Dark City of The Drow

• Chapter 10 in the Chronicles of the DragonRider

So, you're saying that I'll be able to go with you this time? Blake said eagerly over their telepathic connection. That's what Lezard's papers say..._Anitra replied in kind, enjoying the feeling of the wind in her hair as they flew towards their target. The same wind made it virtually impossible to communicate ordinarily, but their telepathic link easily circumvented that problem. _He identified several possible entry-points into the caverns where these Drow live, and one of them is a cave big enough for you to fit thought. Good thing, too. Blake nodded. Yeah, I gather we can't expect a warm welcome.

Anitra sighed, leaning back a bit. Yeah, they're probably gonna be the most hostile of all the creatures we've visited so far. According to Lezard's book, the Drow are a subspecies of elves, who moved underground ages ago, and haven't looked back since. Extremely xenophobic and aggressive. Few explorers return after meeting them, which means that little to nothing is known about their society. I wonder how ol' Lutan managed to survive finding their city. Blake shrugged his mighty shoulders, causing them to undulate slightly under Anitra. We'll probably never know. But no matter how hostile they are, I think they'll hesitate to attack a full-grown black dragon.

Anitra send him an affirmative thought. The past several places they'd visited, they'd managed with a bit of diplomacy, but it seemed more than likely that they'd have to resort to main force this time. Narrowing her sharp eyes, she looked around from her high position, trying to pick out the landmarks that Lezard's map had shown. There it was, the white cliff that looked like it had four faces set in the front, and over there was a tall, narrow peak that seemed almost square in its ruggedness. Using the two points as reference, she guided Blake with her mind, and together they swooped down into the rugged lands. It was mostly mountains and cliffs around there, with a scattering of hardy fir trees. A large clump of them were growing around the place where, according to the map, the entrance to the large cave should be.

Guess we'll have to land and investigate... Anitra thought to Blake. There's no way to tell whether we're in the right place with all those trees in the way. Blake's reply carried an amused tint. Isn't there? Then she felt his lungs expand beneath her, while his mighty wings stared beating against the air, slowing their movement to a crawl... then, his maw opened, and he spat out a huge fireball - even from her safe position, Anitra could feel the intense heat radiating from it as it rushed down towards the mountainside, trailing flames and smoke. When it hit the trees, it detonated in a blinding flash, the explosive sound echoing deafeningly between the naked cliffs...

When her vision and hearing returned, a few seconds later, all that was left of the obscuring trees were some small piles of ash, and a few smoldering chunks scattered across the whole area. A bit excessive, perhaps? Blake thought to her without a hint of remorse. Nahh... she returned with a grin. Then she turned her attention back to the mountainside - sure enough, a dark cave-mouth gaped there, right where the map said it would be. It was big enough for Blake to enter, but not wide enough for his wingspan... Blake had noticed the same thing himself, and circled downwards, claws outstretched to ensure a safe landing on the rough ground.

Once Blake had backwinged to a soft landing, Anitra jumped off and approached the cave-mouth cautiously. It was huge and dark, but her sharp eyes penetrated deeply into it... as far as she could see, it was a natural tunnel, presumably left over from a time where the mountain they stood on had been an active volcano. It continued into the mountain at a downwards angle for as far as she could see, and there were no signs of anything even remotely threatening. "Well, I guess we better get going..." Blake said, tucking his wings into his flanks, and walking towards the cave on all fours. Despite the fact that he was obviously build for flight, he moved smoothly and gracefully on the ground as well, and Anitra had to half-run to keep up. It was clear, however, that the roof of the cave was too low to allow her to ride him in there. At least he could still carry their luggage...

The cave went on and on... after the first hour or so of walking, the light seeping in from the entrance had grown too distant for even Blake's sharp eyes - and Infravision wouldn't help much either, considering the almost uniform temperature of the rock that surrounded them. Fortunately, she had purchased a magical glow-crystal in Flenceburg, and now it came in handy... taking up less space and providing light considerably longer than a torch, it had cost her a pretty penny - but as it lit up their surroundings with a gentle, green light, she decided that it had been worth its price. With the glow-crystal lighting their way, they continued deeper and deeper into the cave for several more hours - at least, that's what it FELT like. Without a sun to look at, it was hard to tell how much time was passing.

Soon, they passed from the natural tunnel, into what seemed to be a mineshaft carved out by human (or demihuman) hands. Later, they passed from this into a natural cavern with a high ceiling. Their path twisted and turned, Varying from natural to man-made, to indeterminable, but always it went down... lacking any real sense of time, they stopped to sleep when they got sleepy - Anitra, lacking Blake's ability to go for days without needing rest, rested often on Blake's back when the height of the ceiling permitted. Blake had made sure to eat his fill before they found the cave, and the supplies in the saddlebags were enough to keep Anitra from becoming hungry anytime soon. Occasionally, they would come upon an underwater stream or lake, allaying any fears they had held about running out of water. Anitra also worried that the glow-crystal would run out before they reached their goal - to speak nothing of getting out again - but Blake reassured her that if needs be, he could generate magical lighting himself, although it would be an unfortunate and constant drain upon his magical resources.

It was impossible to tell how much time had passed... it felt like they had been wandering for weeks, through one tunnel after the other. The most remarkable thing was, perhaps, that they had seen no side-tunnels or other splits. Always, there had been only one way to go, one possible path, leading ever-deeper into the bowels of the planet... and there were never any signs of life, not even some of the small troglodytes or goblins that almost invariably infested caverns like these... presumably, all the small fish knew that it was Drow territory, and stayed away. However, they saw no sign of any of those illusive Dark Elves, either...

That is, until they suddenly saw a lot of them at once. After an indeterminable number of days or weeks of absolutely nothing ever happening, a lot of things happened all at once, all around them. At the time, Anitra was walking next to Blake, eyes warily scanning the surrounding darkness, with the glow-crystal in her hand. Then, something fell from the ceiling, entangling them both. Blake roared in surprise as his claws got caught in it, and stumbled forwards, falling to the ground with a loud thud. Anitra, too, found all of her limbs tied down by a sticky mass, and the glow-crystal rolled from her hand to spread its light on the scene from the ground. While desperately attempting to keep standing, she assessed the situation - it was a gigantic spider-web that had fallen on them, but it seemed that strange, faintly-glowing runes were woven into it in various positions. Her suspicions were confirmed when Blake breathed a quick tongue of flame on his entangled forelegs - any ordinary web would have shriveled up and burned at that intense heat, but thanks to some kind of magical enchantment, this stuff was apparently capable of withstanding Blake's flame - at least for a brief time. And since even Blake's scales didn't protect him fully from his own fiery breath, there was no way he could subject it to a longer treatment...

Anitra tried to reach the BlackFire, hoping that the enchanted blade would be able to cut through the mess - but it was still in the sheath on her back, and with her arms tangled up in the web, she couldn't reach it! Then, her eyes caught movement in the shadows... lithe shapes were coming out from behind stalagmites, moving swiftly and silently, without coming any closer. Blake noticed them too, and sent a tongue of flame through the tunnel towards them. Sure-footed, they dodged behind rocks or simply vanished into the shadows again - as far as she could see, not a single one was as much as singed. Then, the bolts started flying...

The tips were briefly visible as they flew through the air, glowing slightly with some form of magical enchantment. Blake was unable to dodge, and although he burned several of the darts to ashes in the air, they were coming from all sides. Dozens of them hit his hide, and their magical tips enabled them to penetrate his scales... Anitra redoubled her struggles to get out of the sticky web, while watching the elves attack her beloved from a safe distance, like the cowards they were. The seemed to be using small crossbows, and she could only hope and pray that whatever the bolts were coated with was a drug and not a poison. She could hear that his thrashing was becoming weaker... whatever it was, it was taking effect in spite of his draconic resistance to poison.

Finally, she managed to get an arm free, and gripped the hilt of the BlackFire. Pulling it from the sheathe, she aimed a powerful cut on the strands of enchanted web that was still holding her down, only to find that the blade, too, was swiftly entangled. With a muttered curse, she activated the blade, and watched in satisfaction as the powerful flame combined with the anti-magic properties of the metal to melt the web. A few quick swings later, the webs around her were destroyed, and she was free once more. Quickly she ran to Blake's side, but she could sense that he was already unconscious. Fortunately, he didn't seem to be sliding deeper... the darts' poison hadn't been lethal. Whatever it was, it would wear off in time... all she had to do was to finish off these cowardly creatures.

Turning with her back to Blake, she saw that they were now approaching, swords in hand, forming a loose half-circle around her. Their eyes glowed in the darkness, and their weapons were horrible to behold - all hooks and barbs and saw-edges, seemingly designed to cause pain rather than kill. The flames of her sword flickered and died. The battle was joined...

Rage flared brightly inside her, and her sword danced as she leaped forwards towards the shadow-elves. She had begun her journey with nothing but her superhuman strength, speed and agility - and the advantage of possessing enchanted equipment - but through several battles, she'd learned by experience, and she was quickly becoming a seasoned swordfighter, even without formal training. In fact, her lack of any kind of formal training might have actually worked to her advantage - no known school of fighting was designed to take advantage of the unique combination of copious strength and light-footed agility that her draconic blood offered. As she fought the elves, she seemed to flow between using agile fencing-moves to penetrate their parades - and flesh - and using her huge strength and unbreakable blade to crush their armor - and bones... in fact, several of their wicked-looking swords were shattered by her blade, bringing about the swift death of their owners, and proving that saw-edges and barbs didn't provide much in the way of structural integrity.

The Drow fell one by one, and soon she found herself bereft of foes, the dozen elves that had initially attacked her dead at her feet. But dozens more still surrounded her, keeping to the shadows, their eyes glowing like pale jewels as they prowled around her like a pack of hungry wolves. Then, another challenger stepped forwards from the circle - towering head and shoulders above the rest, he was dressed in an intricate and dreadful-looking armor, covered with spikes and hooks to catch and snare the opponent's weapons. A tall and pointed helmet sat upon his head, with a pair of jet-black, pointy horns attached - adding a satanic aura to his appearance, especially since the horns appeared to be from a genuine demon...

His face was also concealed behind a ghoulish skull-mask of pure, white ivory, which created a powerful contrast with his otherwise black armor. In the dark eye-holes, however, burned the same, blood-red eyes that she could see peering at her from the surrounding shadows - in other words, he was still just another Dark Elf, and nothing more. He did, however, seem to be a bit wiser than his brethren - the weapon he now brandished at her had a clean blade, without any of the hooks and barbs that the other elves had adorned their weapons with, sacrificing the strength of their blades for the sake of appearance...

It was, however, still an unusual weapon by most standard. A double-ended, curved blade, almost like two large scimitars attached handle-to-handle... the handles, furthermore, were bone-white and shaped like a pair of skulls, grinning toothily back at her from his hands. The way the blade curved in opposite directions on each side of the handle gave it a dangerous, aerodynamic appearance - it was clearly not a fencer's weapon, but rather designed to be in constant motion, whirling ceaselessly and leaving no openings for attack.

Warily, they circled each other. She had underestimated opponents before, and come perilously close to death as a result - she was not about to make the same mistake here, rushing in for an attack that might give him an opening. As for him, the elfin corpses they were both gingerly stepping around, had probably been all the warning he needed - he would not underestimate her, either. Which was a shame, really, since some of her greatest victories had resulted from opponents doing just that.

Finally, he leaped forwards, his S-shaped blade swinging through the stale cavern air with a sound not unlike the drawn-out shriek of a person in unimaginable agony. She met the strike with BlackFire, and then quickly shifted the sword to block the inevitable follow-up attack from the other end of the double-sword. Leaping back immediately, so as not to leave her any time to counterattack, her opponent seemed to channel the motion of the jump into his blade, spinning it faster and faster in front of him. The shrieking sound became constant, reverberating between the hard stone walls, assailing her sensitive ears painfully. She forced herself to ignore the sound - she could not afford any distraction.

Again, her opponent leaped forwards, now swinging harder and faster thanks to the speed he'd build up by twirling the blade. And still she blocked, taking full advantage of her own unbreakable sword, as well as her prodigious strength and nigh-infinite stamina. She attempted an occasional counterattack, but always the elf was too fast, dodging back out of range, ensuring that she hit nothing but air. She was, however, careful never to overextend herself - time was on her side. The elf was lithe and agile, but decked out in heavy armor, wielding a large weapon - he would eventually tire. She, however, was virtually unencumbered, and could potentially continue for hours without slowing down.

As the minutes snailed by, the Drow Elf seemed to realize this as well. Suddenly, without warning, his method of attack changed - with a touch to an unseen switch, the double-bladed weapon split in the middle, yielding twin curved scimitars. He rushed forwards, swinging them both rapidly, and forcing her to concentrate fully just to block all the attacks he delivered. And this time, he didn't leap back after she'd stopped the first two or three blows - he continued to push the attack, driving her backwards with constant attacks, seemingly throwing everything he had into a final assault.

As suddenly as the attack had begun, it ended. Rather than jumping back, however, he delivered a dual overhead blow, forcing her to block high and then stagger back to avoid any follow-up attacks. No such attacks came, though. He was just standing there, holding his blades low, ready to guard any attacks she might make - but his arms were visibly shaking - he was clearly at the end of his endurance. It was easy to see, in fact, since he happened to be standing directly above... the light crystal... that she'd dropped on the floor when the attack began...

Realizing his intentions too late, she leaped forwards in a desperate bid to take him down before he could enact his plan - but even with draconic speed, she didn't have a chance. Lifting one armored boot, he stomped down hard on the crystal, breaking it into dust. The magic faded in less than a second, and the green light that had illuminated the battlefield was gone, leaving only pitch-black darkness. With no source of light whatsoever, even her enhanced vision was useless - and she didn't have infravision. The Drow, however, did.

As she stumbled forwards, still caught up in her desperate charge, she fully expected to find herself impaled on a scimitar. And when she felt a sharp pain across the midsection, she initially assumed that she'd been correct. Then she realized that the truth was much worse... the elf had only barely cut through her skin - it was hardly even a flesh-wound. And yet, she felt her legs growing weak... obviously, the blade was drugged, probably with the same thing they'd used to subdue Blake. They wanted her alive...

Her legs could no longer carry her, and her fingers could not hold BlackFire's hilt. The sword fell from her numb hands, and she collapsed onto her knees. In the darkness, she could hear laughter, echoing between the walls, as the Drow closed in around her. As the darkness around her swallowed her consciousness, her last thought was that she'd been an arrogant fool, to assume that one girl and a dragon could attack an entire underground civilization, alone, and have any hope of success...

