Official Shells Thread (Chapter 26, 9/17/09)

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Re: Official Shells Thread (Chapter 23, 8/06/09! YEARGHBLE!)

Postby Duamutef » Fri Aug 07, 2009 12:50 am

BUMP for NEW CHAPTZ0Rz. (On page 1. Because that way things stay tidy.)
Step into my world, and maybe one of it's denizens...
http://www.sdcga.com/~duam9/
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Re: Official Shells Thread (Chapter 23, 8/06/09! YEARGHBLE!)

Postby Throku » Sat Aug 15, 2009 10:00 am

Amazing as always!

I'm mostly impressed by the width of your characters, I suppose I'm too single minded to accomplish anything of the sort.
It's very captivating, despite the lack of vore. I find myself wondering how many of the mindless folks here who only read 2 page quick-fix "stories" would get hooked if they ever gave it half a chanse. I suspect most of them.

I'm eager to see where the story leads and how you handle the tricky power-inflation problem. ;)
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Re: Official Shells Thread (Chapter 23, 8/06/09! YEARGHBLE!)

Postby Winny » Sat Aug 15, 2009 7:14 pm

Yay a new post! I love your work duam I hope you continue. (Was kinda worried since you went poof for so long.)

I love my character you got her down perfectely. ^.^
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Re: Official Shells Thread (Chapter 23, 8/06/09! YEARGHBLE!)

Postby Duamutef » Sun Aug 16, 2009 12:34 am

I'm eager to see where the story leads and how you handle the tricky power-inflation problem.


Years of experience as a Game Master who saw his own worlds as ant farms to be stomped on.

I love my character you got her down perfectely. ^.^


That's good, because she only gets moreso...
Step into my world, and maybe one of it's denizens...
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Re: Official Shells Thread (Chapter 23, 8/06/09! YEARGHBLE!)

Postby Winny » Tue Aug 18, 2009 11:55 pm

she only gets more...what duam? -takes out a stick hidden from god knows where and begins pokeing the vore god.- *poke poke* Only gets moreso....what? -Shi giggles excitedly.-
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Chapter 24

Postby Duamutef » Wed Aug 19, 2009 8:20 pm

Winny wrote:she only gets more...what duam? -takes out a stick hidden from god knows where and begins pokeing the vore god.- *poke poke* Only gets moreso....what? -Shi giggles excitedly.-


More what? Well...maybe I should just show you.

******

CHAPTER 24! YAY!

******


"UGH!" Winny yelled. "This isn't even a stomach! It's a snot factory!"

There was no reply--only a mild ripple of muscle in the soft, pliant flesh around her.

"Where the hell are my hooks...!?" she muttered, rifling through her numerous hidden pockets and pouches, all of which were utterly soaked.

"They won't do you any good," came a muffled voice. "Nothing has ever gotten out so far, and neither will you unless you tell me where my bra went."

"Why the hell would I have even wanted your bra?"

"Our bras are the one thing of value we usually carry, thank you very much. We're monsters--how long do you think lace is going to last? And where are we gonna buy it? And how often do you think we shed a boob-shaped piece of shell? Those things are hard to come by, and if you don't beg, borrow, or steal one, you have to buy one, and they're expensive as hell! Even by human standards!"

"I didn't take your stupid bra, Ralier! Can't you just take a chunk of your armor off or something?"

"I only wish. This crap is bolted on. Which was not comfortable, by the way."

"Yeah, cry me a river," Winny said. "Is there any place you might have taken it off?"

"I never take it off!" Ralier replied.

"Eww! Doesn't it get all grody?"

"I'm a monster. Monsters don't get grody. We're used to being out in nature and stuff."

"Yet you can't live without your bra for ten minutes," Winny said as she felt the sudden warmth of a huge glob of gooey liquid flowing through her hair. "EWWWW!"

"We WEAR them so we don't accidentally knock people out with our HONEY," Ralier said indignantly. "You're WELCOME."

"Fine, whatever! But why would I even want it!?"

"Like I said, they're worth a fortune."

"Bullshit! It's an ugly piece of Kari shell and I DON'T HAVE IT!" Winny yelled before suddenly hearing another voice.

"Ralier, what's going on?"

It sounded like Annelique.

Winny scrambled towards the entrance to Ralier's stomach. "Annelique! Annie! It's Winny! She ate me!"

"I'll let her out as soon as she gives me my bra back," Ralier said.

"Um," came Annelique's voice, "If she has your bra, won't it be half-digested by the time you get it back?"

"If she has it with her, yes. If not, telling me where she hid it would be just as good."

"And what if I didn't steal it and you digest me to death?" Winny yelled. "You want that on your conscience for the rest of your life?"

"You won't be on my conscience. You'll be on my boobs."

"That's not funny!"

Ralier's first response to this statement, of course, was to laugh. "I'm sure you can survive stewing in there for a while longer," Ralier said. "Incidentally, for a thief, you taste great."

"For the last time, I am not a thief!" Winny yelled.

"I dunno about this," Annelique said. "We were treading pretty thin ice with Ushan..."

"Ushan? The succubus?" Winny said. "She ate one of you? Oh wait, she's a succubus, of course she did..."

"No, I ate her," Ralier said. "It's a long story."

"Actually, they both ate somebody..." Annelique said. "Ushan ate Ishiar and Ralier ate Ushan..."

"Sounds like you guys were great friends," Winny said before another warm blorch of God-knows-what erupted from the bottom of Ralier's belly, soaking her entire midsection. "Oh, for MASALLA'S SAKE, just LET ME OUT OF THIS PUKE-SACK!"

"You know, we karis digest pretty slowly. And you seem like a pretty resilient little girl so far. I could probably leave you in there for a whole day before you lose consciousness. Of course, you'll head into my intestines long before that..."

"Do NOT even KID about that. Your stomach juices are bad enough without your bodily *waste.* Speaking of which, whose bones are these!?"

"Oh, *those.* Those are from the *last* girl who tried steal my bra."

"Also not funny," Winny said firmly. "Ralier, listen carefully. If I survive this, I am going to plant a crossbow bolt into each of your EYES at least once a day FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE. Or better yet, I'll shoot at your nipples, so you'll need to get a new precious bra!"

"Ralier, let her out. I don't think she has it," Annelique said.

The next voice--Cassandra's--was considerably louder.

"Winny, Ralier, where the hell were you two!? Digest on your own time! That goes for both of you!"

"But my--"

"I checked. Kaboom was using it as a mixing bowl."

"Mixing!? For what!? Gunpowder!?"

"Yes. Along with several other kinds of explosives."

"See?" Winny said. "Not only were you wrong, but the Goddesses are punishing you for it. From now on, any time you wear that bra, your tits could get blown off."

"You win this round," Ralier said. "I guess you can come out now."

"Um, I've been trying, in case you haven't noticed," Winny said, trying to shove herself against the sphincter to Ralier's enormous lower mouth. Not only was the sphincter not about to go anywhere, but neither was she--Ralier's stomach was far too slimy for Winny to get any traction. "Kamaruga's tits!" she yelled as she squirmed uselessly. "Somebody get me out!"

Cassandra sighed angrily before walking up and ramming her hand down Ralier's throat.

"OWW!!!" Ralier yelled. "Hello?! Spikey gauntlet!?"

"Deal with it," Cassandra said.

Winny saw Cassandra's open hand--complete with it's alarmingly sharp-looking gauntlet--shoot out of Ralier's throat and into her stomach. She grabbed it with one hand while wrapping her other arm around Cassandra's, glad for the spikeyness as it actually gave her a way to keep ahold of it in spite of all the slime. Cassandra's grip was quite tight, and she yanked rather violently. Her arm slid back out, but when it came time for Winny to follow, the sphincter held tight, refusing to widen any further than it already had.

"OW!! OW!!!" Ralier yelled as several more yanks failed to free Winny.

"This would be easier for both of us if you'd stop clenching," Cassandra said.

"I'm trying, but there's this thing called reflexes--OW!!!--look, do it slower!"

Cassandra rolled her eyes and started to pull. She braced her other arm against the top of Ralier's mouth, but Ralier's throat just didn't want to seem to give up her meal.

"Annie--" Cassandra started.

"Yeah," Annelique said, grabbing Cassandra by the waist and pulling. Between the two of them, they finally forced Ralier's recalcitrant gullet to disgorge it's diminuative cargo. All three of them fell backwards onto the floor, with Annelique getting the worst of it by virtue of having Cassandra land directly on top of her. Winny would have argued that she got the worst of it, of course, simply because she was still covered in the former contents of Ralier's stomach.

"Yaugch!" she said as she slowly pulled herself up, making a disgusted face before turning up to glare at Ralier. She wasn't the only one.

"What?" Ralier said. "I thought she had it."

Cassandra sighed. "Where were you?"

"Where was I what?"

"During the battle, when the ship was overrun with Zadiians."

"You seemed to have everything under control," Ralier replied.

"Couldn't you have at least grabbed one of them with that fat maw of yours instead of eating my newest crewmember instead? At least she's a good shot, even if she is the size of a bran muffin."

"I didn't want to go into battle with my tits out!" Ralier said.

"Why!?" Winny said. "You just said you use them to paralyze people!"

"It's drafty out there. Especially with the way Cassandra flies."

More stares.

Ralier threw her hands up. "Come on, you're freakishly good, Cassandra! Anything that could threaten you would be shitting me out in less time than it took me to draw a sword! I was pretty good at hunting clueless villagers, but I'm not a soldier! Why do I have to explain this to every person I ever meet!?"

"You're officially affiliated with the most hunted people in this sector of space, Ralier," Cassandra said flatly. "If you don't know how to fight, you'd better learn, and learn quick."

Ralier made a pensive face, but it quickly melted into one of resigned surrender.

"She's right," Annelique said softly. "I know it isn't fair, but they're going to come after you just because you know us."

"I make no apologies for helping you guys," Ralier said. "And I do wish I could do it more, or better. But the truth is I suck. Aerothi didn't train me...they just nailed adamant to my legs and said 'go kill stuff.' Never mind that these things are so heavy now that those few combat skills I did have I suddenly couldn't use," Ralier said, slowly hefting her legs up for emphasis.

Cassandra looked Ralier's armored legs over and sighed impatiently. "Look, I can teach you to fight if you need it so bad. I know some tricks you can pull. But the first thing you're gonna have to change is your attitude. Get over this idea that you can't fight. Take Annelique here. When she's thinking like an angel, she's harmless as a bunny. When she forgets for a minute or she gets pissed off, she turns into a merciless hurricane of destruction."

Annelique stitched her eyebrows together. She definately didn't think of herself as a "merciless hurricane of destruction," but looking back on the havoc she had wrought in those few battles where it was important, she realized Cassandra had a point. Even if it was all the fault of Klayer's brutal training.

"Go into every fight planning to win," Cassandra continued. "If you don't know how, that *doesn't matter.* Just fight as hard as you can and learn as you go. The techniques will come to you. That being said, having some training and tactics going in certainly won't hurt."

"Okay...what kind of tactics can I use besides kicking people?"

"What's your range of motion on each of your legs?" Cassandra asked in an almost annoyed tone.

"Well, pretty good..."

"Good enough that you can do any damn thing you want with them, with the sole exception of picking things up or knocking things out of the air," Cassandra said as she strode up to Ralier. "And I've still seen some Karis pull off that second one." Stepping between two of Ralier's legs, she said "Alright. Assuming I'm standing here, what can you do to me?"

"I'd say nothing, since you're so close, but I'm guessing that's wrong?"

"You guess right," Cassandra said. "I am *extremely* vulnerable in this position, especially with your legs being heavier than normal. Lift this leg," she said, slapping one of them, "and use it to kick me in the back of the legs, either the calves or the back of the knees."

There was a shuffling clank as Ralier's armored leg lifted and swung into Cassandra's scale armor, sweeping her knees forward and causing the rest of her body to fall backward. With a swish and a thud, Cassandra spun off of Ralier's leg and hit the floor.

"Now was that so hard?" she said before standing up again.

"I'd just never thought of that," Ralier said.

"You can do even worse things."

"Really?"

"Yeah. You can twix them. Twixing is sort of the reverse of what you just did. I'll show you."

She stepped up again and pulled two of Ralier's legs out, once again positioning herself between them.

"Okay," she said. "Take the back leg and put it behind my ankles."

Ralier complied.

"Now lift the front leg to about the middle of my shins and just yank it back."

Ralier did so, not really sure what was supposed to happen. She was rather surprised by what did--Cassandra's knees locked hard as her shins were spun back and she was almost whipped to the floor.

"So that's your 'oh shit' tactic," Cassandra said as she stood up again, seemingly unfazed. "And once they're on the ground, what do you do?"

"My first impulse would be to stomp on them," Ralier said.

"Good girl," Cassandra said. "Your legs are plenty sharp; any time you can use them as a weapon, do it. If you're facing one enemy, stomp the neck. If you're against a lot, go for the shoulder or something else that will keep them on the ground. The rest of the time, use them to throw your enemies down, control their movements, or shield yourself."

"How do I control their movements?"

"If they're further away, you just jam your pointy little leg towards their face--that much you probably already know how to do. A kari who knows her stuff should be all but immune to anybody with a weapon shorter than a spear unless they're attacking head-on."

"What if that's what they're doing?"

"That's when you use the fact that you've got a maw the size of Crucia," Cassandra said. "But you've got to get them there first. The most important thing is to make sure you own everything within range of your legs. First of all, you need to get out of the habit of holding yourself up on eight legs, or even six. See, if I get inside your range again like this and I'm about to attack you, you can pinch your legs together and trap me, then point me towards an ally who can start whacking at my defenseless head. But I could be coming at you from anywhere. You need to be ready to do that with any two legs, not just the middle ones or the front ones. The same goes for the knockdowns..."

Curious as Annelique was as to the details behind Kari battle tactics, she was too uncomfortable to keep listening. It reminded her too much of her own instructions at the hand of Klayer. That had been a traumatic time, knowing that she would have to leave Brightwind when it was the only place in the omniverse she wanted to be. That and Klayer's training regimen bordered on outright abuse...

As she turned to leave, she was surprised to see that Winny was standing at the door, still soaked from head to toe, watching the pair.

"Didn't you want to get cleaned up?" Annelique said.

"It's not often I get a chance to see Cassandra get beat up," Winny replied.

"And you're hoping they might start sparring and you'll get to see Ralier get beat up too?"

"So it's true about angels," Winny said. "They do know what people want."

Annelique chuckled slightly and stepped out. Though she wasn't tired, she thought she had better get some sleep; even if she was becoming some sort of invincible turbocharged murder machine, she still wanted to be normal, and all she could think to do was act normal. And she felt like she needed some kind of rest, even if it wasn't for her body.

She headed for Cassandra's quarters. Since the very first night she slept in her bed, she had stayed with her. Some nights she seemed troubled; other nights she seemed better. Other nights she was just plain unreadable, but in any case, Annelique knew what her job was. She didn't go into the room very often when Cassandra wasn't there, but she had said that it was alright.

Without much fanfare, she slipped into the room, pulled herself under the covers and just let everything go. For a time there was just silence and a pair of open eyes...why she didn't close them, she couldn't really say. Maybe they were just keeping themselves open. Even after she fell asleep, she wasn't sure if she had closed them, if they had closed themselves, or if she was just dreaming through a pair of open eyes.

She slipped into a strange limbo...a dream that felt like the entire universe was nothing in particular and neither was she. She just stared, as if her strangely open eyes had indeed followed her into her dreams.

She eventually saw two forms; towers, from the looks of them. One was white, one was black. Some sort of war was being waged between them...but there were no soldiers. It looked as though the towers themselves were fighting, cannon blasts and strange flashes blasting between them like peals of thunder. Eventually she did make out some humanoid forms, standing on the roof of each tower. She seemed to move towards them--or perhaps they were moving towards her. They weren't fighting--they were just watching.

All of them were pitch black, like living silhouettes standing atop the towers. All but one. Atop the black tower was a single individual that stood out from the others. It was another angel, clad in white robes. As she drew close she realized it was her--or an exact duplicate of her. Soon she was hovering only a few meters away, watching as this other version of herself simply stared out towards the other tower.

The explosions were very close now--she could feel the shockwaves from them as though they were reaching up and rattling her very bones.

Something about this dream was very wrong.

Well...she figured she may as well take the straightforward approach.

"...Is this some sort of vision?" Annelique said to the familiar angel in front of her.

Her counterpart remained motionless--everything but her lips. When they moved, she had Cassandra's voice.

"No one can see the future, Annie," it said. "But that doesn't mean you don't know exactly what is going to happen."

It turned towards her. It's gaze froze her heart, and suddenly she felt like she had been hit by a cannonball.

She snapped awake. She wasn't sure how long it had been--it could have been a few moments or it could have been a few hours. For all she knew, it could have been days. Things were just as they were when they fell asleep--almost. There was one thing that was different, almost as though a piece of her dream world had followed her. It was Blast.

She was sitting on the edge of the bed. What little color had returned to her face over the last few days seemed to have been lost again; in fact, if anything, it looked like she had been stabbed through the heart a second time.

"Blast?" Annelique said. "What's wrong?"

She simply sat there, silent as ever and practically motionless. Annelique could barely tell that she was breathing. She was staring downward, but her eyes seemed to drift off into nothingness--just as Annelique's had.

Annelique got out of the bed and got down on the floor, sitting and hunching down until her face was directly underneath Blast's own.

"Blast?" she said, looking right into her eyes. Eyes which did not return her gaze.

Blast's body remained motionless--all except her hand, which raised and patted Annelique on the head. It was rather unsettling. It felt like she was being pet by a zombie; like Blast was reaching out from across some cold and distant universe.

Annelique took her hand and held it in hers. "Is something wrong? Is your heart giving you trouble?" she asked, gently placing her fingers on Blast's chest.

Blast shook her head. Her hair bounced back and forth as she moved, eerily framing the hollow stare that did not seem to move an inch.

"Please look at me," Annelique said quietly.

Blast's lips pursed slightly and her eyes finally seemed to settle on her.

"So what's bothering you?"

Blast's gaze moved down towards her other hand. It was simply hanging off of her knee. It took Annelique a moment to realize she was holding something--some sort of flat, transparent object between her thumb and forefinger.

She surreptitiously took it and held it up.

"Is this what's bothering you?"

Blast nodded.

Annelique examined it. Though it was small, it was also very ornate. It looked like a triangular piece of blue colored crystal or glass, less than an inch per side and a few millimeters thick. It's edges were etched with tiny golden runes and the center had a few simple celtic patterns woven out of precious metals. It didn't seem magical, nor infused with any particular sort of malice.

"What is it?" she asked.

Blast pulled out a gold coin and held it up next to it.

"It's gold? Er--it's money?"

Blast nodded again.

"Where did you get it?"

This time, it was Blast who took Annelique's hand, holding it between hers and holding them to her face as her head slowly bowed down--as though she were trying to console Annelique even as she was breaking down herself. This lasted only a moment, however. Before long Blast sprung abruptly off the bed and started walking towards the door.

"Wait!" Annelique said. "Please, don't be like this! I can't take it now! It's been going on for too long. Tell me what's going on, and use your voice."

Blast stood there for a moment. Silently at first, but soon she began to take deep breaths, as though she needed to prepare her lungs for the task ahead.

In the end, her breath stopped. Rather than speaking, she simply dropped something to the floor. It was a large metal pendant, engraved with a double-headed hammer.

It was Gairanda's.

Annelique opened her mouth to reply, but she was suddenly siezed by something--a realization that gripped her out of nowhere and held on like an iron fist.

For a split second, she understood.

Blast didn't want to say it. Annelique didn't want to hear it, and whether it was true or not, she wouldn't want to say it to anybody else.

For one brief moment, she found herself bound in Blast's world--and looking back on all the horrible things she had spoken of or heard in her short lifetime, she realized she never wanted to speak again.

It took her a few moments to recover her voice. "Blast..." she said quietly, "what happened to you? Back when you used to sing? What made you stop?"

Blast closed her eyes. She was about to leave, but Annelique leapt off the bed and took her by the arm.

"Wait, don't go yet..." she said as she gently led her back. "I don't want you going off to some corner to cry by yourself. If you're gonna do that, you should at least have someone with you."

She sat Blast down on the bed next to her, gently wrapping one wing around her slender shoulders before curling her arms around her.

"Don't be embarassed," Annelique said. "This is something that we angels do. Especially for the people we love."

Blast seemed to pause for a moment, looking at her questioningly.

"Of course I love you, Blast."

The distant look totally left Blast's eyes--but what replaced them wasn't happiness. It was pain. Her face pinched itself into a mask of anguish. Her right hand slowly balled into a fist which she held tightly against her heart. Soon her left hand followed suit and she crumpled over, both of her arms crossed over her chest like she was freezing to death inside.

"It hurts, Annelique!" she suddenly cried. "It hurts so much I can't even stand it! It never stops hurting, and the more I think about it the more it hurts!"

Her words came in broken sobs. Her every word rent at Annelique, like a thousand broken spikes were slowly tearing furrows through her chest and into her heart. It was like the sounds themselves were spears. Her breath caught in her chest. In spite of herself, she clenched her eyes shut as her face involuntarily wrenched and contorted under the sudden onslaught as Blast's words continued.

"I didn't want to speak before," she said, "and now if I do everyone will hurt! I can't let it out! It won't heal! I can't sing it away! Singing hurts so much! I don't know what to do!"

Annelique clenched her teeth and held as tightly as she could--it was the only thing she could do to fight the terrible sensations that were shooting through her.

"I feel like I should be dead," Blast said slowly, "but I can't die. And it's all that sword's fault!"

Her voice cracked. "Why would someone make something like that? Knowing that it would hurt someone so much?"

The answer stung Annelique even more than Blast's words, because she had heard it used to many times to justify so many atrocities.

