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Maybe Tomorrow

-

Princess Kimmi and the

Temple of Bloom

---

by Dissident Love

copyright 2017

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

First off, I suppose I should apologize. Originally, this was going to be an eight-part story. Last month, I said it had probably been expanded to nine parts. And now... yeah, I need two more parts to finish this off. BUT... they will be big, they will be adventurous, and they will hopefully satisfy the cries that I've been hearing for close to four years now, namely "When is Kimmi going to finally lose hir virginity?"

Check Out My Patreon At www.patreon.com/dissidentlove for early releases!

Part 5

Hir Royal Grace the Princess Kimmi really hadn't expected there to be no resistance to hir commotion. The deafening, wall-shaking impacts had to have alerted the entirety of the temple as to hir efforts, and whether or not anyone thought shi'd a chance in Hell to escape, shi would have figured there to be at least some nominal observers outside their chamber.

The solid stone door lay in ruins, three great slabs pitched up against the far side of the corridor, and countless smaller segments that were unable to resist hir fury. Partway through hir demolition, shi'd stopped to admire the incredible handiwork of the stone hinges that allowed such an immense portal to function. The door must have been dropped in vertically, the pins integral to the massive slab lubricated with graphite, and then the lintel installed overhead before any higher walls could have been constructed. It was an impressive engineering feat... which shi'd smashed to pieces with hir bare paws.

Paws throbbing, shi could only shrug. Shi wasn't about to be careful with private property when hir person was being threatened.

Still blushing, trying to hunch and decrease hir imposing silhouette, shi glanced back over hir shoulder at Isima. Shi certainly wasn't going to let anyone else get hurt because of hir, either.

"Shall we?" Kimmi asked, sticking out hir elbow.

The corridor beyond, with its complicated and never-ending, never-repeating friezes of black obsidian and flawless white marble, was empty. There were none of those robed priestesses, and no sign of Ninos, the duplicitous husky. Kimmi raked hir fingers back through hir raven mane, dislodging a cloud of dust and several tiny shards of granite. Isima approached cautiously, but still slipped hir arm through the huge taur's elbow without reservation, pressing herself tightly to the Princess's side.

"No-one?" the doe asked, chewing her lip.

"No-one that I can see, or hear," Kimmi frowned, ears twitching. "Not... anything. But whatever that damn THUMPING is!"

"I'm pretty sure that was you, dear..."

Kimmi chuffed, bumping hirself ever so gently against Isima. They stepped out into the corridor, repeatedly swinging their heads left and right, looking for some clue as to which was the preferable route. "No, not THAT, it's... can't you hear it?"

"I can't hear much of anything after all of your shouting."

"I'm sorry, I REALLY am," Kimmi winced, leaning down to press hir nose against the doe's forehead. "I'm not... I know, I must look like just some sort of dumb beast, but I'm really, REALLY hardly ever quite so... beastly."

Isima sighed sharply. "Stop that."

The taur blinked but nodded, retracting hir nose. "I know, I'm sorry, this is hardly the time or the place."

"No, not THAT! This whole 'dumb beast' business! You're none of those things!"

"But I LOOK like-"

"Yes, all right, you LOOK like some sort of pubescent mink's hayloft fantasy come to life, but that doesn't mean that how you LOOK has anything to do with what people THINK of you!"

Kimmi's cheeks reddened, even through the dust. Hayloft fantasies was the term, usually uttered with a great deal of sniggering and lewd winks, for when folks seemed to be unduly attracted to their taurs, which were often seen working the largest and most productive fields. "I'm not quite sure how to take that," shi murmured.

"Take it for the compliment it is, Princess," Isima smiled, leaning her cheek against the side of Kimmi's bosom, nuzzling a swell several times larger than her own head. "I promise to have many more compliments at the ready, assuming you can actually, you know, get us out of here? Please?"

Kimmi's heart was pounding, and they turned and started to trot to the right. Kimmi hirself, escorted by Ninos, had approached from the left. Shi didn't know much about this temple, and to make matters worse shi didn't know what shi didn't know, but the few facts at hir disposal told hir that moving away from where shi knew there to be priestesses was the best of a bad lot. "I'm working on it," shi muttered. "And there's a little rat who better be doing the same."

Clinging tightly to one another, Kimmi trying to keep hir hormones under control, the pair strode cautiously down the corridor. Hir paws were immensely sore, and even slipping hir paw around to squeeze Isima's strong, hardworking hands made one eye twitch. Shi was strong, sometimes almost unreasonably so, but hir body was simple flesh and bone, and more than once shi'd injured hirself trying to discover hir limits.

Shi seemed to feel no pain, however. Hir heart still pounded like a trip hammer, hir fury at once more being restrained, at being enslaved, filling hir senses with molten steel. Hir training with Shingen was paying dividends; outwardly, shi seemed calm, and shi spoke with even, measured tones. Even that monastic training was being sorely tested by the addition of hir feelings for Isima, however, and the throbbing in hir paws was being echoed by a throbbing in hir loins that was threatening to throw hir hindquarters off balance.

Just keep it together, and keep moving up, shi ordered hirself. Ninos said many things, and I don't think she lied so much as she was playing little games with the truth. The Temple of Seriphos extends above ground at the apex... and it's probably no stronger than the door.

_ _

Hir tail wagged as they rounded the far corner, dislodging from the dense floof and sending flying a tiny blue petal.