Anitra slowly floated back to consciousness. It was harder than just waking up from a deep sleep - a part of her struggled against the very concept of waking, warning that whatever waited up there, in the waking world, would be bad - bad enough that unconsciousness would be preferable. And yet, slowly, she surfaced, gradually becoming aware of her surroundings. She felt cold metal encircling her wrists and ankles. Arms and legs were spread wide. Her wrists were sore - the manacles were digging into them, since most of her weight rested on them. Apparently, she was hanging on a wall, spread-eagled. As the last vestiges of oblivion fled, she sadly decided that she should probably have listened to the part of her subconsciousness that had suggested staying down.

More and more of her sense checked in. It was hot - oppressively so. Her skin was slick with sweat, and the salty fluid was stinging unpleasantly in the places where her wrists and ankles had been rubbed raw by the unrelenting metallic manacles. She could hear... someone. Someone moving around, rather quietly, but still audibly. From the way the sounds resonated, she extrapolated that she was in a small chamber with hard stone walls. She could also hear a faint sizzling, and while she couldn't say with any degree of certainty what made the sound, the context made it fairly obvious nonetheless...

Carefully, she opened her eyes, just a little. The chamber was fairly dark, lighted only by a brazier which, just as she'd guessed, had a selection of unpleasant-looking metallic implements buried in the hot coals. The faintly-lit walls were covered, practically from floor to ceiling, with various instruments of torture and pain - from relatively benevolent whips and flails, to a large variety of pointy and/or sharp metallic implements, clearly designed for more lasting pain. As if that wasn't enough, a long stone table filled the middle of the room, covered with even more such tools - some of them seemed more like the tools of a surgeon than those of a torturer, which just made them all the more frightening. Despite the heat given off by the brazier, Anitra felt cold to the bone - more chilly than she'd ever been during her travels in the snow-covered northlands.

Standing with his back to her, apparently going through the tools on the table, was the person she'd heard. He was clearly a Dark Elf - the pointy ears and black skin made that obvious, even from behind. He was also completely bald, and wrinkled like an old apple. He wore a robe which, as far as she could tell in the flickering light, was a very dark shade of red. The idea that it had not always been that color was neither unlikely nor pleasant. It was embroidered with silvery sigils - and while she could not hope to understand the language, their meaning was somehow clear nonetheless - the spidery script seemed almost malevolent in its own right, if such things can truly be said of mere letters.

"Don't bother pretending that you're still unconscious..." he said, quite suddenly. His voice was dry like leaves in autumn, and somehow seemed to create no echo in the stone-walled chamber. "I know exactly how much of the venom you received when you were cut... and I also know how resistant to poisons you are. Calculating how long you would be under was easy." Having said this, he turned around, revealing that his face was as wrinkly as the back of his head. His eyes burned red in deep sockets, and conveyed a complete lack of compassion, and a bottomless capacity for sadism. Combined with the noble features that all elves share, the overall impression was a disturbing mixture of hideousness and unearthly beauty.

"I presume you were hoping to somehow take me by surprise, by recovering from the poison sooner than expected, hmm?" The old elf chuckled in a decidedly menacing way, while slowly approaching her. Realizing that subterfuge was pointless, Anitra opened her eyes fully, and flexed her muscles, straightening herself in her bonds, and taking some of her weight off of her wrists. The Drow nodded. "Much better. Oh, and don't bother trying to break out of your bonds. I'm well aware of your physical strength, and those manacles are solid steel, reinforced with magic and anchored deeply into the solid stone. Even a full-grown cave-troll wouldn't be able to break them."

He laughed again. "Oh, where are my manners... let me introduce myself - my name is Urien Rakarth. Don't bother memorizing it, though - you will soon know me simply as 'Master'. Don't bother introducing yourself, either. Whatever name you may have had back on the surface, you are now named 'Slave'." Narrowing her eyes, Anitra gave a testing tug on the manacles - sure enough, they didn't move even a little. Even with the full force of The Quickening behind her, she probably wouldn't have been able to break them - and in her presently weakened state, it was just plain impossible.

She was tempted to serve this arrogant elf a biting retort, but she thought better of it. For the moment, at least, she was in his power, and antagonizing him would probably just make bad worse. So she said nothing, merely glared at him. Urien raised an eyebrow. "You already know how to hold your tongue in the presence of your Master, hmm? Maybe you are smarter than you look." He leaned closer. "However, enough with the pleasantries. You will notice that you are still wearing most of your armor. A close examination revealed that it is attached with magic, and will loosen only by your will." Anitra blinked. She actually hadn't noticed. Looking down, she realized that she was still wearing all of her armor - with the exception of her red dragonscale panties and her sandals, the only parts of it that could be easily removed without releasing any of the magical bondings.

Urien smiled unpleasantly. "We could easily cut off the armor - but our Artificers are quite impressed with it, and want to study it intact. We could also just cut you apart to get the armor off in one piece, but we have... other plans for you." The way he said 'other' made Anitra's blood run cold. "Anyway," he continued, "my point is that I need you to release the magical bondings of your armor, so that I can hand it over to the Artificers for study, and get on with my work.

Anitra considered it. Even without her sword, she could still fight armed opponents, as long as she had her armor - not only did it provide protection, the bracers also enabled her to effectively parry weapons. If she lost her armor, she would be literally naked... and she wasn't really too keen to let Urien get on with 'his' work, anyway. The longer he was delayed, the better the odds that she'd be able to find a way out of this mess, or that Blake would find a way out of HIS mess and come rescue her. Suddenly, she realized that she had no idea what had happened to Blake...

Triggering a subconscious switch, she activated their telepathic bond and threw her thoughts out to him. She could feel him... just barely. It was similar to when they were far apart, but not quite the same. Either he was still drugged, or they were separated by some type of magical barrier that weakened the link. She could still feel him - he was alive, and apparently unhurt. Maybe, just maybe, he'd find some way to break out of wherever the Drow had imprisoned him - and then he'd definitely come looking for her... just like he'd done that time when she almost got killed by the Tauros.

"Not complying, hmm?" Urien commented, bringing her thoughts back to her own, immediate plight. His eyebrows were raised, and an evil smile curled his lips. "Excellent. I was starting to fear that this would be boring." In a fashion that clearly spoke of intimate familiarity with the room's 'decorations', Urien reached out and snatched a whip from the wall. It seemed like a fairly straightforward bullwhip, albeit a rather menacing one - all black leather, with silver decorations on the grip. Urien noticed her glance, and grinned. "You think this is an ordinary whip, don't you? Oh, I've got one of those, sure - somewhere, I think. Now and then, it's nice to go back to the roots and enjoy the simple pleasures. But no, not this one." He lifted the whip, being careful not to touch anything but the handle. "This whip is made from leather taken from a particular type of tunnel-rodent... I won't bore you with the biology, but basically, the whip is covered with tiny, near-invisible bristles. I hear there's a plant on the surface that has something similar... Stinging Nettle, or something along those lines. Regardless, the result is that these bristles are torn off when the whip is used, and remain stuck in the skin - generating a lasting pain, as well as a particularly unpleasant itch that is quite difficult to scratch when manacled to a wall..."

Urien took a deep breath, regaining his poise after the rambling, run-on sentence. "I just thought I'd tell you. The anticipation is half the fun, don't you think?" He laughed again, and this time it was less of an evil laugh, and more of an insane cackle. Then, without warning, he cut off the laugh, and swung the whip. He was far stronger than his aged frame suggested, and the tip of the whip cracked painfully across her midsection, making her gasp in pain.

The initial, stinging sensation of the leather, gave way to a burning itch that was nothing short of painful. As she strained against the unyielding steel that bound her, the dark elf cackled in amusement, and swung the whip again. In quick succession, he delivered strikes to both of her legs, both of her arms, and both of her boobs - with half of them left exposed by her armor, they were easy targets. Each hit brought an intensification of the burning, itching pain, and a gasp to her lips. Already the areas the whip had touched were turning an angry red color, while swelling into highly visible welts. The itching was unrelenting, and even though she had long since realized, consciously, that she wouldn't be able to break the manacles, she couldn't stop herself from continuing to try and tear her hands loose - just a few good scritches would be ever-so-soothing. And of course, the manacles remained as solid as ever, digging into her wrists with every pull, and soon drawing blood. The dark elf cackled loudly as he saw the drops of blood roll down her arms, and hefted the whip again...

"You are starting to understand now, hmm?" he asked, as he delivered another painful hit to her upper thigh. "The pain you are feeling now will remain, undiminished, for hours, if not days..." another strike, this time to the other thigh. "You know, I once did something funny with this..." a strike to her stomach. "After giving a slave 100 strikes from this whip, I tied gloves on him that were fixed with sharp claws on the fingers, and threw him into a cell we've got for just such occasions - its walls are polished perfectly smooth." He aimed a blow at her throat, causing her head to snap back instinctively, hitting the stone wall behind her. Urien giggled insanely. "When I looked in the next morning, he had scratched himself to death - ripped up every last piece of his skin in an attempt to scratch himself, and bled out as a result." The whip hit her cheek, drawing blood and coming dangerously close to her eye. "I suppose there's a lesson in there somewhere, about self-control... but personally, I just thought it was hilarious."

Urien stopped the whipping for a bit, hefting the handle thoughtfully. "You know, I'd just love to draw this out a bit more, but the Artificers will be coming around soon, so I guess I really should get down to business..." Anitra stared incredulously at him. Her entire body was aching, hurting and itching, and if he had been telling the truth, it would continue to do so for a significant period of time - and now he was talking about 'getting down to business'? She'd experienced pain before, certainly - but it had usually been in the context of rape, and her experiences with Blake had taught her to take some degree of pleasure from those particular forms of pain... even when it had been at its worst, she had been able to distract herself with the sordid pleasure she derived from it. But not this time.

He swung the whip again, and this time he wasn't holding anything back. The whip came up from below, right between her legs, and hit her directly below her pussy, causing the tip to crack across her left butt-cheek. The whip hadn't touched her labia directly, but the area between pussy and ass was also quite sensitive, as was her ass, and the impact caused her to jump as high as her bonds would allow, muscles bulging as she fought futilely to escape. The beginning of a scream was cut off as her jaws clenched shut in pain.

The next hit DID impact her pussy directly, cutting across both of her labia. Then another strike from below, this one aimed better than the first, caused the tip of the whip to hit directly between her cheeks, touching the sensitive ring of her sphincter. The pain came so swiftly and strongly that it completely drowned out the burning, itching sensation that was now arising from the fresh welts, but as Urien briefly paused, flexing his whip and taking careful aim, she could feel it - it was like a bonfire was burning between her legs, licking over her most sensitive parts. And suddenly, she realized what he was taking aim for...

"No! I'll do it!" she screamed desperately, but Urien ignored her and swung the whip. That he could hit such a small target was truly a demonstration of his skill and experience as a master torturer, but as the tip of the whip unerringly cracked across her clit, she found it very hard to appreciate his professionalism. Her scream of agony echoed in the chamber, being somehow twisted by the walls into a wailing, inhuman screech that Urien found most pleasing to the ear...

Sobbing, Anitra felt her legs give out from under her as the burning agony in her crotch was intensified hundredfold, generating a - by comparison - insignificant flash of pain in her bleeding wrists. The blinding pain, and the promise of more to come, had robbed her of her courage - her recent adventures had instilled her with a certain degree of confidence, but underneath it all, she was still just a girl, who had not yet seen her eighteenth birthday. Unable to resist anymore, she willed her armor to be released, and so it was - her bracers and shin-guards clattered to the floor, and her chest-armor peeled away from her skin, falling to the floor after it. The plates on her thighs followed, having been slowed by her bent legs - they had provided scant protection from Urien's whip anyway, covering, as they did, only the front of her legs.

Hanging from her bonds, sobbing at the constant, unrelenting pain that seemed to envelop her entire body, but centered particularly around her most private places, she hardly noticed Urien reaching behind her head to retrieve the back of her chest-armor, and the sheath for her sword. She paid scant attention as he gathered up the fallen pieces, but felt a certain gratitude when she noticed his interest in the magical gem that was afixed to her breastplate - as long as he was studying that, he wasn't inflicting pain on her.

It didn't take many minutes before a polite rap on the steel-studded door to the torture-chamber signaled the arrival of another Drow Elf. Entering the chamber, he did not even seem to notice Anitra, who was still varying between hanging freely from her bonds while sobbing quietly, and struggling futilely in an attempt to alleviate the constant burning. The elf chatted amiably with Urien for a bit, before pulling a metallic ring out of his pocket, and finally turning his attention on the helpless girl. Moving with a clinical efficiency that clearly indicated that he had done this a million times before, he opened the ring, and then closed it around Anitra's neck. The metal felt cold against her skin, and the fit was very snug. Even through the pain, she understood what had just happened - the ring had glowed slightly in the dark room. It was a magical slave-collar of some kind, and now it was attached to her neck.

Without wasting as much as a glance on the woman he had just consigned to slavery and torture, the Artificer picked up the pile of dragonscale armor, and disappeared out the door again - allowing Urien to once again focus his undivided attention on her. For a few moments, he merely regarded her silently, watching the angry, red welts that were clearly visible against her fair skin. Then, he snapped his fingers, and the bonds that bound her opened, causing her to fall limply to the ground. Weakly, she tried to rise to her feet and attack her tormentor, even if it was with her bare fist, but unsurprisingly, she found that her muscles would not obey. However, when Urien sharply commanded "Stand up!", she instantly obeyed, her muscles leaping into action before her brain had even sensed the order.

Her legs shook under her as Urien ordered her to walk over to a set of manacles that hung suspended from the ceiling, but she obeyed, again, without thinking. As she lifted her tired arms over her head, the manacles magically closed around her bloodied wrists. Then, they retracted, lifting her slightly from the floor. She felt cold steel close around her ankles as well, and then the chains moved to the sides, pulling her back into the now-familiar spread-eagled position - only this time, she was suspended in open air, instead of having her back to a wall. "Well, now..." Urien chuckled behind her, and she felt his withered hand caress her ass, sliding across the burning welt he had left there with his deft use of the whip. "Now that that's out of the way, we can get on with MY business... gauging exactly how good your capacity for regeneration is."

From the wall, Urien selected a cat o' nine tails, made form the black leather that seemed favored by the Drow. The end of each of its 'tails' was weighted down by a metallic bead, ensuring that every stroke would draw blood. "Let us start out with the basics, before we move on to the more _exotic_implements, hmm?" The cat whipped across her unprotected ass, leaving 9 bloody stripes, and adding another drop to the sea of pain she'd found herself floating in. There was nothing to distract her, no upside to look at... she was drowning in pain, loosing herself... and yet, somewhere, deep inside, she felt a remote touch in her mind - a distant feeling of familiar strength and safety. It could not illuminate the darkness that she felt closing around her mind, but nor could the darkness swallow it completely...

