their magical items behind and go set it off while the rest wait at a safe distance. Actually..." his neck craned and he gazed thoughtfully at the still-sleeping Direza, suddenly grinning. "Why don't we just take that necklace off of her and then throw her in there? The anti-magic charge should wipe out the residual effects of the sleep-spell just fine, and she's carrying less than anyone else at the moment."

Considering Anitra's gear, Lara's weapons, and the enchanted armor that both Melora and her daughter were outfitted with for the occasion, this was certainly true. Anitra still hesitated for a moment, though, stepping up to check the slumbering drow - finding her pulse still slow and steady, her sleep deep and restful. "Shouldn't she have woken up by now anyway? It's been a while..." she mumbled, mostly to herself, feeling increasingly worried. Blake, however, still heard her and stepped over to look more closely at Direza's relaxed body. "Normally, yes." He conceded. "But it looks like she got an even heavier dose than I'd imagined. Best I can think of to explain it? That enchanted crystal she was standing right next to must have resonated with the spell, giving her double exposure. If that's what happened, she could be nigh-impossible to wake for another couple of hours, maybe more. So... why not let that trap do some good instead?"

Anitra couldn't argue with that - though she did argue with literally throwing the unconscious elf anywhere. Instead, her naked body was laid on a blanket from Blake's saddlebags, now_completely_ nude with the removal of her Arcane Focus, and effectively pushed across the smooth floor by Blake's telekinesis-spell. The spell failed the moment the trap triggered, of course - in a burst of colorless energy just on the edge of the visible, bathing the entire corridor and only fading out a few feet from where the rest of them had so carefully positioned themselves. A nasty trap indeed, Anitra thought as she started towards the now-stirring Direza - it could've left an entire team of hardened adventurers suddenly equipped with nothing more than mundane steel and a bunch of colorful drinks.

Suddenly, with Anitra still only halfway there, Direza sat bolt upright, her face distorted into a grimace of disdainful anger. "Damn_that pathetic, _idiotic scout!" She swore, seemingly rambling out of the blue. "How dare he take what should have belonged to my Mistress! Oh..." Her face, in a flash, instead became a mask of pain and regret, tears welling in her eyes. "I'm sorry..." she sobbed as Anitra picked up her pace, confusion and worry rising into her throat. "You poor girls... I never wanted to hurt you... I had to... it was the only way... I'm so sorry I did such horrible things to you all..."

Direza's neck creaked as she threw her head back and forth, her face flashing rapidly through expressions of determination, resignation, pain, disdain, disgust, pleasure... then, suddenly, it was pulled into a stony mask of open-mouthed exultation as she raised her arms towards the ceiling, staring blindly at the smooth stone above. "LOLTH!" She cried. "How could you?! Why?! I can't... how can I possibly... _ NO!! _" With this final, loud shout of denial, her eyes rolled up into her skull and her whole body grew slack again as she tumbled forwards, unconscious.

Anitra, breaking into a full-on sprint, managed to intercept her beloved servant's head just before it cracked into the stone floor, quickly pulling Direza's whole body into her arms, cradling her like a child. She could feel the elf's heart still beating - rapidly, now, but slowing as the unconsciousness took hold. Small tremors were rushing through her limbs every now and again, as a reminder that this time she wasn't sleeping - she had passed out, violently, suddenly and inexplicably.

The rest of the team wasn't far behind her, gathering around to all stare at Direza's unconscious form with varying degrees of confusion. Blake, in particular, recoiled slightly when Anitra lifted her eyes to glare at him. He didn't get glared at very often, particularly not by the woman he loved, so he found the experience... disconcerting. "That... shouldn't have happened." Was all he could think of to say. No matter how intensely he stared at Direza, his eyes told him the same thing - her body was completely clean of any kind of magical residue now. The trap had been an anti-magical charge, exactly as he'd thought, nothing more, nothing less. Not that it made any kind of sense to imagine some _other_effect being mixed in with it - whatever it was, the anti-magical effect would naturally have erased it instantly. "Maybe she just had a... really lifelike nightmare while she was napping?" He finally suggested, rather lamely.

"Well, what do we do about this?" Anitra demanded. Normally, Direza was the one who supplied any healing anyone happened to need. Who healed the healer? "Try giving her a health-potion?" She thought aloud. "I know we packed some, just in case." Lara, however, shook her head - having felt Direza's pulse and pulled back her eyelids to inspect the empty white beyond. "I wouldn't recommend it..." she warned. "I can't say what happened exactly, but her current state... it looks like mental shock. Trauma, emotional exhaustion, something like that. Nothing wrong with her body, just her mind. And healing-potions don't do a bloody thing for your mind. Even the best ones can only manage to help you suppress trauma in order to power through an immediate crisis - usually to your own detriment in the long term."

Their best bet, according to Lara? A telepath - a wizard specialized in mind-magic. Someone like that would be able to see exactly what was going on inside Direza's weary head, and possibly even fix it. Unfortunately, they didn't have one of those handy right now. The ultimate conclusion, thus, was that the best they could do for her was to just let her rest - and then take her to see a specialist as soon as they got out of the trap-infested tomb. Anitra elected to carry her herself, for the moment, while Blake continued to range ahead to handle traps. Both Melora and Mel were looking rather concerned, their brown and amber eyes - respectively - flickering between the Master they so worshiped, and the woman he cared about more than anything.

They needn't have worried, though. Though no words passed between them for a while, their telepathic bond ensured that no misunderstandings could remain between them for long - and enabled both of them to express their feelings in a pure and wordless form. Thus, Anitra could feel that Blake hadn't wanted any harm to come to Direza, and indeed would never even suggested the course of action they'd ultimately followed if he'd thought for even a moment_that the trap could hurt her in such a way. Blake, meanwhile, could feel that Anitra still loved him dearly, and indeed loved him more than anything - including Direza... but that she still _did love the dark elf too, and would be rather upset with him if he ever hurt her in so frivolous a fashion again, even if it was only out of carelessness. Finally, words did form in the air between them - not really coming from either direction, but rather coalescing from a shared resolve. Whatever happened, we'll fix it.

Eventually, the winding, trap-filled corridor came to an end - somewhere a good ways behind where they'd originally descended, if Lara had counted the number of corners correctly. Another ramp led down, lit by blue torches, to a third floor that would presumably be even more expansive. The option of turning around and heading back up instead of descending deeper into the tomb was discussed as they started down, but was ultimately rejected. By now, the guardians of the Mausoleum would have awakened and realized that something had happened - if nothing else, the fact that the unarmored and less well-disciplined servants that no doubt worked in various parts of the building would have fallen asleep faster and been slower to snap out of it, would certainly tip off any number of people. Hence, the only way back out was to simply blast out through the Mausoleum - doable, sure, since the place wasn't built to defend against an attack from inside, but messy, and a bit risky if Blake had all five of them clinging to his back, slowing him down.

"There's bound to be an easier way out at the bottom... at least, that's how it always work in my experience!" Lara added sagely. More to the point, getting Direza to a trustworthy specialist who'd actually be likely to help someone who was so clearly a Drow meant taking her all the way back to the Utopia, so the extra time spent finishing what they'd come here to do wouldn't really make that much difference in the final accounting. "Let's just try not to get hurt too much, hmm?" Blake commented with a shrug. "As mentioned before I've got some healing-potions in my saddlebags, but they're not going to last very long compared to Direza's magical skills." Lara, as any good adventurer, was also carrying a couple of potions of her own. And of course, they had a huge, nigh-invincible black dragon they could all hide behind if push came to shove, so avoiding injuries didn't really seem like it'd be _that_much of a problem.

At least, it didn't, until they emerged from the ramp and found themselves entering the third floor. Vastly larger than the trap-filled spiral they'd just left, and completely open - one enormous room, the ceiling supported by regularly-spaced stone columns. A wide-open avenue extended straight forwards from the ramp they'd just descended by, to another in the distance, at the other side of the room, going down even further. Getting to it would literally be as easy as walking down the street... except that said street was lined by a mind-boggling number of armed men.

Indeed, the entire floor-space of the huge, open space, barring the central avenue, was so packed with soldiers that it was literally 'standing-room only'. They stood in neat, orderly ranks, arranged into units with an elaborately-dressed officer at the head of each, ready to march into action at a moment's notice. They were also, universally, made from dusty, red-brown clay. "Golems?" Anitra whispered, somehow feeling an urgent need to be very, very quiet, despite the army surrounding them currently resembling nothing more than a vast collection of statues. "There's _so many_of them!"

Blake's keen eyes swept the room, and even he seemed a touch nervous. "Yes and no... I've never seen anything quite like it before..." he rumbled, also keeping his voice pitched low. "They're definitely animate... but there's something else there, mixed into it. Looks almost... necromantic in nature. Hmmm. Best I can guess, once-living minds have been bound into those clay bodies, like a sort of Lichdom Lite. I mean, normally, a golem has to be either directly controlled by a wizard, or limited to a few very simple tasks - neither of which is ideal for an army this size. But if you locked the minds of fallen soldiers in them, leaving them dormant until you needed them... it could work, and the result would be both flexible and dangerous. I've just never heard of anyone actually doing so, let alone at such a scale!"

His head was still sweeping, eyes narrowed in concentration. "Worse, there seems to be some kind of... bond between them all. Almost reminds me of the telepathic link I share with my dear Anitra, actually, just far more complex. All of the soldiers are linked to their officer, and all the officers are linked together, with... what_looks_ to be a final link heading downwards. Presumably to some central control-device." Lara whistled - quietly - while likewise glancing around at the seemingly never-ending rows of soldiers, their armor sculpted from the clay of their bodies, but the steel of their spear-tips, swords and shields gleaming bright with preserving and strengthening enchantments. "Bit overkill, even for an emperor's tomb if you ask me..." she commented dryly.

Nodding, Blake lifted his head higher, nearly scraping the ramp's ceiling as he looked over the helmets of the regular soldiers to see what waited further away. "More than overkill. There's no way these are all here to protect the tomb. There's cavalry further down the line, and even chariot-archers. Heavy infantry and siege-machines closer to the walls. Even what looks like support-personnel, though I suppose for a golem army, they'd be more like craftsmen than corpsmen. This is an actual army, meant to fight actual battles. So if nothing else, I'd say that Lara's assumption about there being another exit is likely spot-on - I doubt these are all meant to march out of here by way of that painfully long, winding corridor above us."