Not everyone is an angel like you, Annie.

And yet Annelique couldn't even bring herself to hate the people who committed those same atrocities.

And though Blast's words had stopped, she felt one final pang when she realized Blast didn't either.

"It's all that sword's fault," she had said. Nothing about Rea. Nothing about Aerothi. Nothing about all the hate and ruthlessness and warmongering. Nothing about the people who had hurt her.

And for the first time, it made Annelique realize something. She finally had an answer.

"Not everyone is an angel like me..." Annelique whispered, "but you are, Blast. You are."

******

The first person Annelique found was Ishiar; she was in the galley munching on an apple, not looking particularly concerned about anything.

"Ishie," Annelique said, "have you seen Gairanda?"

"Since when?" she replied.

"Since...I don't know. When was the last time you saw her?"

"Uh...I saw her on the deck when we landed in Ecilix...haven't seen her since then. Maybe you should ask Elvet. She's usually the one who pulls her out of her comas."

"Blast...well...she's really worried. I think she thinks..." she paused, "well, she's really worried," she finished apprehensively.

Ishiar looked up at her, her expression suddenly grave. "Why?"

"She didn't say."

"Cassandra?"

"What?"

Ishiar looked around, then stood up. She walked in so close to Annelique that their bodies were touching slightly.

"Annie, I'm suspicious," she whispered. "You know her reputation. We know the Orchids are after us. And just before we found that out, I saw Cassandra drop off a fistful of demon money. Where do you think she got it?"

"What? No...she couldn't have done something like--well, for one thing, why just one of us?"

"Because Gairanda was the mindreader, Annelique! The two of us have fate marks, and she might not want to take the risk of fighting all of us at once. But if she's going to do anything else, she would need to get rid of Gairanda first!"

"Is anyone else missing?"

"Not that I know of..." Ishiar sighed, pausing momentarily as she pondered something. "How much do you trust Elvet?"

"Well...she's basically Cassandra's second in command, isn't she?"

"I don't know. Something doesn't seem right on this ship, and it's not Cassandra--it's her. The rest of these girls are treasure hunters at best and brigands at worst. Cassandra doesn't hire people like Elvet. I'm starting to wonder if Cassandra wasn't speaking out of personal experience when she said the Orchids need someone they can trust. The question is, can we trust Elvet as much as Cassandra does?"

"I don't think she would lie to me..."

"But would she tell you the truth if it meant selling out her own captain?"

Annelique's stomach was turning. "But if Cassandra was planning to do something to Gairanda, wouldn't Gairanda have noticed?"

"She couldn't stray far from Elvet. That meant Cassandra could keep her away if she played her cards right."

"Well, I don't think we should accuse her of anything yet. We should at least ask Elvet first."

"Either way, it will tip them off that we know Gairanda's gone."

"Well, we don't know that for sure. She might have passed out in a storage room or something."

"I might think that was possible if it was anyone other than Blast. She lives in the nooks and crannies, Annelique. If she says Gairanda is gone, she's gone, and if she thinks something happened to her...I'm inclined to believe it."

"I don't want to have lost another friend...I'm running out," Annelique said, fixing an almost pleading look at Ishiar.

"Then let's make sure we don't. We ask Elvet, then we corner Cassandra. One way or another, we'll get an answer."

It wasn't difficult to find either of them; as it turned out, Elvet and Cassandra were both on the main deck speaking to each other.

"Elvet, can we talk to you for a sec?" Annelique asked.

"Of course," Elvet replied. Annelique and Ishiar turned to head below deck, and Elvet obligingly followed. Thankfully, Cassandra politely stayed where she was. Even so, as they took Elvet to an out of the way room, Annelique couldn't help but focus her every sense on trying to determine whether Cassandra was secretly following them.

"Something seems to be troubling you," Elvet said as they went into a storage room and shut the door.

"Yes, something is troubling us," Ishiar said bluntly. "Where is Gairanda?"

Annelique bit her lip--she had hoped to be a little more delicate than that.

Elvet paused for a moment, a look of concern crossing her face. "Have you...I haven't seen her since Ecilix." Her concern seemed to turn to worry. "Are you certain she boarded before we took off?"

"We were hoping you would know that, seeing as you're her caretaker," Ishiar said.

"Well, I was trying to help her as best I could, but I wouldn't call myself her caretaker...in any case, I was busy seeing to the re-crewing of the Starslicer. When I disembarked, Gairanda was still onboard. If she left, I would not have known."

"Were you with Cassandra that whole time?"

"No, no...I...wasn't."

Annelique noticed something.

Elvet was biting her own lip.

"Is there something you want to tell us?" Annelique asked.

"I hold no secrets from you," Elvet said earnestly, "but I do not know of Cassandra's activities prior to the incident with Blast and Kaboom."

Ishiar looked tellingly at Annelique. Annelique's stomach was turning so much now that it felt like her heart was being wrenched along with it--or the other way around.

"She supposedly gave some money to the Meckis..." Annelique said as she placed her hand on her chest, trying to control her breathing. " ...What did it look like?"

"They were Orchid Faiths. They are triangular crystal coins with assorted patterns and symbols inset within them," Elvet said. To their surprise, she reached into a pouch at her belt and withdrew one--it was identical to the coin Blast had. "This is one such coin. Their colors and patterns vary, but they are fairly consistant in their overall design."

She handed the coin to Annelique.

"So where did you get this?" she asked.

"It was left over from the budget I was given to hire replacement crew," she said.

"Out of that budget, how many of the coins were Faiths?"

"A significant portion," Elvet said. "Perhaps a fifth. We have a wide variety of coins in the vaults; the majority are silver and gold coins, but we have a large number of Moon Crescents, Firebirds, and Emperesses, along with many forms of demonic currency, including Faiths."

"Can we look in this vault?" Ishiar asked.

"There are several vaults," Elvet said. "None of them are actually aboard the Starslicer. I'm afraid I cannot say much beyond that, for fear of placing their security at risk."

"Can you look in the vaults?"

"Perhaps. If I may ask, what are you looking for?"

There was a silence. Eventually, Elvet answered her own question for them.

"You're looking for Gairanda. And you believe this may have to do with the Orchids?"

"Yes," Ishiar said guardedly.

"It may well," Elvet said.

"It probably does," came Cassandra's voice. The door swung open as she walked in. "If you figure I sold her out, that's good thinking, but I didn't. At least not yet," she said with a wry smile. "On the other hand, if you figured I'd be coming along to eavesdrop on you eventually, you were mostly right. I figured Elvet would tell me if it was something important, so I went ahead and finished up top first. And since she would tell me anyway, no harm in eavesdropping. So what's this about Gairanda? Is she hiding or is she genuinely gone?"

"We don't know," Annelique said.

"Well, we should probably find out," Cassandra said. "I'll see if any of the crew saw her leave when we were at Ecilix. You guys might want to talk to Winny--she's explored every nook and cranny of this ship, trying to find new ways to hide from me so I won't keep confiscating the weapons she steals. It's possible she just passed out in a corner somewhere." Her expression turned serious. "If not...we obviously have a problem."

"We?" Ishiar said.

"We," Cassandra repeated. "Apparently Admiral Kaleta is at least a little serious about keeping you alive after all. She has officially hired me and my crew as your personal bodyguards. Losing one of my charges on the first day would be most unprofessional."

"Bodyguards?" Ishiar asked incredulously. "You don't strike me as the bodyguard type."

"Hey, for the right kind of money I'd work in a Flesh Fane brothel. And that's about how much she's paying. I must admit I was rather surprised; typically, you can either hire me for a month, or you can buy a small civilization forever."

"How small?"

Cassandra tapped on her chin. "I dunno. About half of your homeworld," she said.

"If you're worth half the money on our planet, then by definition there's no way she could afford it," Annelique said.

"She's exaggerating, Annie," Ishiar said.

"I know..." Annelique said sheepishly.

"But not by as much as you might think," Cassandra said, her face suddenly serious. "I don't think Shannon's war fund is the sole financier of my contract."

"Who else would be? Assuming she's not in bed with the Flesh Fane already," Ishiar said.

"She's not," Cassandra said. "That much I can give her. She is honest in her contracts. So are they, for that matter--you just need to make sure you're very specific in how you word your documents and you know the list."

"List?"

"Yeah. There's basically a boilerplate of disclaimers you need to put at the beginning of any contract with the Flesh Fane--or any other Fane, for that matter--that more or less tells them that you're not a sucker, or that you're at least smart enough to have hired a professional contract writer. It's things like 'Text which is invisible, microscopic, illusionary, erased, altered in conscious memory, or in any other way obscured or absent conceptually or literally in the document or conscious mind of either party at the time of signing or anytime henceforth is wholly null and void, and in all cases of ambiguity or contradiction, interpretation of this contract will be in favor of' and then your name.'"

"Holy--they try that stuff? No wonder nobody makes deals with demons," Ishiar said.

"No, plenty of people make deals with demons," Cassandra said. "It's just that only the experienced ones get away with it."

"Then where is the rest of the money coming from?"

"The ASP, as near as I can figure."

"Asp?"

"Allied Star Protectorate. Also very surprising, considering they're the ones who impounded my ship and said they'd sooner feed themselves to a Bile demon than let me out of their prison. Like they had a choice in the matter..." she said with a wolfish smile. "But it shows how desperate they are that they'd be willing to hire me, even by proxy."

"Why did they arrest you?" Annelique asked.

"You know the 'Corsair' part in 'Cassandra the Corsair?' It means 'one who plunders ships for fun and profit.' Like you said, I'm not exactly the bodyguard type."

"Well, yeah, but it sounds like they're a government. You know. With battleships and stuff."

"Yeeaaahhhhh...let's just say I hit some pretty high-profile targets," Cassandra said. "I needn't tell you that it takes a lot of ships to get me to surrender...I was almost flattered when they actually went ahead and sent that many. I think their flagship was there, actually..." She momentarily pondered to herself. "I had momentarily considered cloaking and hiding in one of it's gun barrels. But I decided that it was *slightly* more suicidal than it was brilliant. Weird how blurry that line sometimes gets. But anyway...back to Gairanda. I'll try some of my contacts in Ecilix; in the meantime, everybody look for her. And while you're at it, somebody find Winny. When you do, handcuff her to the floor and come get me...I'd like to have a *word* with her..."

A few hours later Ishiar and Annelique did stumble upon Winny, but they decided against taking Cassandra's orders literally. Instead they got straight to the point.

"Winny? Have you seen Gairanda?" Annelique asked.

"Gairanda? Is that the redheaded girl who never talks?" Winny asked in return.

"No, Gairanda's the one who is always passing out," Ishiar said. "We can't find her, and we're hoping she just passed out somewhere obscure. She's got greyish hair, built like liquid murder, but tends to wobble anyway? Ring a bell?"

"Uh...I'm not sure I know who you're talking about. The only one I see sneaking around is the redhead. What is her deal, anyway? She seems so...emo."

"She was stabbed through the heart with a weapon forged by the goddess of the death of worlds," Ishiar said.

Winny nodded. "That would do it."

"She was really very happy before," Annelique said. "I wish I could help her..."

"Well, if she got smote by a Goddess, I'm pretty sure you're outgunned there. Best of luck, though."

Ishiar huffed with frustration. Nobody they had talked to had seen Gairanda, and they had scoured every square inch of the Starslicer at least twice, and the fact that they had actually found Winny first essentially destroyed any remaining hope that she was just asleep in a corner.

"Was she one of the ones that everybody is after?" Winny asked.

"I don't know," Ishiar said. "As far as we can tell, the person with the most to fear from her is actually Cassandra."

"Why?"

"She sometimes picks up on people's thoughts."

"Really? What species is she?"

"Human. It happened after she got half-digested by a ghost...don't ask me how that's supposed to work. Pissed me off, too...she was one of the best fighters we had. But any emotions or thoughts as intense as combat always knocked her out."

"I wouldn't put it past Cassandra to have arranged for another ghost to finish the job," Winny said, "but I'm new on this ship, so if she did, I didn't get a chance to see it. You want me to keep an eye on Cassandra? See if she lets anything slip?"

"Can you keep yourself hidden?"

"Let me put it this way," Winny said as she pulled out a gigantic pistol--the same one she had taken out of the armory. "This is hers. She still doesn't have it. And probably never will again. But I'll be taking a risk...and technically she's the one who's paying me."

"You're saying you want something in return."

"Well, it certainly wouldn't hurt. I'd definately be more motivated."

Ishiar's face turned red as a strange expression crossed it--one of resigned frustration.

"What is it?" Annelique asked her.

"I've got dick for money, but so far everybody I've met has wanted a different kind of payment from me anyway," she said.

"What do you mean?"

Ishiar closed her eyes and took a deep breath through her nose. After exhaling and pausing for a moment, she turned back to Winny. "Winny, if you spy your guts out for us, I'll fuck you crosseyed."

Winny and Annelique's eyebrows shot up simultaneously.

"Seriously?" Winny asked.

"Yes. Seriously. I did it for Ralier, and she's not even human," Ishiar replied.

"Really? What did you want from her?"

"I don't even remember," Ishiar said honestly. "I just have this vague image of laying on top of her as she hauled me back, desperately clinging to what little consciousness I had left."

"Wait a minute, when did this happen?" Annelique asked, shocked that she wouldn't have noticed a budding romance between the two.

"It was back at Ushan's house, when you were in a coma of your own," Ishiar replied.

"Well, we know she's not on the ship," Annelique said, her face clearly worried. "Maybe she just went shopping in Ecilix and passed out somewhere...?"

They had no choice but to go back to Cassandra.

"No, she didn't leave..." Cassandra said. "I talked to the deck guards. When the rest of us left she went below deck. Somehow somebody got aboard the Starslicer...either that or they teleported her out. Either should have been very hard to do, but between the battle damage and the fact that we were so severely undercrewed..." Cassandra looked indignant--almost insulted. "Well, in any case, I've dealt with this kind of situation before. We have procedures."

"Like what?" Ishiar asked.

"Find out who took them, find out where they're being held, burn the place to the ground, and make a rescue raid in the confusion."

"Um...while I'll admit that that sounds more satisfying than just rescuing them, it also sounds a hell of a lot harder," Ishiar said.

"You'd be surprised," Cassandra said. "Think about it. They're going to build their entire defense around a rescue attempt. That practically gives you free reign of the rest of the place, provided you know what you're doing. So you go into all of those areas and plant explosives. If every alarm in the whole place is going off already, troops are vanishing left and right and half of the security measures are physically destroyed, who's going to be in any position to stop a group of heavily armed professional intruders? Sure, I don't do it that way every time, but I have yet to see it not work. Well, except for the times when security was too tight to do it in the first place..."

"But what if she's been killed?" Annelique asked.

"She hasn't. Trust me."

"How do you know?"

"Annie," Cassandra said, leveling a dark gaze at her, "you are their target. You and Ishiar. Whether she's under the weather or not, it takes some serious dedication to get aboard the Starslicer undetected. They wouldn't have wasted an operation like that on a secondary target like Gairanda unless they planned to use her to get to you."

"How do we find out who took her?"

"Usually they come to you...but you can't fight them on a battlefield that they choose. I'll find out who's in charge and we'll hit them on their home turf, where they don't expect us."

"Find out who's in charge? How are you gonna do that?" Ishiar asked.

Cassandra grinned. "I have my ways. Sufficed to say, I'm a seasoned professional in both arenas."

"What arenas?"

"Kidnapping people *and* getting them back," Cassandra said as she walked out.

******

It was less than a day later when Cassandra quietly motioned Ishiar into a side room.

"They didn't waste any time," Cassandra said, tossing a sheaf of paper down on the table. It was addressed to Annelique. It's writing was elegant cursive, penned in golden ink. It read:

~~~

Miss Annelique,

First, allow us to offer our warmest greetings and our regrets that our first contact must be under circumstances as this. We are writing regarding a friend of yours named Gairanda who has come under our care. We fear she has been injured, and due to some strange condition she bears our healers have had difficulty resolving the issue. We know of specialists who can perform the service, but we fear contacting them because--as we're sure you are aware--there is a bounty on Gairanda's head, and those who are willing to work descretely and under such circumstances are prohibitively expensive. We believe the safest option for all concerned would be for us to remit her to you. Please come in person; we do not know whether this letter will be intercepted by others who might attempt to capture her.

Sincerely,

Lady Bataen, Leerin Court of the Orchid Fane

~~~

"...She was dumb enough to tell us she's from the Orchid Fane?" Ishiar said.

"Shannon keeps tight security..." Cassandra said. "This may sound odd, but I don't think the Orchids know that we've been told about their plans."

"They don't think the mighty Cassandra the Corsair could have figured it out?"

"They probably don't think anybody has figured it out," Cassandra said. "Publicly they've joined the Alliance, and the Orchids aren't stupid about secrets. I guarantee that 99% of the Orchids on this planet don't know what the master plan is, and the remainder aren't going to squeal on their own plans."

"So how did Shannon find out?"

"Shannon is sharper than you give her credit for..." Cassandra admitted grudgingly. "She doesn't protect her employers and attack her enemies. She protects her employer's interests and attacks her enemy's interests. So she always makes sure she knows both. And I'm sure she is keeping her knowledge of their plan secret as well...if word gets out that she knows, that knowledge becomes useless to her. She only told us because you are one of the alliance's top priorities now."

"What? Since when?"

"When they found out why Aerothi was after all of you," Cassandra said. "Shannon told them everything."

"So this Lady Bataen expects Annelique to be dumb enough to buy this crap, knowing she's a demon?"

"Not as such," Cassandra said. "This is standard procedure for Orchid ransom notes...tt's sort of a game Orchids play. They hide their threats in flowery double-talk, but they fully expect you to see through it. They tried to send it to Annelique because she's the one who's sentimental enough to try to go out there alone, knowingly trading her life for Gairanda's."

"Which we aren't going to let her do."

"No we're not. Bataen made one big stupid mistake, and it wasn't the fact that she used her real name--it's that she wrote the letter personally."

"You can analyze the ink or something...?"

"If I had to, I'm sure I could find somebody," Cassandra said. "But in this case it's much simpler. Elvet was taught how to read mental imprints on objects, and she's one hell of a detective when she wants to be. She was able to pick up what Bataen was seeing and thinking when she wrote the letter. We analyzed the room, and I'm almost sure I know where she was when she wrote it and where Gairanda is. And we've got a perfect opportunity to hit them."

"Which is?"

"Elvet caught a glimpse of Bataen' plan. They were going to arrange for an ambush in a spot in the wilderness and then contact Annelique directly, telling her to fly to their location. But they haven't moved yet. We can get there first and ambush them," Cassandra said.

"I'm sure you're enjoying this," Ishiar replied.

Cassandra looked back at her and half-grinned, but it seemed to be competing with a somber mask for control of her face. Soon the mask took over and her expression turned serious.

"Ishiar...how many Orchids do you think you could take on?"

"I don't know...I've never fought one before. How many will there be?"

"Probably two dozen, plus Bataen--assuming we wait until they're set up. I'm guessing they'll have four people escorting Gairanda herself--if we can drop them fast enough we can make off with her and Elvet can come pick us up. But we may get bogged down and have to fight until she gets to us. We'll still have better odds than if we did things their way, but there are no guarantees."

"So why don't we just take the whole crew?"

"They're not dumb. If they see even one of us they'll scarper. I do have some tricks up my sleeve," there was suddenly a clattering as three objects--rings, from the look of it--literally fell from her sleeve onto the table, "...but only so many. These will keep pretty much anyone short of a top-notch sniffer from detecting us, but I've only got the three. One for me, one for Gairanda, and one for whoever comes with me. I need Elvet to stay to fly the ship, I can't trust any of the new recruits with something this important, and none of the old guard are up to this--they're mostly the crew who stayed out of the battle because they weren't fighters. When you were fighting the Zadiians, you seemed to be blasting through them pretty efficiently...I'd say you're the only other person onboard who could break out of there if things turn south. I obviously can't make you go, and we'd both be taking a risk...well, I wouldn't so much, but you might be..."

"Where is this spot that they plan to take her?"

"It's a clearing in a forest a jillion miles from anything even remotely resembling civilization. They don't want anyone wandering in while they were setting up all of their traps and hiding places. And they know nobody will, because the forest is supposedly the hunting ground for some terrifying mythical beast; it's in Dire Star territory and even they won't go near it."

Ishiar did her best to hide her suspicion--Cassandra was asking her to accompany her to unknown destination alone. And, while Cassandra hadn't come right out and said it, she had been furnished with an excellent excuse not to tell Annelique that she was doing it. Everything Cassandra was saying made sense, but she had a feeling that it would be a bad idea to assume Cassandra couldn't trick her. In fact, if Cassandra lied nearly as well as she seemed to do everything else, she could have been a hydra in disguise and Ishiar wouldn't have been able to tell. Things made a little too much sense.

Especially that last part--a giant mythical monster that Cassandra could conveniently blame when only one of them came back.

"I think we should bring someone else with us," Ishiar said. "We have three rings. We should press the advantage."

"I'd love to, but you have to remember--we not only have to get Gairanda, but we have to transport her out. We can't assume she'll be able to defend herself, and even I can't fight all that well if I'm running through a forest carrying another person on my shoulder."

"We can bring Annelique. We grab Gairanda, put the ring on her, we three run, and Annie flies. Demons are shitty fliers--they'd never catch her."

Cassandra thought for a moment. "That's true..."

There was a long pause.

"...Well?" Ishiar asked.

"I'm just trying to measure the odds...they'll have equipment to bring Annelique down, because she's the one they expect to fight. They'll have nets, harpoons, crossbows, and possibly some dark angels...they, unlike most demons, are just as good of flyers as angels. And you can bet they'll be bringing the fastest they can get their hands on for exactly that reason."

"But will they have enough to beat Annelique in combat?"