She had no way to gauge time, so she didn't know how much time had passed. There was no day in the City of Eternal Night. They fed her on occasion, though - slaves were no good to anyone if they starved to death. So she decided that every two meals corresponded to one day. By that reckoning, she calculated, it had taken 9 days before the marks had stopped vanishing. For 9 days, the Master had whipped her, with one implement or another, for every waking hour. Most of the time, he didn't do it personally, of course - the Master was busy, and he had plenty of apprentices who could handle the grunt-work. She wasn't that important, after all.

For the first 8 days, the marks left by the canes and whips would disappear within hours. But after the 9th day, they didn't. They stayed - red marks on her white skin. And it kept hurting, too. The Master observed, made some notes, and nodded. Hopefully, the Master would hurt her less now. Bot there wasn't much hope. There were many others, of course... after the first day, they'd moved her out into a bigger chamber, where the Master's apprentices worked their craft on dozens of slaves. Presumably, none of them had her regenerative abilities, but they were nonetheless tormented constantly. Their screams echoed in the chamber, which seemed to have the same terrible acoustics as the Master's private torture-chamber, turning the cries into a terrifying cacophony...

Some of the time, she was thrown into a cell. She chose to call that 'night'. That was where she slept, because even slaves need sleep now and then. At first, they had thrown her into a huge room where many slaves slept, but some of the other slaves tried to do things to her, and they weren't Masters - and she was still strong. So she broke them. She was afraid that the Masters would be angry that she had broken their slaves, but they just laughed. Afterwards, though, they put her in a cell by herself to sleep and eat.

The pain continued. There wasn't anything else, only pain. She had seen some of the other slaves, after having spent some days at the whips, being strapped to tables while the apprentices, or even the Master himself, took out sharp things and opened them up. But they never did anything else to her. Just pain. She'd heard the Master talk about her with another one, though. Talking about whether her powers came from something inside that they could take out. But apparently, they decided that it didn't, 'cuz they never came to take it out. She wasn't sure why they were always giving her pain, though. But she'd noticed that they didn't do as much pain if she didn't try to move away from the whip. Maybe there was a way to make them do even less pain.

Then the Master came to her, said that they would try something to give her powers to something he called 'The Soldiers of Lolth'. She wasn't sure what that was, but if the Master wanted it, she would give it, because if she didn't, he'd give her more pain. And he was much, much better at giving pain than the apprentices. So they took her to a big, dark room, and tied her to a table even though she wouldn't run anyway. Then they left, and for a while, she just lay there, enjoying the feeling of being in less pain than usual. Her stomach and chest were pushed hard against the stone table, and her knees rested on the floor, and her arms were stretched out on both sides of her, tied to the table, but even though all of her was still covered in whip-marks, she wasn't really in a lot of pain.

Then she heard something moving behind her. Something fairly big, and judging from the strange rhythm, something with a lot of legs. Very long and hairy legs, she noted, as said legs became visible on both sides of her. Looking slightly up, she saw a horrid face, with 8 eyes reflecting the light of a couple of torches the Master had left in the room, and a pair of huge fangs dripping with venom. It didn't look like it was about to bite her, however. Instead, it proceeded over her, and then she felt something poking her between the legs. It hurt a bit, because they often hit her there with the whips.

The whole thing seemed quite familiar, really, and she remembered having been in similar situations any number of times. Maybe not with a gigantic spider, specifically, but she nonetheless felt a reassuring sense of familiarity - it reminded her of a time when not everything was pain, and where it was sometimes day. She didn't resist when she felt her labia being parted, but she couldn't resist looking over her shoulder to try and see it. She could see it come out of the end of the spider's behind - almost like a stinger. It was black, and seemed to reflect the light. It felt very hard inside her, and was accompanied by a strange, new pain, that she couldn't quite identify. Some part of her remembered that it would have been good if it had hit the other hole. But since it hadn't bit her, it probably served the Master, and therefore, it was probably in the hole that the Master wanted it to be in, and that was good.

It stabbed deeper into her, and she felt rough hair caress her tormented labia. It was all inside of her, very hard and fairly long, the tip was stabbing at her cervix, but it was an old, familiar pain, and it didn't feel so bad. As the spider began to thrust into her, she felt something she had almost forgotten existed - pleasure. Coursing through her, it somehow made the lingering pain from her last whipping fade into unimportance. It made that small light inside of her that the Master didn't know about, flare up a bit, and she felt it caress her mind with thoughts of things she'd forgotten. Things like love.

But it didn't last very long. After a few brief moments, the spider stopped thrusting, and she felt something rush inside her. It burned. Now she remembered what that pain was, that she had felt when he first pushed it into her - it was the burn that came from acid, and now it was burning inside her. It ran down the sides of his tool, leaving the hard material untouched, but causing her entire pussy - from labia to cervix - burn with pain. The pleasure fled, and the thoughts it had brought with it were forgotten. The acidic seed did not stay inside her for long - she felt her abdomen contract, and with a hiss, it ran out of her, onto the floor below. She felt some of it touch her knees - it burned, but only a little. It wasn't highly acidic, apparently, but it was enough so to make her insides feel like fire.

The big spider left, and shortly afterwards, the Master returned and brought her back to the chambers. He ran some sort of magical gem over her abdomen, and apparently, he wasn't happy with the result. He told the apprentices to give her extra pain before putting her in her cell again. Even though she didn't shy away from the whips, they kept doing it for a long time. If she tried to avoid it, they just did it more, she knew that. So she tried to help them - straining against her bonds, offering herself to the whip, opening her legs so that they could hit her more easily. They laughed, and they didn't hit her so many times. She felt a rush of victory - she had figured it out. The Masters gave less pain to good Slaves.

After every sleep, she was brought to the room and tied to the table and the Spider came. And it felt good, but that was bad, because she was a slave, and not supposed to feel good. It burned afterwards, though. And the Master always got angry, and she knew it was because she'd felt good, and a slave isn't supposed to feel good, and she wanted to be a GOOD Slave. She tried to make it hurt when the spider was in her, by pushing herself back against it so that it pushed against her womb, but somehow it didn't hurt very much. So she tried to not push the burning out afterwards, but it didn't work very well, and even if it did, she'd still felt good before. She was a Bad Slave.

The Master started doing things to her before she went to see the Spider. He gave her things to drink, and they always tasted awful, but she drank them because a good slave does what the Master says. But the Master was still angry afterwards. Then she got an idea - if she couldn't make herself not feel good, maybe she could make the Spider feel good in return, and that would make the Master happy, right? She tried the best she could, when the Spider was inside her, to push against him, and rotate her ass, and flex her muscles inside. She remembered that men who were inside her liked that. And it did make Spider put the burning inside her faster, so she didn't feel good for very long. The Master was still angry afterwards, though.

The next time, The Master told her to bend over before going to see the Spider, and he pushed something into her other hole, and she felt a liquid run inside, and it felt familiar and a little good. But it was very hot, and it burned, but not in the same way as the Spider, so it was okay. And then he put something wide into the hole so it closed, and it was stretched a bit, which hurt in a familiar sort of way. It was a bit distracting when she tried to make the Spider feel good, though. The Master was still angry when she came back, and he ran the glowing thing over her abdomen. But he still removed the thing that was hurting her behind, and the hot liquid, which wasn't really all that hot anymore, ran out of her.

The next time, he didn't do anything to her before she went to see Spider, but when Spider came, there were MANY Spiders. And they all put it inside her, and it burned, and it kept burning for a long time, because they just kept coming. Her legs were in a pool of it, and it burned a little bit there too. She was there for a long time, and by the end, it hurt a lot when a new Spider put it into her. So she wasn't feeling good, which meant that she wasn't a Bad Slave. But when The Master finally came and got her, and took her back to the room, and ran the glowing thing over her, he was still angry.

The next time, before she went to see the Spider - or maybe there would be many Spiders again? - the Master did something new. He pushed a thin tube, which glowed in a very peculiar manner, into a little hole over the one the Spider always used, and it didn't feel familiar at all, and it hurt quite a lot, so she pushed against it because she was Good Slave. And after he'd gotten it all the way inside, and all the piss had leaked out, he pushed something else inside, which bubbled in a very unpleasant way, but didn't quite hurt. But he pushed a lot inside, so it started hurting anyway, especially when it bubbled. And then he said something she didn't understand, and the tube closed, and she could feel that it was stuck and couldn't move, and the bubbling stuff inside of her couldn't get out either. Then he took her to meet the Spider, and there was only one again. The bubbling inside her hurt a bit, and it was really hard to try and make the Spider feel good, but she pushed against it in such a way that it ran over the part inside her that bubbled, making it hurt more, because she was a Good Slave.

But The Master was still angry afterwards. He said another strange thing, and the tube opened and the bubbling stuff came out, and the tube too, but The Master was really angry even though she'd tried her best to be a Good Slave. That's when he started punishing her a lot every time she had been with the Spider, and run the glowing thing over her. That time, he used a new type of whip on her, that hadn't been used on her before, which was somewhat surprising because she'd tried a lot of whips. This one had spiked on it, though. It hurt a lot, and it made her bleed everywhere, and he kept doing it for a long time even though she tried to lean into the strikes. When he hit her between the legs with it, she screamed, which she didn't actually do very often.

The Master said that it was her fault. That she was a Bad Slave. And because she was bad, she deserved to be punished. And it was The Master himself who punished her, and he was really very, very good at it. One time she remembered in particular, he had taken a big, wide thing the size of her forearm, coated with leather and studded with spikes, and hung her upside down, and pushed it inside the hole the Spider didn't use, because she clearly didn't need it much. And he'd pushed it in and out for a long time, which gave her more pain than she could remember having had before. Then he took some white stuff, which he said was Salt, which she vaguely remembered, and mixed it with some water, and poured it inside her, and then closed her with a big, wide thing which hurt too. And it burned inside her a lot more than the Spider did, like somebody had stuck a lit torch inside her hole. It was very difficult to lean into the whip while she was hanging upside down and burning inside, but she wanted to be a Good Slave, so she did her best.

Another time, he put a pair of things inside her, one in each hole, and they were metallic and didn't hurt at all. But there were wires attached to them, and he put them into an orb that was glowing and sparkling like lightning, and then it hurt in an entirely new way. But not really all THAT much, which seemed to annoy The Master, and made her sad because she deserved to be punished for being a Bad Slave, but it didn't hurt much. So instead, The Master told several apprentices to whip her in all the places that hurt the most - around her holes and on her tits. She did her best to lean into the whips, but they did it all at the same time from all sides, so she really couldn't do anything but spread her legs. They hit the little thing above her hole a lot, which gave her almost as much pain as the big spikey black thing had done, which she deserved for being a Bad Slave. They kept doing it until everything went dark, and she woke up in her cell. Her behind hurt when she laid down and sat down for a long time afterwards, so she couldn't sleep much, which made it much harder to make the Spider feel good and lean into the whips like a Good Slave is supposed to.

Another time, he hung her up over a really tall, metallic thing, which was a lot wider than the two he'd used before too. And he lowered her down on it, until it hit the bottom, but she was still a long way above the floor. Then he just let her hang there, while some apprentices lit some coals around the base of it. She could feel the heat on the soles of her feet, vaguely. Then the metallic thing started getting hotter inside her, and it kept getting hotter. She could see that the bottom of it was turning red, and then white, while the red crept further up the metallic pole. It hurt inside her a lot. The Master let her hang on top of it until the bit sticking out between her legs started turning red. At that point, she was screaming all the time. It had been a whole new type of pain. When they pulled her off, she could see that smoke was actually coming out of the hole, which didn't seem to be closing. It also smelled burned. For many days after, it hurt a lot whenever she went on the bucket in her cell.

There was also the time where The Master put something into the little hole over the hole the Spider used, and then expanded it a lot, and the time where The Master put her tits in a vise with spikes in it, which hurt and bled for a while, and the time where The Master made her sit on the black thing with spikes while she spread her legs and they whipped her there, which hurt, and the time where The Master put string around her tits and used it to lift her off the floor while her hands were tied to her feet, and left her there for a long time, which hurt too. And she deserved it all for being a Bad Slave and making the master angry by not making the glowing thing react in the way it should after she'd been with the Spider. After a while, she started being able to tell the Spiders apart, but each of them was just the Spider that day, so it didn't matter. And none of them ever hit the other hole, which would have been good even though she no longer remembered why.

The 'days', the Spiders, the punishments, they all merged into one another and no longer seemed separate. There was no sense of time or progress. Nothing ever changed, apart from the occasional new type of pain, and even those soon became few and far between. Then suddenly, The Master was approached by another Master - she could tell he was a Master because he wore a robe decorated by silver, just like The Master, even though the color was different. She couldn't really concentrate much on what they were saying, because she had to lean into the whip - it was one of the new apprentices today, and he was just hopeless with the whip, never hit the really sensitive places unless she helped. But she tried to listen as well as she could, just in case The Master had any orders for her, because a Good Slave always obeyed orders from The Master immediately.

"But she's MY project!" The Master protested. "I've been working on this for ages - you can't ask me to just give it up!" The other master shook his head. "Your project isn't getting anywhere. All this time, and you haven't produced as much as one viable result... it would appear that it isn't actually possible to transfer her abilities to our divine mistress' Soldiers." The Master was getting angry now, which was something she had seen often enough to identify it easily. Sometimes he even got mad at the apprentices, which was usually bad for them. But what happened if The Master got angry at another Master? Absently moving her behind to let the whip snap across it, adding another red line to the hundreds that already criss-crossed most of her skin, she focused more of her attention on the conversation.

"Just give me more time, and I'm sure I can get a result..." The Master stated confidently, but the other master shook his head again. "That's not going to happen, and you know it. The High Priestess asked for this directly. I don't want to defy her, and neither do you. If it's any consolation, the Artificers were just as angry - they haven't managed to extract anything from her equipment, either." The Master rubbed his temples. "But it's such a waste... she's worth more as an object of study, than as a piece of brief entertainment." The other master shrugged. "I'm not going to argue with you over that. But if you got any complaints, you'll have to take them up with the High Priestess - though I wouldn't recommend it." The Master threw up his hands. "Fine, fine, you can have her, but I think the High Priestess will be disappointed. I've broken her quite thoroughly, so even without the collar, she's not likely to put up much of a spectacle." "Not my problem. Or yours." The other master replied. The Master sighed. "I'll have her brought over before the games begin."

The other master nodded and left, while The Master turned and stared at her quite intensely. She was worried that she'd somehow been a Bad Slave, but instead of punishing her, he angrily walked over to the apprentice and yelled at him a bit for his poor whipping-skill, giving him a couple of pointers on whip-control, and then stalking off into his private torture-chamber. The apprentice redoubled her effort and, she noticed, had taken The Master's advice to heart. He was causing her significantly more pain now.