"What kind of guy takes a fully-functional army with him to his grave?" Anitra asked, somewhat redundantly, as she checked that her sword was loose in its sheath. "Someone who isn't planning to stay_there..." Lara replied, checking her own hand-crossbows. "Any of you ever fight a Lich before?" They had not, as it happened, though Lara had and could give them some pointers. Blake, however, remained unconvinced. "If the 'Immortal Emperor' really _is_Immortal, why would he still be down here, instead of up _there, ruling the empire that still worships him as a god? Heck, even if the people of Qinxiang had some kind of problem with being ruled by a Lich, and he couldn't think of some way to disguise his true nature, he's got the army here to make his claim stick regardless. I don't buy it. Maybe he was planning for lichdom, but somehow failed to pull it off? Or perhaps he changed his mind in the last minute. The stories we've heard do say that his 'Journey of Enlightenment' resulted in him returning much-aged and changed."

Even so, he couldn't argue that it was better to be prepared for an encounter with a Lich and not meet one, than to meet one and not be prepared for it. Which still raised the question of how to get through the room before them. They were all still standing at the bottom of the ramp, not quite having dared to set foot inside the cavernous room. "Well, if they're meant to be a proper army, and not just tomb-security, maybe they're not set up to activate and attack if anyone gets close?" Melora ventured, somewhat cautiously. "After all, Lord Blake's vision tells us that they are meant to be controlled from somewhere below, and by his impeccable logic, there isn't likely to be anyone _there,_manning said controls..."

An optimistic assumption, but at the same time, there was really no way to move on without passing right by several hundred of the clay soldiers. "One thing I'm fairly sure of is that if we break any of them, they're all going to activate and attack us..." Anitra declared, somewhat pessimistically. "With that network between them, it just wouldn't make any sense not to set them up that way." After some back-and-forth, a plan was laid - not a great plan, but the best they could come up with given the circumstances. "We'll try to walk slowly and quietly past them. If nothing happens, great. If they animate and attack, don't try fighting back - just run like hell to the ramp on the other side. Once we get there, I'll stay behind and put a cork in the bottleneck. The rest of you keep going, and find what we're looking for - and a way out, ideally!" Blake summed it up, as they all limbered up in preparation for what would hopefully remain a casual stroll down an open street. "Well, implanted minds or not, clay golems still shouldn't be too fast, so outrunning them won't be a problem..." Lara declared, a bit fatalistically.

Hesitantly, forcing themselves to move at a slow, steady pace, all five of them stepped forwards onto the path. At both sides of it, army-units stood straight, officers in front and facing the road, baked clay faces blank and emotionless. For about half a minute, the oppressive silence continued, and it seemed like Melora's optimistic suggestion might actually turn out to be spot on. Alas, it ultimately turned out that the golem's creator had merely wanted to ensure that _retreating_wouldn't be too easy - thus, it was only once they'd completely passed the first pair of units that six groups, all around them, suddenly animated in a surge of magic. Clay feet stepped forwards with unanimous discipline, clay hands shifted on spears of aged wood with a dry hiss...

Everyone jumped, cursed, and were ready to hit the ground running... when all six unit, every last golem moving in perfect unison, knelt and presented their weapons. "Hail, noble Avatar of His Glory and Power!" Came the words, rumbling like gravel on a pan from six throats simultaneously - the six officers that now knelt in front of their units. The remaining golems - more than a hundred in all - simply knelt in silence behind them. Everyone paused, some in mid-stride. "Remind me - what did the plan say we should do if they bowed to us?" Lara asked sardonically. Blake just blinked in confusion, his head sweeping around to take in all of the now-animate clay soldiers. "Definitely human minds locked in there... but what are they thinking?" he mumbled.

Anitra's mind, meanwhile, was racing as she clung tightly to Direza, still carried in her arms but by now swaddled securely in a blanket as well. Avatar of 'His' glory and power? Who could these soldiers be talking to? None of them looked like natives of Qinxiang. Looking more closely at the nearest officer-golem, she saw that his face had animated as well - despite seemingly being composed of hard-baked clay, it now showed a recognizable human expression: Religious awe. And his eyes were looking up... at Blake. Inside her mind, various pieces - many of them collected during a spate of adventure and curiosity years before - were coming together rapidly, painting a picture she still couldn't quite wrap her head around.

Her assumption about who they were addressing was confirmed when six pairs of clay eyes panned down to her, and spoke again in unison. "Hail, noble Rider, touched by His Glory and Power!" they resounded, and a shiver ran down her spine. "Keep walking... I've got a bad feeling about this..." she whispered to her fellows and started stepping forwards briskly. Even so, she couldn't take her eyes off the nearby officers, tracking their gaze with her own - seeing an expression of confusion on their faces as they looked at the unconscious Drow in her arms, saying nothing, apparently unsure of how to react to one such as her. Almost as if they hailed from a world where dark elves did not exist...

Then, however, their gazes fell on Melora and Mel - and six heads tipped sideways as if in consideration. "Horse-girls..." they declared, all together, as if tasting the word. "Delicious... but armed. Armored. Warriors. Intruders!" A massive scraping sound resonated through the vast chamber as a hundred-plus clay warriors simultaneously rose from where they'd been kneeling, readying their weapons and stepping forwards onto the path. Meanwhile, as the group moved forwards, the next pair of units activated before them - and rather than kneel, they too took on an aggressive demeanor, already stepping forwards onto the path, eyes fixed on the two Equus. Clearly, the magical network they shared extended to the still-dormant too.

The puzzle building inside Anitra's mind was still not quite complete, but one corner at least painted a clear enough picture that she was willing to bet on it. Skidding to a halt, she interposed herself between the nearest row of spear-wielding clay soldiers - and their officer, who had already unsheathed a sword that glowed with potent enchantments - calling desperately behind her. "Both of you, drop your weapons and armor, right now! Then bow!" The golem officer, closest to her, was already lifting his sword - but hesitated, as he looked at her. All the other soldiers, behind him and on the other side of the path, likewise hesitated, while further ahead, Blake and Lara both slowed their pace, already close to surrounded, to see how her sudden brainwave would pan out.

"Step back, soldier! They're with me!" She experimentally called to the officer before her. He tipped his head, seemingly confused. "Rider. Noble. Honored..." Eight clay throats now declared, and his sword was lowered. However, rather than step back, he simply stepped sideways - eyes still fixed on Melora and Mel. "Horse-people. Warriors. Enemies." The eight officers stated authoritatively, clearly unimpressed with Anitra's cogent argument. Apparently, whatever they saw her as, they weren't about to actually take orders from her.

Fortunately, while both Melora and Mel were decked out in plate-armor that normally would've taken at least twenty minutes to get out of -with some help from a squire - both sets of platemail were also heavily enchanted, and not just for protection. Their primary duties were more sexual than combat-oriented, after all, so the ability to shed their armor at a moment's notice had been considered in the design of their equipment. Priceless, enchanted mail crafted from dragonforged steel clattered to the ground, followed swiftly by a pair of even more heavily-enchanted polearms. While Melora and her daughter primarily served Blake, they were both quite used to taking orders from 'Lady Anitra' too - unless countermanded by Blake himself, which was something that had never yet happened. More importantly, they both trusted her, and Melora in particular was well aware that Anitra regarded her as a friend just as much as a servant.

Thanks to their quick-release armor and lack of hesitation, both Equus were quite naked and unarmed when the first set of officers stepped around Anitra to face them, weapons at the ready - only to hesitate again. "Horse-girls. Naked. Soft and subtle. Delicious. Slaves?" They queried, clay eyes narrowing speculatively. Anitra nodded eagerly at the two, who quickly caught on - bowing deeply, hands clasped before them in a suitably slavish fashion. "Yes, good sir - we are here to serve you..." Melora softly declared. The officers' eyes seemed to light up despite the dull, red-brown material they were made from, and the degree to which their clay faces could animate was demonstrated when eight clay tongues were revealed in order to lick dry and dusty clay lips. "Barrack-whores! Lovely and fresh! We have waited so long for new meat..." the eight currently-active officers now declared, and sheathed their swords. Behind them, the regular soldiers grinned eagerly - and put down their spears.

Glancing back at Melora and Mel, who were looking around at the sheer number of clay soldiers who were now starting towards them with wooden lust written on their faces, Anitra shrugged apologetically. "I'm not sure how long they'll carry on, but... just try to keep them busy for a while! We'll find the control-center below and call them off, then you can join us." She called to them as she dashed forwards, quickly catching up to Blake and Lara despite still carrying Direza in her arms. "Make me proud, my dear servants!" Blake rumbled encouragingly back at them as he too began moving again. "I am confident that you will be able to meet this challenge, as you have met every other I have put before you..."

While Melora and Mel quickly disappeared behind a sea of red-brown bodies, the remaining three members of the team ran for the ramp as originally planned. Each unit of soldiers they reached animated as they passed them, and in keeping with their apparent networking, each group then immediately dropped their weapons and moved hungrily towards the cluster of fellow soldiers surrounding the two newly-arrived 'barrack-whores'. All, except one group which instead stepped smartly forwards as they passed, tripping up Lara with an expertly-placed spear, then piling on her as she fell. "Barrack-whore! Lovely and fresh! New meat!" The solitary group's officer belatedly echoed as he held Lara down, his 'men' gathering eagerly around him. "Oh, not again!" Lara complained resignedly as her blouse and shorts were torn away from her body by the golem's powerful hands.

Anitra and Blake didn't look back - only exchanging a glance as they continued to run. This certainly confirmed the 'curse' thesis... and depending on what, exactly, it was that Lara wanted from this tomb, an offer to help break it could prove a useful bargaining-chip. The last sprint took them past four units of cavalry - clay soldiers standing straight beside their clay steeds - and two units of chariot-archers, each (wooden) chariot featuring two more clay horses tacked before them. Each animated in turn, and their attention remained riveted on the display further back. "Those should make things interesting..." Anitra mumbled as they finally reached the ramp leading down. Still, it wasn't as if _any_of them were unfamiliar with horse-cock, per se, so they should all be fine...