"...I don't know. Just between you and me, I think she could fight her way out if worst came to worst, but that's the kind of assumption that you don't get a second chance to be wrong about," Cassandra said. "Honestly, I'd rather not have both of the Orchid's main targets in the same place at the same time--especially if the one they're prepared for is the one they can see."

"Can we at least see what she thinks about the idea?"

"I suppose, but don't go blurting it out right away. We don't want her flying off to get killed."

"...Whatever."

Meanwhile, Annelique herself was walking along the deck of the Starslicer, slowly pacing back and forth as something continued to gnaw at her. Her angelic instincts, once again giving her a formless warning...she felt like she needed to leave. But it wasn't just that...there was somewhere she needed to go. Somewhere specific.

Every time she tried to think of where it was, she got an image of Eronmar and of Gairanda--but that much was obvious enough. Of course Gairanda would be on her mind. But there was something...wrong about that interpretation. That wasn't it. But every time she tried to think of what else it could be, that's all she got.

She was pacing for an hour before it hit her.

Eronmar.

Not *just* Gairanda. Eronmar itself. That's where she needed to be.

She considered asking Cassandra to take them there, but she was seized with a strange sense of forboding any time she did...like a stormcloud hovering near her head.

But then, she had been feeling that a lot lately.

And it wasn't exactly hard to explain why. As far as Annelique knew, Aerothi was still using Eronmar as her headquarters. Landing the Starslicer in the middle of the fortress might be a tad suicidal.

Then again, Cassandra had already snuck them in once...

...and Annelique's mind stung her when she remembered her original plans for sneaking them back out again.

It felt like everyone had become suspicious of Cassandra. Only Elvet seemed unaffected; she seemed to trust her captain implicitly. That was what ultimately gave Annelique her faith in Cassandra's good intentions. If Elvet believed in her, so would she.

It was on that note that the doors leading below deck swung open, revealing Cassandra and Ishiar.

"Annie, we need to talk," Ishiar said.

"I know. I think I...well, I have this feeling about something we need to do."

Cassandra raised an eyebrow.

"What?" Ishiar asked.

"We need to go to Eronmar."

"Why?"

"I don't know."

"That's...not very convincing," Ishiar said. "You need to be sure. That's Aerothi's fortress, remember? The one we've all nearly died in at least once? Well, everybody except me..."

"Well, I--I know it's not really--I just--" she stammered for a moment. "You know, sometimes it's frustrating being an angel," she said as she ran her hand through her curly hair.

"You don't have any idea why?" Cassandra asked.

"It...I feel like it has something to do with Gairanda, but...it's not where she is. Or something. Like, she's not there, but we need to go there before we can find her."

"I don't mind telling you I'm a bit wary of this idea," Cassandra said. "On the other hand, your hunches tend to be right..."

"Can you sneak us in there?" Ishiar asked. "Without eating us this time?"

"Probably. The Starslicer has very solid stealth, and I can fill up on donuts before we get there," she said with an evil smile. "The question is, can you do whatever it is you're going to do there without getting killed."

"Um...I think so..." Annelique said. "I hope so..."

Cassandra drummed her fingers on her hips for a moment before responding. "Okay. I'll fly you there and watch your back. Just don't do anything that could be construed as courageous, alright?"

******
Step into my world, and maybe one of it's denizens...
http://www.sdcga.com/~duam9/
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Duamutef
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Chapter 24, Continued

Postby Duamutef » Wed Aug 19, 2009 8:22 pm

AND EVEN MORE!

******

(Chapter 24, continued)

******

The trip to Eronmar was quite short--so short that Annelique didn't actually know how long it was. Cassandra insisted that they both disguise themselves, and while she was a fast and sometimes reckless pilot, she was apparently a very slow and methodical disguise artist. Annelique was a little frightened when she looked in the mirror; her hair curled in the wrong direction, it crowned her head like a wave rather than simply framing her face, and it was suddenly reddish brown instead of black. Her wings were no longer white; they were striped in spots and ended in grey tips, more like a bird than an angel. Blush and makeup had been applied to her face, giving her cheeks a rosy appearance. That was probably the most disturbing thing. They had already been rosy, but now they were rosy *in the wrong place.* It was quite convincing--she saw all of those characteristics in angels at Golden Star Hall--but it shocked her slightly to see herself that way. She truly did look like a different person.

Cassandra was even more extreme. She apparently was only interested in making sure no one recognized her--she didn't seem to care how much attention she drew to herself. She had made herself up to look like some sort of voluptuous love-goddess, geared like a warrior but clearly intended to provoke a carnal response. She had not recolored her hair, but had pinned it up instead--that single act seemed to change her entire appearance from cocky pirate to regal noble--and she had removed her trademark black scale armor in favor of a blue adamant breastplate that was clearly padded to ridiculous proportions. (Annelique knew from sleeping with Cassandra that her breasts were NOT naturally capable of producing that kind of cleavage.) The breastplate vanished into a set of armored leggings that seemed almost strategically designed not to cover any of a girl's important curves. In fact, they seemed designed to accentuate them, and even take their place when necessary.

Ishiar was the first to comment on this. "Um, Cassandra," she said, "not that *I* mind, per se, and I'm certainly not eager to cater to your already enormous ego, but I think that outfit is going to cause everybody in the whole city to leak honey at prodigous rates. Don't you think it'd be better to go with something a little more...subtle?"

"Do I look like myself?" Cassandra asked as she applied a layer of ruby-red lipstick.

"Not really."

"And are you looking at Annie?"

"...No."

"Mission accomplished," Cassandra said with a flirtatious smile. She blew Ishiar a kiss before leading Annelique out of the room, every step bouncing with enthusiasm as though they were going on a date. Apparently she was just as comfortable reinventing her personality as she was her appearance.

They had been gone for less than a minute before Ishiar started cursing herself. She had let her guard down when Cassandra agreed to follow Annelique's suggestion, but now she realized it just meant that instead of going off alone with Cassandra herself, she had inadvertently let Annelique do it!

She scrambled out of the room, but made no attempt to intercept the pair that had just left--instead, she made all haste to the last place she had seen Blast. The skinny redhead was sitting cross-legged on a bench, listening to one of the new crewmembers tell stories about the last ship she had been on. (Apparently it had been eaten by a giant squid.)

"Blast," Ishiar said quickly, "can you make me look different?"

Blast simply stared back at her for a moment, but only for a moment--her lips quickly turned into a broad smile, and Ishiar suddenly felt like a mouse that had just asked a Naga for directions to the nearest toilet. Meeting Blast's gaze was like the mouse staring up at the Naga's eyes and realizing just what an incredibly stupid thing it had just done.

But it was too late. Blast was already nodding, and while the motion of her head was slow, it only seemed to intensify the incredible enthusiasm that Ishiar could feel like heat on her skin.

As Blast hopped off the bench and started pulling out beakers, Ishiar steeled herself for the mayhem she was sure she was about to experience.

******

Annelique really had no idea what she was looking for. She hated to admit to herself that all she was really doing was wandering the streets hoping something good would happen. If this aimlessness bothered Cassandra, however, she certainly wasn't showing it; she was wandering around flirting with everything that was capable of speech. Incredibly, no one ever took her up on it; she always had a way of making the idea seem horrible at the last minute. "Oh, my other lover is a Thaegon, I just wanted to make sure you were cool with that before we get home?"--"Oh, you are so gorgeous I could just eat you up! *sudden guilty look, followed by very quickly changing the subject*" "Sure, I'd love to see your place! You live alone, right? Yeah, I just figured we'd be more...*comfortable* that way. And, um, nobody ever comes to visit? It's just that I wouldn't want someone to walk in on us...also, just out of curousity...how big is your bathroom?" "Oh yes, please! I'd do anything to get away from my current girlfriend...she's *crazy.* And not 'throw a tantrum because you didn't fold the sheets' crazy, she's like 'I'll only burp you up if you solemnly swear to stop looking at other girls that way' crazy...I just hope she's not following me like she was last time..." "Oh, I don't think I've ever felt this way towards a Naga before. I just might be in love...heh, my grandmother freaks out every time I say that. What? Oh, it's just this crazy story about a curse, the last daughter of each generation being doomed to eat their first lover or something like that...just because my mom did doesn't mean everybody's going to! Jeez! No, I'm not the youngest, I'm an only child. Heh, no, I doubt I'll ever have a little sister, seeing as my mom got eaten by a giant clam. Why?"

There were so many stories and so much repartee that Annelique could barely focus on trying to figure out why she was there; it was all she could do not to stare at Cassandra. Not that it would have mattered much; it's what pretty much everyone else was doing. Which was probably not only Cassandra's intention, but a source of incredible personal satisfaction for her. For someone supposedly renowned for her stealth, she sure seemed to enjoy being in the spotlight.

She was so distracted trying not to look at Cassandra that she almost jumped out of her skin when Cassandra came to her, bearing news.

"I don't know if this is why you're here, but I just overheard that a monster called Gehenna is being held in a high security cell here in Eronmar."

"So?"

"So, the place that our little friends plan to stick our other little friend is in a spot where they figured they could count on having their privacy. They figured this on account of the fact that all of the locals were scared to death of a monster called Gehenna that supposedly prowled the region."

Annelique felt a little tingle. "You think we should check it out?"

"Yes. Yes I do."

******

Ishiar wasn't sure how to feel about the job Blast had done. Though she was thankful she still had arms, at least. And a head. Most of the rest of her had been changed into a gigantic snake's tail.

As it turns out, Blast had only fed her one potion, and it was fairly simple--if still a bit shocking. She hadn't been sure which was more disorienting--looking in the mirror and seeing a naga, or having all of the sensations of her legs vanish, replaced with a plethora of new ones; a seemingly endless tunnel of strange muscles rippling beneath skin shifting beneath slick scales as they slid along the ground. Within this strange mass was an unbelievably long stomach that stretched from where she figured her knees should have been and further back than she could really wrap her mind around. She had fallen over at first, thinking Blast had turned her lower half into a tree root or something. She got the hang of it quickly enough once she realized what had happened, but it was still very odd.

She was so busy looking back at her tail in shock that she didn't even notice Blast braiding her hair until she was halfway done. When she noticed she just let her work, letting her gaze settle in the mirror; she looked exactly as she had before, except that her hips now vanished into a naga's tail.

Blast didn't bother with makeup; she just produced a top hat from who knows where and pulled it down over Ishiar's head. That seemed strange enough, but Blast's hands didn't stop there. They dissected and removed Ishiar's clothing with frightening speed, replacing it with a single bow tie before Ishiar even had time to object.

"Hey, wait--I can't just go in there with my--"

Her arms shot up to cover her breasts. Even as they did, her eyebrow raised in the mirror.

"Wh...these were NOT that big..."

She looked down at Blast, who was sitting cross-legged on a nearby bench. She seemed to think she was done.

"Uh, Blast, I can't go out there like this. First of all, except for the tail, I still look like *me,* and second...I'm hanging out all over the place."

Blast looked indignant for a moment before grudgingly hopping off the bench and scampering into the next room.

"HEY!" Ishiar heard Ralier yell. "Not you too! Come back here with that! Don't think I won't eat you just because--"

Blast skipped back in with Ralier's bra and tied it around Ishiar's breasts. Ralier was hot on her heels, but she stopped short the second she saw Ishiar.

"I...uh...wow," she said. Her eyes were wide. "Um...welcome to the family?"

"Thanks," Ishiar said as Blast tied a dark cloth around her face, making her look like a masked bandit. A very ridiculous masked bandit, what with the top had and bow tie.

While she was still nervous about being recognized, she wasn't sure she wanted any more help.

"So...um...thanks, Blast. I guess I'll just go now..." she said. "Wish me luck..."

Blast gave her a thumbs up.

Ishiar slithered out of the room as best she could. As she was leaving, she heard Ralier make one final comment towards Blast.

"This is your fault, isn't it?"

Blast just giggled.

Since then Ishiar had ditched the top hat and bow tie, deciding they drew more attention than they were worth, but she grudgingly kept the makeshift mask. It may have been slightly suspicious, but less dangerous than someone seeing her face. In either case, once she caught up with Annelique and Cassandra, she still had to keep her distance. She didn't want to bet on Cassandra not recognizing her, and sure as hell didn't want to place her bets on Cassandra not realizing someone was following her, so she followed them entirely by the sounds they were making. Cassandra was making this fairly easy, since she was apparently trying to draw attention away from her angel companion by being as loud as possible. Or maybe she just saw it as another opportunity to be boisterous. In any case, they seemed to simply be wandering around the city. Ishiar actually had to double back or head down another street several times because they had randomly turned around and were heading towards her. They didn't seem to spot her...for a while, at least. She wasn't sure if it was because Cassandra had somehow noticed her, but both she and Annelique eventually went quiet. She couldn't hear Cassandra speaking to anyone. After a minute or two she chanced a look down the road they had been on; she glanced at them just in time to see them turning a corner. It was quite a ways away from her; far enough that they could be anywhere by the time she reached it.

"Shit!" she compulsively hissed to herself. Looking around and rifling through her mental map of the city, she did her best to improvise a shortcut that would give her a chance of catching up with them a bit...assuming they kept heading in the same direction. She started to slither as quickly as she could; it was faster than she had expected, but slower than her human body could run.

She turned through several streets and alleys, looking frantically for her quarry. She reached the end of her supposed shortcut and there was no sign of them. She was about to leave when she spotted them in the corner of her eye. They were heading down another street and into one of the stone-paved tunnels that led underground.

She recognized it well; it was the one that led to the dungeons.

"Cassandra, you whore, I knew it!" she growled to herself.

She reached for her sword, but her hands grasped nothing but air.

Then she remembered--she was wearing a kari's bra and half of a ninja mask. And nothing else. No sword, no scabbard, no belt. Her hips had nothing but skin and scales.

"DAMMIT!" she yelled.

Well, she *was* a Naga, as far as she knew...if all else failed, maybe she could just eat her.

Doing her best to push her new body along, she powered her way down the road towards the dungeon entrance.

******

Cassandra did the brunt of the work of talking their way into the dungeon, though ironically she was often honest--"I want to see if this Gehenna is really as scary as everybody says!" she would say, rubbing her hands together and fidgeting with excitement.

"Okay, it's your funeral," they would say. "Pity to let such a hot ass go to waste. Hell, if all you want is to get eaten, I can do that myself."

"Oh, you!"

It wasn't until they had nearly reached the cell block that Cassandra finally dropped her facade. "Wow," she said quietly. "I haven't had so many overt offers to eat me since I ran silver adamant for the Gurglemeisters."

The dungeon was about two thirds full, and only a handful of the prisoners were human. There were several large monsters, but one of them immediately stuck out simply because it seemed so...mutated. It was a massive creature that looked like a scorpion, a phoenix, a lion and a human had shared a bed for far too long. While most of the monsters were simply sulking or complaining about how hungry they were, this monster was spinning grandiose tales of her own exploits with broken, dishevelled speech.

This was, without question, Gehenna--if nothing else, the fact that she referred to herself in the third person made it pretty easy to tell.

In front of Gehenna's cell was an even stranger creature; a humanoid with smooth, light skin, a stark contrast to the raven-black hair that cascaded freely down it's shoulders. It practically vanished into the sheen of black silk that covered most of her body. Those parts which were not covered by the silken robe revealed a hint of a black leather bodice beneath. She had talons like glittering crystal and eyes that gleamed in a way that could best be described as unnatural. What was most unsettling, however, were the small black tendrils that wafted off of her, the most prominent being a large set coming out of her back that resembled wings of a sort. She was simply sitting quietly, not confined by any cell. She was completely motionless. Whether she was merely transfixed by Gehenna's stories was difficult to tell; her eyes were not particularly revealing, and her expression was calm and distant.

A few feet behind her, Annelique heard Cassandra whispering to the guard.

"Who's that?"

"The giant thing or the weirdo?"

"The weirdo."

"I don't know. They unlocked her a few hours ago and she's just been listening to the monster tell terrifying stories since then. I wish I could say the stories are exaggerated."

"What makes you say that?"

"That's Gehenna. Apparently *the* Gehenna."

"That's...odd..."

"Tell me about it. What I don't get is why they didn't just kill her."

"GEHENNA UNKILLABLE!" Gehenna yelled with a smile; it didn't seem defiant so much as proud. "Humans could kill stars before they could kill Gehenna!"

"It's interesting that you should say that," Annelique said. "The one who took you captive is trying to keep this planet from being eaten by a monster the size of a planet."

"Ahh...maybe that's why they capture Gehenna! They want Gehenna to hunt planet-eating monster for them!" Gehenna smiled again. "Gehenna like angel. Angel smell good. Angel come closer, Gehenna not hunt you today," the creature beckoned.

Annelique's heart fluttered nervously, but she took a few cautious steps towards the cell. She was almost as nervous about the monster's would-be companion, and she made sure to keep a fair distance between them.

"So, um, my name's--"

"*HI,* I'm Tanya and this is Rachel!" Cassandra interrupted rather loudly, bouncing over to where Annelique was. Annelique's breath almost caught in her throat as she realized she had almost told them her real name without even thinking.

"Human smell like perfume and makeup," Gehenna said. "Not as good as angel."

"Thanks, it's lilac!" Cassandra said with a stupefyingly ditzy smile.

"So what are your names?" Annelique asked.

"Gehenna!" the monster boomed.

"Liliandra," the strange person on the floor said plainly.

"Oh, you're--" Annelique started, before realizing she had no way to finish that sentence.

"...I'm what?" Liliandra asked, still motionless except for her eyes, which idly flicked towards Annelique.

"You're...um...Liliandra."

"Oh, Rache, you're so dumb!" Cassandra said with another ditzy smile, rubbing her knuckles into Annelique's head for emphasis.

"Thanks, *Tanya.*"

For a moment, Liliandra's gaze moved from Annelique to the guard. Then it returned to Annelique, and her lips pursed into a smile.

"Rachel..." she said, as if to herself. "You're a very pretty angel, Rachel."

"Th...thank you," Annelique said. "You're pretty too," she added, not sure whether she was telling the truth or not--the woman was a bit too unnerving to evaluate. She was like Ushan in a way--on the surface it had always seemed that she was physically beautiful, but she had always been too estranged by the fact that she was a succubus. And an eccentric succubus, at that.

Something about that thought stuck. And struck. As she looked at Liliandra, she realized she wasn't just reminded of Ushan by her odd nature; she actually looked like her. Her chin was less angular and her curves weren't quite so extreme, but overall she had many of the same features. Those that didn't still seemed eerily familiar, but not because they looked anything like Ushan. If anything, they reminded her of the faces she saw in Brightwind.

"Liliandra, d--do you...did you have a mother?"

"Many," Liliandra said. "Some in body, some in spirit."

"Which...who were the ones in body?"

"I never learned their names," Liliandra said, the slightest hint of sorrow in her otherwise inflectionless voice.

"Wh...do you know what they were?"

"In body, an angel and a succubus. In spirit, a warrior. Her name I remember, for it echoed within my egg like a song as I grew."

"...What was her name?"

"Ishiar."

Annelique bit her tongue.

"Is that why they tossed you in this cage? Shah! Rude!" Cassandra said.

"No...I was born in this cage," Liliandra said. "I was returned to it for reasons unknown to me, and released for reasons unknown to me."

"Maybe they scared of Liliandra, like they scared of Gehenna!" Gehenna said. "So scared they let her go!"

Liliandra's eyes narrowed in thought. "That would be a pleasant truth. But truth it is not. I proved inferior to their warriors."

"Warriors of this place strong," Gehenna said with a nod. "Warriors strong enough to hunt Gehenna must frighten Goddesses themselves. Maybe that why they put Gehenna deep underground; they afraid that if Goddesses see that mortals have defeated Gehenna, they will have to attack mortals, or run from mortals!"

Liliandra smiled.

"I...didn't know monsters knew about Goddesses," Annelique said.

"I totally didn't either!" Cassandra tittered. "Isn't that crazy?"

"Many Goddesses. I have heard many Goddesses names, as humans and monsters beg them to protect from Gehenna's hunt!" Gehenna made a set of sounds that were half laughter, half growl. "But Goddesses know better than to try to stop Gehenna!"

Annelique half-smiled. She knew she needed to talk to Liliandra, but she didn't want to do it in full view of the enemy.

"Uh, Liliandra...I'm glad you think I'm pretty...uh...would you like to...come back to my place?" she said in a way that was as unconvincing as it was awkward.

"Oooooo!" Cassandra sung coyly. "I hope I can come!"

Annelique meekly clung to the hope that Cassandra's acting skills were enough to make up for her own...

Liliandra looked unmoved; neither excited at the prospect, nor dismissive of it. In fact, her gaze was in the direction of the guards when she replied.

"I suppose," she said.

She rose with a strange, fluid grace--one Annelique had seen before. Now there could be no doubt--if all she had seen were a silhouette, she would have sworn it was Ushan herself. Even her posture was the same; the way she held herself on one leg, allowing the other to rise as though she were lying on her back, beckoning a lover to her.

But the white skin and black tendrils reminded her very firmly...this was *not* Ushan. While she felt a kinship with her, she was also a little bit...afraid of her.

"Come back soon," Gehenna said. "Gehenna wants to eat jailors much less when Liliandra here."

"Yeah, come back soon," one of the guards said. "Because I think she's got a point."

*****

Ishiar was almost flabbergasted that no one had tried to arrest her. She had been caught by several guards, asking what she was doing.

"Uh...going down to the dungeon?" she had said, for lack of a better idea.

Somehow that seemed to be good enough. They all seemed to have their own little bizarre responses, though, ranging from "alright, but don't touch anything" to "okay, but be warned, it actually is *the* Gehenna, so don't do anything stupid." She vaguely suspected Cassandra had given them stupid pills of some sort, but she wasn't about to complain.