They let her stay in her cell a lot longer than she was used to. After a while, she realized that even though she still felt discomfort after her most recent whipping, and still felt stabs of sharp pain in her behind from the way The Master had punished her after the last time she'd been with the Spider, she had hardly ever gone this long without having new pain inflicted on her. The last punishment had been a fairly new and creative type of punishment, though, where she'd been impaled on the tall, metallic pole, but instead of putting fire around it, there'd been a ring on it, with spikes pointing upwards. Then the ring would fly upwards, and hit her rear hole where it was stretched and really sensitive, hard enough to lift her up from it a ways. Then the ring would fall back down to the bottom of the pole, while she'd fall down until the pole hit something hard inside her, and then it'd repeat. An interesting combination of pain, from the stabbing at her hole and the stabbing inside, really, and he'd left her there while making his rounds and giving instructions to the apprentices.

Checking with a finger, she found that she'd almost stopped bleeding from her behind, and the pain had receded into a dull beat, which was familiar enough that she could easily sleep through it. It was really quite odd that nobody had given her any pain for so long - she didn't know what to do with herself. Her still-aching behind ensured that just sitting down in the cell caused her a fair bit of discomfort, but it still wasn't the same.

Then they came to get her, she was relieved - the inaction had started to make her think, and she didn't like thinking. Everything was easier if she didn't think. She had expected them to take her to the room with the Spider, or to one of the whipping-posts, but instead, they led her out, away from everything she knew. Out into what she recognized as a city, even though she couldn't quite remember how she knew it.

In her present state, Anitra was entirely incapable of understanding what she was seeing - a sight both beautiful and terrifying, which few humans had ever seen, and lived to tell about. Most of those had just gibbered about it for a while before committing suicide. It was Commorragh, the City of Eternal Night, the capital of the Drow Elves - a magnificent, heavily-fortified city, built in a huge, naturally-domed cavern. Roads and byways snaked through, under, and above miniscule dwellings cared out of the rock, and magnificent mansions build from arduously imported obsidian. Some even had doors made from ebony, imported from the surface at great expense.

At the very center of the city stood the Great Temple of Lolth, which was also the Citadel of the High Priestess of Lolth - the uncontested, unquestioned, spiritual and governmental leader of the Drow. To cross her, defy her, or question her commands meant instant death - if she was in a good mood - and a fate much, much worse than death if she was cranky, which she usually was. The only thing that really cheered her up were the gladiatorial games, which were the favorite entertainment of both the priesthood and the nobility of Commorragh. In the Great Arena - which was conveniently located just next to the Great Temple - slaves and captured monsters fought professional gladiators for the amusement of their betters. It was to this building that Anitra was brought, though roads crowded with both sleek, dark-skinned Drow, slaves in ragged clothes - and occasionally in no clothes at all, like Anitra - and the occasional priest or noble, riding astride a giant spider, for whom the crowd swiftly parted.

The apprentices who were leading her brought her down below the Great Arena, to the cages where beasts and slaves were kept before the games. An armored Drow received them, and told them to throw her into a large cage where several other ragged humanoids already sat or lay. "Not really a good idea..." one of the apprentices stated dryly "We tried to put her in general population back when we first got her in. She killed three other slaves who tried to get fresh with her. She's not quite as feisty as she was back then, but maybe you'd better put her in solitary anyway." The armored elf shrugged. "We don't HAVE any solitary cells available at the moment. Just put her in there - if they can't survive in the cages, they certainly can't survive in the arena anyway." The apprentice snorted. "Have it your way - but if the High Priestess complains tomorrow because all the other slaves died somewhere she couldn't see them, she'll probably use YOU to replace them." Then he pushed her into the cage and closed the door after her.

After the apprentices and the armored one had left, some of the other slaves came over to her. Most were humans, but there were a couple of half-orcs amongst them as well, along with a couple that might be half-elves, and one or two she couldn't readily identify. They weren't masters, but when they started pushing things inside her, she didn't do anything. It hurt when they pushed things into her behind, and it started bleeding again, but she didn't mind - she was a Good Slave. Then they shot stuff inside her, stuff that didn't burn or smart. And she started feeling strange... just a little, like a tingle across her skin, and her behind stopped bleeding.

She was awakened from sleep by a roaring sound in the distance. A cheering crowd, her mind told her. She realized that there were fewer people in the cage than there had been when she was put in - apparently, several of them had already been taken above. She understood that she was in an arena, and that these slaves were forced to fight against gladiators or beasts for the viewing pleasure of the Drow. She wasn't quite certain of how she knew that - it felt like there was a fog in her mind, which had only just gotten thin enough for her to realize that there was a fog at all, and not just an infinite whiteness.

Guards appeared and dragged a couple of other slaves out of the cage - big and burly ones, including one who was probably a half-orc - and led them up above. It seemed like they were saving the better ones for last. By the time they picked her out, the cell was almost empty. She followed them up the hallway, walking naked and barefoot between their armored forms, the thought of running never entering her mind. Ahead, a portcullis loomed, and she could see a sandy expanse stretching out beyond it - well-lit by presumably magical means. "You're supposed to be the star attraction - better put on a good show." One of the guards whispered into her ear, before he spoke a codeword that unlocked her slave-collar, pulled it off, and shoved her through the portal. Steel bars plunged from the top of it, sealing it shut behind her. Above her, she heard the roar of the crowd, now undiminished by stone or distance.

A magically-enhanced voice roared out across the arena. "And now, nobles and clerics of the Dark City, the spectacle you've all been waiting for... for the first time in the history of the Great Arena, a young girl who is much more than she seems. A hundred brave warriors died at her hands when she was captured, and it is said that even Drazhar, the Master of Blades, was pushed to his limits in order to bring her down. Her endurance, strength, and powers of regeneration have baffled even Urien Rakarth, and NOW, her blood will be spilt on the sands of the arena for your viewing pleasure... I give you, from the accursed skies above, THE DRAGONRIDER!"

She walked forwards, feeling the rough, volcanic sand shift beneath her bare feet, and let her eyes sweep across the stands. The walls of the Great Arena towered high above her, and with her inhuman eyes, she could make out faintly-glowing sigils covering the entire surface - magical reinforcement, ensuring that even the fiercest beast could not hope to break through and escape the Arena. Above, several rows of seats were visible, all filled with dark-skinned, white-haired Drow. And they were cheering. Cheering for her? It seemed inconceivable, but it seemed true - many of them were on their feet, some of them were even calling out her title. "DragonRider! DragonRider!"

The magical voice continued "Take a look, if you please, in the other end of the arena... piled there, you will see her equipment - armor forged from the scales of a black dragon, enchanted with unknown magics, and fitted perfectly to her body. Even our greatest Artificers have not been able to wring from them the secrets of their making. And crowning it, as you can no doubt see, is a black-bladed sword - the name engraved upon its blade is BlackFire, and it too hold impenetrable enhancements. With this equipment, the DragonRider may actually stand a chance against the challenge she is about to face..." a hush fell across the crowd.

Anitra noticed a movement above, and glanced up. Positioned to her left, on the front row, and directly between her and her armor, was an opulently-decorated Royal Box - shielded from the crowds around it by black velvet, it had but a single, throne-like chair in a space that could easily have accommodated 6 or more spectators. Sitting on the throne was a woman both beautiful and terrifying, with a face as heart-stoppingly gorgeous, as her dark-red eyes were pitiless. She sat alone, flanked only by a single, armored figure, whose characteristic helmet made faint memories surface in Anitra's mind. The High Priestess - for that was obviously who it was - had her right hand raised in the air, while her left was wrapped around an onyx staff tipped by a faintly-growing red crystal - a scepter which seemed likely to hold power both symbolic and real.

She brought down her hand, and directly below her, another portcullis opened. A deep roar which seemed to make the entire arena vibrate. Then, a hulking figure charged out of it, skidding to a halt in the middle of the arena. The voice of the announcer thundered on, as if it had never stopped. "IF she can reach it, that is. Standing between her and her armor, is one of the most terrifying beasts of the underworld - the horrifying Umber Hulk!" Seemingly reacting to its name, the monstrous form threw its arms - each as far around as her waist - into the air, and roared again.

The hulking, powerful creature looked somewhat like a cross between a great ape, and a huge beetle. The low, rounded head was dominated by a massive pair of saw-toothed mandibles, longer than her arms, and rows of triangular teeth that marked the being as a likely carnivore. It had two large compound eyes, much like an insect, but above and between them were two smaller, ape-like eyes. Its entire body seemed to be covered with plates of chitinous armor, while tufts of hairlike feelers peeked out between them. It stood easily 8 feet tall, despite its hunched posture, and seemed to be nearly 5 feet across at the shoulder.

And Anitra was walking calmly towards it, with no weapons, armor, or even clothes. The last thing she'd been told was to 'put on a good show', and through the fog that covered her memories, she realized that she knew how to do that. The huge beast seemed somewhat stupefied by her calm approach, and rather than charging at her, it just stood there, starring at her with its oddly mismatched pairs of eyes. The crowd was silent, hushed by the expectation of what was about to come. The only sound that could be heard, was the swish of sand under her feet.

As her approach brought her within the Umber Hulk's significant reach, it couldn't wait anymore, and with a roar, it swung one immense, claw-tipped arm at her. She ducked beneath the blow, and rolled forwards, without really thinking. It was like a reflex - so deeply ingrained that it remained active even though her memories seemed lost. As she jumped to her feet, she was right in front of the immense creature, close enough that it would be awkward for him to attack her with his long, ape-like arms. His mandibles clicked dangerously, less than an inch above her head, as she ducked even closer...

...and embraced the huge, hideous creature, pressing her naked body against it. The beast froze in mid-movement, seemingly stunned by surprise, and she wasted no time taking advantage of this. She reached down a hand between its armored, insectoid legs, and gently rubbed an area right beneath the chitinous plate that covered his abdomen. She had, instinctively it seemed, figured out that that was where it would have hidden... yes, there it was, growing beneath her fingers, peeking out through the rough, leathery skin that covered the areas between the armor-plates. 'It' was a 'he', and as his tool gradually emerged from its armored sheath, she redoubled her efforts. Memories from another life were gradually filtering through the fog that covered her mind, and she knew that she was quite experienced at this. Even though this didn't look like any cock she'd seen before, she nonetheless knew exactly what to do with it.

It was, unsurprisingly, a deep umber, just like the rest of the creature. It was also fully in proportion to the hulking body, but she'd expected that. The skin that covered it was still leathery, but obviously thinner than what covered the rest of his unarmored parts - she could feel the blood flow through it, through her fingers, and absently wondered if that was umber, too. The shaft, thicker around than her arm, was slightly curved, but it was the head that attracted her attention - it was pear-shaped, and covered in little, wart-like knobs. Whether those knobs served some clever function during the mating - she had long since learned that evolution had supplied critters with a large variety of ingenious methods for those purposes, though she couldn't clearly remember where or how she'd learned it - or if it was merely meant to stimulate the female, she wasn't sure - but the sight made her loins quiver as she imagined how it would feel inside her.

For now, however, she merely rubbed herself against it, lifting one leg to allow her pussy - which had started drooling its juices while she watched the hulking shaft inflate before her eyes - to rub against the base of the dick. As the umber monstrosity hardened into full erection, she released her supportive hold on the creature's armored chest, and instead used her hands to enfold the shaft with the soft embrace of her boobs - basically supporting most of her weight against the dick itself, which seemed to have no trouble handling it. Then, she bent her neck, and gently started sucking on the knobby cockhead that was so invitingly positioned in front of her face.

Above her, the huge crowd of Drow seemed almost as paralyzed as the Umber Hulk. They had expected a lot of things from the fight, but this wasn't one of them. Many of the elves who had a good angle to view the events below, unconsciously leaned forwards in their seats, while their sharp eyes zoomed in on the unexpected blowjob. Most of them were surprised to realize that they were getting excited at the sight. Meanwhile, less fortunate elves, seated at the other end of the arena, could see nothing but the broad back of the Umber Hulk. Most of them were wondering what the hell was going on.

Carefully bending the knee of the leg she still had standing on the ground, Anitra lowered herself a bit, allowing the knobby, dark-orange cockhead to fully enter her mouth. She heard a surprisingly human-like gasp from above, as her jaws easily dislocated to let it enter, and as she let her tongue play across the - apparently sensitive - knobs, it was followed up by an equally humanlike moan. While trying her best to keep the large, soft globes of her chest pushed against the shaft, she released them and instead let her hands wander further down it, caressing its rough surfaces as she went, and finally finding what she'd been looking for - at the base, a pair of testicles were hanging, having left their armored containment as the Hulk's excitement grew. The 'hair' that covered them were actually highly-sensitive feelers, and as her skilled fingers gently caressed them, the Umber Hulk's entire, 800-pound body shook, making its chitinous armor-plates rattle against each other.

Unable to continue resisting her tender ministrations of his most sensitive parts, the Umber Hulk finally came, with an earth-shaking roar - and as he did, Anitra realized the purpose of the knobs. They weren't just there for stimulation, but also for delivery. The 'knobs' now opened, and gave her mouth a full, 360-degree spherical coating of sperm. Eagerly, she drank it down, barely taking the time to enjoy the heavy, musky flavor. Considering that testicles she was still running her hands lovingly across, were bigger than her fists, it was no surprise to her that he delivered a truly impressive load of cum - gallons, it felt like, and most of it disappeared down her gullet. And then, she felt it...

A power, building from within, rushing through her like a thunderbolt. The fog that had been covering her mind was pushed aside, and she was suddenly fully aware of who she was. She was no slave... she was Anitra, she was the DragonRider, and through the telepathic link provided by her nipple-rings, she could still feel the remote presence of her beloved Blake's mind, only partially blocked by whatever magical wards they were using to keep him imprisoned.

She also suddenly realized that she had just given a blowjob to a very large, semi-insectoid monster, in front of an audience that easily numbered in the hundreds, and that she was still unarmed and unarmored in a rather unenviable position. With a 'schlorp', she released the still-erect cockhead from between her lips, absently popping her jaw back into place, and looked up at the inhuman head above her. It was looking straight down at her, its huge mandibles close enough to her neck to easily snip her head off before she could move, and its two sets of eyes starring intently at her - at least, the simian eyes were starring - the buglike compound eyes were, of course, looking in all directions at once. A gravelly voice suddenly whispered down from above. "Well, that was certainly pleasant, but in case you don't realize, those accursed elves are liable to kill us both if we don't start fighting soon."