"I take it you are thinking along the same lines I am, with regards to the source of the minds sealed in those clay soldiers?" Blake rumbled as they paused at the bottom of the ramp to catch their breaths. Anitra nodded. "I can think of only one group of soldiers who'd recognize and hail a black dragon and his rider in that fashion... and considering what we learned during our trip to the Herdlands, put together with your recovered memories, I figured those same people would be familiar with naked-and-willing 'horse-girls' in only one way. Looks like I was right..." Blake nodded, then scratched his chin. "But what does it all_mean?"_ He wondered aloud. Anitra shrugged. "Maybe we'll find the answer to that question - and a few other lingering ones - down here..." The fourth floor waited before them - blue torches coming alight to show a long corridor with several sidepaths. It looked depressingly like a labyrinth. Hopefully, the three they'd leave behind would be able to handle the attentions of the clay soldiers - however many hundreds of them were awake at this point - for a while, Anitra thought as she hefted Direza's unconscious body and stepped forwards, all senses alert.

Mel felt a detached sense of amusement as the clay soldiers surrounded her. As their rough hands gripped her, she relaxed her body - just as her mother had taught her - and let them bend her as they wished. There were more of them than she could count - already, they formed a solid wall around her, separating her from her mother and everything else, leaving nothing but red-brown clay visible in any direction. This was not what amused her, of course - rather, it_aroused_ her. Her mother had told her stories about 'gang-bangs' and similar large-scale encounters, and trained her stamina and endurance so that she would not be found wanting in such a situation - but this would be her first time actually surrendering her body to such a large number of individuals.

Indeed, if one really counted all of these clay golems separately - which was a bit of a stretch, granted, considering the way their minds seemed to be linked - her total number of sexual partners was about to skyrocket. Up until now, she could nearly have counted them off on one hand: There was mom, most frequently; auntie Direza and Lady Anitra, during various group activities; Lord Blake, for whom she had so devoutly trained her body; auntie Gisela, a few times, together with mom; And of course the Young Lord, Jet, her first... though she tried not to think about the times they'd shared too much. It made her chest hurt oddly.

Now, just a couple of days ago, she'd added this 'Lara Croft' to the count, albeit somewhat tangentially since she had, as was her duty, focused most of her energy on pleasing her Master. And now, she'd apparently be adding a few hundred nameless clay golems, somehow controlled by the minds of long-dead soldiers supposedly, to that count. Finally, all the training she'd gone through would be _truly_put to the test! Her pussy was already drooling eagerly, her pert nipples hard and erect.

Still, that edge of amusement remained. Her 'partners'... why had they even been equipped for sex, if they were meant to be nothing but remote-controlled soldiers? Perhaps Lord Blake or Lady Anitra could have explained this, but they weren't there, so all she could do was laugh silently at the way it worked. Their clothes and armor was, after all, part of their bodies - sculpted from the same clay as the rest of them. They couldn't disrobe or even open their pants. So instead, they just... sprouted dicks from their hips, on top of their sculpted armor. Cones growing outwards, clay reshaping, gradually gaining definition and turning into a recognizable cock-and-balls arrangement. They were bigger than she'd expect from humans... but then, they weren't human, exactly, were they? And they were still quite a bit smaller than her mother's equipment when she used her Ring of Priap, as she frequently did. So, no problem - just a strangely amusing sight.

She was bent at the waist, now, with a rough pair of hands firmly gripping her hips, watching this strange cock-creation - like a naughty sculpture formed by an invisible and no doubt perverted artist's hand - right in front of her face as another set of hands gripped her mane. Her mouth opened as readily before the phallic lumps of hardened clay as her labia did, and as she was penetrated from both sides at the same time - both cocks slammed home in her pussy and mouth, respectively, without any restraint or hesitation - a delighted shiver ran through her body. The texture was... well, as you'd expect from baked clay without glazing. Rough, like fine sandpaper, on top of being literally rock-hard. The resulting edge of painful overstimulation this added to the penetration more than made up for any deficiencies in terms of girth...

Of course, the roughness didn't end with the harsh shafts - their wielders were plenty rough too, handling her without trace of tenderness, their vise-like grips bruising her even as the hardened hips of the golem behind her smacked repeatedly and painfully into her buttocks, gradually tenderizing them. Somewhere under the sound of hard clay smacking into soft and subtle tissue, she thought that she could just barely hear a strange, hoarse whisper, coming simultaneously from every throat around her despite their unmoving lips, declaring their intent. "Horse-whore... teach you to love human cock... knock you up with a fine halfblood..." they whispered. "You're our toy, our plaything, our cocksleeve, our cum-dump, our meat-toilet... you have no right to rest, to sleep, to food... you are property, slave, object, not person..."

Well, they could be as rough as they liked. The pain only excited her, as did the knowledge that it would surely escalate as her pussy and throat - and probably ass too, soon - became abraded and sore from their rough-textured cocks. She had trained for this, ever since the day her mother had first caught her with Jet, thus proving that she was 'ready'. She'd learned what it was like to be handled roughly, used, serving obediently through ever-escalating pain. She was ready for this. And with any luck, handling this challenge with aplomb would finally make the Master see that she was ready to serve him fully... she knew, after all, that he still held back when he fucked her. She could always tell that when he was with her mother or Lady Anitra, his thrusts were sharper, fiercer, more violent. She wanted to feel those bone-shaking thrusts for herself, and if this 'misfortune' could get her there, she'd thank her lucky stars for it!

Still, it was an odd experience. The golems couldn't 'cum', not really - she'd gotten a good look at their cocks when they were forming, and they were entirely solid. Just clay dildos stuck to their groins, really. But they acted like they came - their human minds presumably imagining a mighty jet of sperm where none appeared. So they'd moan, push inside her to the hilt, shudder and shiver in a very familiar fashion... but nothing came of it, her tongue tasting only the same clay as always. Then they'd step back, sated somehow, to make room for the next couple of soldiers.

It annoyed her somewhat that they couldn't use all of her holes simultaneously - she'd rather been hoping to experience that for the first time too, in a way that didn't just involve dildos. Not that these clay dicks were really any different, she supposed. Either way, the golems' lack of flexibility and agility precluded any of the usual three-on-one positions, so instead she simply found herself pulled through a broad selection of two-on-one variations. Like bent-at-the-hip with a cock in either pussy or ass, or standing double-penetration that had her sandwiched between two rock-hard bodies, her tits mauled by powerful hands, leaving bruises and handprints...

More often, though, she was pulled completely off her feet, her limbs clamped in stony grips as she was manhandled, entirely helpless, dangling face-up or face-down while her throat was raped along with one of the nether orifices. She liked the face-up version best of all, due to the added option it provided her, with regards to anal. An option that only became more valuable as the orgy continued with no end in sight, the wall of soldiers around her never thinning or declining in the least.

The first time her ass was penetrated, she came - reaching her first orgasm of the event. Not from pleasure, mind - it was a purely masochistic orgasm, wrenched from her dazzled mind by the sheer novelty of the agony she was suffering - a rock-hard, sandpaper-rough cock pushing dry into her well-trained but still moderately tight anus... turning it into a single, tube-shaped abrasion nine inches deep. And that, of course, was just the start - lubricated mainly by her blood, the torturous cock's owner proceeded to pound her just as roughly and mercilessly as his peers had her pussy. She orgasmed through most of that round, the ecstasy prolonged by the waves of tearing pain that radiated out from her bleeding asshole with every movement.

Once the orgasm receded, however, she quickly realized that - captivating though the pain had been - she'd need to do everything she could to reduce the damage to her ass if she wanted to go the distance. There was no saying how long it would take Lord Blake and Lady Anitra to find the control-center for these clay soldiers, after all, and at some point mere pain would give way to lasting damage. And Lord Blake had specified that they should try to avoid injury, what with auntie Direza being out of commission for the moment...

Hence, the advantage of the face-up position, which allowed her to turn one of her more recent fields of study to her advantage with a bit of creativity. It wasn't that long ago that her mother had started to train her urethra - it was not an orifice that their Master, Lord Blake, would ever truly be able to use, after all. Still, the Master was nothing if not creative, and he'd found various uses for Melora's peehole during any number of torture-sessions - usually, but not_always_, in conjunction with the Ring of Priap. Hence, Mel could certainly see the advantage in preparing that diminutive hole to serve her Master as well - and better yet, once the training started, she'd soon proven to be something of a prodigy in that department. Already, she'd graduated from the pencil-thin toys they'd started with, to taking her mother's entire middle finger, knuckle and all, so that the fingertip pushed through into her bladder.

This practice had toned the sphincter-muscles in that area, and taught her an iron-cast bladder-control. Now, whenever she found herself suitably positioned, she made use of this to release a carefully-controlled stream of pee down through her slightly-gaping labia, to coat the rough-textured cock that was currently tormenting her bleeding asshole. The pee stung unpleasantly in the abraded interior of her ass, but the accumulating cocktail of piss, blood and anal secretions was steadily turning into a decent enough lubricant to prevent any further damage to her asshole.

How many had it been by now, she wondered as she felt a new cock push into her ass, dry as all those that had gone before yet failing to create the tearing sensation that heralded fresh damage thanks to the lubricant that was now dripping from her gaping sphincter between each visitor. She'd already lost count - the clay soldiers were all visually identical, after all, and it was only the dry condition of each and every cock forced into her that really made it clear that new soldiers kept rotating in. Could she be up to a hundred already? It was hard to say. Nor did it matter. Dozens of units had been activated during Lord Blake and Lady Anitra's dash for the exit - there had to be more than a thousand of the clay soldiers milling about. Going two at a time and at this leisurely, unhurried pace they were keeping, even with the load spread between her and her mother, it'd take days to get through them all... assuming, of course, that the ones she'd already dealt with weren't just rotating to the back of the line.

Then, something finally changed. The wall of identical soldiers surrounding her parted, to let pass another golem dressed - or rather, sculpted - in a different, lighter type of armor. A cavalryman - pulling his clay steed by its halter. A huge clay horsecock was already growing beneath its belly, dangerously long and thick - surpassing even her mother's in both dimensions, and clearly possessing the same agonizing texture as the rest. Finding herself bent over before the clay stallion, her legs pulled apart to leave her at a suitable height, she eagerly lifted her tail and caught herself hoping that the equine golem would find his way into her ass, rather than her pussy. What delicious agony it would be! But she was supposed to be_avoiding_ injury, not hoping for it, of course... not that it seemed like she'd have much say in it this time.

The clay horse came down heavy on her back, making her grunt with effort. But this, too, she had practiced for. She'd trained her legs, knees, hips and back tirelessly, so that she might one day feel the Master's weight on her back, and endure the kind of bone-shaking, unrestrained, inhumanly violent pounding that she'd watched him pour into Lady Anitra so many times while warm juices darkened the inside of her thighs. Better yet, another clay soldier was already stepping up before her, making it clear that her mouth would still be in service - and providing her with a rock-solid waist to grip and steady herself against.