Though this gave her more or less free reign, Ishiar had been wandering around the dungeon for entirely too long by the time she finally heard Annelique's voice. Following it, she ended up heading towards the deepest part of the dungeon. Strangely, she seemed to be having a normal conversation--she wasn't cursing Cassandra for betraying her or anything.

She decided to remain hidden; she just waved to the guards on her side of the door and they nodded, not seeming to care when she moved next to one of them so she could hear what was going on inside. It was largely nonsense to her; she seemed to have arrived a bit too late in the conversation. It grabbed her attention quite firmly when she heard her name, however:

"...What was her name?" Annelique had said.

"Ishiar," an unfamiliar voice replied.

She was suddenly seized with an almost irresistable curiousity as to who was on the other side of that doorway, but she wasn't willing to reveal herself to Cassandra--not yet. Though it seemed she hadn't stabbed Annelique in the back yet, Ishiar figured she would feel a lot better knowing Annelique had made the entire round trip.

Soon Annelique had asked the stranger--"Liliandra"--to come back with them. Ishiar headed down the hallway and turned a side corner, not wanting Cassandra to see her as they left. For the guards' sake she did it as casually as she could, but she still hustled.

She turned the corner and waited. She heard the sounds of the others leaving. She waited a few more moments before coming down the hallway again.

"Are they gone?" she whispered to one of the guards.

"As far as I know. Why?"

"Ex-girlfriend," Ishiar replied. She glanced into the prison; neither Annelique nor Cassandra were there. She started heading back up to the city, hoping to get back to the Starslicer before Cassandra did--or at least before she took off.

She didn't make it far. The second she reached a hallway that was out of earshot of the guards, she got jumped from behind--literally. Someone leapt onto her back, wrapping their legs around her waist and using one arm to wrap around both of hers, them back. One of her attacker's hands gripped her hair and pulled it back even as the other brought the point of a dagger up to Ishiar's throat. She flailed around with her tail and her arms, but her struggles were basically useless--her tail couldn't do much to someone who was already clinging to her back, and both of her arms were pinned to one extent or another. As she squirmed she felt the dagger being pushed into her throat and she grudgingly stopped.

She heard a voice just as she recognized the smell of lilac perfume.

"Ishiar?" Cassandra said from behind her.

"Cassandra, I presume?" Ishiar grunted from beneath her grip.

Cassandra got off of her, looking at her in what seemed to be genuine bewilderment.

"Wow...What the fuck?" she said, her eyes darting back and forth between Ishiar's body and her tail. She knelt down to poke at it. "This thing's real!" she said, half chuckling. "Who the hell did *this?*"

Just then, Ishiar heard Annelique's voice, coming from a nearby stairwell.

"Is that Ishiar? What's going on?"

Annelique came trotting down the stairs. She didn't seem surprised at all when she saw Ishiar.

"Who's that?" she asked.

Cassandra sighed--amused as much as anything else--and pulled down Ishiar's mask with one finger.

Annelique's jaw dropped and she almost fell backwards. "Ishiar!?"

"Yes," Ishiar said, a hint of frustration in her voice as she glanced back at Cassandra.

Annelique jogged over, looking at her body in obvious astonishment. "W--what happened to you?"

"Let's just say my disguise artist's methods differed from yours."

"Your disguise artist?" Annelique said in an absurd tone. "Who are you even--" She stopped. "Blast did this, didn't she."

"Blast?" Cassandra repeated. "Blast turned you into a naga," she said incredulously, turning to Ishiar.

"Yes," Ishiar said. "You wouldn't be surprised if you had been around her for as long as we have. In retrospect I'm lucky I still have a face."

"True enough--if you hadn't, I probably would have killed you," Cassandra said.

"How did you know it was me so fast, anyway?" Ishiar asked. "You obviously didn't know when you attacked me, unless you were just doing it for funsies."

Cassandra rapped her knuckles on the kari-shell bra she had "borrowed" from Ralier. "This sort of struck me as familiar. Then I got a better look at your hair, which made me lean a bit closer...and that's when I realized you were wearing one of my nightshirts on your face."

"Figures..." Ishiar said.

"That's really sharp work, though," Cassandra said. "Have you been following us this whole time? I honestly had no idea. And that's *hard.*"

"Well, I knew you'd recognize me anyway, so I just followed your voices..."

"Good call. That's one of the things I train my crew to do...Marion could pick out a whispering pixie at a Ruby Chord rock concert," Cassandra said. "Pity she got eaten by one of Mnokugura's little fucking death monsters..." she added with a tinge of annoyance.

Suddenly, all three girls turned as Liliandra's voice came from the end of the hall.

"Mother..." she said. She was standing next to the stairway Annelique had come from, staring at Ishiar.

Ishiar looked back at her. "So you're the one who they were talking to in there."

Liliandra had a very different look on her face now; she seemed childlike. Innocent. Almost...vulnerable.

"I...didn't think I would ever see you," she said.

"Wait a minute. You..." Ishiar's voice became quiet. "...you're Ushan's daughter."

"You know her name..." Liliandra said with a faint smile. "Ushan..."

"How do you know her?" Annelique asked emphatically.

"I don't, but...look at her," Ishiar said. "She's..."

She stopped.

"What?"

"I...hell, I dunno. Lucky guess, I guess..."

"Well, she does look a lot like her," Annelique said.

"Yeah, but I didn't even realize that until after I said it," Ishiar said. She had a strange look on her face, as though she was unnerved by her own reaction. "And she's definately not a succubus."

"Yeah...what exactly are you?" Cassandra asked.

Liliandra looked down. She raised one hand, studying her fingers and their shining talons. She closed her eyes and felt along her back; the ethereal black wings that had been there before had vanished. The two enigmas that she felt were uniquely hers, even if she did not understand them.

When she opened her eyes again, they seemed distant, as though she was contemplating something. A warm smile came to her lips, and her arms moved across her as though she were embracing herself as she answered:

"I am Ushan's daughter."

As they looked at her, they realized she wasn't being facetious or evasive; if anything, she was relishing that moment, as though she was discovering it for the first time herself.

And indeed she was.

"Okay...so are we done here, then?" Cassandra said plainly.

"Yes, I think so," Annelique said with a smile. "Welcome to our family, Liliandra."
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Re: Official Shells Thread (Chapter 23 AND 24, Whee! 8/19/09)

Postby Duamutef » Wed Aug 19, 2009 8:33 pm

Ironically, it's the *next* chapter that has the most Winny in it so far, but I don't want to completely deluge everybody, especially considering how fracking long chapter 24 is...
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Re: Official Shells Thread (Chapter 23, 8/06/09! YEARGHBLE!)

Postby oldman40k2003 » Thu Aug 20, 2009 1:24 am

Hmmmmmm...
Winny wrote:...begins pokeing the vore god.- *poke poke*

results in
Duamutef wrote:
More what? Well...maybe I should just show you.

******

CHAPTER 24! YAY!

******



So poking Duamutef with a stick results in new chapters? We must test this hypothesis... for SCIENCE! (And more shell chapters.)
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Re: Official Shells Thread (Chapter 23 AND 24, Whee! 8/19/09)

Postby wsensor » Sat Aug 22, 2009 5:09 pm

aaah Duam's site doesn't load up anymore the horror
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Re: Official Shells Thread (Chapter 23 AND 24, Whee! 8/19/09)

Postby Duamutef » Sat Aug 22, 2009 11:46 pm

wsensor wrote:aaah Duam's site doesn't load up anymore the horror


I know...but I hadn't gotten around to uploading chapter 24 there anyway. You folks were the first to get it.

That's how much I love you.

Also, I'm lazy.
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Chapter 25

Postby Duamutef » Mon Aug 24, 2009 11:49 pm

That's right! More! MORE! EAT IT! EEAAAAAAATTT IIIIIIIITTTTTT!!!

******

Chapter 25

******


The group had little trouble leaving Eronmar. Ishiar was glad. The whole naga thing was becoming very unsettling--she increasingly found herself with urges to coil around people and do hitherto unspeakable things to them that almost always involved unhinging her jaw. She was already paranoid of any every emotion she felt towards Cassandra, but the fact that she suddenly looked absolutely delicious was making her nervous for entirely different reasons.

They were all following her when she went below to find Blast. Or, rather, Liliandra was following her, apparently out of some strange fascination, whereas everyone else was following Liliandra for largely the same reason.

"Blast?" she said with relief as she found the skinny redheaded girl sitting in exactly the same spot that she had been in when she left.

Blast looked up. She looked over curiously at Liliandra for all of two seconds, then turned back to Ishiar.

"We're okay," Ishiar said. "I need you to change me back now."

Blast raised her eyebrows and pursed her lips. Before long her eyes darted away nervously and her lip vanished beneath her teeth.

"Blast?" Ishiar said again, watching her shift uncomfortably on the bench. "Blast? You *can* change me back, right?"

Blast looked at her and shrugged apologetically.

"...What's that supposed to mean?" Ishiar said.

Blast reached for her belt and withdrew a fistful of empty vials, shaking them for emphasis as she pointed to several empty pouches on her belt.

"So...you could, but you need more stuff?"

"I wouldn't advise that," Kaboom said as she abruptly strolled into the room. "Bee has a tendency to get a little too creative when she's trying to do something that specific."

"Why? I thought you could make just about anything," Ishiar said, looking at Blast.

"Oh no," Kaboom said, shaking her head. "She doesn't have any sort of potion books or anything. Nor would she read them if she did. What she *does* have is a transcendant talent for making shit up as she goes along. That's great *most* of the time. But when you get picky, things get dangerous."

"You've got to be kidding."

"Nope. She once turned me into a mermaid, and it took us months to find a potion that turned me back into a faerie."

"But you did find one?"

"Well, you have to understand. This wasn't exactly a matter of diligent research or scouring the jungle for rare and exotic ingredients. This was Bee throwing junk in a jar and ramming it down my throat every day. To make a long and delightfully chaotic story short, yes, we did find one--after a LOT of VERY INTERESTING trial and error. I thought it was a blast--no pun intended--but you might not enjoy that kind of experimentation quite as much. Especially the day I got turned into a whole herd of garden snakes. That was weird even for me. And the day I was a girlcrunch plant...damn near ate her every time she tried to give me a new potion. In fact, I think I might have once or twice. My memories of the plant incarnations are a bit, uh, hazy..."

"Well, it's not like we don't have a witness," Ishiar said. "Blast, did Kaboom ever eat you while you were trying to turn her back into a faerie?"

Blast rolled her eyes and nodded.

"How many times?"

Blast held up six fingers. Then she paused for a moment, thought back, and eventually raised two more.

"Ooo," Kaboom said. "I hope I didn't digest you too bad or anything."

Blast shrugged.

"Okay, so I'm guessing unless we feel like becoming fertilizer for Ishiar's beautiful green petals, there won't be a lot of shape changing until we find someone more reliable," Cassandra said.

"Wait a minute. I'm not sure you realize what you're suggesting here," Ishiar said. "You're suggesting I *stay* a naga."

"No, I'm suggesting you *not* turn into something worse," Cassandra said. "We were all glad you still have a face, so let's keep it that way."

"Look, Cassandra, this is not natural. Even as we speak, I have this overwhelming urge to coil you up and stuff you into this thing," Ishiar said, pointing an accusing finger at her own tail. "I don't think there's any possible way that could end well."

"We can find you someone to eat," Cassandra said. "Where's Winny?"

"HEY!" came Winny's voice, seemingly from out of nowhere.

Cassandra laughed.

Annelique nervously twirled her hair on one finger. "Um...well, I'm still immortal, so she could eat me, I guess..."

Ishiar was about to say something when a loud, rumbling growl erupted from her tail.

"Shut up, you!" she said to it. "You're not the boss of me!"

It responded with a low, deep gurgle.

Her eyelids batted up and down in frustration as she looked back and forth between it and Annelique, seeming genuinely torn and obviously very hungry.

"...Shut up, you," she finally said again.

"We need Annie," Cassandra said. "Besides, with as powerful as you two are becoming, she could take all year to digest. Or you could end up digesting her clean out of the spacetime continuum. If we're gonna take that kind of risk, we may as well do it with one of Aerothi's cronies." She paused. "Or Winny."

"Shut UP!" came Winny's voice.

"Oh, what are you so worried about? You know you'd love it. I bet right now you're imagining what it would be like to slither 'round inside that hot, powerful tail..."

"I'll kill you."

"Oh, whyever would you do that?"

"Look, Ishiar is cute and all, but Ishiar's *shit* is not. So if I want to stay cute myself, I need to stay outside of Ishiar."

Cassandra laughed again. "Oh, you're a survivor, Winny. I have complete faith in you. Go right ahead and indulge yourself. Don't worry, I won't tell anybody. I won't even look. Go on."

"Dangit, I do NOT want to be eaten!"

"WHERE is her voice coming from?" Annelique said, jerking her head around in frustration.

"Annie!" Winny suddenly said. "Annie, I need you to do a favor for me! I need you to slap Cassandra in the face as hard as you can!"

"She's just doing this to try to get to you," Annelique replied.

"I know, and she's succeeding! That's why I need you to slap her!"

Cassandra cackled wickedly. "Oh, Winny, you're so much fun to have around. I should have hired you sooner."

"Stab you in the eyes. I will STAB YOU. IN THE EYES. A LOT."

"Totally worth it," Cassandra replied.

"I WILL FIND A SPELL TO MAKE YOU GROW MORE EYES SO I CAN STAB THEM! AND I'LL GET A GREAT BIG OL' CUSTOM EYE-STABBING THING SO I CAN STAB THEM ALL AT ONCE! YOU WILL HAVE *NINE HUNDRED* EYEBALLS! ALL GETTING STABBED! ALL THE TIME!"

Winny's voice was echoing in the small space of the room--with her voice so loud, it actually sounded like she was yelling from somewhere inside the walls. Several places, really.

"Where does she come up with this stuff?" Ishiar said.

"The question you should be asking is 'has she actually followed through on any of this stuff at least once before?'" Cassandra said.

"You've got to be joking."

"NINE HUNDRED!" Winny yelled.

Cassandra nudged Ishiar. "Interested in a wager as to how long she keeps going?" she said quietly.

"AND ONCE I'VE STABBED THEM A MILLION TIMES EACH I'LL STITCH THEM ALL OPEN AND GET SOME REALLY SMELLY DEMON TO PUKE BILE INTO 'EM AND THEN I'LL RUB IT IN WITH A RAG THAT HAS STEEL SHAVINGS IN IT AND THEN I'LL FEED YOU TO THE DEMON AND THEN I'LL FEED THE DEMON TO A DRAGON AND THEN I'LL FEED THE DRAGON TO AN EVEN BIGGER DRAGON! AND THEN I'LL STAPLE IT'S ASS SHUT SO YOU'LL BE STUCK IN THERE FOREVER AND EVER!"

"And how do you plan to survive stapling a giant dragon's ass shut?" Cassandra said.

"IT WILL BE COMPENSATED HANDSOMELY!"

"That's...actually a pretty clever answer," Cassandra replied. "But bribed or not, it would still need to shit eventually."

"IT COULD SHIT EVERYTHING ELSE! JUST NOT YOU!"

"Or the demon, or the other, smaller dragon. That's a lot of real estate for one ass. I'm not sure you could afford it."

"I WOULD FIND A WAY."

"I think my ears are gonna catch fire if I keep listening to this," Ishiar said.

Cassandra laughed. "I never said Winny wasn't talented. She just needs to learn to stop being so *touchy!*"

"Eyes. Nine hundred. Stabbed. A million times." Winny said. "Entire sagas will be written about the eye stabbing."

Cassandra reached into one of the nearby drawers and pulled out a pair of sunglasses. Slipping them over her eyes, she confidently declared "I'm ready. Bring it on."

Ishiar looked strained. "Listen, guys, I hate to interrupt your witty reparte, but I'm pretty sure my self-control won't last through nine million eye stabbings."

"Nine hundred million, technically," Winny said. "One million stabbings times nine hundred eyes--"

Cassandra's hand suddenly shot out like a snake and she practically ripped open one of the drawers. Her other hand descended into it just as quickly, grabbing something that appeared to be covered in clothing.

"GOTCHA!" she bellowed.

"ACK!" Winny squacked as she squirmed beneath Cassandra's iron grip.

"What the--how did she get in there?" Annelique asked.

"Probably phasing magic. Or tunneled in from behind. So are you gonna come out, or do I have to yank you through the wood?"

"I'll come out, I'll come out! Jeez!"

Cassandra let go and a little black shoe emerged from the pile of clothes, only to disappear again. Strangely, a second drawer seemed to shift as it did, before Winny finally half-stepped and half-fell out of a nearby closet on another side of the room.

"That's a neat trick," Cassandra said.

"Not neat enough, apparently," Winny said, straightening out her dress and brushing it off.

"Anyways, back to business. Into Ishiar you go."

"I'll fucking kill you," Winny said. There was actually a gun in her hand this time--Cassandra's gun, no less.

"So THAT'S where that went. Why am I not surprised. I'll tell you what. You give it back now and maybe you *won't* end up on Ishiar's dinnerplate tonight."

"I'm not eating Winny," Ishiar said.

"You're hurting my bargaining position," Cassandra said.

Winny apparently didn't need the encouragement anyway--she was already tossing the weapon back to Cassandra. She caught it deftly with one hand, then gave Winny a stern look. "Now what do you say?" she asked.

"What?"

"What do you say?"

"About Ishiar not eating me?"

"No. What do you say after you steal something from someone?"

"Um...neener neener neener?"

"Guess again."

"Uh...'Hi, my name is Cassandra?'"

"No, we say we're sorry, don't we?" Cassandra said. "Or we end up being fed to SOMEBODY, even if it's not Ishiar. And it might just be Ishiar, if you're both locked in the same room for long enough."

"You're just unbelievably moist over the idea of seeing me get devoured, aren't you?" Winny said. "And you call *me* the pervert."

"You know, you might just convert me," Cassandra said, mischievously nibbling her fingertips. "But I'd have to see you do it to know for sure."

"Not gonna happen. That's not the only gun I stole."

"Oh, I know."

"But after this treatment you can be damn sure it's the only one I'm gonna give back. If you get back any of the rest, it will be one bullet at a time."

"I think you're underestimating the rate of fire on some of those things," Cassandra said. "But I get your point. You're cranky because you've had to spend the last few days hiding in the walls for fear that I would destroy you for stealing my favorite gun. And also because I've been mocking you relentlessly since the day we met. And you haven't been paid."

"I was afraid to come out of the walls long enough to bring it up, but yeah, there is that."

"Well, you do have a locker, just like the rest of my crew. And that's where I stash everybody's pay when they're not around, including yours. And if you hadn't vanished on day one, you would have gotten the key a lot sooner. Instead you vanished."

"Into yet another one of your crew. Even now I'm concerned that coming out of the walls was a bad idea."

"Technically Ralier is a client by proxy, not a crewmember."

"But you still let her eat me."

"I got you *out,* remember?"

Winny scowled harshly. "...You win this round, corsair."

"Everyone wins when I'm involved," Cassandra said, tossing a small locker key to Winny. "Except the people I don't want to win."

"Have you ever considered changing your title to 'Cassandra the Avatar of Raw Seething Hubris?'"

"Oh, Winny, when have you ever known me to understate things like that?"

"If you thought it would bug me, you would."

"You should be honored. Very few get such personalized attention."

"If you were giving me sex, I might like that kind of personal attention. But what I'm currently receiving? The whole relentless harassment thing? That's not so appealing," Winny said indignantly.

"So you're saying all you really need is some warm, tender make-up sex?"

Winny looked indignant, but also looked like she wasn't sure how to answer.

"...I suspect that question is a trap," she finally said.

"In my case, maybe," Cassandra said. "But I bet Annelique would be all over you. In the good way."

"Bullshit," Winny said. "She--wait." She looked at Annelique. "I just realized I barely even know you. Would you actually do that?"

Annelique blushed, suddenly uncomfortable. She didn't really want to blurt out the fact that, if she thought it would make Winny happy, she probably would. She looked around nervously, biting her lip.

"That's a good question," Cassandra said. "Would you do that for just anybody?"

The question became that much more complicated as Annelique realized she might have been asking whether she would choose Winny over her.

In the end, she just threw caution to the wind and walked over to Winny. Crouching down and giving her a kiss, she put her arms around her shoulders and said "what can I say? I'm an angel. I can't help it."

"Nor would you even if you could," Cassandra said, a surprisingly genuine smile gracing her face for a moment. It was only for a moment, however. It seemed having a genuine emotion for once was a bit too much for her face, and with a twitch it was replaced with a cautious, half-assed grin, the look in her eyes intensely uncomfortable.

"W...what's wrong, Cassandra?" Annelique said.

"Wrong? There's something wrong with Cassandra? I want to hear about this!" Winny said.

"I...just remembered there's some ugly business to attend to," she said, looking over to Ishiar.

Ishiar returned her somber look. "I still think we should bring her," she said, looking over at Annelique.

"Take...me...what?" Annelique said, bewildered.

"You still haven't told her?" Ishiar asked.

"No, because I still think it's a bad idea," Cassandra said flatly.

"Cassandra--"

"Ishiar, I'm not an idiot. Don't pretend like I don't know what this is about. You still don't trust me. Which...fuck, whatever. That's fine. Don't. It's probably a bad idea anyway. I'll just...I'll just fucking go myself. That way everybody's safe."

"Even you?" Ishiar asked.

"No, Ishiar. For your information, I am not immortal, unlike some people in this room," Cassandra said. There was a distinct tinge of anger in her voice--almost resentment. "Strategically I'd be much better off having you with me, because they'll have brought all the firepower they think they need to take down Annelique, and I don't want to deal with *all* that myself. But you're going to be second guessing me the whole time. That will be a burden on us both."