She stared up at him dumbly for a couple of seconds, before she realized what had happened. This beastlike monstrosity was more intelligent than its appearance would have suggested, and apparently, it was capable of speech. Her mind, running at full capacity for the first time in... she didn't really know how long, and she didn't really want to either... was churning over every fact she had about her present situation, and adding in this new fact finally birthed a viable plan. "Do as I say" she whispered back "and both of us may yet leave this place alive and free." The simian eyes narrowed above. "The walls of this arena are reinforced by potent magic, and the sand below is too loose to dig through. You may be able to scale the walls somehow, but I can't, and I'm not about to sacrifice my life for you, no matter HOW good you make me feel..."

On the stands, murmurs were becoming rather audible, especially from the end of the arena that hadn't been treated to a live-show. A number of guards positioned along the sides of the arena were hefting their crossbows, constantly shifting their glances between the supposed combatants on the arena floor, and the High Priestess who would give the order to kill them both, if she got tired of waiting. The High Priestess, meanwhile, had had an excellent view of the events, and was currently trying to regain her composure - the perverted sight had aroused her intensely, and she had taken advantage of her voluminous robes to sneak a hand down under them, pushing two slender fingers in between the folds of her labia. She'd managed to bring herself to a fairly mediocre orgasm, but her pussy screamed out for more. She had a number of pretty boys waiting back in the Temple, each of them trained to give her several hours of pleasure, before they were sacrificed on the altar of Lolth - and now she was split between the desire to end the Games quickly, so that she could hurry back to the Temple and seek her pleasure amongst them, and wanting to see how the scene below would develop.

Suddenly, the strange embrace between the lithe girl and the Umber Hulk was broken, as the huge monster took half a step back and swung one powerful arm at the unprotected girl. A gasp of surprise rolled through the crowd as the girl stopped the powerful attack with her bare hands, causing her feet to skid across the sandy floor of the arena from the force. Then she jumped forwards, seized the Hulk around its waist, her fingers digging into the edges of its abdominal armor - and, as the crowd watched in stunned amazement, she lifted the 800-pound monster above her head, and threw it aside. The armored giant skidded across the sand, roaring in surprise, as the girl sprinted towards the jumbled pile of armor at the other end of the arena with incredible speed.

Anitra's felt the familiar exhilaration of The Quickening as she dashed across the arena. The Umber Hulk's cumload had not only provided her with the boost she had needed to heal the numerous injuries of her captivity - physical and mental alike - but also given her a healthy taste of his own powers: Immense strength and nigh-infinite constitution. He had not, however, provided her with the natural armor he enjoyed, so she needed to reach her own armor in a hurry. As she ran, she started to realize that she'd received more than just physical strength... through the sand below her, she could somehow FEEL the Umber Hulk getting to his feet behind her, its motions generating minute tremors in the ground that she was somehow able to translate - clearly, sneaking up on an Umber Hulk was an exercise in futility.

Through the ground, she could feel that the Umber Hulk had started moving in pursuit, stomping heavily across the ground. He wasn't moving nearly as quickly as she was, but it wasn't as if she had anywhere to run, anyway. Reaching the pile of black scales, she wasted no time in pulling it on. The sandals, the shin-guards, the thigh-armor, the bracers, the panties and finally the breastplate were quickly pulled on and locked in place with a quick concentration of will. Her sword, she noticed, was still sheathed, and with a quick motion, she threw it across her shoulder, where the sheath locked in place before the pulled the sword out of it, turning in one smooth motion to meet the charge of the Umber Hulk who had now finally caught up with her.

Wasting no time, he threw both of his immense claws towards her, and she lightly dodged to the side, ensuring that they hit nothing but air. Experimentally, she let the edge of BlackFire play across the inch-thick armor that covered his lower arms - and with a smirk of satisfaction, she saw that the edge bit through it as easily as if it had been paper. The Umber Hulk gave a surprised grunt, and stepped back, circling her cautiously. Then he launched into a swift combination of attacks, that forced her to rapidly jump back several steps in order to avoid his snapping mandibles.

Above them, on the stands, a roar was slowly building, as the battle they'd come to see had finally started playing out, with more drama than they could have ever hoped for. The combatants were fighting with fierce skills, launching swift attacks, dodging, blocking, and moving across the arena with frenzied purpose. Then, the Umber Hulk suddenly seized upon an apparent opening, swatted aside the black-bladed sword, and delivered a direct punch to the girl's chest, the immense force of the blow lifted her off her feet and sent her several yards through the air, before she hit the sandy floor, and skidded to a halt. The crowd held its breath for several long moments, and then exhaled as the warrior woman got to her feet and nonchalantly brushed the black sand out of her long, dark hair with her left hand. Her right hand had retained its grip on her sword despite the blow, against all odds.. The Umber Hulk gave a great roar and rush towards her again - apparently, he had noticed the same thing that most of the crowd had: Despite her attitude, the black-armored girl was no longer entirely steady on her feet, and she seemed to be having a hard time finding a foothold in the arena's treacherous sands.

Anitra took some deep breaths, feeling her chest expand. No ribs were broken, apparently. It had hurt, but as she'd hoped, The Quickening had given her the innate toughness of the Umber Hulk, even if it hadn't given her the armor. Whether it had given her enough, she would soon find out, as the roaring behemoth now charged towards her, mandibles snapping. As the final yards of space between them rapidly closed, he opened his mandibles fully, ready to clamp them shot around her necks as soon as she was within range. Anitra sheathed her sword. It seemed as if she had consigned herself to her fate, and a great moan went up from the crowd, who did not want the spectacle to end yet. In the last second, however, her hands flew up with a speed that rivaled a striking cobra, closing around the great mandibles with incredible strength, keeping them from closing on her head. The sheer mass of the charging Hulk lifted her off her feet, and she was carried along with it until it finally ended, against one of the arena's walls. The creature's huge arms smashed into the unyielding rock, bringing the rushing attack to so sudden a stop, that it would almost certainly have broken several bones in the body of a human being.

Several front-row spectators rose from their seats and leaned over the edge of the arena, to try and get a better view at the dramatic conclusion to the battle. Among them were the High Priestess, who was annoyed that they'd come to a rest right next to the portcullis that lay directly beneath her. She was, however, also too caught up in the dramatic battle, to let pride prevent her from rising from her seat in order to observe its ending. Like all the other front-row spectators, she leaned out across the edge to watch the girl below, with her back against the wall, her fists around the mandibles of her opponent, and a huge, clawed arm on either side of her...

Pushed back against the wall by the immense weight and strength of the Umber Hulk, she was looking directly up into his two sets of eyes. His simian eyes flickered upwards, and then back to her - then he winked. A smile curled her lips. "When you get outta here..." she whispered "You should seek out the Valley of Wonder, in the western mountains. It's as safe a place as you can hope to find - and maybe I'll drop by sometime to visit. I still wanna find out how that knobby cockhead of yours feels inside..." her smile took on a decidedly naughty twist. The monster in front of her sighed. "Please, try to keep your mind on the business at hand... ready when you are." She nodded, all business once again, and pulled down hard on the mandibles, while bunching the muscles in her legs.

She jumped as he pulled her upwards, their combined strength carrying her in a gentle summersault that landed her on his broad neck, right between her head. Quickly, she turned around, being careful not to loose her footing on the smooth chitin. Between her and the wall, the Umber Hulk had brought his immense hands together, in the older-than-time maneuver known as the 'horseshoe' - albeit a horseshoe with immense, superhuman strength behind it. Jumping from his neck, she landed in a crouch on his broad hands, and as his arms surged upwards, she leaped. They were working in perfect unison, driven by reflexes and desperation, but it could not have been done better if it had been done with careful choreography and months of practice.

Knowing that she needed every bit of speed she could get, Anitra twisted her body slightly, so that her feet were pointing towards the sheer wall in front of her. While her right hand reached across her shoulder for the hilt of her unbreakable sword, BlackFire, her sandaled feet touched the rough wall, and she started to run. The power of The Quickening allowed her to actually move her legs with sufficiently inhuman speed that the motion was genuinely helping her movement upwards, but it was still mostly a slight addition to the boosted jump that was propelling her upwards. To the incredulous eyes of the spectators, however, it seemed that she was, indeed, running up a sheer wall, in a movement that would land her immediately left of the Royal Box.

She was still several feet from the top of the wall, however, when gravity took hold. Her upwards movement slowed, stopped, and then she started to fall. There were no handholds or irregularities on the wall that she could hope to grip. But before the crowd could build up a good cheer for her dramatic - and probably fatal - fall, BlackFire came out of its sheath, and with a quick motion, she plunged it into the solid stone wall to her right. The enchanted blade, fortified by draconic antimagic, parted the magically reinforced stone wall as easily as it had penetrated the Umber Hulk's armor, and went in nearly to the hilt. While Anitra used the handhold thus provided, to swing herself around and turn her fall into an upwards motion, a huge, arcane sigil - previously only visible to those with magically enhanced vision - glowed brightly on the wall for less than a second, before fading away entirely.

On the sands below, the Umber Hulk let out a triumphant roar, and smashed his weight into the wall. No longer empowered by magic, the stone was unable to stand up to his assault, and it easily crumbled before him - Umber Hulks were, after all, natural tunnelers, so to them, a solid wall of rock might as well be a highway. Moving as quickly as his bulk would allow, he smashed his ways through the thin walls of the arena interior, wasting no time in his search for a place where he could tunnel into some nice bedrock, collapsing the tunnel behind him in a way that ensured that no Drow could hope to pursue or track him. Above, he heard desperate shouts, cries, and the sound of metal ringing against metal. Just as the girl had promised, her actions were focusing the attention of everyone in the area, ensuring that nobody had the time to go after an escaping monster. He had never caught her name, he realized, nor had he given her his own. Then and there, he decided to seek out this 'Valley of Wonder' place she had mentioned, if only for the chance to meet her again. She was quite... interesting, for a human. Or whatever the heck she was.

As the force of the swing carried her into the air once more, she pulled the blade free of the rock, and grabbed the edge of the wall with her free hand. She only just barely managed to reach the edge with her fingertips, but since said fingertips were inspired with extraordinary strength at the moment, it was enough. With a final exertion, she pulled herself over the edge, landing nimbly on her feet with the sword at ready. In less than a second, she assessed the tactical situation... her target, the High Priestess, had stumbled back in surprise, and fallen onto her throne, while her bodyguard had stepped forwards, blade at the ready, to intercept the attacker. She remembered him now - with his skull-painted helmet and double-ended scimitar. He was the one who defeated her back in the caves, an eternity ago, and now - thanks to the announcer - she had a name to put on him: Drazhar, the Master of Blades. His victory in their previous encounter had only been due to him taking advantage of her inability to see in complete darkness... right now, armed as she was with the Umber Hulk's tremorsense, he would not be able to pull off that trick. But in the present situation, she didn't really have the time for a lengthy and intricate duel - the edge of the arena was ringed by crossbow-wielding guards, and she needed to get into a better bargaining-position before somebody gave them orders to shoot... fortunately, Dark Elf society didn't exactly place a lot of emphasis on independent thought, so it was unlikely that any of them would fire on their own accord.

Resolutely, she rushed forwards, to meet Drazhar's charge with her own. With the High Priestess in danger, he was clearly not going to hold back, and his twin blades were already separated, whirling through the air with their trademark shriek. Seizing the initiative, she swung a powerful, overhand blow, which would leave her entirely defenseless if it was blocked or dodged... however, with his inertia already carrying him forwards, Drazhar could not hope to change his direction quickly enough to dodge. And thus, instead, he crossed his blades above his head, intercepting the blow.

Or rather, trying to. A split second before the impact, Anitra activated the fiery power that lay hidden in the black blade, causing its entire length to ignite with all-consuming flames. As it collided with Drazhar's weapons, the fierce heat burned through whatever enchantments had been placed upon them, and with a metallic sound that resounded across the arena, both of the blades shattered. The overhand blow continued, cleaving Drazhar's helmet, skull, and brain. A thick cloud of ill-smelling smoke issued from the now-open helmet as Drazhar slid to the ground without making a sound, his fingers still clutching the hilts of his sundered weapons, refusing to relinquish them even in death.

Wasting no time on reverie, Anitra leaped across the fallen bodyguard, and seized the High Priestess, whose beautiful face was contracted in a grimace of shock and fear with her free hand. Pulling the unresisting cleric from her throne, she kicked the priestess' glowing staff out of the way just to be on the safe side, and then quickly jumped back to the edge of the arena, where she put her back against the low wall surrounding the sandy slaughterground. Pulling the High Priestess up in front of herself as a living shield, she placed the still-burning blade of BlackFire gently against the woman's throat. The intense heat of the dragonfire licked across her flawless, black-skinned neck, causing her to issue a scream as she felt genuine pain for the first time in her life - always before, she had been the one INFLICTING pain on others...

A dozen or more guards in ornate armor slashed their way through the velvet fabric surrounding the Royal Box just then, weapons at the ready and glistening with venom. As they caught sight of what had happened, their charge faltered. "Tell them to back off." Anitra hissed into the priestess' ear, holding her tight enough to deter any escape, attempt, and pressing her blade directly up against the elf's throat as the last flames flickered and died. The combined feeling of the intense heat, and the sharp steel, made the priestess cry out again "Don't come near!" she yelled in desperation at the approaching guards, and they froze in their tracks. Anitra smiled - a particularly unpleasant smile which, several of the guards realized, wasn't all that different from the smile that the High Priestess usually wore just before she did something unspeakable to somebody she didn't like.

A guard with armor somewhat more ornate than the others cautiously stepped forwards, both hands outstretched and upturned to show that he was unarmed. Drow were not usually known for their skill at diplomacy, but you didn't get to be Captain of the Temple Guards without some skill at it. He had never encountered a real hostage-situation before, particularly not one with such a high-ranking hostage, but he was no fool. While he did not care particularly for the High Priestess, he knew with certainty that successfully negotiating her release would garner him enormous favor - and he suspected, with the somewhat-less-certain belief of a cautious skeptic, that Lolth would punish him if he allowed Her High Priestess to perish while in his care.

"I'm unarmed." He stated, quite unnecessarily, as a way to open a dialogue. He, too, noticed the unpleasant smile on Anitra's lips, and decided then and there that calling her bluff would probably be a spectacularly bad idea. "That's nice..." the black-armored woman said pleasantly "But the rest of your guards AREN'T, and armed people makes me nervous. And right now, all kinds of unpleasant things might happen if I get too nervous." The captain nodded, and signaled to the other guards to withdraw and sheathe their weapons. They did so, with some relief - the captain had taken charge now, so however the dice might fall, they could safely claim to have merely followed orders.