A thick clay tower rubbed teasingly against her groin, then between her thighs, before finally finding its mark in a suitable orifice. Her pussy and ass were both gaping wetly at this point, so either could have caught him - but as luck would have it, her secret hopes went unanswered, with the fat pole instead slipping into her well-lubricated pussy. Even there, its sheer girth was enough to make the breath catch in her throat - and send fresh shivers of delicious pain up her trembling spine as her straining inner muscles pushed the rough texture against sensitive tissue with far more force than before. It slammed home with all the weight and force of the equine golem behind it, rubbing roughly across her cervix before hitting the very bottom of her vaginal sheath.

The shockwave that spread up through her organs from this impact was a familiar treat, and pushed her steadily closer to a fresh orgasm as the potent thrusts continued to come. Years of practice, first with her mother's cock, then with long, thick dildos, had hardened her abdominal muscles and tissue in preparation for the Master's attention, after all. Perhaps the Master wasn't quite ready to test the fruits of that training with his full strength, but the regular poundings he had been giving her had still helped to advance her further down that road. His full length would never truly fit within that orifice after all - at least not until many years from now, once she'd had a foal of her own and the integrity of her uterus thus wasn't a concern any longer. Then, like her mother before her, she could have her cervix permanently loosened and, with training and practice, gain the same ability that Lady Anitra possessed naturally - accepting Lord Blake's cockhead, thicker than a fist, into her very womb.

As her tongue caressed yet another clay shaft and every thrust of the much larger horse-cock in her pussy pushed her closer to a fresh climax, her ears flickered - picking up the sound of heavy, clay hooves behind her. Oh yes... there's been two entire cavalry-units lining the path further down, right? And chariots, too. There'd be_plenty_ more stallions where this one came from. Surely, at least some of them would find their way into her ass, to give her the agonizingly torturous, balls-deep anal pounding she so craved! Moaning around the hard tool in her mouth, she redoubled her efforts on it. She wasn't entirely certain whether these strange golems could actually tell the difference, but that was no reason to slack off - if nothing else, this was good practice for dishing out reliable oral pleasure even while distracted by steadily-escalating pain and pleasure!

Lara Croft groaned slightly as the two rough clay cocks rubbed against each other inside her, separated only by a thin and increasingly sore layer of tissue. Still, even if it hadn't been for the third, equally-rough shaft blocking her throat, she wouldn't be doing much more than that - this was far from the most painful thing she'd endured during the course of her illustrious career, not even if she ignored the various moderate-to-severe injuries she had suffered_outside_ of sexual encounters.

She had to admit, though, that it was rising steadily through the ranks and likely would continue to do so for a while yet. How long had it been already? An hour, maybe? Clearly, the control-center for these golems hadn't been right at the bottom of the ramp ahead. Indeed, the maps she'd managed to uncover during her investigation had been rather vague as to how many levels this place even had - being partially damaged by the passing of millenia. It could be as many as many as five, based on what she'd been able to make out from the surviving bits of the drawings - and if Blake and Anitra had to make their way through two entire floors, each larger than this one, she could be stuck here for a while yet!

If only they had flipped her the other way around when they dragged her down to the ground, she groused for the twentieth time. The clay cock that her pussy was being pushed down over with every thrust from above was well and truly lubricated by now, slipping easily and pleasurably in and out - hardly a surprise, since the limited flexibility of these golems meant that there was no way they could switch places down there. Which was presumably why it was the 'officer' who'd claimed this spot - enjoying an endless cowgirl-style ride while constantly tormenting her dangling tits with his square clay teeth and harsh hands, covering them in abrasions and bite-marks.

This, of course, left all the regular soldiers to take turns using her mouth and her increasingly bloody and pain-wracked asshole. The mixture of blood and anal secretions was providing some degree of lubrication by now, and the steady loosening of her sphincter helped to decrease the continued abrading of the sensitive tissues, but the pain was still mounting along with the damage. Hopefully, the salve she usually used after a rough round of rape would be able to soothe even this kind of injury - but there was little doubt that she'd once again have to call on her regular (well-compensated and highly discreet) healer once she returned from this particular adventure. He'd repaired worse before.

Another clay cock disappeared from her mouth, hovering briefly before her eyes, gleaming with spit. Then its owner stepped aside, making room for yet another of his fellows - whose hardened clay shaft was visibly dark-red and stained, carrying a sharp and unpleasant scent with it. One of his hands gripped her braid as he forced it into her mouth, making her grimace. It seemed like every new arrival at her mouth was like this by now - a previous visitor of her ass, the flavor of blood and bitter secretions soaked deep into the dry clay. With the first couple, she'd tried to open wide so that they wouldn't touch her lips or tongue - and received several stinging slaps to the face for her trouble, leaving her ears ringing badly enough that she couldn't quite tell whether the creepy whisper about her being a 'disobedient, disrespectful whore' had actually come from the surrounding golems or just been her imagination.

Either way, she'd learned her lesson, and meticulously licked each rough cock clean as it was thrust into her mouth. Wasn't as if she hadn't 'enjoyed' the dark flavor of her own ass several times before, anyway - be it by force, or while under the influence of mind-altering drugs or magics. The fact that she was seeing 'repeat visitors', meanwhile, made it clear that all of her tormentors belonged to the single unit which had somehow diverted from the two horse-girls to tackle her - and that each of the golems were rotating to the back of the line when they finished with their orifice of choice. Specifically, the back of the other line. Unfortunately, the sheer length of each 'line' ensured that even the cocks she'd previously whetted with her mouth were bone-dry by the time they made it around to her agonized asshole. Just her typical luck at work...

Still, this whole situation was even more evidence in favor of the 'curse' theory, she thought as the soldier behind her pulled out, leaving her bloodied sphincter gaping briefly in his wake before a fresh, dry,unlubricated cock was forced into it. And while she wouldn't admit it to anyone alive... she didn't really mind it. Risk and danger was what she lived for - it had been that way ever since the accident when she was a child. It had cost her her parents, and her innocence - but it had taught her to survive in return. It had taught her of the unparalleled intensity of life-and-death situations, and the mind-expanding sweetness of the adrenaline high.

Ever since then... she hadn't been able to find any peace in a quiet, safe_life. Without the constant risk of death, she didn't feel _alive. And soon, with or without the help of that theoretical curse, this attitude had seeped into her emerging sex-life. Being raped, tied up, tortured, losing all self-control to drugs or magical influence... knowing that every orgasm could be her last, that her rapist would likely kill her if she failed to pleasure him suitably... it made everything so much more intense, so much more pleasurable. She'd tried to seek that high in the 'safe, sane, consensual' way - there were secret clubs, after all, in the major cities, where all manners of pleasure could be had for the asking if you knew who to ask and had a suitably heavy purse. And young, lonely noblewomen like herself were hardly unusual clients there. But it had left her cold, in the end. Knowing that she could end her plight with a single word the moment it got 'too much' meant that it was never 'enough'.

Indeed, when Anitra had dragged her into that mini-orgy a couple of days ago, it had mostly been because she figured it'd be a good way to bond with this impromptu 'team', and get to know them - working with others wasn't something she was particularly used to, after all. But Blake had been a... revelation. Even though she'd bent over for him freely, without any kind of force being applied other than his sheer, dominating presence, there had still been a risk. Regardless of precautions, a slight tear in her overstretched pussy or asshole would have resulted in agonizing, internal burns for her. How many times had she even cum while he pounded her, his two loyal servants watching her with carefully-concealed envy?

Certainly more than these clay men were managing, she reflected with an inwards sigh. Despite the growing pain in her blood-dripping ass, the only real 'risk' here was the same one that had kept her going through nearly three days of rape and humiliation back in the Luoyang plaza, locked naked in those stocks. The knowledge that, without outside assistance, she'd eventually be facing a grisly fate indeed! If the golems weren't called off at some point, they'd presumably just keep rotating indefinitely, their clay bodies tireless, their cocks eternally hard and ready - raping her until she perished from thirst, blood-loss and exhaustion, and perhaps even continuing to abuse her decaying body for countless years afterwards!

Pushing aside the knowledge that Blake and Anitra clearly were too competent and powerful to fail in their endeavor, and that they'd likely pull out all the stops in order to rescue their two equine servants if not, directly, her, she let that thought wash over her. She imagined herself locked in the implacable embrace of the clay soldiers for days while the steady loss of blood from her torn-apart ass and the lack of water and rest progressively weakened her, with no way to fight back or escape. As her heartbeat accelerated, spurred by this terrifying prospect, she let the thrill combine with the still-growing pain in her asshole and the pleasure radiating from her dripping-wet, constantly-pounded pussy, and felt it lift her closer and closer to a much-needed orgasm...

Melora's nostrils flared as the clay stallion climbed off her back, pulling out... and pulling more than ten inches of her intestines out along with it, leaving a long, bleeding prolapse hanging from between her toned buttocks. She could feel the pain all the way up through her body as her digestive system was pulled out of shape. It was the_wrong_ sort of pain, the kind that warned her that her body was nearing its limits. It reminded her of when her breasts had been severed... only without the Master's soothing presence to make it all feel right. And drawn out for what seemed like hours already.

A rough-surfaced clay hand wrapped around her prolapse, and shoved it back inside her - followed by the hand itself and the forearm behind it, generating fresh tremors of unendurable pain in her abdomen. "Worn-out whore... used up..." A hundred identical voices whispered around her. "Good only for the horses..." The arm withdrew, leaving her tailhole gaping bloodily in its absence - but not for long. Within seconds, another clay stallion reared up behind her and landed heavily on her back, its thick, rough-textured cock scraping cruelly across her sore, yet neglected, pussy before finding its way inside the ruins of her asshole just as those who had come before.

He slammed it home just as ruthlessly as his predecessors, drawing fresh blood from the depths of her tormented anus. Balls-deep, every inch of his shaft inflicting pain and injury upon her sensitive internals. She gasped as he pulled back for the second thrust, and was immediately punished with a viciously powerful slap to the side of her face, sending her whole head sideways. "Disobedient whore... you forget your duty..." the voices whispered, and she obediently spat out the blood that the slap had drawn from her gums, then turned her head forwards to resume licking and sucking the two clay cocks that were being presented to her, courtesy of a pair of soldiers standing hip-to-hip before her.