"Wait, I never said--"

"Just shut up," Cassandra said curtly, to the shock of pretty much everyone in the room. "You've said everything. You just haven't said it with your mouth. You were following me down the streets of Eronmar, for fuck's sake. You think I don't know why? I'll be fighting alone whether you come with me or not. So I don't see the fucking point. I'll go by myself or take somebody else."

Ishiar was momentarily speechless--speechless for long enough that Cassandra had time to turn and walk out of the room.

******

There was an almost morbid atmosphere on the deck as the Starslicer sat in a small clearing, having left Cassandra to her dangerous errand. Part of Ishiar had wanted to argue with her, and part figured this was the perfect solution. Now it was moot; she was long gone. Annelique was frustrated and frightened. She had no idea what was going on, and nobody seemed willing to tell her. The others were in roughly the same position; they all sensed the tension, but nobody knew what was causing it; nobody but Ishiar and Cassandra.

As the latter stomped off into the jungle canopy, there was nothing but a heavy silence.

Several minutes passed, everyone too nervous to be the first one to say anything. Everyone, that is, except Annelique.

"Ishiar, tell me what is going on," she said.

Ishiar sighed. "There...isn't much I can safely say out loud. I don't know who might be listening."

Somehow the reply made Annelique feel sick.

"Does *anybody* know what's happening?" Ralier said.

"Must have had some sort of tiff with Elvet," Winny said.

"Cassandra thinks I don't trust her," Ishiar said. "She's right."

"Why?" Annelique asked.

Ishiar didn't answer. She was strapping weapons on.

"Why? What's going on? What are you doing!?" Annelique said frantically.

"She tried to lure me into that forest alone," Ishiar said darkly. "But I didn't go with her."

"So? So what?"

"So...Liliandra did."

"Wait, when?"

"Winny saw her sneak off after Cassandra almost as soon as she left."

"You're welcome," Winny said as she stood across the deck, munching on an apple and not seeming too perturbed by the whole situation.

"We have no idea what Cassandra really doing out there," Ishiar said. "I don't plan to wait around until she rearranges things to bring the ambush to us, and I'm not going to take the chance that she might catch Liliandra. "

Ralier broke in at this point. "But--you barely know that...whatever the hell she is! To be perfectly honest, she looks an awful lot like a demon. Why would you trust her any more than Cassandra?"

"She's my daughter! I don't give a damn about the details!" Ishiar snapped.

"What makes you think she's really your daughter?"

Ishiar gave her a frustrated glare. "Look, Annie's not the only one who ever gets to care about someone they don't know," she said, her voice heavy. "Ushan loved me and she died before she ever really got to say it. I feel that every time I look at her. She doesn't care that she doesn't know me, so why should I? She..." Ishiar stopped. "If Cassandra thinks she can just..."

"You really think she'd lead Liliandra into a trap?" Annelique said. "She doesn't know who she is any better than we do."

"Cassandra is a master of secrets. I'm sorry--can't waste any more time. Listen--I can't say what's going on. Just...whatever you do, don't follow me. It would be really bad."

She began to slither into the forest. Annelique simply stood there, feeling sicker than ever.

******

Gairanda had been in something resembling she figured must have resembled a coma for entirely too long now. She felt like her body was so far away she couldn't even claim ownership of it anymore. She even wondered if she was dead. And if so, she knew exactly who's fault it was.

Unfortunately, there wasn't a hell of a lot she could do. She had been stuck wandering from one ethereal landscape to another for days, or weeks. She didn't even know. She fitfully awoke, but never for longer than the briefest of moments; just long enough to catch a glimpse of a demon's face, the feeling of manacles on her as she laid on a cold floor, or hands clamped around her arms as they hauled her from one place to another.

She had almost given up hope when she suddenly felt a tug at her mind, like something reaching out of the ether looking for her. It quickly turned into a tug on her "body," as though someone was trying to physically pull her out of the dreamworld.

At first she thought it might be Elvet, but that didn't last long. This...thing was definately not her. It had none of her gentle subtlety. As it pulled it suddenly felt like it was trying to engulf her, as though it was pulling her into another realm altogether--like a ghost trying to drag her into the ephemeral space where it's warm belly waited.

She tried to struggle, but she didn't have anything to struggle with. There was nothing to hold on to; the misty realm she was in simply melted as she was pulled, and she felt the strange creature pour itself all around her, covering her like a blob of muscle. She felt it's form begin to shrink and constrict, but it was not crushing her--instead it seemed to simply push into her from all directions as though her skin was nothing but air. She couldn't even tell if it absorbing her or she was absorbing it. Suddenly she started to feel another presence welling up inside her, pushing it's way into her from the inside just as the other was from the outside. This one seemed very different; it was somehow wet, pulsing, like a giant organ. She felt hard rods and shapes emerge, feeling as though they were pushing through her spirit like it was a wet membrane. Their shape and configuration seemed almost designed to inspire horror; they felt almost exactly like a human skeleton.

Then she realized it was.

The instant she felt the heat of the strange creature completely permeate her, she realized her senses were no longer describing some strange dreamscape. She was in her own body, still drooping but being held up by two pairs of strong arms. Her spirit was still only half-tethered to it, but somehow it was firmly and unswervingly anchored to this...thing, and it in turn had anchored itself to her body. It was like it had consumed her soul and possessed her body in a way that had somehow left her mind intact.

But her mind wasn't alone. This thing's presence was unmistakeable...it was at one with her, watching her, maybe even manipulating her--she had no way to know.

"What are you?" she silently asked.

It did not answer her question, but she still sensed a reply. A voice that seemed to fill both her and the strange presence inside her with a terrible rage.

Cassandra.

******

Cassandra didn't bother with the Orchid snipers or the ambush party a hundred meters from the meeting site, but she knew they were there. She also knew about the group that was thirty meters away; standard procedure for catching fleeing enemies. She didn't even have to look to know where they would be. They would be exactly where she herself would have put them.

She was only mildly surprised by one thing; the sight of Gairanda, alive and well--albeit unconscious.

She was being held up by a set of demonette warriors at the back of a small clearing in the forest. Almost the entire clearing was encircled by Orchid demonettes and succubi. A single massive Thaegon stood in one corner, idly shouldering a quad-bladed axe. Near the back the clearing, just in front of Gairanda and her keepers, was a succubus clad in robes of blue and gold.

"Huh." Cassandra said flatly. "I thought you would have killed her by now."

"We may still need her for leverage," the succubus said, her voice smooth and calm. "Where are your...'companions'?"

"They aren't buying it. They've decided I'm setting them up."

Bataen shook her head. "Cassandra, I held you in much higher esteem than that," she replied. "You were a much more skilled deceiver in my mind...pity. What shall we do with the Ironbelly now?"

"You'll unhand me," Gairanda growled.

The succubus looked back at her curiously. "Is our little friend cognizant once again? Pity that can't last."

With surprising force, Gairanda practically threw off the demonette who was holding her right arm. The second she literally did throw, grabbing her hair with one hand and flinging her head over heels as she tried--unsuccessfully--to cling to Gairanda's arm. As the demonette crashed to the ground, Gairanda fixed her gaze on the succubus.

"I am Gairanda Hellanna, Ironbelly liaison to the Kikagon court of the Blood Fane," she said, menace filling her voice. "You are forbidden from holding me prisoner, Bataen of the Leerin Court."

Bataen raised an amused eyebrow. "Then feel free to be on your way, liaison," she said, stepping to one side and gesturing towards Cassandra.

"You..." Gairanda said, glaring at her with eyes that were orbs of pure black, whisping with ethereal smoke.

"What about me?" Cassandra said guardedly, her own expression slightly hostile.

"You know damn well!" Gairanda hissed. Walking up to one of the other succubi, she wrapped her fist around the handle of it's sword. "Gimme that!" she yelled as she yanked it out of it's holster and shoved the succubus to one side, practically knocking her to the ground.

"Well, you seem to have regained your bearing," Cassandra said. "Care to explain?"

"I don't know, and I don't care," Gairanda said, smoke practically writhing it's way up her forehead. "All I care about is gutting you, eating you, and leaving you as fertilizer for the ugliest tree I can find."

"You don't know what you're getting into, Ironbelly," Cassandra said as she drew her sword. "The only way you'll live through this is if Bataen is smart enough to stop you."

"I'm afraid I cannot," Bataen said. "As liaison to a court that is formally recognized by my own, we must allow her free passage if she wills it...unless she commits a crime against us. Since you have done so much do advance our interests, attacking you might qualify as such an act."

Cassandra glared at her for a moment.

Bataen simply smiled. "But *until* she does so, I'm afraid I cannot intervene. I'm sure you understand."

"Let's just get this over with," Cassandra muttered.

"Gladly," Gairanda growled before charging headlong at Cassandra. Cassandra deflected her blade and moved to throw her off her feet, but Gairanda grabbed her right back. Their limbs entwined for a moment before they both withdrew. Cassandra made a feint before twisting her blade behind her back and making a stab, but Gairanda didn't react to the feint and merely sidestepped, swinging for Cassandra's neck. Cassandra moved and spun with lightning speed, bringing her swordarm up and stopping the attack with the haft of her blade. She shifted her stance to bring her second hand onto the hilt and moved to smash Gairanda with the pommel of her sword, but Gairanda stepped into her, shoving at her arms with one hand and attempting to bring her own blade straight up into Cassandra's neck. Cassandra jerked her torso backward, kicking off of Gairanda's knee and turning her sudden headlong retreat into a shallow sommersault that left the two combatants out of range again.

Cassandra moved into a cautious offensive, strafing towards Gairanda with her sword held up in a neutral stance. When she came in range she suddenly surged forward, twirling her blade backwards and away from Gairanda even as she kicked the bottom of Gairanda's blade. As her foot drove it upward, her own blade was finishing it's twirl and rising for an attack. It cleaved upward into the side Gairanda's chest. She grimaced and twirled her own blade into a reverse hold, trying to make a downward stab, but her position was too awkward. Cassandra spun around and sent her leg smashing into Gairanda's knees, nearly knocking her down. It was clear she had not expected Gairanda to stay upright, however, as she was not prepared for the immediate counterattack--Gairanda attempted another downward stab which plunged cleanly into Cassandra's shoulder.

"AUGHFfff..." Cassandra yelped, as much out of embarassment as in pain. She fired a ferocious punch into Gairanda's midsection as she stood up, but this didn't move the stout Ironbelly warrior either. Gairanda responded with a punch of her own, which Cassandra almost--but not quite--dodged. The blow sent her staggering back as she stood up, and she barely deflected the series of attacks Gairanda had launched in the meantime. Once she had recovered her balance, however, the tide quickly turned. Cassandra changed her tactics, staying away from Gairanda and doing everything she could to turn the fight into a contest of pure swordplay. Gairanda suffered a series of vicious slashes and stabs before she realized she could not stand up to Cassandra blade for blade, and she once again moved in and tried to move the battle back to one of physical strength. Cassandra had learned her lesson, however, and she was simply too nimble for Gairanda to pin down. Even so, strain was visible on her face--this wasn't the kind of combat she liked, where she won quickly and effortlessly. She had to work for every strike and Gairanda was making her pay for every mistake. And when Gairanda took a hit, it didn't even seem to matter--she just kept coming at her. It stayed that way for a long time. But as that time passed, it became more and more clear: Cassandra was the superior fighter. Slowly but surely, Gairanda's movements became more labored, and more and more attacks started to get through her defenses. The blood began to seep from Gairanda's wounds, her injuries started to get deeper, and a look of desperation began to grow in her eyes.

She knew she was dying.

At last, a twirling slash through Gairanda's chest staggered her enough that she couldn't hold her guard up. Cassandra launched into her with a merciless storm of attacks, her every motion delivering a kick, a punch, an elbow, or a blade. The flurry didn't stop until Gairanda fell to her knees, clutching her sword for support for only a moment before dropping it and holding herself off the ground with a pair of shaking arms.

Cassandra said nothing, nor did she move to finish her off. She simply walked around the clearing, trying unsuccessfully to catch her breath.

"It seems that Gairanda's odds of victory have just taken a sharp fall," Bataen said. "Shall we finish her, then?"

Cassandra looked over at her, her face still flush from the battle. "Go right ahead," she huffed.

"You're going to pay for this, Cassandra," Gairanda said. "Someday you're going to run into an enemy you can't kill, can't sneak past, can't lie to, and can't run away from. If you're very, very lucky, that person *won't* be you."

"Yes, yes, remorse rhetoric, lovely. Eat her," Cassandra said, motioning towards the demons. Bataen, in turn, motioned towards the Thaegon.

"Guuldesh, darling, we have something for you," she said.

The Thaegon clomped loudly over to where Gairanda was desperately trying to stay upright.

"Good evening. Would you prefer headfirst, feetfirst, or assfirst?" it said. It had a surprisingly pleasant voice for a Thaegon. Which wasn't saying much.

Gairanda ignored her. She was still glaring at Cassandra.

"This isn't over," she said through barred teeth. "I couldn't kill you. But no one lives forever. I have seen into your mind, and I know you will never run out of enemies. And when you've murdered Annelique, not even the Goddesses themselves will be able to protect you from them all."

"I'm glad to see you're accepting defeat so gracefully," Cassandra said.

The Thaegon looked down at her. "Well, most people prefer feetfirst, but *I* prefer headfirst, so if you don't mind..."

It seized Gairanda by both arms and started shoving her into it's mouth, head first.

Gairanda didn't resist. She simply let the Thaegon start engulfing her battered body, one meaty gulp at a time. She could barely even feel the oppressive heat of it's mouth through the heat of her own rage. She couldn't help but think that her one solace was that she was being eaten by a demon, simply because it was doubtless a kinder, nobler creature than Cassandra. She exhaled and lost most of her breath as the glomping swallow of the Thaegon sent her head and shoulders into it's disturbingly roomy throat. When she inhaled again, it was second-hand air from the humid depths of the Thaegon's lungs. She simply closed her eyes and let herself go limp as she felt her torso beginning to slide further down it's esophagus.

Cassandra stood there silently as the morbid display unfolded. After just a few gulps the Thaegon had already gotten most of the way to Gairanda's navel. Then something curious happened. A black, misty shape, almost like a ghost, seemed to emerge from Gairanda's back and dissipate into nothingness. Doubtless it had something to do with the strange darkness that had been in Gairanda's eyes...but that didn't matter now. Whatever power she was using was about to become Thaegon shit.

As her legs began to disappear into the demon's thick jaws, Bataen turned to Cassandra.

"Well, now that that is dealt with, I trust you'll make efforts to bring your friends to us?"

"I'll hold up my end of the deal. You just remember yours."

"The Angel will be spared, if that's what you're referring to. I am an Orchid. I keep my word."

"Only when it's written," Cassandra said.

"At any time an agreement is made," Bataen said, her eyes narrowing in anger. "Unlike you. Do not think we will not be watching to ensure *you* remember our bargain, corsair."

"I've beaten far more powerful demons than you," Cassandra retorted, just as the last noisy swallow came from the Thaegon. It gave off a mighty belch and then returned to it's previous position, it's muscled belly jutting out like a barrel.

"Does that mean you plan to renege on us, then?" Bataen replied.

"No. I think I've hit my backstabbing quota for the week."

"I will congratulate you on your astute choice of words to keep, then. You present an excellent long-term prospect. It would be an unthinkable waste for our relationship to be soured for the sake of one Darkswallow admiral." She paused. "I assume your contract with her is your main source of concern?"

"I wish," Cassandra muttered.

"Ah, you have developed an attachment to one of your closer associates then. Understandable. It sometimes happens to my colleagues as well. If their experience is any indication, you will forget them soon enough."

"Obviously. Your colleagues are demons," Cassandra said.

"You have nothing to be ashamed of, Cassandra," Bataen said. "While fate may have misfavored you with a human body, you are well worthy of the title of demon. I would happily sponsor you into the Orchid Fane personally, if the occasion arose...assuming you were willing to embrace the Fane's Code of Honor, of course."

Cassandra sighed through her nose and simply walked away, gritting her teeth as she tried to block out the loud and irksome noises of the Thaegon processing Gairanda's body.

A few minutes after Cassandra disappeared into the woods, one of the demonettes walked up to Bataen.

"I had no idea our captive's combat skills were so impressive," she said. "And it seems the corsair is all that she is said to be."

"Not all," Bataen replied. "The Cassandra I was told about was shameless."

"You think she'll get over it? Or will we need to intervene?"

"It will not matter once Mistress Cloud of Azure hears of this."

"Cloud of Azure?" the demonette seemed shaken. "Lady Bataen, the Mistress Cloud of Azure is..."

"A liability. But only in one way. She will not want to spare the angel."

"A liability? But why would she even be interested in this? I doubt a demoness of her standing has even heard of this planet."

"Think for a moment of what she stands to gain if she takes their souls," Bataen said. "The fortune we dropped on the corsair will look like a handful of pebbles compared to what an Empirisai would pay to get even a single fate mark of such power."

"And how do we entice her into buying them rather than simply taking them?"

"We don't need to. Cassandra is going to do it for us."

******
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Duamutef
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Chapter 25, Continued

Postby Duamutef » Mon Aug 24, 2009 11:51 pm

Ishiar found that slithering through the underbrush was not nearly as difficult as she thought it would be. In fact, moving through the forest seemed easier than the stone streets of Eronmar had been, and her movements were fairly quiet in spite of her barging pace. No wonder she'd been jumped by so many nagas in the forest; with no legs to make footsteps, they could sneak up on people without even trying.

Nonetheless, her passage through the forest did not go unnoticed for long. She heard a set of mechanical snapping sounds, and in the very same instant, she felt a half-dozen crossbow bolts bury themselves in her torso.

"Gyah!" she yelled, quickly slithering for the cover of the nearest tree, yanking the thick arrows out one by one as she did so. Bracing her back against the tree, she scanned the treeline for signs of attackers. Her first hint that they were there came when another arrow shot through her chest from somewhere in front of her. It wasn't long before she felt several more perforating her tail, reminding her that it was still trailing out behind her.

With a fierce look, she started scouring the nearby forest, moving at full speed towards the spots she imagined the arrows must have come from. Several more hit her, but every time she turned to find the attacker, she saw nothing but rustling leaves in the trees.

Ishiar was never particularly good at finding people who were trying to hide...so she decided on a tactic that wouldn't require a whole lot of it.

Pulling out her sword, she grabbed it's handle hard with both hands and gave a mighty warcry before taking a powerful swing at the closest tree. The force of the blow didn't merely cut through it--it practically blasted it's trunk apart. It came crashing down into another tree, creating a small storm of splintering wood as their branches impacted and crushed one another. There was a strange flicker inside the chaos; for half a second, a demonette became visible as she was partially smashed between two hefty branches. It was only for a moment, however; soon she was invisible again.

"Dammit..." Ishiar muttered. Well, at least now she knew what she was up against. She hacked down another tree, then another. In the meantime she was still being shot to pieces with arrows, but each time she got hit, she sent a tree collapsing in that direction, occasionally catching one of them in the crash. Though she hadn't knocked any of them out yet, they got a lot more careful and their rate of fire dropped sharply once they caught on that she wasn't about to stop.

But for a moment, she did stop. For a moment, something concerned her more than the barbed and poisonous crossbow bolts that were rapidly making her look like a horrible tailoring accident. It was the fact that she was knocking down trees that were sixty feet high and four feet thick with a sword. What was even more disturbing was that that had been her first impulse.

There were a few seconds where she simply held her sword arm out in front of her, dumbfounded.

"Holy shit," she said quietly.

Cassandra's equipment was generally powerful; even the second-hand stuff she had handed out to her semi-allies. But blowing trees off their trunks was a bit much...

And she had seen Annelique do some things. And she had seen Annelique with the exact same look on her face that she imagined she had now: awestruck. And she had been looking at Ishiar when she made that face.

Ignoring the next few crossbow bolts that drove their way through her body, she decided to test just how far the power of the fate mark could be pushed.

She punched a tree.

She was rather unnerved by the results.

Granted, the fact that the tree trunk practically exploded would have been frightening, but a much more immediate concern was the fact that there was now a tree falling on top of her.

She bobbed out of the way and the tree fell behind her. Several branches struck her shoulders and snapped, but she managed to avoid the big ones. She wished she could say the same for her tail; the stupid thing was now thoroughly pinned underneath the tree. With the way the branches had fallen and snapped around it, they were practically braided together.

"BLAST, IF I WAS CAPABLE OF BEING MAD AT YOU..." she yelled as she tried, unsuccessfully, to slither out from under it.

Seeing her immobilized seemed to give her attackers a great deal of renewed enthusiasm. The snapping of crossbows became almost incessant, as was the pain of bolt after bolt as they pierced her flesh. There were so many now that they were knocking each other around when they struck her, metal grinding against metal in a fashion she could only describe as extremely unpleasant.

She attempted to lift the tree off of her with her arms, but it was too physically awkward. She quickly found it more effective to lift it with her tail, but she couldn't lift it and slither away at the same time. But she had to come up with something--it was actually starting to feel heavy, and she was starting to feel lightheaded. She noticed her hands were trembling; whatever insane threshold the fate mark had, it seemed the demons were quickly approaching it with their relentless attacks.

She lifted the tree with her tail and moved herself underneath it, pushing it up above her head with her arms and finally flinging it far enough that no significant part of it was on her tail. That was apparently around the time the demons ran out of crossbow bolts, as she suddenly felt at least four invisible blades slashing through her. She started swinging her sword wildly around her, but she was feeling faint. Between attacks she lunged this way and that with her outstretched hand, hoping to get a grip on one of them so she could finish her off or eat her to replenish her strength, but her fingers grasped nothing but air and the occasional blade edge.

Finally, she collapsed to the ground, a dozen splintered branches smashing into her torso as she did so. She couldn't even hold her head up, but her unseen attackers didn't even miss a beat, continually stabbing her prostrate form over and over.

Well, she had apparently put the fear of God into them, at least.