"Oh, and while you're at it, get rid of the crossbowmen you have stationed around the edge of the arena..." Anitra continued. "And then you might want to clear out this crowd. If they start running and screaming, it gets a whole lot harder for BOTH of us to figure out what's going on." The captain nodded, and then caught himself... the crossbowmen! They were excellent marksmen, and several of them were positioned at angles that should allow them to hit the unprotected back of this madwoman - she'd never see it coming. Anitra's eyes narrowed as she noticed his hesitation. "Don't get ideas." She said in a sharp tone. "The armor on my back is quite impenetrable, you know. If they hit ANYTHING other than the back of my head, your little priestess here will be dead before she hits the ground, and YOU will be next. Do you really trust their markmanship THAT much?"

She had hit a sensitive spot, and she knew it. Trust didn't come easily to the Drow. The captain knew that the crossbowmen were good - but did he trust them with his own life, as well as that of the leader of their entire society? He looked into the eyes of the priestess, seeking her opinion, and with desperation in her eyes, she nodded slightly, then grimaced as the minute movement pushed her until-recently unblemished neck against the razor-sharp blade of BlackFire. With a sigh, the Captain made a wave at the nearest crossbowman, which signaled for him to stand down and pass it on. The wave soon made its way around the rim of the arena, where several of the crossbowmen had been standing for several minutes, their weapons leveled at the back of Anitra's head, while sweating bullets at the thought of the responsibility that was now in their hands. Much as the Temple Guard, they greeted the order to stand down with unanimous relief, quickly shouldering their weapons and withdrawing back to the guard-room. Having the fate of your entire civilization resting on their shoulders, weren't something any of them had really been prepared for, or wanted.

With obvious satisfaction, she watched as the crossbowmen filtered out, while the rest of the guards started herding the shellshocked spectators out. Most of them had simply stayed in their seats, continuing to watch as the drama they'd come for, had moved from the arena sands to the Royal Box - although many of those seated closest to the event, had quietly left their seats and rapidly made their way to the nearest exit, unwilling to get mixed up in the matter. Soon, the stands were clear, and the only people left in the arena were Anitra, the High Priestess, and the Captain of the Temple Guards. Having gravely watched the last of his men retreat out of sight, and feeling very, very alone out there, he turned to face Anitra again. "Okay, they're all gone. Now, what are your terms?"

Anitra narrowed her eyes. "I was captured along with a black dragon. I want you to release him, and let him fly here unharmed - the roof here is easily high enough for him to maneuver." The captain blinked in surprise, albeit quite deliberately, in order to conceal his consternation. If she got her dragon, she'd be able to take to the air WITH the High Priestess - thus making a bad situation infinitely worse. Lacing his words careful compassion, he replied "I'm terribly sorry, but that dragon is long-since dead. We didn't dare keep such a powerful creature alive, knowing that he might break out of confinement - he was executed more than a month ago, as you surface-dwellers reckon time." It was a daring bluff, but he was a highly-skilled liar - a talent that had saved his life on several occasions - and it was the only way he could think of that might still allow him to salvage the situation.

A brief look of pain and consternation flashed across Anitra's face, and for a moment, the captain thought that he'd gotten away with his bluff. Then her face hardened, and her mouth twisted into a sneer, as she used her free hand to seize the High Priestess' left wrist. With unyielding force, she pulled the woman's slim, black-skinned hand up to the sword-blade she was holding at her throat, and pushed the index finger up against the other side of the blade, just hard enough for the razor edge to bite into the flesh. A drop of red blood trickled down the side of the hand, and the venerable High Priestess began to tremble slightly as a whimper escaped her lips. It seemed likely that the only reason she wasn't shaking like a leaf in a storm, was the realization that doing so was likely to push herself even harder against the unmoving blade.

"You lie. " Anitra sneered. "I am bound to my steed with a connection you cannot possibly hope to understand. I know that he is alive, and I will most certainly know it if you kill him. Now, listen carefully... from now on, every time you lie, I'll remove one of the fingers of your 'High Priestess'. So unless you watch what you say, it will soon get very hard for her to carry that nice scepter..." Unable to stay silent anymore, the High Priestess shouted. "In the name of Lolth, DO AS SHE ASKS!" The captain took a step back, realizing the error in his calculations... if the High Priestess survived, with digits missing because of him, she was likely to be a LOT less grateful... with a carefully respectful bow, he replied "Of course, my apologies for attempting such deception. I'll see to the dragon's release right away." Then he turned and quickly made his way down into the arena's guard-room, where he could hopefully find a runner to send to the facility where the large beasts were kept restrained. Would his best chance truly be to simply give the DragonRider whatever she asked for, and then hope that she would release her hostage? "My kingdom for a 'Detect Lawful' scroll..." he mumbled to himself as he stepped into the guard-room, where dozens of soldiers were eagerly awaiting his orders, safe in the knowledge that nothing that happened were THEIR responsibility.

As the captain disappeared into the depth of the arena, Anitra released her captive's hand, and shifted her arm to grip her around the waist. The woman was quite slender, clearly used to a life where slaves and servants did all the heavy lifting, so Anitra's arm might as well have been unyielding steel - she was quite certain that, even when the added strength-boost she had received from the Umber Hulk disappeared entirely, the woman would not even be able to put up a token resistance against her inhuman strength.

Looking around, she allowed herself to relax a little bit. She and the captive priestess were entirely alone on the stands, and the priestess was busy rubbing the cut in her left index finger while whimpering quietly. It was typical of leaders, really - they could be quite brave while surrounded by stout walls, bodyguards, and armies - but put a sword to their throats, and they were just as quick to surrender as the lowliest footpad.

Shifting her stand slightly, she suddenly noticed that she could feel a slight wetness in the fabric that rested against her thighs... she giggled a bit - had the venerable High Priestess actually lost her bladder-control? How humiliating! Then, her nostrils flared... no, she wasn't smelling the highly-characteristic scent of piss - but something else, something equally familiar... the scent of female excitement. Her giggle turned into a full-on laugh, as she slid her free hand further down the priestess' robes. "Well, well, well..." she whispered into the ear of her whimpering captive "Looks like you really enjoyed the spectacle of the arena, hmm?" The priestess stopped in mid-whimper as she felt the woman dig her powerful fingers in between her legs, rubbing the smooth fabric against her naked pussy. She never wore anything under her robes, enjoying the feeling of the smooth, black silk against her curves.

She had already felt the warrior woman's strength firsthand - so to say. Her muscles were like steel, and the fate of her bodyguard had paid witness to the unstoppable force this woman could be when she wanted to. And now, she felt that same, unstoppable force, pushing against her pussy in an insistent, yet gentle, manner that made her gasp. In the sudden rush of consternation and panic that followed her being taken hostage, the unsatisfied lust that had resulted from her rather unsuccessful attempt at masturbation during the scene in the arena, had been pushed to the back of her mind. Now it was coming back to the front again, and she was shocked to realize that she was enjoying the motions of the surface-dweller's fingers immensely. Taken hostage with a sword against her throat, she was actually getting off on her captor's fingers!

Anitra's grin broadened as she felt the involuntary thrusts of the priestess' hips, that indicated her mute agreement with her motions. Wasting no time, she maneuvered her hand in between the folds of the robe, finding the skin beneath to be delightfully naked. Chuckling, she ran her fingers over the moist folds. "No underwear, huh? I don't know how you do things down here, but up where I come from, only naughty girls walk around in public without panties..." The priestess didn't answer, except to moan slightly as Anitra thrust two fingers into her, letting her thumb gently caress the sensitive clit above. She had never tried to finger another girl from this angle, but she nonetheless had the advantage of considerable experience with a number of female lovers - particularly Pamila, back in the Fairy Forest, who had taught her a couple of tricks. And as always, she had the advantage of inhuman stamina and strength, moving her fingers around in the dark elf's tight, black pussy with significant power behind them, and without having to worry about tiring them out.

As she forcefully explored her captive's cunt with her fingers, occasionally rubbing over her G-spot, she found that with the tremorsense - which still lingered from The Quickening she had received from the Umber Hulk - she could actually feel the lithe elf's heartbeat, as her lust rose and made it more rapid. Concentrating on the feeling, she let her thumb rub against the elf's clit while adding a third finger to the three that were already sploshing in and out of the tight pussy. Immediately, she picked up the increase in the woman's pulse, as it rose towards a frenzied peak... quickly, she seized her manipulating of the sensitive clit, and slowed her thrusts, feeling the pulse-rate drop slowly as a result. Delighting in this newfound ability, and eager to exploit it fully before she lost it, she pushed her body erotically against her shivering captive - who seemed now to be shaking more from lust than from fear.

"You know, it's a real shame we're in such... risky circumstances." She whispered into the priestess' ear. "If this had been at a more opportune moment, I would have shown you real pleasure... the kinds of things I can do when I can use both of my hands AND my tongue." The elf whimpered in reply as Anitra once again slowed her thrust, letting her fall back from the edge of an orgasm she'd been needing desperately for nearly half an hour. She'd never felt like this, not in her 600 years of life - all of the countless young men who had been hand-picked and specially-trained to please her before being sacrificed, had utterly failed to produce anything even remotely approaching the sensations that were welling up in her now. Maybe it was because they always did as she told them... followed her every order, her every whim, responding to her requests and demands with equal eagerness. While this woman, quite clearly, didn't... and for the first time ever, she spoke a word she's so far only heard used by the pitiful sods who sought her mercy.

"Please..." she whimpered "D...don't tease me..." Anitra's laughter was coarse in her ear. "Oh, this is classic, all right... wouldn't it just be dandy if we could come to some kind of agreement, hmm? A night of unearthly pleasure, dwarfing anything you feel at the moment by an order of magnitude, in return for my freedom and the tablet-fragment I seek? Oh, it'd be right out of the naughty storybooks..." with a wet sound, Anitra withdrew her fingers entirely from the High Priestess' Most Holy Cunt, and lifted them up so that the elf could see the juices that were literally dripping from them. "Too bad I can throw you a whole lot further than I trust you." She finished, before bringing the juice-covered fingers to her mouth, sucking them clean noisily while the priestess gave a pitiful moan as the delightful feelings in her pussy vanished, and the edge of what had felt like the mother of all orgasms, receded into the distance.

She had just decided to ignore every shred of pride she had left, and use her own hands - which Anitra had made no move to restrain - to bring herself off, when the Captain of the Guard came into view from the stairs leading down into the arena interior. Sending a silent prayer of thanks to Lolth, that the captain hadn't come in while the woman had been playing with her - or worse, after she had started doing it herself - she quickly folded her hands, and tried to quiet her rapid breathing lest the captain notice her excitement for what it was.

The captain marched up in front of them, while still keeping a respectful distance, and made a respectful bow. "The order has been received at the prison-facility - they are in the process of freeing him right now. Considering the number of magical wards that have been put in place, however, and the number of mages that will be required in order to break it, it's going to take a short while." Anitra smiled pleasantly. "See how much easier it is when you just cooperate? Don't worry about how he'll find his way to me once you've set him free - the bond between us will guide him." The captain merely nodded. "I presume you'll also want the objects we found in your saddlebags returned, yes?" She nodded. "I'm afraid it might not be possible to locate ALL of the items - and this is the truth, believe me - but the more significant ones will be returned, including all of the papers and documents. Most of the remainder were, I believe, standard adventuring supplies, and simple coins. I'll have a significant sum of gold added to the packs in compensation - will that be satisfactionary?" Anitra snorted. "All the gold in the world would not make up for what I've gone through... but yeah, I guess it'll have to do."

The High Priestess had finally found her voice, after having carefully calmed her breath. "Captain." She spoke with all the authority she could muster. "Whatever this woman demands, give it to her without delay, and without further attempt at deception. Do not gamble with my life. Should I die before passing on the secrets of the High Priestess to my protege, the rage of Lolth will rain down on ALL Drow. Whatever she asks, it is a small price to pay." The captain bowed sinuously, without missing a beat. "Certainly, your Eminence. And I do apologize again for my earlier lie - I assure you, it was born entirely from momentary panic at seeing your Eminence in danger."

"Nice to see you two agreeing so well..." Anitra mumbled, though it was still clearly audible to the captain's sharp, elven ears. "Now, with my dragon and my stuff returned to me, I'm pretty much back where I started... but I'm still missing the very reason I came to this god-forsaken place." Almost unconsciously, she tightened her grip on the priestess, who found herself becoming unwillingly aroused merely by feeling Anitra's muscular body press against her own. "A piece of a magically-preserved tablet - brought here by an explorer, thousands of years ago. And don't try to tell me you don't know - he escaped this place, and returned to the lands above, which clearly isn't something that happens very often around here. Somebody is bound to remember him." The captain's face was frozen with genuine fear. He had no idea what she was talking about, but if he said that and she didn't believe him, everything - including his own life - would come crashing down in a hurry.

Then, the priestess broke the silence again. "I know of this fragment." Anitra glanced sideways at her, and knew that she spoke the truth. Suddenly, she realized that she was subconsciously using her tremorsense to look for the telltale quickening of hearbeat that usually resulted when somebody tried to tell a lie. That ability was really coming in handy... she'd miss it when the Quickening faded, something which was already beginning to happen. "All right, let's hear it." She said quietly. The priestess responded, with no apparent attempt at misdirection. "My predecessor mentioned it, a while before I took over the position from her. It's in a vault in the Temple where we keep magical artifacts that none of our mages or artificers have been able to gauge the power of. According to her, the fragment had been found in the cell of a traveler who had been captured in a nearby tunnel - the prisoner was nowhere to be seen, and only the fragment remained. This had happened while she, herself, was serving as the protege to HER predecessor... since none of the artificers were able to detect anything magical about the fragment, other than some basic preservation enchantments, it was decided to lock it away with the other unidentified artifacts, on the assumption that it had something to do with the explorer's escape."

The priestess took a deep breath after finishing her story, glad that she'd managed to finish it without starting to ramble. The feeling of the DragonRider's large breasts pressing against her back was somehow becoming very, very distracting. The captain nodded. "I've heard of that vault. I'll send word to the Temple Mages to retrieve the tablet-fragment from the room." "Very good - now leave us, and don't come back until the demands have been fulfilled." The captain was somewhat surprised that the one speaking those words were the High Priestess, rather than her captor, but nonetheless quickly made a bow and retreated to the arena interior again.