She had grown complacent, she now realized. Too used to the Master's kind hand, the way he turned any pain into bliss just by being_there, just by the awareness that _he was causing it. Sure, in the past, she'd weathered worse trials than this without his presence - as challenges set out by him, during a temporary absence. But that was years ago - more than a decade, easily - and that was a long time for an Equus. She was over thirty by now - a mature, matronly age for her kind. Neither her body nor her mind was capable of handling the same stresses they once had... was she even still worthy of serving the Master?

It didn't feel like it right now. Rather, she just felt like breaking down in tears and begging for mercy. Not that these fell creatures were likely to give any! Heart flooding with guilt, she realized that if this had been one of the kind of 'amusing challenges' the Master had set before her at various points in the past, she likely would have failed - giving up, pure and simple, accepting that she would disappoint him. At least the punishment for such a failing would be likely to come at his hand, making it far less soul-grinding than this constant, bone-deep torment.

But this was no game, and there was no surrender, no way to cry uncle. She could only endure - legs trembling, breath unstable, vision going blurry - as her body was endlessly battered. How was her dearly beloved daughter faring under this onslaught, she wondered? She had sought to train the girl in every facet of her future duties, to ensure that she'd enter the Master's service more prepared than_she_ had been when the Master first graced her tight young holes with his glorious scepter. Would that training be enough to let her handle this trial? There was no way of knowing - the clay soldiers formed a solid wall around her, and she could hear little over the pounding of her own pulse.

Suddenly, ecstasy flooded her system. Pure pleasure, radiating out from her clit, pushed back the flood of pain and despair - and while it could not banish it entirely, it did a fine job of balancing it out. Greater yet was the effect when she foggily realized, already rising towards an orgasmic climax, where the pleasure came from - the clit-spike. Even from somewhere far below, the Master had reached out to touch her, to hold his hand over her. The guilt in her heart remained - the knowledge that she had needed this gesture, this touch of his, in order to keep going. But all the same, she now knew that she could keep going.

Standing before him, feeling his talons against her skin, she had endured the insertion of the spike without flinching, spreading her legs willingly even as the red-hot metal pierced deep inside her, causing a pain unlike anything she'd ever felt before. And she had done so in order to ensure that he could hurt her as much as he pleased, whenever he so desired. Every torment he had devised for her, she had suffered gladly - from having her pussy nearly scorched into a lump of coal by his fiery breath, to inserting her magically-summoned cock and balls into a barrel of starving piranhas. Every time he fucked her pussy, forcing his way past her cervix and into her womb, it was agony - an agony that she would not trade for anything.

Indeed, if her ass was being torn apart now, it was because she had already sacrificed it to him - even Direza's healing-magic and the various salves derived from the Library of the Perverse could only do so much, and she was well aware that it was only thanks to both_of those things that she was even still capable of keeping her sphincter closed on her own. At times, when she was struggling to pull herself together after yet another rough anal pounding from her beloved Master, she was reminded of the time when she had - somewhat reluctantly - participated in the permanent anal ruination of a devil-worshiping cultist. It was ironic, and perhaps inevitable, that her own rear would eventually wind up little better than the wreckage she had made of that cultist's asshole. Indeed, the way her sphincter looked these days - a swollen and wrinkled ring that looked strange and misshapen when _not stretched around some thick intruder - it was certainly no surprise that her equine rapists had so easily homed in on it.

Still, it hardly mattered now. Even when the clay stallion finished up and dismounted, once again pulling several inches worth of prolapse along for the ride, only for the sensitive tissue to be roughly gathered up and stuffed back inside her, she didn't flinch. She simply continued to lick and suck every clay cock that was put before her, allowing herself to float away happily on the pleasure-daze that her Master had so mercifully granted her. Even the torment tasted sweet now that she had been reminded of the Master's touch. She would continue to offer up her body, to face the challenge head-on, until the loss of blood from her shattered anus robbed her of consciousness...

Blake sighed as he looked at the ramp leading down. "I had a feeling_that the magical link I saw led deeper than this floor, but I was still hoping to be proven wrong..." he lamented. Anitra nodded and echoed his sigh. "I hope everyone is still keeping it together upstairs." She said hopefully, glancing up at the ceiling. Blake shrugged. "Melora's been through worse, Mel's got the vitality of youth, and if what Lara told you is true, this is just another regular day for _her. Still, I just activated Melora's clit-spike on a medium-high 'pleasure' setting - just as a pat on the head and keep-it-up. Let's just hope that the next floor is it, or at least less labyrinthine!"

The fourth floor had, indeed, proven to be a labyrinth - and then some. Among its twisting - though fortunately trap-free - hallways, several rooms had been found, all hinting that this 'tomb' had been built to be something far more. "This place is a full-on command-bunker..." Blake had commented after they'd found the first handful of rooms. "You could run a war from down here - and build your own army while you were at it!" The fourth floor labyrinth was, presumably, meant to delay and confuse invaders, while being easily navigable to those familiar with it - hence the lack of traps.

They'd found workspaces for building clay golems, a smithy for forging weapons for them, enchanting-workshops for both, an alchemy-laboratory, and various storage-spaces still half-filled with materials. They probably hadn't all been manned by the Immortal God-Emperor himself, either - there were also barrack-rooms lined with dusty beds, a kitchen, and even a renewable food-supply. A large room filled with mold and long-dead plants had apparently once been a vast, magical greenhouse, its enchanted ceiling now dark and dormant, while another contained empty pens and cages that had presumably once housed cattle, chickens and other domesticated animals.

None of it was very useful, of course, save for the massive teleporter they'd found at the end of the very first passage. Presumably, it was meant to transport the clay soldiers to somewhere they could easily march from, and Blake was fairly certain he could activate it once everyone was together and ready to leave. However, considering the variety of utilities they'd discovered, there was no way to know that the golem control-unit wasn't in some dusty corner of the labyrinth... other than meticulously mapping out the entire thing and checking every room.

Even once they'd grown confident enough in the lack of traps to move quickly, that had taken quite a while. The labyrinth was, after all,extensive - just as they'd been told to expect, it was bigger than the huge, open room on the floor above. Down here, far from the sun, it was impossible to tell exactly how much time had passed, and their shared sense of urgency could be skewering their estimates - but it certainly seemed like several hours had passed. Direza was still out cold, still resting in Anitra's arms and occasionally shivering or groaning. Blake hadn't offered to carry her again. Their mental bond made such an offer unnecessary - he knew that she wasn't holding on to the slender Drow because she didn't_trust_ him with her, but just because she wanted to make sure that if and when Direza awakened on her own, it would be in her Mistress' arms.

Sharing a final glance, they descended the ramp - which they had first discovered halfway through their search of the floor but not dared use until they'd thoroughly checked the current level - blue torches once again flickering to life before them in order to light their way. At the bottom, they looked around - and both raised eyebrows in surprise. They were standing at a four-way split, with the path behind them leading up to the previous floor, and all the other three each seemingly leading into a single room. They had both been dreading another escalation in terms of size - something even larger than the previous floor, which would truly put this tomb at the same scale as a large city. Instead, it seemed, the final floor was just three rooms...

Cautiously, Anitra stepped into the first room - the one right in front of them - with Blake's head following suit. As had been the case with most of the rooms on the floor above, the doorways leading inside were too narrow for his body, but his long, flexible neck let him peek inside all the same. The room looked to be a personal study-slash-library-slash-bedroom, featuring several shelves of books and scrolls that smelled strongly of mold, a writing-desk in an antique style, and a rather palatial-looking bed.

The bed was notably occupied. Poking up from the covers was the head and shoulders of an ancient, desiccated corpse - parchment-fine skin stretched across yellowed bones, the result of natural mummification. "Not a lich, then..." Blake mumbled quietly. "But I think we've found the 'Immortal' God-Emperor, Liu-Tang." Anitra nodded and stepped up to the writing-desk, where a scroll laid open, covered in dust. Blowing it aside, she glanced at the half-finished letter beneath and flashed a lopsided smile. "And, while we're at it, the mysterious explorer Lutan." She declared. The lettering was immediately recognizable - it was the same script she'd once seen imprinted on a certain clay tablet.

Setting Direza down on a dusty chair nearby, she unrolled the scroll further - being as careful as she could with the crisp, aged parchment. Her eyes widened as she read. It was an old but still perfectly legible dialect of the common human trade-tongue - though, to the people of Qinxiang, that probably qualified as a mysterious cipher. Sensing her excitement, Blake stretched his neck and twisted his head so that he could read over her shoulder - then whistled quietly. "Guess that explains the clay soldiers' reaction, indeed. Talk about a three-for-one special." He commented dryly.

Indeed, the scroll - which had rather the tone of a deathbed confession - spelled it all out, though the fine details wouldn't be sorted out until later, when they'd had the time to go through all of the journals and scrolls lining the small study's shelves. The gist of it though, the central revelation, was written out in plain text and obvious at a glance. Liu-Tang - or Lutan, the name he'd taken up in the world beyond Qinxiang's rock-solid borders - had once been known by another name entirely, a name now forgotten even by he himself... the name of the God of Power, creator of humankind and instigator of the God-War that had devastated the world many millenia ago.

The scroll skipped rather lightly over his reasons for starting said war, but at least made clear how he had ultimately been brought low despite being well on his way to victory. The remaining gods, it seemed, had united all of their remaining strength - not to attack him directly, which he'd been well prepared for, but rather to launch an ingenious, indirect strike. They had, in fact, erased his name from reality itself - and with it, his presence in every mind on the planet. Both those who had feared him and those who had worshiped him immediately forgot that he'd ever existed - cutting him off from the faith that all gods needed in order to survive.

It hadn't destroyed him outright, as they'd no doubt hoped - he'd gathered too much power at that point, enough to sustain his own existence for at least a brief while. But still, he had been left dreadfully weakened - and sensed the remaining gods gathering to finish the job. Fatigued though they were from the grand spell they'd just finished casting, they would still easily be able to do it, too. And so, like any good strategist would in that situation, he'd beaten a tactical retreat. Taking advantage of the large amounts of residual, magical 'noise' that the other gods' enormous, world-spanning spell had created, he'd thrown a hefty attack in the faces of his approaching foes - and then Incarnated as a mortal, concealing himself in a bolthole he'd prepared for just such an eventuality. To all the divine senses of his attackers, it seemed like he'd just expended what little power he had left in a suicidal attack, choosing to die on his own terms rather than grant them the pleasure of finishing him off.