As Ishiar felt unconsciousness approaching through the rain of horrible stabbiness, she reflected on the sheer ignominity of it; defeated simply because she wasn't prepared for something as simple as invisible attackers. One decent mage--Annelique, for that matter--could have seen her through this fight. But she had left Annelique behind, too consumed by her anger and paranoia to let her come along.

The first decent look she got of her attackers was a wide-open maw. It belonged to a slender demonette; strangely pretty, with an almost innocent look to her face, in stark contrast to the wantonly demonic combat gear that covered her. Ishiar almost groaned as she felt the shape of her mouth against her hair, half out of humiliation that she was taken down so easily and half out of the fact that the more animalistic side of her was suddenly incredibly excited at the imminent prospect of being eaten again. Her hindbrain found the idea of entering the lithe demoness quite exhiliarating, much to her conscious mind's chagrin.

Apparently she had indeed been swallowed one too many times, as her limp, powerless body tingled with almost-but-not-quite-unwelcome pleasure and anticipation as she felt the wet flesh of the demonette's cheeks slide over her face. Her breathing became rapid, right up until her air supply was cut off by the fact that the demonette had swallowed her head.

She felt a pair of lips and teeth glancing over her front and back as the demonette's cheeks glided across her shoulders. Rippling muscle contractions pulled her, practically embraced her, giving her sensations that she hadn't even realized she wanted.

By the time her head crowned the demonette's throat and entered it's stomach, Ishiar's pent-up energy caused her to moan in a way that could best be described as embarassingly loud. Her body writhed, but not in the panicked way that a terrified meal would; it writhed in the way that a lover would.

"MMMmmmmmm?" the Demonette hummed as it momentarily stopped. If it could see inside it's own stomach, it would have seen Ishiar's cheeks turn red.

"Sorry," Ishiar muttered, feeling rather absurd.

"Mmmmm-hmmmmm..." the Demonette replied. No more swallows were forthcoming. Ishiar had started to wonder if it had changed it's mind about eating her when she suddenly felt a pair of fingers touching her privates ever so lightly--so lightly that the effect was stronger than if she had just jammed them in.

"EEEEEEEEEE!" Ishiar meeped. The Demonette began to chuckle, and the stroking became smooth and regular. The shape of her labia, laying flat as it did against her new naga body, allowed for effortless, even strokes of a kind she had never felt before.

"Oh...oh jeez..." she gasped. "This is wrong for all kinds of reasons..."

As if in response, she felt two fingers prying her naughty bits apart, making room for a third that started descending into it in a lazy, circular pattern. At this point she was having difficulty telling whether it was the same demoness or if at least one of the others had gotten involved.

"Yee...wow...maybe it's not *all* wrong..." she said between breaths. She heard the demoness give a quiet laugh around her. The finger gently but firmly pushed it's way into her. It began to circle again, it's whole length sliding along the inside of Ishiar's flower.

Something occurred to her--if they were toying with her like this, they probably planned to swallow her immediately after they got her off. She could buy herself some time if she could succeed in not actually being stimulated. Of course, she'd have to string them along so they wouldn't get bored and eat her anyway...

She wiggled her tail a bit, faking a response to the sensation. (She suspected she may have ended up doing it anyway, but that thought was quickly quashed.) Soon there were two fingers inside her, then three, then four. She was certain there was more than one demoness in on it at this point; three of the fingers were slowly pushing themselves in and pulled themselves out in the same rythm, but as one was pushing all the way in, another would be pulling out and the third would be halfway between one or the other. The fourth, meanwhile, was slithering around them in a constant back-and-forth half circle.

She clenched her teeth, her body wiggling in a way that she was pretty sure she wasn't faking. It felt unbelievably good. She started to worry; if this kept up she would only last a few minutes, if that. The effortless way they moved together in ways that made her brain squirm with slightly involuntary joy suggested two things: they did this a lot, but if their techniques were any indication, they still didn't have to wait very long for their meals.

She tried to focus her mind elsewhere--trying to pull her attention away from the five and then six fingers that were now not only reaming her in an asynchronous fashion but making half and quarter circles all over the place. She was getting quite wet, and her skin was starting to tingle all over. Deep beneath her scales, the muscles in her tail started to tingle as well, which was a little disturbing. She also realized it was a little nerve-wracking that she couldn't kick her legs around in response to the intensifying sensations. Instead, her tail wiggled limply, still too weak from being shot a jillion times to actually move much.

She attempted to shift her focus towards the sensations of being in the stomach; the intense heat, the stomach acids, the smell, and the whole knowledge of impending doom thing.

"DAMMIT!" she screamed, as she realized that was only turning her on even more.

Her demonic "tormenters" doubtless misinterpreted this; whatever they decided she meant, the last thing they would have guessed was that her attempt to turn herself off by focusing on the demon's stomach had drastically backfired.

She was now panting uncontrollably with excitement and desire. She was flooded with memories of being inside Ushan, being inside Blast, even being inside that unbelievable bitch Belaphonne...and how much she had loved it every time, even if it had required multiple trips through several different digestive tracts for her to notice. Now her body was pulsing with the sensations of what was going on on both ends of her waist--the outright professional-quality finger-banging she was getting on one end and the warm, gooey embrace of the quivering throat and the dripping stomach on the other. She felt an urge burning inside her to *be* digested; she wanted to feel herself falling apart inside the hot folds of this creature. She desperately wanted to feel it's full, firm breasts from the inside, and wanted even more to become part of them.

Voraphilia kicking in at the worst possible time: when she was clinging for dear life against exploding into orgasm all over the demoness' faces and subsequently being slurped up like a scaley spaghetti noodle. And now that a substantial part of her really wanted to get to that part, calming herself down was getting very difficult. The demonesses seemed to almost perfectly sense every nuance of her body's acceleration towards total ecstatic meltdown, their every movement in synch, always touching each part of her just as it begged most to be touched and amplifying the effect with seemingly strategic use of multiple fingers.

Ishiar was quite vexed with herself. They were winning almost as blatantly as they had been when she was punching trees at them. Every breath brought her closer to the edge, and she knew the edge meant death--an unbelievably pleasant death, but death nonetheless. Every finger motion was like a tiny, wonderful death knell.

"DANGIT! STOP KILLING ME!" she yelled.

The demon around her laughed again, causing it's esophagus to bounce around her. Her flesh slid up and down it's sides, and suddenly it felt like her whole torso was about to cum--not that she had any idea how it would.

The fingers sped up. Then she felt something else--something much longer, that was going much deeper. It--or, rather, they--started to plumb depths she heretofore had not realized she had.

"Hey! HEY! No tails! NO TAILS!!!"

She was about to give. She couldn't take it. Her fingers were clenching and unclenching. Her body was shaking to some dischordian rythm, gyrating wildly like a piston engine that had lost a few too many pieces.

"GYAH!" *gasp* "GYAH!" *gasp* she wheezed, almost perfectly in time with the forceful thrusts of the strongest, thickest, knobliest, most aggressively intrusive and, unfortunately, most talented tail. When she felt it's owner plant her ass on top of her knees and grab her thighs so she'd have more leverage, she knew she was doomed. The fact that a supple demon ass was now rubbing back and forth against her legs didn't help any. She felt it's hot skin slide against her as it rocked it's hips back and forth, using each motion to drive it's tail deeper into Ishiar's...well, tail. Apparently her flower went that deep now. No wonder Nagas were such sexfiends. She didn't realize how much she'd been missing by being human.

Hell, she didn't realize how much she had been missing in the short time that she had been a Naga just because she didn't realize what she *could* have been doing.

Of course, she was catching up on all of it now, and with interest. As she raggedly gasped for breath, she suddenly marveled at the fact that she *hadn't* already blown a gasket and been sent into gastrointestinal oblivion.

"Okay...fine..." she said between heady breaths. "Screw it...you girls just go to town...work your magic...I'm all fucking yours."

She heard a faint voice. "Really?" it said. "I thought *we* were all fucking *yours.*"

"Well, I know it ain't mine," said another.

"You know what I--oh, never mind," Ishiar said.

"Oh yes, we know what you meant, sweetmeat," one said. "Maybe we should take our time with this one, girls. After all, how many chances are we going to get to suckle at the flower of a woman who can punch down trees?"

Ishiar grimaced in embarassment. "That fight sucked, by the way," she said.

"Oh, I can imagine."

Ishiar bit her lip. "Can I ask you guys a favor? I know it's kind of weird, me being--well, under the *circumstances,* but--"

"Oh, by all means, please."

"Instead of sweetmeat, could you call me..."

"Yes?"

Ishiar hesitated. "Goddess, I don't even know why I'm asking this--" indeed, she almost didn't, "--could you call me 'Darling'?"

"Oh?"

"Yeah, it's, um...well, it sort of has to do with the last demon who ate me. It's a long story."

"Darling?" the demoness said. "Hmm. I can't say I would have pictured you as a 'Darling'. A 'babe,' perhaps, or 'hot stuff'..."

"Well, I looked kind of different then. I had legs, for one thing."

"Really? This must be quite a story indeed."

"Well, she was already--never mind that part. It was just sort of her styYYYYAAAIIIIIILlle..." Ishiar yelped as three tails simultaneously shot into her, writhed around inside her like snakes, then emerged again. Meanwhile, the one who had planted her haunches on top of her had started taking it slow, simply moving back and forth, leaving her tail embedded deep within the now-dripping folds of Ishiar's personal playground. Ishiar found it's presence and it's slow movements to be perversely comforting, though she didn't consider that to be any more blatantly insane than the fact that she was asking the people who were about to murder her to call her by a particular pet name while they did it.

"So who was this demon?"

"Um...that depends. How do you guys get along with the Flesh Fane?"

"Oh, splendidly. Just last night I got along very well with a particular Flesh Fane consort three times. I had only planned to get along with her once. But when she offered a discount after such a stellar performance, I simply couldn't refuse. Had I done so, my erotic organs may well have fallen right off of my body in protest, perhaps even attacking me."

"So, I guess that's good?"

"We have cordial relations with the Flesh Fane, my scrumptious little dumpling," the demoness replied. "Oh, of course. 'Darling'."

"Thanks. Yeah, she was a Flesh Fane succubus named Ushan."

"Oh yes, of course! How could we not remember?"

"You knew her?"

"Well, half the planet is after you, darling. Surely some of them would have looked into your recent history."

"I keep forgetting that. Which, frankly, I prefer."

"Don't worry, precious. I doubt anyone will want you after Eslie has...um...concluded her business with you."

"That makes me feel way better."

"If it's any consolation," she said, "I'd be willing to wager a hundred stones that you're *delicious.*"

Ishiar suddenly felt a tongue slithering along one of the few parts of her abdomen that wasn't lodged in an esophagus.

"That's...um...nice of you. I've gotta say, though, the way you've been talking, you sound a lot more like a succubus than a demonette."

Ishiar heard her laughing. "I think there's a pretty good reason for that, darling."

There was a pause.

"So you never saw me?" the demoness continued. "Well well...with the way a few of those trees were falling, I was almost certain I'd been spotted. But yes, it is understandible that I would sound like a succubus. To the best of my knowledge I am one."

"Oh."

"Does that surprise you?"

"No, it's just that all the ones I saw were demonettes."

"Well, my counterparts here are," she said. "Eslie, the charming little lady who's day you are about to make quite enjoyable, is a demonette, as is the delightfully...outgoing woman who has situated herself on your kneecaps. You should consider yourself lucky. I've never been able to talk her into using her tail on *me.*"

"Maybe she only uses it on people who are getting eaten."

The succubus chuckled again. "We don't have the opportunity to indulge in this quite as often as you might think. Our foes rarely remain conscious once they've been felled. They only awaken once firmly secured within our bodies."

"What a lovely thing to wake up to. So how many others are out there?"

"Two, not counting Fale and myself."

"Fale?"

"The one who's tail is lingering within your loins. Though I would recommend avoiding any statements that involve rhyming the two. She has a...harsh policy about that."

"Kay...what's your name?"

She sighed. "Oh, dear..."

"What? Is it 'flabhumper' or something?"

"No, no. Nothing *that* bad. My name is Feather."

"Feather?"

"Yes."

"What's wrong with that?"

"Oh...it merely carries an angelic connotation. I've had to cannibalize a few of my fellow Orchids to get them to stop pointing that out."

"Why don't you change it?"

"Make no mistake, it is my name, and I am proud of it. The sound of it pleases me, and I believe it suits me. I do not wish to give it up...besides, I find it much more satisfying to send those who disapprove into my belly, where it can teach them the error of their ways. Alas, while it is an excellent teacher, few survive the final exam..."

"Would that be your colon, by any chance?"

She chuckled. "Perhaps, perhaps...and would your name, by any chance, be Ishiar?"

"Yeah..."

"Fascinating! How did you become a naga?"

"Oy..." if she could have slapped her forehead, she would have. "What other people do you already know I hang around with?"

"Let me see...the silent alchemist, the angel Annelique, obviously Cassandra the Corsair--"

"Yeah. It was that first one."

"Incredible...perhaps the stories are not so exaggerated after all."

"Well...I wouldn't go that far. There's a reason I'm *still* a naga, and it isn't that I enjoy it. Though you guys are rapidly changing my mind there."

"Happy to be of service."

"I wonder what she would have done if she had been in that fight...last time I saw a bunch of people trying to peg her with arrows, she just danced around like she was psychic while she mixed a potion that exploded into a gigantic iron...thing."

"I heard about that. It rendered the underground inaccessible for days, though as I understand, that mattered little, as Aerothi had already taken the fortress."

"Do you work for her?"

"I think it safe to say that, no, we do not."

"Who do you work for?"

"That, unfortunately, I must withhold."

"I figured as much." There was a brief silence. "You know what's really weird?"

"Besides the fact that we're having a conversation? Granted, that is not abnormal for our kind--amusing as it is--but it does often seem strange to our meals."

"Uh, no, that was pretty much it. Well, that and the fact that I'm actually starting to like you guys. Which is grotesquely stupid of me."

"Oh, now now now. The fact that we are presently adversaries is no reason to abolish any budding affection between us."

"Isn't it? Because I'm pretty sure it's a really good reason."

"Did the succubus Ushan never teach you? We succubi relish our defeated foes. I'm surprised it never came up; members of her Fane frequently develop an affection for their adversaries."

"Uh, yeah, actually, I did find that out. I *all KINDS* of found that out. But I didn't think you guys were the same way."

"Well, we do not develop an affection for our enemies per se. But there is a primal connection between predator and prey that I find quite beautiful. What is hated on the battlefield can be ecstacy once it is safely and snugly nestled within the proper place."

"Which is obviously your belly."

"Of course. Or Eslie's, in this case. It's her turn, you see. But don't worry..."

Things went quiet for a moment. Suddenly, Ishiar felt something pressing down on her, as if someone had lowered a few bags of cement on top of the demon who's body she was half-occupying.

She felt something shifting beneath her as well, though she couldn't really tell what it was--she could barely feel it.

She didn't know what was going on until she heard Feather's voice; it was coming from somewhere much closer now, and it seemed as though she had laid down right on top of Eslie.

"Eslie is my lover, you see," she said. "Well, I have many lovers, but to let you in on a little secret, she's my favorite. And I needn't tell you I have only the highest standards."

"What are you doing?"

"Oh, lover-ish things...lying down on top of her back, naked, squeezing her breasts as I gently insert my tail into her flower..."

"Eeep...okay...any particular reason?"

"I merely wish to set your mind at ease by assuring you that you will be in very good hands."

"You mean yours?"

"...That's an interesting point. I had not even realized that. When I said 'hands', I of course meant 'stomach,' but you're right. You will be eminently squeezable by the time you near the end of your journey. Her breasts, among other things, will play host to your spirit as your body is absorbed. As she feels, you will feel. Do you, by chance, wish to experience an orgasm with her body before your spirit passes on...?"

"Well, that's awfully nice of you...I'm not really sure what to say."

"Well, I do. I want to see your pleasure reflected in her eyes. But if we wish to do that, time is short--our duties will require that we part ways before you are sufficiently digested if we dally any longer."

"In that case, I think I'll--"

'Hush, darling, just let the bliss that is Eslie's body embrace you with it's warmth, and soon you shall feel the warmth of mine against you. Ladies, if you would kindly provide your assistance?"

Suddenly everything yanked out of her pleasure-bits. The last abrupt movement almost made her blow sheerly from the surprise. Almost, but not quite.

"Um..." Ishiar started. "Aw, hell, it's not like you're not gonna eat me anyway. And it's not like I can move. Well, not in any serious way."

"That's the spirit," Feather said as four pairs of arms dug their way under her tail and started lifting her. "It's really a shame I can't eat you myself. Had we met under less adversarial circumstances, I think we could have gotten along quite well."

"Would you shut up, Feather?" came another voice. "If you want people to stop comparing you to an angel, you could at least stop acting like an angel!"

"I'll pretend you didn't say that," Feather said.

"They're actually quite nice, in my experience..." Ishiar said.

"And I'll pretend *you* didn't say *that,*" Feather replied. "On the count of shove...shove!"

Four pairs of arms practically threw her tail inwards towards Eslie's throat. It rather awkwardly sent her torso skidding through the wet tube of her throat and into her stomach. Her back started to curl and her torso bent slightly sideways as she slid up against the bottom of her gut.

"Jeez, you've got a long tail..." Feather said as the demonesses started to feed it hand-over-hand into Eslie's mouth. Ishiar could only watch with morbid fascination as her own scaly tail--already a strange thing for her to be looking at--emerged from the esophagal sphincter, bunching and coiling up inside the stomach and gradually forcing her into the stomach wall as the space was rapidly filled. It got uncomfortably tight rather quickly, and by the time the last bits of it were being pushed into the stomach she felt like a bunch of *other* nagas were crammed in the stomach with her, their slick, scaly tales pressing her up against the stomach wall. It quickly began to drip, hot liquids seemingly emerging from all directions. She was pressed up against the stomach so tightly that they flowed over her shoulders and down her back rather than down her front. It didn't matter much, since the part of the stomach she was wedged against soon started excreting it's own glop, acting almost like grease and causing her belly and her breasts to slither back and forth against the surface. She felt her hair being soaked with hot goo, and even though she couldn't feel much going on through her scales, she was pretty sure they were getting soaked too.

Ishiar merely groaned when she felt her body shudder in the throes of orgasm. While she appreciated the sensations, it was still rather humilating under the circumstances.

The digestive juices flowed rather liberally, and continued until the stomach was filled almost a third of the way. This wouldn't have been a problem if Eslie had stayed in the position she was in, but before long she heaved herself off the ground and stood up, causing the pool of stomach juices to cascade all over Ishiar and turning her body upside down. Her head was submerged in the pool of stomach acids. She felt a tangy, sour, and slightly bitter taste creeping through her closed lips. The reports her submerged nostrils were giving were something she did her best to ignore, and she pinched her eyes shut, having decided rather immediately that she didn't even want to find out what that might have felt like.

She squirmed around, trying to get her head above the pool. She had to grab her own tail and practically hoist herself up, simultaneously shoving with another part of her tail to act as a platform for her torso, but she eventually did it. Shortly after, she realized that meant she was able to move, and she wondered just how long it had been that way.

She thought of trying to shove herself out of Eslie's stomach, but she had three times her bulk in tail bunched up between her and the exit, and she would somehow have to pull all that out as well--while the demonesses were trying to beat her back in.

And though she realized it wasn't a particularly healthy perspective to take, she didn't really care all that much. The pressure of being a hero kind of sucked. Being digested was awesome. And she would probably be reincarnated with her power intact, even if she didn't have any way of knowing who--or necessarily even what--she would be reborn as.

So she relaxed, accepting her fate. She would be fat on a demonette's boobs, get played with by a succubus, then get crapped out. And hopefully when she was reborn she wouldn't have to deal with being a friggin' voraphile...

She felt the stomach start to bob up and down as Eslie started walking. She heard the demonesses start talking, but her tail muffled everything too much for her to hear without straining, so she didn't bother. She just listened to the sound and let it sooth her as she felt the inexplicably pleasant sensation of the stomach acids beginning to dig into her skin.

Suddenly, she felt a sharp pain--it was confusing at first, because it seemed to come from a dozen parts of her tail at once, and she was almost certain it wasn't from the stomach acid. She heard a strange noise--the sound of flesh on metal--and squirmed as she felt Cassandra's sword being pulled out of her. The stomach spun violently and she started to hear yelling. There was another sharp pain--this time from the part of her tail near the throat.

Ishiar realized what was happening--the rescue she had forgotten she was even waiting for had actually shown up. And apparently it was Cassandra, of all people.

Suddenly Ishiar felt stupid for all kinds of reasons. She was embarassed that she had basically given herself over to being digested, having forgotten about Cassie, having assumed Cassie would sooner kill her than save her...on the other hand, having a long and elaborate conversation with the people who were about to make her dinner apparently paid off. On accident.

She felt Cassandra's sword biting her several more times as she attacked Eslie. She heard her yelling something. The stomach spun as Eslie fell and hit the ground, then spun again as she got back up. It shifted in strange directions. She abruptly felt something strange touching her tail, seemingly feeling around it. With a start, she realized it was Cassandra's hand.

"That's not gonna work!" she yelled, hoping she could hear her. "All of the grabable parts of me are at the bottom!"

She wasn't sure if it was because Cassandra heard her or not, but almost immediately, the stomach fell and shifted again. It tumbled and twisted as Eslie and Cassandra engaged in some sort of close melee--every once in a while Ishiar could feel Cassandra's knees and arms as they brushed against--or punched--Eslie's belly. Eslie hit the ground again, and something very confusing happened.

Ishiar felt Cassandra's hand again.

From the other direction.