As soon as the captain's back had vanished from sigh, the High Priestess glanced sideways at Anitra - who was grinning in an infuriating, knowing way - and whispered "I've done all I can to help you get what you wanted... nobody else could have told you where to find the tablet-fragment you wanted... now won't you_please_ finish... what you were doing?" Anitra giggled delightedly at the pleading way the word 'please' had come out. It was obviously not something this high-and-mighty priestess was used to saying, but she was getting the hang of it in a hurry. "Why don't you just do it yourself?" she asked, arching an eyebrow. "That's obviously what you were doing while watching me 'perform' in the arena earlier." The priestess blushed a dark read, looking more cutely innocent than a 600-years old evil priestess had any right to do. It reminded her a bit of Malchiah, the shy - but tremendously well-equipped - black unicorn she had met in Silverdale.

"I'm... I'm not very good at it..." stammered the priestess. "Why not?" queried Anitra, actually genuinely curious now. "I mean, you're obviously several hundred years old - you should have had plenty of time to practice." The priestess didn't answer for a bit, but merely blushed even more fiercely. Then she bowed her head a bit. "It's... it was... I thought it was below me." She said, in a very small voice. Somehow, she had a feeling that telling that to the DragonRider would destroy any chances of being rewarded with that pleasurable feeling again - but she had asked directly, and she dared not lie, nor refuse to answer. Anitra laughed out loud, the sound generating an echo from the other side of the arena. The priestess hoped that nobody would come to investigate the sound. "Masturbation is beneath you... but getting off on the fingers of an escaped slave from aboveground while she's holding you hostage at swordpoint - isn't?"

She didn't answer. She couldn't. Then, she felt that powerful hand close around her lithe jaw, and her head was forced up and sideways, where she stared directly into the DragonRider's strangely hypnotic eyes - blue as the most exquisite sapphire, with a vertically slidded pupil, like the eyes of a cat, or a reptile. As the face drew closer to her own, she found herself suddenly breathless, and her well-formed, black-lipped mouth dropped open with a slight moan, while a broad smile played across Anitra's red lips. The High Priestess could hardly believe what was happening - but even less could she believe how fiercely she WANTED it to happen. It was a feeling entirely alien to her - to be in another's power, so utterly dominated by her mere presence, longing so greatly for her merest touch... the words that the woman had spoken to her earlier - of what she could do with both hands and her tongue - flashed across her mind, accompanied by obscene images that made her pussy drool, and her fingers twitch. She felt certain that she'd happily give up her throne, her authority, her power, even her favor in the eyes of Lolth, the spider-goddess, to experience such things at the hands - and tongue - of the invincible DragonRider, just once...

Then, their lips met, and she felt her entire body grow unbearably hot. Six hundred years... and this was her first kiss. She'd been chaste since before puberty, consigning her body and soul to Lolth since childhood, and though she'd dallied with more pretty young men than she could count, she had never kissed them. A kiss was not a gesture of lust or pleasure, but a gesture of love, and her love belonged only to Lolth. Until now.

As she felt the DragonRider's tongue dart into her mouth, wrestling with her own, she shivered with pleasure. She hardly noticed that the motion caused the sharp blade of BlackFire to bit slightly into her throat, drawing blood if only barely. Had she truly been an unwilling captive, less than half an hour ago? The overwhelming presence of the DragonRider was all around her, her smell - the smell of fresh sweat - wafting across her nostrils, the feeling of her muscular, yet subtle and feminine body pressed against her own, through the thin fabric of her robes. She wished feverishly that the robe wasn't there at all, so that she could feel the DragonRider's body directly on her skin. The taste... as their mouths were interlocked... she was tasting her mouth, pushing her tongue into it... and there was a vague, earthy taste in the background. A fresh shiver ran through her body as she realized that she was tasting traces of the Umber Hulk's seed, from when the DragonRider had sucked him off with her as a rapt audience. Rather than being disgusted by it, she felt a deep pleasure at having shared something so intimate with the DragonRider.

As their mouths parted again, she was literally panting like a dog. A thin string of spittle connected their tongues for a second, before it vanished into the air. "You're a pretty good kisser..." Anitra commented, licking her lips in a way that seemed very sexy to the panting priestess. "Gotten a lot of practice on that, maybe?" She blushed again, but this time it was at the praise, rather than because of her honest answer. "No... I never kissed. It seemed too intimate. You... you are the first..." Anitra giggled loudly. "Aww, that's so sweet... for a centuries-old person, you're really adorably inexperienced. Is there anything _else_you've never tried?" The twist that Anitra put into the word 'else' somehow made it sound loaded with unspoken, naughty suggestions, and the priestess' breath grew even more labored.

She couldn't believe what she was saying, but she couldn't _not_say it, either. "I've heard that some women use... the other hole - sometimes. I've never tried that either. Always figured it'd hurt." She'd turned her face downwards as she spoke, unable to face the DragonRider. She couldn't believe herself... she was acting like a teenaged girl with a crush. She was well aware of the short lives that humans had, and she was quite certain that the woman she was stammering her confessions to, was less than one tenth her age. And yet, the DragonRider was completely and unquestioningly in control - and not because of the sword that had, through it all, remained perfectly still at her throat, a testament to the DragonRider's near-infinite stamina.

Anitra chuckled. "Is that a fact? I'm not surprised, though... and you're right, it usually DOES hurt, right at first... but it can be quite enjoyable, once you get into it. It's sort of an acquired taste, I guess..." The priestess swallowed hard. From the way she was saying it, there was little question that the DragonRider did, indeed, have plenty of experience with such things. She remembered watching the DragonRider's muscular ass as she'd run naked across the arena while trying to retrieve her armor, and that image now seemed irresistibly erotic in her memories. All unbidden, the image of some faceless man bent over her while his penis went into her behind, came to her mind. In the image, the DragonRider was looking at her and smiling that infuriatingly sexy smile...

She hadn't even realized that she was doing it, but suddenly, the sloshing sounds from her groin made her ware that she'd pushed her robes aside, and was now masturbating furiously. But it didn't feel right... compared to the DragonRider's deft and skillful touch, her own, slender fingers felt rough and clumsy, jabbing in and out of the soggy cunt, creating obscene sounds that seemed to echo in the abandoned arena, but not really generating any pleasure. She felt like she could actually hear the DragonRider smiling broadly, her face so close to hers that she could feel the slight caress of the DragonRider's breath on her cheek.

"You weren't kidding about not being very good at it..." Anitra observed clinically as she stared intently at the High Priestess' fingers as they stumbled about in her cunt. As expected, the woman instantly stopped her manipulations, seemingly freezing in place except to blush so hard it seemed likely to bruise her cheeks. Reaching down, she closed her hand around the woman's wrist, and pulled the juice-covered fingers upwards. "I bet you've never tried to taste yourself either..." the said playfully, lifting the fingers towards the black-lipped mouth. She didn't have to push the dripping fingers against the mouth for very long, before the lips parted, and the elf carefully sucked first one digit, then another, clean of the juices. The sight was surprisingly erotic. Anitra felt her own panties growing increasingly moist, and felt a slight twinge of regret for the teasing she'd put this surprisingly innocent 'girl' through.

"Do you like the taste?" she asked offhandedly, while making a quick decision. If this woman was truly so enamoured with her as she seemed... well, she'd soon find out. The priestess nodded slightly, blushing as hard as ever, trying to conceal her eyes between her long, white tresses. With a pleasant smile, Anitra leaned forwards a bit, grinding her entire body against the priestess, who seemed almost ready to faint at that alone. "You know, I haven't really been fair to you..." she intoned, while letting her hand slide smoothly into the top of the priestess' robes. "I mean, I've been put through a lot here, but I can't really blame you for it - you may be the leader, but it's not like you had anything to do with my torment, personally." While talking, she deftly wrapped her fingers around the elf's right tit, squeezing it lightly, and then pinching the nipple, twisting it slightly. The elf seemed to just melt against her as she did this, resting her entire body against Anitra's, in a strangely trustful way. The moan that came from the black lips was deep, resonant, and so laced with desire that Anitra almost expected her to come from the tit-treatment alone. It didn't happen, but from the way the body leaning against her shivered, it wasn't far from.

She withdrew her hand from inside the black robe, eliciting a despairing sob from the overstimulated elf. Time had snailed by while they chatted, and it had now been well over an hour since she had first leaped over the edge of the arena. She'd already established telepathic contact with Blake, making sure that he was okay, and she knew that he was currently in flight, on his way to the arena with her old saddlebags slung across his broad back, and _most_of the original content intact - at least, the most important bits: The other pieces of the Tablet she'd collected so far, and the papers and maps that would guide her to the remaining ones. If she wanted something to happen here, she'd best make sure it happened soon.

Lowering her voice to a whisper again, she leaned close to the dark elf's pointed ear. "Tell you what, I'll make you a deal... I'll bring you to an orgasm you've never even dreamed of, if you'll do something for me in return..." The priestess' breath quickened, as she saw hope of much-needed release winking seductively ahead. "What do you wish?" She asked, breathlessly, knowing that whatever the DragonRider requested, she'd grant it in a heartbeat. "Well, all this chatter has actually made me a bit horny... so, I want you to get down on your knees in front of me, pull my bright-red dragonscale panties aside, stick your tongue into my wet pussy, and bring me off with your mouth." She deliberately made the request unnecessarily descriptive and colorful, feeling the lithe, elfin body practically petrify in her arms. She could see the priestess' jaw tremble, and heard something that sounded like "B...b....b....b..." "But you've never gone down on a girl before?" She helpfully finished the sentence. "Don't worry about it - considering how well you managed your first kiss, it seems like you've got a very talented tongue."

The elf was now shaking so heavily that Anitra was surprised she hadn't just come apart at the joints. The reaction wasn't entirely unexpected, however, and she'd taken care to move her sword a bit out from the shivering priestess' throat. "You know..." she said conversationally "It's not like you _have_to do it... all we gotta do is wait for a little while longer, then your captain will come back with the Tablet Fragment, and my dragon will come by to pick me up - and then you can go back to whatever consorts you entertain yourself with back in that big, spooky temple of yours..."

As the DragonRider spoke those words, the priestess felt her violent shivers stop. Those young men... there was no way they could ever hope to give her what she so utterly needed right now. Nobody could. Nobody but the powerful, well-muscled amazonian warrior-woman, who she was currently leaning against in order to better feel the contours of her amazing body. She didn't have time to think about it. The DragonRider was right - it was just a question of time before the captain returned, and she did not want to get 'caught in the act'. Feeling the last shreds of her once-immense pride slide away, she nodded, not trusting herself to speak. The sword that had hovered in front of her throat for more than an hour, suddenly disappeared. She didn't even consider trying to escape - she couldn't run away from something she needed so badly.

As she moved slowly forwards, she felt the DragonRider's powerful fingers close around the edge of her robe, pulling it back and down. The explorations of both her and the DragonRider's fingers had loosened the robe significantly, and it now easily opened enough to slide down around her shoulders. For a heart-stopping moment, she thought - hoped, even - that the DragonRider intended to undress her entirely, but she left the robe bunched around her arms. "I like to have something nice to look at." The DragonRider offered by way of explanation, as she was gently turned around. The hungry eyes with which the DragonRider devoured her full, round, ebony-black breasts made her shiver all anew. For a moment, she hoped that the DragonRider would put her hands - or better yet, her mouth! - on the sensitive globes, for at this point, that alone would grant her release.. but she merely stared at them lustily for a few moments, before gesturing at the ground before her.

The High Priestess had never kneeled before anything other than the Great Altar of Lolth, but now she fell to her knees without a second thought, never even considering the submission that it entailed. As she leaned forwards, she smelled it - the powerful, musky scent of the DragonRider's arousal, teasing her nostrils. She could see slight drops of moisture, rolling gently down the muscular, inner thighs. All of it centered on the bright-red patch of mysteriously modified dragonscales, which barely covered that most private place. Breathless, she reached up one hand, looped the long fingers through the bottom of the panties, feeling the wetness on her skin, and pulled the surprisingly subtle material to the side. There it was, a pale pink, open and inviting in excitement, so different from her own, midnight-black opening...

Suddenly, she felt hands on her head, and before she could react, she was thrust face-first into the display she'd just been admiring. Her nose mashed up against the top of the hole, while her lips game into contact with the juice-dripping pussy-lips. "We don't have all the time in the world..." the DragonRider said sharply from above "If you're gonna do it, better do it quickly, and well." In a flash of insight, she realized that if she wasn't quick, the DragonRider wouldn't have time to bring her off before the captain returned. And more importantly, she realized that she'd rather have it done to her in front of the captain, or indeed the entire guard, than miss out on what the DragonRider had promised. Beyond hesitation, she parted her lips and pushed her tongue, for the first time, into the juicy folds of another woman's pussy.

The taste, she found, was intoxicating. She wasn't entirely sure whether it was actually the taste, or just the knowledge that it was the juices of the DragonRider, but she did know that slurping the clear, sticky liquid down, gave her a warm and pleasant feeling. The smell, too, was heady, now that her nose was so close to it, sometimes dipping directly into the hole when she was licking at the lower end, leaving wet traces at the tip of her nose. She found that the DragonRider had been right - it wasn't as difficult as she'd imagined, and judging from the moans she could hear above her, she was certainly having the desired effect.

As she let her highly-sensitive tongue play across the outer labia, she noticed slight indentations, all but invisible to her eyes, but she could feel them on her tongue. Lines of roughened skin. Scar-tissue. She knew what it was... remnants, traces, of the horrible treatment the DragonRider had suffered at the hands of her expert torturers. That the scars had healed up so quickly and so completely was further proof of the DragonRider's magnificence, but it did not excuse what had happened. She felt salty tears run down her cheeks as she admitted to herself that the very person who had taught her a new meaning of pleasure - and would yet redefine the meaning of the word for her, if she kept her word (and she knew that she would, because the DragonRider always kept her word) - had endured unimaginable torment, if not on her orders, then at least at her sufferance. She knew, with a deep sadness, that the DragonRider had, indeed, been fair to treat her to such merciless teasing - and that it would, indeed, be scant reparation if the DragonRider left her there, her pleasure unreleased, never to learn what it truly meant to climax. And yet, she knew, the DragonRider would do no such thing...

She felt the DragonRider's fingers digging into her pure, white hair, pushing her face harder against her groin, and she reveled in it - the feeling of completely relinquishing power, of being a tool in someone else's hand, and in knowing that she did not even deserve to be in such gentle hands... knowing that those hands didn't owe her that gentleness, that they owed her nothing but agony. That they caressed her where she deserved to be struck. Her tears, of regret, sadness, and joy alike, mixed with the DragonRider's juices on her face, and she dug into the pink hole with all the energy she possessed, hoping to repay the incredible woman, in some small way, for the pain she had suffered so unjustly.