Initially, he had intended for his incarnation to be merely temporary. Once the other gods were satisfied that he was truly gone, and busy rebuilding the shattered world while parting up his empire and his people for their own, he came out of hiding and established a new Empire for himself. He'd chosen the region of Qinxiang due to it being under the influence of an abiding miasma that had resulted from one of his earlier battles during the God-War, where he had wounded the Dragon-Goddess Takharsis - he knew that her blood and hatred, soaked into the very land itself, would drive away most dragons... but not his own creations, the Black Dragons, whom he hoped to be reunited with in order to reclaim the fragments of his old, divine self and thus increase his power. He'd also suspected that Takharsis, who hated him more than just about any other God due to the way he'd stolen and 'corrupted' her children, hadn't been completely convinced of his death, and thus might have her dragons keeping an eye out for any sign of his survival.

"So... that means that the Qinxiang really are the 'chosen people'... and by the true, original creator of humanity, no less!" Blake interjected, shaking his head in bemusement. "Though, granted, the choice seem to have more to do with the qualities of their homeland than with them, per se - but still, good on them." Anitra nodded, a lopsided smile on her face. "Indeed - and for that matter, their Immortal God-Emperor really WAS an immortal, incarnated god. Or... maybe not that immortal in the end, I suppose?" She briefly glanced over at the very dead person in the bed, then quickly returned her attention to the scroll, hoping to find some explanation for how it had ended that way. It couldn't simply be 'old age' - Triton, she remembered, had Incarnated a while before 'Lutan', but was still going strong despite his enormous beard.

According to the scroll, Liu-Tang had initially been entirely focused on regaining his old powers as a true god, and finishing the war he'd started. He'd taught the Qinxiang isolationism to stop word of his preparations from leaking out, and ordered the construction of his final redoubt under the cover of it being a suitably magnificent 'tomb' for his glorious self. His hope that one or more of his Black Dragons might sense his presence and seek him out, or just flee into Qinxiang to escape the persecution of their more colorful brethren, however, proved in vain - and eventually, impatiently, he'd decided to go seek them out himself. The Black Dragons represented his best and fastest route to recapturing his old power... but if he were to find a God-Shard or two - powerful remnants of the gods he and his dragons had slain during the war - along the way, that wouldn't be a bad thing either.

However, to make this journey, he'd had to discard his imperial glory, and assume a disguise that wouldn't draw attention. He'd had to keep a low profile, and not use his powers in any kind of noticeable fashion. Ultimately, he'd had to become human. To live like a human, interact with other humans on an even basis, and just generally see the beings he'd once created from ground-level for the first time. As his travels continued, he'd also seen the other races - the ones he'd once sought to enslave or annihilate - and found himself interacting with them.

And gradually, as he journeyed through years and miles, his heart changed. He came to feel that his war had been an error - that his humans could be so much more than an all-conquering army. He learned to see the beauty in all the races - well, those that still_existed_, anyway - and realized the injustice in what he had sought to perpetrate. By the time he actually found a Black Dragon, he'd lost any desire to either tear the fragment of his old power out of the black dragon's soul, or bind him to his will once more for that matter. Instead, he merely felt intensely guilty for what he had made of the Black Dragons.

He had created them to be tools of war - powerful but ultimately expendable weapons to throw at his foes. Then, with his fall, they'd been left as endlessly reborn outcasts, often driven to madness by loneliness and isolation. The humans he'd created were, more or less, doing just fine without him - gods who had lost their original creations to his rampage had adopted part of the human population as their own, and were looking after them now - but the black dragons were in a miserable position, and there was little he could do to help. The question of how he could improve the lives of the black dragons, and thus find some kind of redemption for the sin of creating them as weapons of war haunted him.

Now searching for an answer rather than power, he finally came across the place known, at the time, as the Valley of Dragons. An inexplicably fertile region surrounding a vast crater... the place where he'd once fought and slain the God of Wealth, Dibias. The detonation of the dying god's power had created the crater - and blasted his heart, still pulsating with the raw essence of wealth, deep into the ground. This granted the region great fertility - a _wealth_of plant-life, fruits, and animals with precious furs - as well as endlessly seeding the ground around it with precious metals and gems.

At the time, the long war between the draconic tribes had but recently ended, and the land was ruled by a greatly-respected couple - the Red Prince and the Golden Princess, whose love had served to end the war and unite the tribes. Realizing that this place - where greed lost all meaning in the face of infinite wealth - was the one place where the dragons could effectively be free of Takharsis' influence, it occurred to him that it also might become a sanctuary for the Black Dragons. A place where they could be accepted by their peers, welcomed and even revered!

To that end, he used what power he could still wield over the lost fragments of his divine self, and induced an unnatural pregnancy in the Golden Princess - putting a black dragon's egg in her belly, against all reason. He figured - correctly, as it turned out - that the combination of the vast respect and power that the ruling couple held and their existing track-record of defying traditions, would lead them to accept their black child... raising him with peace and love, to become their heir apparent and a powerful protector of the Valley of Dragons.

Still, he was well aware that the touch of greed wasn't limited to dragons - indeed, his own creations, the humans, would happily challenge even an army of dragons for the chance to control a source of infinite wealth! Thus, for the Valley to be a true sanctuary, he decided, it would need a defense. A barrier suitable to repel any attack, human or otherwise... and particularly something that might hide if from the eyes of Takharsis, who would likely take offense at the increasingly 'heretical' way the dragons of the Valley were living.

Thus, he set out on a new journey, seeking out hidden places and peoples, dividing amongst them the fragments of a tablet he had crafted to be the key for the gate and wall he'd construct when he was done. If the world ever became sufficiently united that the pieces could be brought together, it would likely mean that greed had lost any true grip on the world - leaving Takharsis too weak to be a threat anymore, and the dragons of the Valley safe to come out of hiding... or so he'd reasoned at the time. He poured a lot of work into the tablet - considering every contingency, every possibility, while filling it with enough of his power to ensure that it'd be able to react appropriately to them all.

Along the way, he also gathered power - assembling god-shards and magical learning, trying to bulk up his remaining divine essence for the final task. However, as he traveled and did his work, unnoticed by all, his paranoia grew. Surely, by now, someone would be catching on? He had worked such evil, made such enemies... surely, not all of them could have grown entirely complacent! He'd seen first-hand by now how deep the wounds of war ran. How the Spider-Goddess Lolth, maddened by the annihilation of her people, the Driders, had gone so far as to steal an entire city of elves from the God of Wisdom, Corellon, twisting them into the Drow and setting them to work on recreating her original children. How the death of so many gods had allowed the demons, previously held easily at bay, to sneak into the world-plane in order to kill, rape, and devour souls. All others had forgotten him, thanks to the spell that brought him low... but the gods, surely, had not!

Even when he wrote this final missive, he had apparently remained unsure of whether he had actually been pursued, actually been suspected - or whether everything, from the dragon flying overhead to the skittering spiders pursuing him in the shadows, had been conjured up by his growing fear that he might ultimately be discovered and thus fail, so close to his goal. All of the tablet-pieces had been emplaced - everything was ready for the erection of a grand, protective wall for the Valley of Dragons! But panic had seized him. If he went there now, he'd lead his enemies right to the sanctuary before he even finished building it - or he would simply reveal himself to whoever suspected him, and wind up crushed beneath the might of a full god, unrestrained by the limitations of the flesh.

Thus, fearing that his 'Lutan' identity had attracted too much attention, he 'killed' him - finding a suitable corpse in the slums of the city that had become his defacto base of operations outside of Qinxiang, disguising it as himself, and arranging a suitable 'demise' for it, complete with a will and a funerary pyre to erase any remaining evidence. Then, he laid low, biding his time, letting the years tick by. A decade, two, three, ten... all the same to him. Only then, once his paranoia had receded and 'Lutan the Explorer' had been forgotten even by those few who had known of him in the first place, did he dare to come out of hiding and return to the Valley of Dragons.

He found it much-changed. A great castle stood there now - the Dragon Utopia, built by the black dragon whose hatching he had arranged on his first visit. He also learned that, while he had been hiding, the Utopia had weathered not one but three attempted invasions by humans who had somehow learned of it - fought off only thanks to the dragons' united strength and the power of the black who led them. The realization that he could have lost everything he'd fought so hard to build simply because of his own paranoia and guilty conscience was the last straw.

In a final bid for redemption, he poured everything he had left, everything he had gathered on his journeys, into his final craft - reaching, in that moment, something approaching his original, divine might. A great, illusory wall that would hide the Utopia and everything around it from the eyes and minds of any who glanced in their direction, impenetrable by any mortal magic, and even proofed against the eyes of the gods... assuming they had no reason to look_too_ closely. The tablet would be the key, and the lock for it he built in the basement of the new castle, with the blessings of the dragons. They seemed to take him for just a friendly human mage, offering to contribute to their defense, and he was in no hurry to correct them. Then, of course, a gap - a special door, just for the blacks, so that they could find their way into the special sanctuary he had built for them...

But it had, indeed, taken everything he had. When the Utopia's wall stood firm, he crumbled - all of his divine power spent, his immortality gone with it. Old age, kept at bay for so long by that power, now returned with vengeance. With nowhere else to go, he traveled back to Qinxiang, the sealed kingdom he'd built as a base for a conquest that now would never come, aging every step of the way, and arriving as an old, decrepit man. His people still recognized him, still hailed and worshiped him, but he was too tired, too feeble by now to try and undo the damage he had done to them. He could only retreat to his 'tomb' to try and prepare for some final contingencies before death, at long last, claimed him - as it claimed any who donned the flesh of a mortal, sooner or later.

Writing this account had been one of the last such contingencies - though he had also prepared for the eventuality that a black dragon might find his way to his tomb eventually, as he had hoped when he originally settled in Qinxiang. Hence why he had made sure that the tomb's main doors would open to the touch of a black dragon, and indeed even the last-ditch magical defenses outside his personal chambers would deactivate on detecting such a visitor. The meandering confession then directed any black dragons who might be reading it to a specific scroll in a nearby shelf, warning that if any but a black dragon tried to break its seal, it and the would-be reader would be consumed with flame.

Needless to say, Blake couldn't resist such an invitation, and carefully fished the indicated scroll out of the shelf. Its wax seal, emblazoned with the by now familiar Imperial Seal - which had been scattered throughout the entire tomb, on wall-hangings, reliefs and mosaic paintings - parted before his talons without any fiery mishaps, and he quickly poured over the contents before sighing and dropping it on the ground. "What did it say?" Anitra asked curiously, feeling her lover's sense of borderline disgust. "Just more long-winded apologies for creating me to be a god-slaying weapon, and directions for the Dragon Utopia and the special entrance between the two peaks. Would've been somewhat useful a couple of decades ago, maybe!"