It emerged beneath her, where all common sense would suggest it should not have been coming from. She was pretty convinced Cassandra didn't like her enough to have shoved herself up Elsie's ass in order to rescue her, but she wasn't about to argue with it. She shifted her body so that Cassandra could get ahold of one of her arms, and immediately felt her vice-like and uncomfortably spikey grip clamp onto her. She started to pull, and pull hard. Ishiar wasn't exactly sure what she was being pulled *towards,* but she wriggled as best she could to untangle herself so she could be pulled through whatever horrible thing it was.

She was very surprised by the results.

The first thing she felt was a fleshy tube--pretty much what she had expected (and dreaded). But only a moment later, she felt her arm emerge into the cold night air.

"What the ffwwwWHOAH!"

Cassandra had clamped on with another hand and was yanking twice as hard. Ishiar's whole shoulder slipped through the short, fleshy tunnel and popped out, along with most of her head.

She looked around in bewilderment, but she only saw boots. Cassandra's boots, planted against something on either side of her head.

Another yank brought most of her torso out, and only then did she see what she was emerging from:

Eslie's flower.

The demonette's legs were pried apart, and Cassandra's feet were planted firmly against her inner thighs, using them as leverage to pull Ishiar out.

"Eep," Ishiar said quietly.

Eslie was yelling and kicking futilely, and there was no sign of the other demonesses. After one or two more yanks, enough of Ishiar was out that it was simply a matter of Cassandra dragging the rest of her out while Eslie hastily scrambled backwards, apparently having decided that this particular meal was no longer worth it. As she felt the last of her tail emerge from the warm confines of Eslie's body, she saw Eslie stumble to her feet and run.

"Um...thank you, and WHAT. THE. FUCK. In that order," Ishiar said.

"It's a little known fact that people can swallow things from both ends," Cassandra said. "So it follows that they can forcefully regurgitate from both ends as well."

Ishiar felt stupid *again.*

"I should have remembered that," she said. "The demon-hoe in Faneglut that pretended I was her slave for a day or two used an enchanted dildo to illustrate that to me rather intrusively. Though I'm thinking it's still better than that gauntlet."

"Hey, don't knock it. At this point it has yanked pretty much everybody out of somebody."

"Is that what that yelling was about the other day with Winny and Ralier? I do remember somebody yelling 'SPIKEY GAUNTLET!'"

"I'm thinking I may actually just name it that. But since that's singular it would beg the question of what to name the other one." She held up her other hand, which was wearing an identical--if less slime-coated--gauntlet.

"Um...Spikey's Sister?"

"That works."

"So...uh...wow. You look like..." Ishiar looked at her, her face practically turning to awe. "You look like somebody actually fought you, as opposed to just eating their own ass and thanking you for it."

Cassandra gave a heavy sigh. "Let's just get back to the Starslicer. The short version of the story is that Gairanda is dead and it was ugly enough that I'm not particularly eager to relive it by telling the long version of the story."

"Okay...what happened to the other demons?"

"They ran when they realized who I was. Well, that or the fact that they fought me for more than the five seconds it requires most people to realize I'm an unstoppable death machine."

"Charming bunch. The one was going to have sex with me after I died."

"Um..." Cassandra looked at her quizically. "Normally I'd probably be intrigued enough to ask, but frankly...I feel like shit. Let's go."

"No argument here. But just to warn you, if I start seeing crossbow bolts, I'm just gonna go ahead and hide under a rock and let you deal with it."

"Wouldn't be the worst thing that's happened tonight..." Cassandra muttered.

"Wait a minute--where's Liliandra?"

"Liliandra...?"

"She came after you just before I did."

"I don't know. I haven't even seen her. You want to look for her?"

"Yeah. We probably should."

"Okay..." Cassandra said, not bothering to hide her exhaustion. "But the first place we should check is the ship."

"Why?"

"If nothing else, we need to let everyone else know to tell her to stay put if she heads back there looking for *us*."

"Oh. Good point."

The pair began to head back to the Starslicer. It was a good ten minutes before either of them said anything--Cassandra eventually gave some half-hearted story about Gairanda bravely facing the Orchids by her side but falling in combat.

They caught sight of Liliandra just as they neared it's landing position; she was leaning against a tree about a hundred yards away from the ship, as if she had been waiting for them.

"Liliandra? How long have you been waiting here?" Ishiar asked.

"Not long. Once the battle was over, I thought it best to await you here."

"How did you know the battle was over?"

Liliandra held up a necklace with a large metal pendant on the end. Though it was covered in filth, it was easy to make out the double-hammer icon of the Ironbelly Clan. It was unmistakably Gairanda's. Liliandra was holding the necklace cord in her fist like she was trying to crush it, but her face betrayed no emotion.

Ishiar bit her lip.

"I was unable to save her," Liliandra said. "I am sorry, mother."

"You still did a lot better than I did," Ishiar said.

Liliandra lowered the pendant. "Shall we inform the others of your safe return?" she continued. "I'm sure they will be happy to see that the two of you are safe."
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Re: Official Shells Thread (Chapter 25, 8/24/09)

Postby Revx_Z » Tue Aug 25, 2009 8:41 am

:-D :gulp: The awesome, it just goes on... and on... and on. ^^;

*experimentally pokes Duamutef with a stick some more*
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Re: Official Shells Thread (Chapter 25, 8/24/09)

Postby Quicksilver » Tue Aug 25, 2009 12:52 pm

Revx_Z wrote::-D :gulp: The awesome, it just goes on... and on... and on. ^^;

*experimentally pokes Duamutef with a stick some more*


Forget the stick poking, if it's going to result in more Shells, I say we drop a freaking tree on him.
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Re: Official Shells Thread (Chapter 25, 8/24/09)

Postby BradRepko » Tue Aug 25, 2009 8:09 pm

I agree. Duamutef is unbelievably talented in his writing. There is a good deal of time where I actually wish he'd forget about his other projects and just make stories. Oh sure, no one can deny he is the god of voraphilic gaming, the alpha and the omega, dare I say, but his writing is so good and can display so much more of Ishara in one tenth the time it takes to make his games.
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Re: Official Shells Thread (Chapter 25, 8/24/09)

Postby Aleph-Null » Tue Aug 25, 2009 10:15 pm

Wow.. You have been quite prodigious. I couldn't help but think that a Liliandra Ishiar team up could do some serious damage.
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Re: Official Shells Thread (Chapter 25, 8/24/09)

Postby Winny » Wed Aug 26, 2009 3:24 am

YAY! more Winny. -Shi bounces up and tackle hugs the god of vore.- the more you write her the more she gets so adorable. even her mood swings are captured perfectly! -Shi grabs a stick and prods duam again while sitting on his chest.- ^.^

*Number one fan.*
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Re: Official Shells Thread (Chapter 25, 8/24/09)

Postby Duamutef » Thu Sep 17, 2009 5:49 pm

Okee, this chapter isn't as long as the last few, but I feel compelled to post it anyway.

*****

It turned out Ishiar wasn't the only one who thought Cassandra looked unusually haggard. When they finally emerged from the darkness of the forest and returned to the Starslicer, it was clear to all that she had had the living shit kicked out of her. Her hair was a tangled mess, her face haggard, her armor dinged and slashed open in places. There was even dried blood soaked into the clothes underneath--blood that looked like it might have actually been her own. Ishiar didn't look all that much better; what little she had been wearing was gone, crossbow wounds dotted her like freckles, and her skin looked like she had been submerged in blood and then washed off with bile. But of the two, only Cassandra looked genuinely beaten. Though Ishiar bore far worse injuries, Cassandra's face was far more grave.

She didn't look at anyone as she walked up the landing ramp. She almost flinched when Annelique ran up to hug her, gushing with gratitude that they were both safe (or at least still alive). If Cassandra heard any of it, she didn't make any sign.

Annelique didn't pay it much heed at first; she had gotten used to the fact that Cassandra tended to swing between wildly flamboyant and dourly maudlin. But then she realized something--though it had happened often enough that it felt like she did it at random, it had never actually *been* random.Though she had seen Cassandra in plenty of dark moods, it was always because something terrible had happened.

She stopped in the middle of hugging Ishiar, suddenly feeling like she had been stabbed with an icicle. Again.

Unlike Cassandra, Ishiar was paying enough attention to notice when Annelique's body suddenly went stiff as a board.

"...What? What's wrong?" she asked.

"Whh--...wh-where did you get that?" she stammered. She was staring at the Ironbelly pendant hanging from Liliandra's hand.

"G-..." Annelique choked, taking an awkward step back. "Gairanda's...where did you get that?"

Ishiar looked tellingly into the forest behind her. "We lost her, Annie."

Annelique's fingers started to twitch. She clamped down on her mind and tried to stop the thoughts before they started--the horrible thoughts that screamed no, no more, not another one, not again...

It felt like the icicle had grown spikes and started twisting.

"*Sgk*"--Annelique choked again, to her own embarassment. "I..."

She blanched.

"I think I need to sit down."

With a thud, she collapsed to the deck and fainted.

******

Some hours later--when Annelique had been consoled somewhat with lots of blankets and an emergency hot chocolate supply that Blast had found God knows where--she sat down with Ishiar in the ship's galley to get the explanation she dreaded receiving.

"Apparently they reacted badly when they realized you weren't about to walk into their trap..." Ishiar said. "They couldn't handle Cassandra, so they tried to make her surrender by threatening to eat Gairanda." She looked wistfully down at the table. "What they didn't realize was Cassandra doesn't lose. And apparently she doesn't surrender either. Neither did Gairanda...as for me, I got ambushed and eaten by a couple of Orchid snipers. Cassandra eventually showed up and yanked me out, but by then, all the action was over."

"So you weren't there when Gairanda got eaten?"

"No...and it took like twenty minutes *after* Cassandra rescued me before she'd even tell me that's what happened."

"Why?"

"She's not used to losing," Ishiar replied. Her expression changed to one of chagrin. "Apparently we don't have much in common that way."

"What?"

"The whole 'never losing' thing. She's a normal human and fought off their entire ambush force. I'm some sort of demigod and got ganked by their *scouts.* Not exactly a stellar performance."

"Oh. Well..." Annelique trailed off.

"I know you want to say something nice, Annie, but don't worry, I'm not about to have a breakdown," Ishiar said. "To be honest, the things that are bothering me about that fight are quite the opposite. For one thing, I was attacking by punching *trees* at them. That's not normal."

"I know...I'm noticing it too..." Annelique said. She stopped, pensively considering something. "I've been wondering...what about Sudvana? Does she still have this?"

"You kept it after being horribly killed," Ishiar said. "Then again, you were in Brightwind...I'm not sure. B--" she stopped.

"What?"

"Actually, you remember that demon lady? The one who told us we had the marks in the first place?"

"Oh, Charlotte? Of course."

"She counted them before. She could probably tell us if there are still four marks or only three."

"Eternity said there would only be three of us..."

"Is that what she meant?"

"Um...probably?"

"Probably doesn't fill me with confidence."

"Me neither..."

There was a momentary silence.

"So...you seemed pretty mad at Cassie when you left. Was it because you thought she was going to give me to them?"

"At least," Ishiar said. "But I'm starting to think I might actually be the bitch in this equation...since all she would have had to do to get rid of me was nothing at all. If she had managed to bring Gairanda back with her, I might have even been willing to say I trust her. To a very limited degree."

"Gairanda told me never to get involved with her..." Annelique said. "But--"

"But you're you."

"...Yeah."

"It's amazing how different you are from Latella."

"Really?" Annelique blushed--she wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not.

"Seriously. I mean, I loved Latella and all--er, you, when you were Latella--but with personalities it's like night and day. Latella never even hugged anybody. She was the nice but aloof type. Never really touchy-feely."

"Why not?"

"You're asking *me?*" Ishiar laughed a little. "It wasn't that big of a thing. She wasn't frigid or anything. She just didn't...she didn't really throw her love at people like you do. I don't think that's a bad thing--loving people, I mean--but it's just odd when I think about how you're so different that way. As for why, all I ever heard was that she had a lover a little too soon in her life who died a little too quickly. It didn't wreck her life or anything, but it made her a bit more...well, less eager."

"She was hurt?"

"Yeah, but it didn't work like it seems to with you. That's another thing...I've never seen anyone react so strongly to things as you do. I've never seen anyone who is hurt so much by death. Most girls can shake it off...they don't necessarily like it, but it's a natural thing, and it's not like they won't come back. It's just that they'll be a slightly different person when they do."

Annelique felt a tingling and thought back for a moment. She had only remembered her life as Latella once Klayer had rather brutally reminded her of it, and those memories were hazy at best...but Ishiar was right. Sitting there, unnoticed, unacknowledged, but nonetheless plain as day, was the memory of her first lover. Ishiar was not exaggerating..."a little too soon" meant "within an hour of hatching." A hundred feet from where her egg opened up she had met Grace, a friendly girl with bright green hair. She was cheerful, affectionate and outgoing, impulsive in her own kindness but still patient with others. She had earned the friendship of practically everyone in the village; Latella became something of a minor celebrity simply by becoming her girlfriend.

She died two days later.

It shook Latella a bit, but she wasn't so worried about having lost her--though she still held great affection for her, she didn't feel any particular sadness, nor did she expect Grace would have wanted her to. But it did concern her. She had only known Grace for two days. Who's to say losing a long-time lover would be the same? It may hurt a hell of a lot more. She had been shown, rather abruptly, that any lover could be snatched away with no warning at any time. After that, she had always been a little hesitant to foster any relationships. She had a few dalliances, but she never felt the desire to take, hold, follow and ultimately love someone the way she had wanted to with Grace; unconditionally, unswervingly, and with the intention of doing so until one of them died.

That was indeed very different...to Annelique, the concept of limiting your own love seemed almost childish, the kind of mistake you might expect an engineer to make when she's never had a teacher or a textbook, jamming screwdrivers in the wrong places simply because no one had ever shown them a better way.

When she thought back to her brief experience with Grace, she couldn't help but see a little of herself as she was now; the arms always eager to hold, the eyes always shining with love and joy. She hoped that she inspired at least a few of the same feelings Grace did.

Ishiar was right. She was different from Latella. To Annelique, the fact that you could lose anyone at any time made it all the more crucial that she love everyone she came across.

She wished she had shown her love to Gairanda.

That had been a mistake. But she wasn't going to let that happen again.

Making a quick mental list, she headed below decks to pay some special visits. She wasn't going to let anyone she loved remain ignorant of the fact. Or vague. Or anything other than blazingly obvious.

Because for all she knew, she'd never get another chance.

******

Four hours later, in an out of the way cabin in a quiet corner of the Starslicer, laid three people in what they previously would have considered a very strange set of circumstances. Ralier was splayed out on the floor, her front leaning against the foot of a large bed, resting her head on top of it. Sprawled across Ralier's backside, with Ralier's bra draped across her head, was Winny Daren. She was clothed, but sloppily; it was clear she had only made a half-assed effort of pulling her dress back on before collapsing onto Ralier's back. She wasn't wearing anything underneath it. This was made obvious by the fact that about two dozen small belts, pouches, daggers, guns, charms and assorted small doodads--normally concealed beneath Winny's dress--were scattered haphazardly all across the room. Between this random scattering of items laid Ishiar's tail, which wound it's way around the bed, along the floor, into the closet, back onto the bed again, and finally ended in a drawer in a nearby night table. Ishiar herself was face down on the bed, a pillow covering half of her back, her posture similar to what you'd expect of a person who had been hit by a train several times. Her mouth and eyes were both open by only a sliver, and a tiny puddle of drool had started soaking into the bed beneath her.

Her foggy-eyed stare was the only sign that she was even conscious at this point. Ralier and Winny, however, had just started to have a cordial conversation with each other for the first time in their lives, thanks to a shared interest neither of them realized they had: wild, rampaging sex with Annelique.

"That...whoa. That...I don't even know what that was," Winny said slowly, her head and body not moving in the least. "I have never been so...*intensely liked*...by anyone in my entire life."

"I know what you mean..." Ralier replied. "I'm the one with paralytic honey and even I can't move."

"Where did she learn to do that...?" Winny said. "Does Brightwind have, like, a 'Fuck Camp' or something?"

"I dunno, but wherever she learned it, I wanna move there," Ralier said.

"Me too. Who'd have thought it, too? I mean, it's Annelique...for a second, I seriously thought that she was a spy, dressed up as Annelique or something."

"When did you think *that?*" Ralier asked incredulously.

"I think it was right around thirty seconds before she got her tits out. After that I stopped caring," Winny answered.

"Well...there's that saying she keeps saying about angels. They always know how to make things right."

"That's just kind of a metaphor, though."

"No, I think they're actually sort of empaths...they can tell when you want something."

"I think you're thinking of succubi."

"Well, no, they MAKE you want things," Ralier said. "Usually things that will make you die. Angels figure out what you want and give you that instead. You know. Instead of eating you. Because they made you want them to eat you. Or something. Whatever. But I'm pretty sure angels can sense what you want."

"Hrm...I think I've heard of angels that do that, but the ones that do it are like an inch tall. They're called, like, berry angels or bopper angels or ferret angels or something..." Winny said.

"Cluvvr angelzz," Ishiar muttered.

"Oh yeah. Clover Angels. That's what it was," Winny said.

"What kind of angel is Annelique?" Ralier asked.

"D'no," Ishiar muttered. "B'def'n'lee not a cluv'r."

"Well, duh. What are the ones that want sex all the time?" Ralier said.

"Um...I think you're making that one up," Winny replied.

"No, there's, like...an angel for everything," Ralier said. "Angels who will let you eat them, angels who will have sex with you, angels who will murder anyone who even looks at you funny..."

"I think that one's made up too," Winny said.

"No, seriously. They're called razor angels. I think. They...um...do something that's...razor-ish." Ralier said.

"You're thinking of Blade Angels. And they just turn into metal or something."

"Maybe we should just ask her..." Ralier asked.

"Yeah."

"But I don't wanna get up."

"Don't worry, I got it covered," Winny said. She didn't get up either; she just took a deep breath before abruptly screaming "ANNELIIIIIIIIIQUE! WHAT KIND OF ANGEL ARE YOOOOUUUUUUUU!?"

There was a moment of silence.

"...Well, I'm out of ideas," Winny eventually said.

There was a knock at the door.

"Are you wearing clothes?" Winny called out.

Elvet's voice answered from behind the door. "Yes," she said.

"Eh, come on in anyway," Winny said.

The door opened slightly and Elvet quietly stepped in. Her eyes widened slightly. "Oh, I, um...hope I'm not interrupting anything."

"D'yu know wuh kinna angel Annuhleek iz?" Ishiar muttered into the bed.

"Uh, yes--I heard you yelling. I believe Annelique is a Daisy Angel."

"Do they go into heat, by any chance?" Winny asked.

"...No," Elvet replied, raising an eyebrow. "Was she involved in...?" she gestured around the room.

"Oooooh yeah," Winny replied. "She was *quite* involved in the festivities. In fact, she *was* the festivities."

Elvet looked around at the tornado-hit state of the room. "I see. It must have been quite...um...festive."

"It started out as just a cuddle..." Ralier said. "Sort of a group cuddle..."

"Oh boy, what a cuddle..." Winny said half-deliriously.

"Something about wanting to love all of us before we all got horribly killed like everybody else," Ralier said. "Was kind of awkward at first, actually. So I pretended like I was going to try to grope Winny to sort of break the tension."

"And...?"

"She looked at my hand for a sec, then looked away. I think it was on purpose."

"Yeah," Winny confessed.

"So I figured, what the hell, so I groped her," Ralier said. "Annelique was like 'Hey!' And Winny was like 'I'll show you,' and she shoves her hand down my bra and gives a big squeeze..."

"Yeah, and then you grabbed my hand and held it there," Winny said.

"Yeah, I did sort of do that...and then I sort of grabbed her wrist with my other hand to sort of make sure she couldn't pull it out..."

"And then I pointed out that she couldn't grope me if both her hands were pinning me down..." Winny said with a raised eyebrow.

"So I let go and groped her with *both* of my hands..." Ralier said.

"Then I was gonna do something similar, but Annelique got in the way, so I sort of half-groped her...then Ralier's like 'Hey, I'll show you!' and *full-on* gropes her..."

"And I don't remember exactly what happened after that, but everybody ended up with their hands clenched on everybody else's knockers..." Ralier said.

"Then Ralier says 'Well, if we're gonna have an orgy, I'm gonna go get Ishiar!'" Winny said. "So I turn to Annelique and say 'well, there's no stopping it now, may as well get my licks in before they get back and elbow me out of the action.'"

"Apparently one of them took that literally," Ralier said.

"I don't even remember which one of us it was," Winny said with a laugh, shaking her head and smiling. "All I remember is Annelique went from sweet, shy and pathetically virgin to fucking madwoman. And I mean literally."

"So I come back with Ishiar, who is kind of confused as to where I'm taking her, and Annelique is on top of Winny, practically raping her, looking like she's trying to get their hips to catch fire..."

"So she looks back and sees Ishiar and reverts to Shy Annelique for a second, and at that point I'm already into it, so I'm like 'I didn't say stop.'"

"And then she's like 'you two bitches, get over here,'" Ralier said. "Wait, was it Annelique who said that, or you?"

"I think it was...Actually, I think me and you both said it at some point," Winny replied.

"Well, I mostly said it to Ishiar, but that was later...she's really good at--" Ralier stopped, "--well, she knows what I like, let's just put it that way. I actually felt kind of bad, though, since she's so banged up from that fight..."

"S'bettr'n *not* hav'n sex..." Ishiar muttered.

"That's a relief. So yeah...uh...about how long would you say it was, Winny?" Ralier asked.

"Two hours...?" Winny said.

"Sounds about right. About two hours later, I'm exhausted, Ishiar is on the floor--"

"Because you gave her your stupid knockout honey..."

"ON ACCIDENT...believe me, I was the LAST person who wanted her to stop moving...but anyway...Winny's on the floor, beet red, wearing nothing but, like, a strap-on dagger..."