Finally, she heard a long, drawn-out moan of pleasure from above, and a fresh stream of pussy-juices washed into her mouth, where the drank it down with the eagerness of a thirsting man in a desert. She was almost disappointed when the DragonRider gently pulled her away from the throbbing hole by the hair, but the knowledge of what came next overruled that entirely. She looked up at the DragonRider with eyes both eager, and glazed with lust, her face covered in the sticky juices. Much of it had also run down to cover her naked breasts, making them glisten in the faint light. "See? I told you you'd figure it out in no time. You were pretty good." The DragonRider smiled down at her, and the priestess beamed with joy at the praise. Then, the DragonRider gripped he by the shoulders, and lifted her to her feet, before pulling her into a tight embrace.

Finally, she felt the DragonRider's body directly on her skin, as her naked breasts were mashed against the magnificent woman's significantly larger chest. She swooned as their lips locked for the second time, felling heat rising in her face, and her loins, as the DragonRider's tongue danced around the inside of her own mouth, in search of the taste of her own juices. Then, while their bodies were still locked together, she felt the DragonRider's right hand make its way past the waistband of her now-loose robes, while the left arm continued to hold her in a tight embrace, from which she could not escape had she had the inclining to - which, of course, she didn't in the slightest.

Her mind swam as she felt her long-awaited goal within reach. The powerful fingers closed around her pussy-mound, feeling her, making her groan into the DragonRider's mouth - their lips were still locked, with no sign of parting, which suited her just fine. It was so very close...would the DragonRider keep her promise and reward her? Or would she instead receive the punishment she so richly deserved, by being pulled to the edge one last time, only to be left in endless frustration? The hand that surrounded her cunt wasn't moving. Then, their lips parted, and she stared directly into the DragonRider's hypnotic eyes, a terrible dread visible in her own, blood-red eyes.

"You know that you're mine now, don't you?" the DragonRider whispered, their mouths still less than an inch apart. "Always." She answered, unthinking, but knowing it was the truth nonetheless. Whatever happened next, the touch of the DragonRider would haunt her, in dreams or awake, for the rest of her days.

Then, their lips locked again, and she felt three fingers rush inside her, deftly rubbing every sensitive surface on the inside, touching places she didn't realize she had, while the thumb stimulated her clit - which had spent the last half-hour at least, with the hood drawn back, exposed to the air by sheer force of horniness, leaving it extremely sensitive. It was like something had exploded inside her, white-hot fire filling her veins as she shook, a helpless husk of pleasure-wracked flesh in the DragonRider's strong arms. The scream she emitted would have shook the arena, had her lips not been locked tightly to the DragonRider's, held there by a rock-solid hand behind her head.

She lost track of time as her mind reeled with feelings so intense, she had never thought them possible. Pleasure, more than could possibly be received from a simple couple of fingers, by any ordinary reckoning - mingled with adoration, sympathy, loyalty, trust, and a spark of genuine love... all things that most people would have sworn up and down that Dark Elves simply did not possess. It was not the orgasm that had sparked those, but the message implicit in it - that she had received the forgiveness of the DragonRider, undeserving of it though she might be. She was lost in it all, a torrent of basic, animal lust, and pure emotions, all mingled together into a mind-blowing cocktail.

"What's wrong with Her Eminence?" a sharp voice queried, somewhere outside the paradise that the DragonRider had sparked inside her mind. "She got tired." Said the plaintive voice of the mighty DragonRider. "I guess someone as high-and-mighty as her ain't used to standing up for over an hour. I figured she wasn't about to make a run for it, so I let her sit down." A skeptical grumble was heard, and she looked up to see who was doubting the words of the DragonRider. It wasn't exactly a lie, after all - she had, indeed, been quite tired, and the DragonRider had graciously allowed her to sit down... and go down. She smiled at the memory, while her eyes slowly focused on the formal armor of the Captain of her Guard. She lifted a hand, giving him a tired wave, and he nodded. "Of course, this has been quite an ordeal for her... it's understandable I suppose."

Some remote, unimportant part of her was screaming something about not letting him see her like this. She glanced down, and saw that her robes had been pulled back into place. Her face no longer felt wet, either. The unimportant part shut up, while the rest of her just smiled and nodded. Of course, the DragonRider, gentle as ever, had straightened her up, so that their passion wouldn't be revealed to the guards... it was something private and treasured, a secret between them. Underneath the robes, though, she could feel that her inner thighs were utterly covered with drying juices.

Behind her, she heard a flapping sound. She didn't look over her shoulder. It wasn't unimportant, but she already knew what it was - the dragon, who served as the DragonRider's loyal steed - unjustly imprisoned as the DragonRider herself had been, and but recently released from his magical bonds. "Nice to see you again..." rumbled an understated voice from back there, and she felt the solid wall of the arena shake lightly as the huge creature came to a rest there. She glanced back after all - just a glance. He was immense, covered in black scales, with huge, leathery wings and a snakelike neck. Truly, a steed worth of the DragonRider. She walked over to him... kissed him on the muzzle as he lowered his head to her height. The priestess felt a brief, bitter surge of jealousy, but pushed it down - certainly, this great beast was far more deserving of the DragonRider's love than an insignificant and cruel woman such as herself. She could not, however, keep back the bitter tears that stung in her eyes.

The captain cleared his throat. "You have your dragon. You can check his saddlebags if you wish." The DragonRider shook her head. "Just give me the piece of the tablet. I presume you brought it?" The captain nodded, and pulled out from under his cloak, what looked like a piece of a broken clay tablet - preserved by powerful magic, through the millennia. He seem to weight it in his hand, starring suspiciously at the DragonRider. "How do I know you won't murder the High Priestess and flee as soon as I give you the fragment?" he asked, his jaw set. Before the DragonRider could retort, the High Priestess spoke. "Just give her the fragment, Captain. We have more reason to trust her, than she has to trust us." It was not said like an order, merely a statement, but although he cast a surprised glance at the High Priestess - who didn't look terribly High, huddled on the ground as she was at the moment - he obeyed. With a smooth, underhand throw, he sent the fragment through the air, to be intercepted with practiced ease by the DragonRider. After a brief glance to reassure herself that it was genuine, she put the fragment into the saddlebag with the others, and swung herself on top of her draconic steed with an acrobatic grace that spoke of both much practice, and skilled muscles. The priestess watched the movement, taking some slight solace in the beautiful display of the DragonRider's grace in her true element - the back of a dragon. The mere sight made her heart ache - and her loins burn with desire.

But the DragonRider was now astride her dragon, beautiful, imposing, almost divine in her magnificence. And that meant she would now leave, and the priestess would probably never see her again, never feel that gentle touch on her most private and sensitive parts again, never again share a kiss so hot, it set her entire body on fire... she felt as if something inside her was bursting with sadness and pain, and she knew that only now, she was truly being repaid in kind for the pain that her people had inflicted on the DragonRider. She felt the Captain of the Guard approach her carefully, his eyes on constant lookout for trickery or deception, and she remembered... the vile people who had so mistreated the DragonRider, called her their leader. She had power at her disposal, armies at her beg and call. Would it not be so very appropriate, and ironic, if she used all that power towards a single purpose - to see the DragonRider again, if only just once? To maybe, just maybe, feel that touch lift her into a world of bliss beyond her imagining, one more time? To... dared she think the thought... truly find out what the DragonRider could do, with both hands and a tongue?

Smiling through the tears, she looked up at the DragonRider, still divine, astride on her steed as his wings began beating, and soundlessly mouthed the words - "See you later". Then she added two more words, two words she could not speak even in the silence of her own mind, but which she now threw across the distance that separated them. And she could see the DragonRider's lips crease with that special smile, as she read her lips, and she nodded. And all the pain she'd felt inside, went away, just for a bit, at this acknowledgement. Even if she had to abdicate her throne and abandon her meaninglessly opulent palace, and wander the lands above as the shunned outcast that the Dark Elves were up there, she WOULD find her way back to the DragonRider...

Then, the dragon lifted off, whirling up into the stale cave-air, and the Captain's strong hands gently lifted her to her feet. "Do not worry, your Eminence..." he said calmly "We'll get you right back to the palace for some much-needed rest... thank Lolth that you're unharmed." She nodded, barely matching his steps on legs still shaking from the intense experience she'd gone through. "Don't worry about the dragon and the slave..." he added, seemingly as an afterthought. "I know which way they'll go - there's only one tunnel wide enough to allow a dragon to fly through it. I've stationed crossbowmen there, fully set up with enchanted bolts and the most powerful venom we have available. They'll both soon be dead."

Staring at him in disbelief, she realized instantly that she couldn't tell him the real reason why she could not allow that plan to go ahead. Summoning up her old authority, and letting her red eyes sparkle with an anger that was quite real, she spoke sharply to him. "You fool! Send word to them immediately, call them off, do NOT let them fire on either dragon or rider!" taken aback by her vehemence, he barely managed to stammer out a "But..." before she continued. "Have you learned nothing from this? Did you not hear me when I told you not to gamble? We have no idea what she is, where her powers comes from, or what the extend of them truly is. If those men attack, and fail, what do you think will happen? Do you think we will be able to stop her from coming right back here with vengeance in mind?" The captain gaped, trying to formulate a defense for his actions. They had, after all, taken down both dragon and rider the first time they'd encountered them... but looking across the arena, he already knew what the answer would be, should he bring up that point. It was Drazhar, the Master of Blades, who had bested the DragonRider in combat - and Drazhar, the Master of Blades, who was still lying forlorn at the side of the arena, his helmet cleft open, his famous blades shattered, his body forgotten in the events that followed.

"What are you waiting for, you fool?!?" The High Priestess snapped at his delay. "Get word to your men before they can fire, and you may yet be spared a trip to the altar of Lolth!" She no longer needed his support, easily standing on her own, her head drawn up regally, and her eyes sparkling with anger. The captain realized instantly that whatever favor he had gained from his handling of the situation, had been lost in his badly-thought-out plan for revenge against the DragonRider - and that he would loose more than that if he argued further. Making a snappy salute, he rushed back into the arena to find a mage, who could send a near-instant signal to the warriors he had stationed at the cave-mouth. The High Priestess, left alone once more, let her imperial features soften, as she turned and looked in the direction the DragonRider her flown. The look in her eyes was distant, and her breath caught in her throat with the beginning of a sob. Then she heard a pair of armored soldiers clanking up the stairs, clearly meant to escort her to the Temple, and she choked back her sorrow, resuming the expression of imperial disdain that always kept the underlings in line.

She had not forgotten who or what she was, but she had realized something else that had changed her deeply. Above and beyond being a Drow Elf, the High Priestess of Lolth, and the leader of most of her race, she belonged to the DragonRider, body and soul. No matter how much time or space might separate them, that fact could never be erased. The pretty young men that waited back in the palace no longer held the faintest attraction to her... she knew that from now on, when she felt desire, she would let the memories of the DragonRider play across her inner eye, and let her fingers do the rest... she'd get better at it, in time.

So, they were basically trying to use you to breed a race of superpowered spiders, huh? Blake's mental query rounded. Apparently. Too bad for them I'm a dragon-gal through and through. She sent her smile over the telepathic connection too. The torments she had endured seemed a distant dream now, helped along by both the healing rush of The Quickening, and that deliciously laid-back session she'd had with none other than the High Poobah of the entire Dark Elf race. Blake had been understandably impressed when she'd recounted the story, if somewhat suspicious that she might be embellishing it slightly. So you basically turned a frigid, sadistic, stuck-up bitch into your willing, lesbian sex-slave in less than an hour? He'd asked, with a hint of sarcasm in his voice. With one hand, don't forget that part... she had retorted, before getting serious.Actually, I'm not that surprised. I've heard about it somewhere, I think - people in positions of great power often find a lot of release from giving themselves completely over to somebody else's control. Blake had shrugged and admitted I sure would've liked to see it...

Having finished that debate, however, they'd had no choice but to discuss exactly what had happened to each other during their imprisonment. I lost all sense of time she admitted to Blake It wasn't until that captain tried to tell me that you'd been dead for over a month, that I realized how much time I'd spent getting tortured and raped. Blake sighed. You're fortunate that DragonRiders are as robust of mind as they are of body. That kind of trauma would have rendered most humans irreversibly insane, but you just bounced right back. She nodded mentally, and then pressed on. But what about you, love? What did they do to you? There was a brief pause in their mental communication, then Blake cleared his throat (quite unnecessary, since he wasn't using it to talk, but he did so anyway) Pretty much the same thing they did to you - tried to use me to breed a bunch of dragonspiders._It took her a moment to take it in. _You're saying they forced you to screw... giant, FEMALE spiders? The image seemed somehow hilarious. Blake snorted in disgust. Yeah, yeah, rape is funny when it's female on male, I know the drill... but let me assure you, those things aren't any more attractive to me, than they are to you. You better believe I didn't enjoy it one shred. She nodded, patting his flanks by way of apology for her amusement. Did they get anything out of it? She asked, mostly out of curiosity. No. It's actually possible with an 'ordinary' dragon, but we blacks are special, as you know. Just like you're a dragon-gal to the core, I ONLY do my magic with a DragonRider. He craned his neck to wink at her, and she mentally told him to get his eyes back on where he was flying - the cave was pretty wide here, but so was Blake's wing, and they REALLY didn't need a replay of what had happened at the entrance of the Valley of Wonder.

Well, at least we both made it out in one piece. Anitra said, philosophically. And we got both a new fragment of the tablet, AND a pretty hefty sum of gold - I guess the cap'n in the cool armor was afraid to insult me - the purse he put in your saddlebags contains at least 10 times what my lost equipment was worth. Blake smoothly dodged around a stalactite before replying. Yep, there's a light at the end of the tunnel - so to speak. I think I can actually see where the tunnel comes out - just like in the maps, it's the caldera of a long-dead volcano - free flight to the open skies. I'm not usually one for sunlight, but damn, it's gonna be nice to see some after this long underground.

Anitra nodded, mentally. She could see the light, now, too, filtering through the cave from the end. Not one to waste time, she carefully removed a parchment from the saddlebag, and used the faint light to read it. Already scoping out our next destination? Blake queried, and she nodded again. Yeah... and after this ordeal, I think we need to go somewhere slightly more peaceful this time. The Tomb of the Golden Knight, it's called. Should be pretty quiet._Being a tomb and all, she figured it was likely filled with undead-types, and her sword had been VERY effective last time she'd wielded it against those. So it should be a cakewalk. _Sounds good. Stated Blake, as they winged out into the sun, forcing the both of them to narrow their eyes as the rays of the sun touched them for the first time in over a month. The Tomb of the Golden Knight it is. And Blake's mighty wings carried them out of the caldera, and into the boundless skies above...

The End

Cummin' atcha live (at some point in the future) is Chapter 11 of the DragonRider Chronicles: The Tomb of the Golden Knight! Maybe it's time Blake got laid for once...