Shaking his head sadly, Blake half-glared over at the corpse in the bed. "It's sad, really. He fought a war against the entire rest of the world, and very nearly won. Then he decided he was wrong, and tried to 'do good' instead - but he pretty much failed at it at every turn, didn't he? The 'defenses' he created for the Utopia turned into a gilded cage, the dragons within nearly dyingout thanks to his 'help'. The special entrance he left for us blacks remained virtually unknown, despite both he AND the dragons of the Utopia trying to get word to us. Heck, if memory serves, the only places where he made any positive difference during his travels, it was by accident." Emitting a gusty sigh, he summed up his feelings succinctly at last. "How can someone be so good at being evil, yet so bad at being good?"

Anitra just shrugged and laughed, carefully shielding her feelings. Certain old secrets aside, she'd also neglected to mention a few other things to him - about how some of their own attempts at 'doing good' had wound up backfiring in the end. How the Sultan of Mirage City had mentioned in a letter, a couple of years back, that the former slave-girl they'd tried to help - Satyameva - had recently perished. She'd worn herself out, endlessly servicing every last animal in his Menagerie, offering her body to the beasts both day and night, using her every orifice to ensure that everything from the smallest macaque to the resident elephant was kept perpetually satisfied. She barely allowed herself rest, obsessing constantly over her 'duties' - heck, when she wasn't being penetrated in one orifice or another, she was putting her tongue to work pleasuring the females or rimming the males. In the end, her merely human body had simply been... overtaxed by all she'd put it through, and one morning she had been found dead from a heart-attack in the elephant's enclosure, hot cum still drooling from her every orifice even as her body cooled. Even though they'd repaired her pussy, they clearly hadn't done anything to help her shattered psyche.

And Darcian... that kind boy. They'd helped him defeat his brother and unite the Herdlands into a new and stable Kingdom of Equus! They'd taught him how to fight a war, how to sway a crowd, how to manipulate his neighbors. And he'd put all those lessons to good use, turning Equus into a military powerhouse that was now the terror of the region, steadily expanding its territory through ruthless power-grabs and lightning-swift skirmishes. Many humans now lived under the reign of the Equus as second-class citizens, barely more than slaves, with abuse and rape at the hands of their equine overlords being both frequent and largely ignored by their supposedly impartial courts.

Perhaps it was no surprise. Both she and Blake had, after all, been effectively crafted by the hands of a god who'd enjoyed no more success than them at 'doing good'. At least the rebellion she'd helped spark in Hell was still ongoing, though it was more of a perpetual deadlock than a real success-story. And the jury was still out on Keltinor, whom they'd helped - both directly and indirectly - to become part of the Utopia. He'd certainly proven himself_useful_ in more than one way, but some of the news Blake had carried home from various council-meetings made her fear that having access to his unique powerset and the possibilities it brought along had pushed the Dragon-Council towards a more cynical, ends-justifies-the-means thinking.

Feelings Blake's analyzing eyes on her, she quickly suppressed the increasingly morose line of thought, before he could get too_curious about the cause of her suddenly depressed mood. She needed a distraction... and no sooner hat _that thought occurred to her than she jumped up. "This is all very interesting, but these scrolls aren't going anywhere, and we still need to find the golem's control-center! It should be in one of the other rooms, right?" Blake blinked and quickly nodded. "Has to be. Still, like I said before, I'm sure they're just fine upstairs, and besides, he could've left instructions concerning the golems in one of these scrolls, right? It was worth checking, at least." All the same, he seemed a touch ashamed at how easily he'd been distracted from their immediate purpose - well aware that while they had been reading and pondering, Melora and her daughter had likely continued to suffer at the hands of the tireless clay warriors.

Pulling back out of the study, the two other doors were quickly checked. On the right was something that resembled a trophy-room, containing various strange odds and ends sealed within floating, slightly-glowing glass spheres that they could both tell would be a lot harder to break than what their appearance suggested. And on the left... a perfectly flat and wide-open floor, broken up into regular squares no more than a foot on each side, each corner featuring an enchanted pearl inset into the tiles. Right inside the door, overlooking this strange floor, a hip-height pedestal stood with two fist-sized crystal orbs set into its stone surface, each glowing with complex, magical enchantments.

Blake was able to immediately confirm what Anitra suspected. "This is it! I can just barely make out the magical links going from those spheres and up through the ceiling..." he declared. Nodding, Anitra stepped up to the pedestal and took a closer look at the two spheres. Considering their height and the distance between them, the way to use them seemed fairly obvious... hopefully, they wouldn't be keyed to their creator alone. The fact that they were behind multiple layers of defenses, including some they apparently hadn't even_noticed_ thanks to Blake's presence, made it at least somewhat probable that Liu-Tang wouldn't have bothered with such restrictions.

"Let's give this a shot, then!" She said confidently, placing her hands on the two spheres. The vague, magical glow within them immediately flared up as long-dormant enchantments were activated. Before her, the network of pearls set into the tile floor lit up in response, and a magical illusion sprang into existence above them. It was a view of the entire Qinxiang territory - towering peaks, bamboo-forests, a wide, muddy river snaking through the whole thing, even the cities visible and meticulously detailed, with the vast and colorful sprawl of Luoyang being particularly eye-catching. It was as if she was hovering high enough in the air to look out across the empire as a whole!

If she had been doing so, however, the tomb she was now inside would have been effectively invisible. Not so here, though - the tomb was visible as a glowing, pulsating dot, with a miniature version of one of the clay soldiers hovering on top of it. Well, miniature relative to the real thing, anyway - compared to the illusory landscape, it was half again the size of a mountain. As she focused on it, the illusion shifted and the mountain containing the tomb grew larger, as if she was zooming through the air towards it. The clay figure remained static - until, eventually, her descent ended with a full, three-dimensional view of the tomb's internals, and the figure split into a large number of individuals neatly arranged on the third floor. Not as many as there actually were there, of course - each figure seemingly representing an officer, and the unit he commanded.

Most of them were grayed out, and arranged in neat rows - still dormant, awaiting orders. But a couple dozen of them, including four mounted figures denoting cavalry-units and two chariot-archers, were glowing blue as they clustered together in the otherwise-open central passage. Two tiny, red figures could be seen among them - simple, humanoid shapes presumably denoting intruders - while a bit further down the path, a third red shape could be seen next to a single yellow soldier-figure.

The meaning of it all seemed quite clear to Anitra. Even clearer than it ought. She found that she knew exactly how many of each type of unit there were, how many were active, and that the yellow figure was so marked because it was acting in an aberrant fashion - suggesting that it was being influenced by some external magic. It was all as clear as if Blake had just told her about it all over their telepathic link - using the kind of wordless transmission of images, feelings or sensations that they often utilized. Of course, this too made sense, knowing what they knew now. After all, Drewyn the Smith had long-since made clear to her that he hadn't created the telepathic bond that connected her and Blake, nor could he extend it to anyone else. The bond was an intrinsic part of the union between Black Dragon and DragonRider - with his rings merely acting as necessary focusing-devices on her end.

Hence, the bond itself had been created by the same ancient, long-forgotten god who created the first Black Dragons and the first Riders, thousands of years ago... and who had, quite a while later, created this pedestal and the army it connected to, after his fall from grace and the loss of his name. All the same, this particular bond clearly wasn't meant for her - and already, a headache was growing in the back of her skull. Not wanting to find out how much worse it could get, she quickly drew on the instinctive knowledge imparted by the pedestal and ordered all active units to return to position and go dormant.

Satisfyingly, all of the blue figures responded promptly, and even the yellow unit complied readily enough, proving that whatever magic had drawn them aside couldn't trump a direct order from their central command-unit. With a bit more focus - and a resulting stab of pain in the back of her head - she sent the returning units a slightly more emphatic command: Continue dormancy until ordered otherwise, ignore normal proximity response. Hopefully, that should stop them from activating again while Melora, Mel and Lara made their way forwards as agreed. Indeed, the little red figures were already moving... or two of them were, anyway. The one she knew represented Lara, closer to the exit, was heading backwards towards the other two, Melora and Mel. One of those two wasn't moving, and the other had only covered the short distance to it, so far.

A few seconds later, the three united figures were moving slowly down the passage, and Anitra let go of the two orbs with a growing sense of disquiet. Had the whole thing been too much for young Mel, leaving her injured and in need of help? She didn't need to look over her shoulder to know that Blake was at least as worried as her. The illusory view of the tomb had faded out as the enchantments returned to dormancy, but the image of the three red figures' slow progress remained in her mind - two people carrying a third, perhaps?

"I'll run up to meet them halfway... they'll need a guide to get them through the labyrinth in a timely fashion anyway." Anitra said, far more breezily than she felt. Blake, feeling no apparent need to put up a brave front, nodded. "Grab the healing-potions from my saddlebags first - someone clearly needs them. I already stopped the flow of pleasure to Melora - she probably needs to be able to think clearly right now. As for me, I'll stay here and take a closer look at the study and the trophy-room in the meantime - and look after Direza, of course. You can move faster than me through these tight corridors anyway."

She could indeed. Carrying the prepared healing-potions - prime-quality ones, produced by the Utopia's superlative alchemists - she dashed back up the ramp to the fourth floor, and set out through the labyrinth at a superhuman pace. Now that they had mapped the whole thing, the 'labyrinth' barely even rated that term - while there were numerous long, twisted paths that either doubled back on themselves, ended in a solid wall or took unnecessarily circuitous routes, you could ultimately make your way from any of the actually relevant locations to any of the others with no more than three or four turns. Clever, considering that people had worked and lived there at some point in the past.

By the time she reached the ramp heading up to the third floor, the three others were still only halfway down it - and she got a bit of a shock when she saw that it was Melora in the middle, an arm slung over the shoulders of Mel and Lara both, hooves barely managing to move as she was carefully carried down the incline. All three looked rather worse for wear, mind - their inner thighs were stained with blood, and only young Mel wasn't sporting bloodstains on her lips and face as well. Each set of bared tits showed abrasions and bruises too.