"Hee hee. Strap-on," Winny giggled.

"Panting like she's been in a marathon, with, like, everybody's honey all over her like some sort of Flesh Fane initiation ritual..."

"Now I can tell all my friends that I've had naga honey, angel honey and kari honey in my hair all at the same time," Winny said.

"And Annelique is like 'Okay, now I gotta go do everybody else,' and we're like...holy fucking shit, woman!"

"Yeah. I think she's banging Kaboom right now." Winny smiled. "Hee hee. 'Banging Kaboom.'" She started giggling maniacally. "Why does everything seem so funny right now?"

"Having your brains fucked to oblivion can make you sort of ditzy," Ralier said. "I'd know. Ishiar has conned me into all KINDS of bad judgement just by grabbing my tits."

"I...see." Elvet said. "Well, I'm glad I was able to answer your question...did you have any others?"

"Nah. But, um, if you want, I can probably get up now, so if you want some of this action..." Winny's arm twitched and moved up about four inches before stalling and eventually flopping back onto Ralier's body. "...Um, on second thought, you might want to give me an hour or so. Or maybe a week. Two weeks at most. Probably."

Elvet smiled. "That's alright. I would not want to strain you unduly. But I appreciate the offer."

"Any tiiiiimmmme..." Winny said, her voice eventually trailing off and turning into snoring. Elvet realized Ralier's head had drooped down onto the bed as well.

She quietly stepped out into the hallway and closed the door, smiling and shaking her head slightly at the absurdity of it all before resuming her course towards engineering.

Some two hours later, she was coming out of engineering again, only to have another, equally bizarre encounter.

Kaboom was lying on the floor in the middle of the hallway, looking as though she had collapsed. She had a piece of angel-feather stuck to the side of her mouth and another sticking out of her hair.

"...Are you alright?" Elvet asked quietly.

There was no answer.

Elvet bent down and nudged her gently on the shoulder.

Kaboom suddenly exploded off of the floor, screaming at the top of her lungs "DON'TTOUCHMYFUCKINGBRAIDSI'LLKILLYOUALLOFYOU--!!!"

In less than a second she was in a combat stance, standing on one foot, her eyes bolted open and her teeth bared, looking like she was about to claw somebody's eyeballs out.

"I...wasn't going to touch your braids," Elvet said.

Kaboom paused, looking around in confusion before turning to Elvet. "Oh. Hi. Um...what did I just say?"

"You asked me not to touch your braids. On pain of death."

"Ah," Kaboom nodded, slowly putting her leg and arms down. "That's pretty much what I usually say. Sorry about that." She suddenly seemed to notice there was angel feather on her lip amd blew it off with an abrupt *PBBFFBBT!*

"...By any chance, have you been with Annelique recently?" Elvet asked.

"You know about that, huh? Yeah...wow. Who would have thought. Sorry if we were too loud. And...um...I'll fix the bed. Oh, and sorry if I scared you coming off the floor there...I was on my way back to my room but didn't quite make it. And I don't usually sleep quite so...forcefully. I guess you could say I was doing it under duress."

"You mean sleeping?"

"Yeah. Annelique is..." Kaboom hesitated. "I'd say intense, but that just seems...inadequate. She's like...imagine I were to take a tripod-mounted alchemically-cooled machinegun with hyperballistic sabot rounds with hollowpoints on the end that also somehow manage to *EXPLODE*..." she stopped for a moment. "Actually, that gives me an idea...but anyways. Imagine she emptied an entire case of that shit into your groin, your pelvis, and both of your boobs, then tossed you into a rail tunnel and watched you get hit by a train several times. That's a little bit like what I feel like right now. And I feel a lot better than I did an hour ago. You know that godlike fate-mark thing? I think she was actually *using* that. For sex. On me. And it rocked. And then I couldn't stand up. And then later I could stand up, so I did, then I ran into the door. Then my memory stops somewhere around there," she said, pointing at the floor. "And now I can't quite remember where my quarters are. And I wish I was kidding." She reached up and rubbed her head with one of her hands.

"Well, I can show you to--"

She was interrupted as Annelique herself came running past them, awkwardly pulling her robe over her shoulder in a way that suggested she may not have been wearing it before she turned the corner.

"Hi Elvet! Hi Kaboom!" she said before turning the next corner, never even slowing down.

"Would it be inconsiderate of me to ask what she's doing?" Elvet asked.

"As far as I can tell, she's nailing everybody on the ship to the wall, one by one. Wait. No. That would imply she's only doing one at a time, which I don't think she is. If she spent half as much time on the others as she did on me, she must have been sexing up two or three people at once at some point, judging by how many people I've seen naked and unconscious or half-dressed and limping..."

"I think she started about four hours ago," Elvet said.

Kaboom stared at her. "...Wow. That's...holy crap. That means...wait. In that time she did me, Ralier, Winny, and Ishiar, at least. So unless she did them all really fast--"

"I believe the four of them were all...together."

"...I...you know, given the circumstances, I would have thought it impossible for me to feel gipped, but now I almost do."

"Perhaps you can convince them to do so again..."

"Oh God, not today..." Kaboom said. "I don't even want to *sit down,* let alone find out what she does when she's actually had a chance to warm up...but it'll be fun to see who she cripples next."

"One can only wonder."

"Well, there's also the process of elimination. If me, Ral, Win, and Ishie are all sexually crippled already, that leaves, what? You, Cassandra, Bee--wow, I'm not sure I even want to think about how much collateral damage *that* process is going to cause--then there's the new girl, Ishiar's mom..."

"Actually, she considers Ishiar to be *her* mother."

"Right. Her. What's her name? Lillith? Lily something? Lillyander?"

"Liliandra."

"Ah. I came closer than I thought I did. Not sure if they know each other well enough for L to be on her hit list, though."

"Were I to venture a guess, I would say that Annelique would choose her 'targets' not by who she wished to please, but who wished to be pleased."

"That would explain why she went for Ralier and Winny right off the bat. And at the same time. I've never seen two people who needed to get laid so bad in my life. Well, okay, that's a lie, I see people like that all the time. But still!"

Kaboom was about to go on, but she stopped for a moment. Peering at Elvet, she said "You look like you're thinking about something a lot more important than Annelique and her new rocket-hips. And at first glance that would seem impossible."

Elvet gave a faint smile. "It's just that you mentioned Cassandra..."

"...And? Is there something weird there I should know about?"

"I don't know. That's what I'm thinking about."

"You're wondering if Cassie will be capable of piloting the ship come this time tomorrow?"

"I am wondering if Annelique will offer...and whether Cassandra would accept. And what the consequences would be."

"I don't think Annelique is going to steal your job, if that's what you're worried about."

Elvet chuckled. "No."

"What is, then?"

Elvet's smile faded. "Hopefully nothing. In any case, I have faith that Annelique's heart is strong enough to handle anything Cassandra may throw at it."

"Unless it's her sword. I hear she is to killing people with swords what I am to killing people with guns. And to give you an idea, the place I used to live kicked me out for killing a ten-headed dragon that had been terrorizing the town because I killed it *too quickly.* Enough so that they decided I was actually more of a threat to their continued survival than it was. The second place I used to live, I was not allowed to *say* the word gun. They honestly thought I would bring the wrath of the technology goddess on me out of--and I'm not making this up--*jealousy.*"

"Well, as highly as I rate your abilities, I don't think you're at any risk of making the goddesses jealous."

"That's what I said; I said 'Look, there are two things that the goddesses aren't: spastic and insecure. If I was better than Technicia, I would have taken her job by now. And if she had performance anxiety, she never would have survived long enough to get into the pantheon in the first place. They would have eaten her alive. The Monster Goddess would chomp her ass in a second if she thought she could get anything but shot a billion times in the face."

Elvet's smile returned. "It sounds like you have a confident grasp on the ways of the higher powers, Kaboom."

Suddenly an unfamiliar voice came from a few cooridors away.

"HELP! ...I NEED SOMEBODY TO GET ME OFF THE FLOOR! ...AND BRING A TOWEL!"

Kaboom raised an eyebrow. "Sounds like Annelique just used a few of her own grasping powers again..."

Elvet's lips pursed into a bow. Before she could reply, Annelique came running down the hall again.

"Hi again!" she said as she sprinted past.

"Which one's next?" Kaboom called after her.

"Depends on who I find first!" Annelique yelled back as she turned the corner.

******

Eventually, even Annelique needed to sleep. She had been a bit shocked by her own behavior, but it seemed to get the point across. She thought maybe the more subtle parts--a bit more on the actual love side than the frenzied sex side--she could work on as time went by. For now, it was time to administer it to the one she still thought needed it most: Cassandra.

Strangely, Cassandra was not in her room. Annelique had figured she would be, especially with how exhausted and injured she looked when she had returned to the forest.

Deciding to postpone bedtime until she found her, she turned and headed for the next most likely place: her makeshift office.

There she found Cassandra sitting at her desk, a set of papers laid out in front of her, along with a plate of food that appeared untouched. Though her eyes were pointed at the papers in front of her, she didn't seem to actually be looking at them. All she seemed to be doing was idly fidgeting with a dagger, almost looking as though she was trying to clean her fingernails with it. Annelique noticed with alarm that it had blood on it; so did the papers in front of her. It had fallen in drops upon the parchments and remained there, untouched.

The source was both obvious and disturbing: there were dozens of tiny cuts all over Cassandra's hands. They criss-crossed her fingers as though she had been absent-mindedly using them to sharpen her dagger.

"Hi, Annie," Cassandra said, her voice not carrying any particular inflection. She didn't look up; she just twirled her dagger, causing a small point of blood to appear as it burrowed into her skin.

"Cass--Cassandra?" Annelique said pensively. "What are you doing?"

"Not much," Cassandra replied. "Too tired to do much."

"Then why aren't you sleeping?"

"I'm a bit too traumatized at the moment."

"Is that...did you cut yourself?"

Cassandra looked at her hands. "Looks like it."

"Did...you didn't do that on purpose, did you?"

Cassandra just looked up at her, like it was the stupidest question she'd ever been asked.

"I ask because...well...you're cut a lot," Annelique said awkwardly.

"I did just fight a pack of demons."

"But that's not where those came from."

Cassandra sighed. "Okay," she said simply.

"You're...I don't think you're okay, Cassie."

There was no reply at first. Annelique was silent for a moment. Eventually, Cassandra spoke.

"Like I said. I'm a bit fucked up right now," she said, her eyes once again affixing themselves to the desk.

"Is that why you're cutting yourself?"

Cassandra looked up, but her head remained bent down over the table. "To be honest, Annie, I'd prefer not to think about it."

"Why not?"

Cassandra looked down again. "Because I really doubt the answer will be anything healthy," she said.

Annelique suddenly wasn't feeling so healthy herself, and it had nothing to do with her body.

"Please come to bed," she said.

"Where you'll hug me and kiss me and try to make everything better?"

"Is that a bad thing?"

"A bad--!" Cassandra's head jerked up and she looked up at her like she had gone insane, but this only lasted a moment before she sighed and looked down again. "No, Annelique, trying to love people and make things better is not a bad thing."

"...But you don't want it."

Cassandra looked up at her. She suddenly seemed agitated, almost...angry. She simply looked at Annelique, constantly looking like she wanted to say something, but she never did.

"...Why don't you want it?" Annelique asked sadly.

Cassandra just kept looking at her. Finally, she huffed "I never should have even had it."

"Everyone deserves love."

Cassandra sighed, her tone almost annoyed. "Why?" she said.

"Why?" Annelique repeated. "How can..." she trailed off.

"You don't even know where to start," Cassandra said for her.

"Yeah!" Annelique said, as if it was obvious.

"Now you know a little bit about how I feel." Cassandra replied.

"No I don't!" Annelique said. "I don't know why you don't want love! I don't know why you don't want healing!"

"Don't you?"

"No! You led us to Eronmar, into the lion's den, willing to risk everything on some vague feeling I had, and now suddenly you don't want to eat and you don't want to sleep! You saved Ishiar's life, but now your hands are covered in your own blood! You've risked everything for us, even putting your ship on the line just to get us to Scyther! But every time you've helped us, you've seemed worse and worse! Why are you doing this to yourself? When I look at you, I get a feeling like I've been crushed under a rock! But I don't know why! How could you feel this way? Is it that you *didn't* betray us?"

Cassandra continued to look at her, but her expression had changed; it was no longer exhausted or angry. It seemed uncertain; as though she knew she had answers to give and was merely deciding whether she would.

Suddenly, Annelique realized that. She knew there was something Cassandra did not want to tell her--something she really, really didn't want her to know. But now she was thinking about telling her anyway.

Cassandra had proven herself enough times to have earned her trust. But if it wasn't something she did, what could it have been? Had someone else died? Had Admiral Kaleta abandoned their cause? Was Aerothi winning the war again? Had she already *won?*

Annelique realized something then. She hadn't exactly impressed anyone with her fortitude when she had fainted on the deck. She had practically even said that she couldn't handle any more. No more death, no more setbacks, no more cruel twists of fate. If Cassandra was hiding something from her, she was merely granting her wish, in a way.

"Okay..." she said pensively, "I...I think I may understand now. I guess I shouldn't be pressing you on this. Just...come to bed when you feel better, okay?"

"Okay."

Annelique turned and walked out, heading back towards their quarters.

Cassandra remained. When she spoke next, it was several minutes later.

"You do *not* understand, Annelique..." she said in a harsh whisper.

With a sudden jerk, she slashed her index finger open, causing a small river of blood to emerge.

"And you *shouldn't try.*"

Another sudden jerk--another cut, worse than before, running all the way down her palm. She scowled at nothing in particular as blood descended her palm and began to soak her sleeve. Then she looked at it, as if noticing it for the first time, and suddenly she wasn't scowling at nothing anymore.

"...And now I really am doing it on purpose..." she sighed before clenching her fist, ignoring the stinging pain of her self-inflicted wounds as she pounded her forehead in annoyance.

She thought about strange things. There were strange things she suddenly wanted to do. She thought about slamming her hands against the wall, staining them red with handprints. She thought about flinging her fingers around, spattering blood all over everything. She thought about clamping her fingers around her own hair until it's sheen was as bloody as they were. She thought about rolling up her sleeve and stabbing the underside of her forearm a few times, just for kicks. All of these things she wanted to do, but didn't. She didn't know where the ideas came from, but she knew they were damned stupid. She resented them--intensely--for even entering her mind.

Almost as intensely as she resented the split second a moment ago when she almost told Annelique the truth.

She stared angrily at her bloody fingers, now annoyed with herself that she had even thought about it. The whole thing was stupid. She'd practically had a breakdown. And she was rapidly deciding that breakdowns were not her style.

It was ironic, then, that the only thing it took to nearly cause another was the thought of sleeping. The thought of seeing Annelique's face.

She did sleep that night, but it was not in her quarters, and it was not until the next day had nearly dawned. It was with her face lying limp against her desk, one bloody hand clenching her hair, the other splayed out in a bloody handprint across the table. That image of herself was burned into her to the point that it was all she saw as she slept; she didn't even have enough left in her to have nightmares. Just a bloody, unchanging image of her own body hunched stiffly over the desk.

When she awoke, it was to the sensation of someone gently pulling her fingers away from her hair. It was a messy business--the blood had dried and stuck the hair follicles together, creating horrible tangles.

Cassandra looked up. It was Elvet.

"You must want to reveal your secrets pretty badly if this is how you hide them," she said.

Cassandra stood up. She looked at the bloody handprint she had left on the table and sighed quietly through her nose.

"You of all people should know I am quite capable of keeping secrets," she said as she tried to shake the encrusted blood off her hand. Her fingers stung with each swing.

"I said nothing of your capabilities. I only spoke of what you want." Elvet paused and fixed a steady gaze on Cassandra. "When Annelique is vexed by you, she often comes to me, burdened with confusion and worry. She does not understand your secrets. But I do."

Cassandra tried to rub the dried blood off of her hand. It clumped up into tiny rolls as she winced. She eventually deciding that trying to get the crap off that way would probably just make her start bleeding again.

She looked back up at Elvet, realizing she had no idea what she had just said. "What?" she asked.

Elvet looked tellingly at her hands for a moment. "An angel and a demon war for possession of your soul, and now it seems their battle has spilled out onto your body. You had best choose a side before one of them becomes so powerful that they no longer need you."

"Heh. An angel inside me. And to think, you're normally such a good judge of character," Cassandra said with a chuckle.

"She is *not* inside you," Elvet said simply. "The angel wears flesh and her name is Annelique. Will you allow the demon to emerge and defeat her?"

"I'm not going to hurt her."

"She is not fighting your demon to save herself, Cassandra. You know that."

"Well, unfortunately, if she thinks she can save my soul, I'm afraid she's out of her league," Cassandra said as she started to walk towards engineering.

"Is she?" Elvet said, only a step behind her. "She met the challenge in strength. She slowly placed you on the defensive. Inch by inch she drove you from your favored battlefields. Now you are faltering because she is assailing a fortress you thought you would never have to defend."

"I was right up until now," Cassandra muttered. "Why are you so interested in Annelique, anyway?" she said.

"This is a mission unlike any other we have faced, Cassandra. And she is unlike any 'client' you have ever dealt with."

She placed a firm hand on Cassandra's shoulder, stopping her. Cassandra turned around to face her with a slightly impatient look.

"Know this," Elvet said, locking her eyes on Cassandra's. "Your fortress is poorly guarded because you thought no one would ever reach it. Annelique's is poorly defended because she does not believe you would willingly attack it. But the demon that holds sanctuary within your fortress would see it burned to ash."

"The metaphors are getting a bit thick here, Elvet."

"Then I will speak plainly. Your recklessness is going to destroy her."

"And what recklessness would that be?"

"The assumption that she will not be harmed if she is not attacked directly is incorrect, Cassandra. Gairanda's death stings her. It would sting her even more if she did not take solace in the fact that you tried to save her."

Cassandra turned around to face her. Her eyes narrowed. Looking around to make sure no one was within earshot, she lowered her voice and said "don't be an idiot. You know damned well that I never tried to save her."

"I do," Elvet said, her own eyes narrowing in turn. "Annelique does not. That is the recklessness of which I speak. Her heart appears boundless in it's light, and it has endured much. But do not believe it is as immortal as her body. Her world can only be shattered so many times before she will shatter with it."

"So she might find out, and she'll hate me for it. How would that shatter her world?"

Elvet simply looked at her; an intense stare that seemed to last entirely longer than it should have.

"Well?" Cassandra said.

"She could not merely hate you and walk away. She has dedicated far too much of her heart to you."

"And who's fault is that?"

"She did choose to accept the risk. But that does not justify your actions. Losing her friend was *not* her choice. Nor were the circumstances surrounded it."

"Elvet, Gairanda was a fucking mindreader! What was I supposed to do?" Cassandra hissed. "Besides, you know this is the way we do business!"

"Make an exception," Elvet said. "You have always trusted my insight. Know that it tells me this: if Annelique is destroyed, you may be as well."

"Unlikely. I doubt Mnokugura can outrun the Starslicer, and I plan to make sure we use the stealth systems this time. I'm not about to make the same mistake twice. And if you mean I'll be destroyed emotionally, I think you forget who you're talking to. I don't *care* about Annelique."

"If you doubt my judgement, perhaps you should enlist a neutral third party. I would suggest a mirror, but any reflective surface would do."

"And what do you expect me to see, Elvet?"

"You are not the only one with eyes, Cassandra." She reached towards Cassandra's face and lifted a lock of her hair. It was stiff and stained with crimson. "This was not here when you returned from battle," she said. "And neither were these," she said as she lifted up Cassandra's wrist, showing her still-scarred fingers. "I know your body and spirit are battle-hardened enough to have healed these wounds a dozen times over. Already the combat wounds you had--the real source of which I prefer not to ponder--are all but gone." She waved her hands over the shredded and cut areas of Cassandra's armor. Of the injuries she had taken, only a handful of shallow scars and discolorations remained. Most had vanished entirely.

"What are you getting at?" Cassandra said.

Elvet took her red-hatched hand and held it right up in front of her face. "These wounds were inflicted by the battle within you, and that is why they do not heal," Elvet said. "That is why I know they can destroy you. It is not Annelique who has been caught in the crossfire between you and your demon. It is you who has been caught between *them.*"

"There is no *demon,* Elvet. There's just me. If that means I'm evil, then I guess I'm evil."

Elvet looked at her. Her expression almost looked like pity. After a moment, she simply turned around and started walked away.

"Elvet!" Cassandra said, moving forward and grabbing her shoulder. "What is the deal with you!? You've never acted this way before!"

Elvet stopped, cocking her head back towards Cassandra.

"You have never sunk this low before," she said.

She started walked away again. Cassandra dropped her hand and let her, gritting her teeth beneath a face that had turned red.

She momentarily resisted the urge to draw one of her daggers and stab it into the wall.

Then she did it anyway, burying it practically up to it's hilt.

It took her five tries to get it back out. When she finally did, she came within an inch of screaming as she realized her hand had started bleeding again.
Step into my world, and maybe one of it's denizens...
http://www.sdcga.com/~duam9/
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Duamutef
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Re: Official Shells Thread (Chapter 26, 9/17/09)

Postby Throku » Thu Sep 17, 2009 8:52 pm

Can't say it's getting any less interesting ;) Though this last chapter did make me go from "What the fuck's gonna happen next?!" to just being a bit more than curious.

I have to thank you for breathing new life into Blast, she was starting to become a second grade backscreen character, I have a feeling you felt that way about her after you broke her. "Um...broken toy...place... over here for now" *Writes on shopping list* 'glue' "Perhaps better make that superglue...?"

I think it's a strength being able to get a breakdown out of a character, but it's getting a little tiresom that every character has to go through it, often more than once. :/

Still a great read! :)
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