Melora was obviously in a worse state than the other two, however. Her coat was dark with sweat, her face noticeably bruised, one eye blackened and swollen. A length of bloody intestine was dangling between her legs like a second tail, and she'd left a blood-trail all the way down the ramp, and likely beyond. Her pussy looked battered and bloody as well, and her breasts looked more badly-bruised than either of the other sets. Dashing up to meet them, Anitra wasted no time - "Put her down - I brought healing-potions!" She shouted. The two nodded gratefully and complied.

As Anitra unstopped one of the bottles, Lara reached down between the legs of the half-catatonic mare to, without any apparent squeamishness, push the blood-dripping prolapse back inside Melora's gaping asshole. "It can cause all kinds of trouble if you don't do that before healing..." she commented casually. "Take it from me." Anitra just nodded gratefully - she was well aware of that particular detail, from various previous 'games'... including Mel's birth, if memory served! Melora, fortunately, wasn't _completely_out of it - she looked battered and exhausted, and clearly suffered from some degree of blood-loss, but when the potion-bottle was put to her lips, she managed to drink and swallow it without incident.

Bruises and abrasions healed before their eyes as the potion did its work. Even the cavernous gape of her ripped-open ass was corrected, at least in part, as the bloodied sphincter healed up and pulled itself together. Her no doubt-sore body relaxed visibly, but Anitra could tell that even now, damage lingered. Blood still dripped slowly from her sphincter, and some of the abrasions on her breasts and pussy were still visible. Fortunately, she'd brought all the healing-potions.

Looking around, she offered the other two one each before getting another ready for Melora. "You two all right?" She asked casually. Mel nodded, Lara shrugged, and both gratefully accepted the proffered potions. "Clay dicks sting..." Mel commented between swallows. "But it wasn't all that bad, really. I think they must have been a lot harder on poor mommy for some reason..." Lara, meanwhile, swished the potion around in her mouth before swallowing. "Well, I certainly know that you two took the brunt of it..." she said with a grimace. "Only a single unit bothered with me at all, and none of the horses. I heard them cantering past on their way to you girls, though. Must've been pretty rough, no pun intended."

With a second potion poured down Melora's throat, the three were left to recuperate on the ramp while Anitra dashed up to recover their discarded gear - none of them had wanted to hang around and collect it earlier, with Melora in such a state and no way to know how long the clay soldiers would remain uninterested in them. By the time she returned, arms piled high with Melora and Mel's armor and weapons as well as the far more compact and lightweight remains of Lara's outfit, Melora had recovered and returned to her senses... though, the fact that she was crying suggested that she wasn't _quite_all the way there. Anitra couldn't recall ever having seen Melora cry before - not during any of the ruthless torture Blake had put her through, nor when she was giving birth, nor even when her breasts were cut clear from her body!

She reached out with a trembling hand as Anitra deposited her armor and weapon before her. "I'm sorry, Lady Anitra..." she sobbed. "I failed... I'm not worthy..." More disturbed by this breakdown than she dared show, Anitra shushed her, placing a comforting hand on her shoulder. "What are you talking about, you silly mare? Your orders were to keep the clay soldiers occupied until Blake and I could find a way to disable them, and you did. Neither of us ever specified that you needed to be able to _walk_afterwards." Nodding slowly, Melora nonetheless glanced guiltily over at Mel, who was kneeling by her side, obviously concerned. "But... compared to the others..." she started.

"Hush, mother!" Mel herself interrupted, stroking her sweat-matted mane. "I am what you birthed me, raised me and trained me to be. If you think I have done well at this challenge, then every bit of that is to your credit, and yours alone. And besides, what have you told me about arguing with my betters?" This, at least, drew out a smile on the tired-looking mare's face. "I suppose I_have_ taught you well..." she mumbled, before drawing her daughter into a tight embrace, followed by a deep and decidedly un-motherly kiss.

Clearing her throat, clearly still a touch uncomfortable with the rather _close_mother-daughter relationship the two shared, Lara held up one of the pockets from her torn-apart shorts. "If you're quite done with the pep-talk... I've got some ointment that's especially good for vaginal and anal abrasions. Since you shared your healing-potions with me, it's only fair that I share with you. It's a lot more effective at getting rid of any... lingering damage than the more general potions." Anitra immediately recognized the revealed ointment as yet another treasure from the Library of the Perverse, and gave the two Equus a quick nod. It proved as efficacious as promised, though Lara seemed to prefer to look in the other direction while Mel helped her mother apply it.

When they were done, Anitra got to her feet. "I'm glad we got _that_all sorted out. Now, can you stand? Blake is waiting for us down below." This, predictably, got both horse-girls to their hooves and into their armor in a hurry. Clearly, whatever lingering damage Melora still suffered under was purely mental, her body as ready and tireless as ever. Moving swiftly - if not as swiftly as when she'd been coming the other way - Anitra led them through the maze and back to the final ramp, reassuring Lara along the way that she wasn't missing anything unless she'd come here in search of a whole lot of clay, iron ingots, moldy cookware or dusty bedding.

At the bottom, Blake received them - having been warned along the way by Anitra's telepathic voice that their initial assumption had been backwards. "Melora. Mel. Well done, both of you. You have accomplished your orders splendidly!" He declared, and both of them bowed graciously before him - accepting the praise without any argument. At least, any spoken out loud, Anitra thought as she noticed a brief, conflicted expression on Melora's face after she straightened up again. Lara Croft, meanwhile, also received an appreciative nod. "You helped to look after my dear little pets when I wasn't there - and I much appreciate it. Perhaps what you seek here is in there? If so, take it with my blessing - and my assistance, if needed."

Lara's target was, indeed, among the articles locked in the hovering glass spheres of the 'trophy-room' as they had dubbed it. Indeed, it was hovering in the middle of its glass prison, defying gravity just as readily as the glass itself: A rather thin circle crafted from some strange, bright-blue, semi-translucent material, possibly crystalline in nature, one side carved into the by-now recognizable shape of the Imperial Seal of Qinxiang. Its magical glow was vague at best, barely even visible to Blake's eyes over the glow of the spells that held the glass sphere itself aloft and unbreakable. Certainly, it did not seem particularly dangerous, so with a shrug, Blake unleashed a carefully-controlled burst of his fiery breath - scorching the reinforcing and levitating enchantments into nonexistence, and thus sending the sphere crashing to the floor and shattering on impact. The bright-blue circle continued to hover over the fragments, apparently unconcerned, until Lara collected it and stuffed it into one of the pockets she was now carrying in her hands.

In the meantime, Melora and Mel had helped Anitra collect all of the books and scrolls from the study, binding them together and depositing them carefully in bags that should be able to fit in Blake's saddlebags. Whatever didn't prove useful at filling in the details of Lutan's narrative would likely be welcomed by the Great Library of the Utopia, after all. With these as well as the still-unconscious Direza slung over Blake's back, all that was left was to ascend back to the fourth floor and make their way to the teleporter that would provide them with an easy access. Anitra, however, returned to the control-room one more time, and briefly linked with the device in order to restore the clay soldier's ability to activate if intruders were sensed in the proximity. After all, some of the other articles in the trophy-room had looked more than a_little_ dangerous, so there was no sense in making life too easy for any future tomb-robbers...

The teleporter was big enough to fit an entire unit of the clay soldiers if needs be - and the floating crystals at each corner gamely lit up once Blake started channeling some of his magical power into them. There was no telling where it came out, but it was obviously somewhere that Liu-Tang had intended to deploy his golems from during an emergency - the scale of the illusory view that the control-center provided had, after all, confirmed that they'd been intended to deal with threats inside Qinxiang, be it in the form of an invasion or an insurrection. So, probably somewhere safe, accessible, and hidden.

Sure enough, as the teleporter flashed, they found themselves deposited on an identical platform, in an identical room, from which a wide corridor led out into a bamboo forest. As soon as they stepped outside, the entrance seemingly transformed into a short, featureless, natural cave - apparently covered in a potent illusion similar to the one that protected the Utopia. And just like with that, even knowing that it was an illusion made no difference. "Mind, I'm pretty sure I could still activate the teleporter if I was standing in the right spot..." Blake pondered, scratching his chin.

It didn't take them long to orient themselves - they were at the base of the same mountain they had entered at the start, on the opposite side compared to the Mausoleum. Once this had been determined, they parted from Lara, who intended to return to the old campsite and pick up the supplies she'd left there - including yet another spare set of clothes, what with her still being quite naked save for the pockets from her shorts, which she'd managed by now to attach to her still-intact belt somehow. As a parting gift, Anitra provided her with the necessary directions and passwords to visit the Utopia if she so desired - and thus collect any further, highly-specialized ointments and body-altering potions straight from the source.

She might also be able to find a way to break her curse - since there no longer seemed to be any need to keep that detail in their pocket for future leverage, Anitra and Blake had confirmed to her that she was, indeed, under the effects of such a thing. Beyond Blake's ability to see the curse directly, albeit vaguely, the golem control-center had added further confirmation - the unit of clay soldiers who'd diverted from Melora and Mel to rape her had been acting under the influence of some outside force, after all. Lara seemed less enthused with this information - and the reassurance that the Utopia's skilled wizards and sages could no doubt find a way to rid her of the curse - than Anitra had expected, but that was her own business, of course...

All that was left, then, was for the rest of them to clamber onto Blake's back while he groused about the added weight of the books and scrolls that had been stuffed in his saddlebags, Direza held tight in Anitra's worried arms. It was a long way back to the Utopia, but unless Direza woke up sometime very soon on her own, the journey would definitely be made at a much less leisurely pace than the trip out. Still, at least we've pretty much got the whole story now, right? Blake commented mentally once they were in the air, his wings beating a bit harder than usual what with the heavy load.

Anitra nodded telepathically. Two different mysteries - the fall of mankind's nameless creator at the end of the Imperial Era, and the origins of the mysterious and inexplicably powerful explorer, Lutan - had proven to be each other's solution. They'd even, without intending it, found out how the original Champion of the Utopia had come to be, born of two differently-colored dragons, something that would normally have been impossible. Everything, it seemed, had been tied up in a neat little bow.

And yet, with Direza's inexplicable collapse, Anitra had a feeling that she wouldn't be lacking for distracting adventures anytime soon...

THE END

Number of tombs Anitra has now raided: 2. I wonder if it'll be the last one! Now, if you are just as confused about Direza's current state as Anitra, you may have missed the Expanded Universe story, 'Direza's Trials'. Either way, that particular situation will hopefully be resolved in the next chapter: The Fall of Commorragh!