---

Shingen clung to the top of the little pyramid, grumbling and muttering under his breath, where he hoped his ancestors wouldn't be able to hear him. The Ninth Level of Wholeness had not, as expected, provided the sort of protection he'd hoped for.

The pyramid protruded a little more than eight feet above the caustic sludge, making it quite a bit larger than he'd expected, as well as quite a bit further from the hedge than anticipated. He'd always had some trouble judging distances greater than a single stone's throw, but he'd never thought that would pose many difficulties; he could throw a stone quite far.

More than once, Kimmi had suggested he might need something called 'spectacles', which were supposed to be ground crystals held against his skull by copper wires. Apparently, they were able to correct some vision problems.

He had scoffed. He had no vision problems.

But now, with his arms wrapped around the apex of the pyramid, fingers and wrists locked while he caught his breath, he pondered whether or not the Princess might have been on to something. Smoke rose from his feet in little greasy swirls, made all the more obvious by the tattered and blackened remains of his formal robe.

Confident that his toes would not, in fact, fall off if he wiggled them, he pulled himself higher so he could support himself with just one arm, his dainty fingerclaws hooked around the very tip of the pyramid. It seemed to be composed of perfectly-milled bronze, or perhaps gold; he was no metallurgist. All he knew was that it was not the simple, reassuring burnished silver of good steel. Securely anchored thusly, he twisted his body around to rest his rump against the north face of the polyhedron, a fulcrum by which he could lift his legs up for a closer inspection.

"Yup," he muttered, reaching out with his free hand to wipe a smear of black goo from his right foot. It left behind a rough, reddish smear. Much to his relief, it was just bare skin, though clearly irritated by the substance, and not actually any of the more vital substances beneath.

In clumps and globs, the fur was falling away from his legs up to about mid-calf. The sludge, whatever it was, had burned it cleanly from his skin, and was now leaving behind nothing but baby-smooth, if slightly rashy, rat skin.

Technically the Ninth Level of Wholeness had protected him from the poisoned pestilence around the pyramid. This did also confirm some of the Humble Ancestor's more cryptic comments regarding the state of one's fur as only a memory of the physical flesh, not alive yet not dead, a fleeting expression of one's inward essence.

Still, Shingen had thought his pelt rather attractive, and now it ended just below the knees.

He continued to examine his feet, twisting this way and that and shaking the last of the noxious slime free. It would certainly have eaten him away to the bone, at the very least, had he not faith in his abilities, but his whiskers twitched with frustration. He had crossed the dead swamp, the last fifty hards or so at a dead run trailing burning scraps of cloth, but his problems were far from over. In fact, they might have multiplied.

Hanging from the tip of the pyramid, his face inches from that mirror-smooth finish, he was bemused to discover no sort of seam, hatch, seal, or even inscription whatsoever. It was utterly unmarred, utterly featureless.

Which meant that, although he was closer than ever to Kimmi, he was quite literally no closer to actually finding hir.

"Blast," he swore, rolling over to place his knees against the sun-warmed metal. He straightened, angling his body away, and drew his sword with a silken hiss. It was considered crude to draw one's blade when not in the presence of a superior foe, but he would discuss the matter with the Princess later. Shi was quite good at using words to hir advantage, and shi could no doubt come up with some way to reassure him that, at the moment, this pyramid was an opponent of tremendous skill and resiliency.

He swung, and he hoped.

---

The Temple was quiet and still, and Kimmi found it even more strangely stifling than hir time underground. At least there, in the subterranean caves, fleeing the strange insect-like slavers, shi'd been able to follow the trickles of water working their way through the rocks, follow the whisper-faint breezes of changing air pressure. There had been paths to freedom, if one had the patience and sensitivity to detect and follow them.

Here, wherever here was, had nothing of the sort.

Kimmi shivered. It reminded hir of what shi'd always felt a tomb must be like. Sealed, still, for eternity.

Isima's words weren't helping to reassure hir that much, either.

"And none of them are seen again?!"

Isima shook her head, swallowing nervously. "It... I never really met anyone who'd been taken. I heard about it a couple times, growing up, but it was always under their breaths, when they thought I weren't listening. They keep the news from the young'uns, of course, and no-one's really come out and SAID anything to me, but... yeah. I guess every... four, five years?"

"And they disappear?!"

The doe nodded despondently. "Usually just travellers, so we think... we try to think... that maybe they just moved on, you know? Just 'cause WE don't see 'em again doesn't mean NO-ONE sees 'em again! Right?"

Kimmi glowered. "You want me to reassure you?"

"... yes?"

They still walked arm in arm, but Kimmi was starting to worry they'd gone in circles. The patterns on the wall didn't seem to repeat themselves in any manner shi could identify, but there was one section that shi was almost positive shi'd seen twice. "Damn," shi sighed. "I wish I'd grabbed a piece of that obsidian!"

"Why?"

Kimmi dragged hir claws along the black stone, leaving nothing behind, not so much as the tiniest little smudge. At most, a little trail of dust was left behind, but the strange distant thumping dislodged it almost instantly. "It's so hard, I can't even scratch it! I'd mark our passage, if I could, so I could make sure we aren't doubling back."

Isima frowned and reached into her bodice, which Kimmi had been desperately trying to not admire. The doe was still wearing the robe that the priestesses had given her, although it was loose around the middle and far too tight across the bust. She fished around for a long moment, heavy bosom bouncing and causing Kimmi to nearly bite through her lower lip, but she eventually emerged with a tiny black triangle.

"Would this work?" she asked, turning the shard of obsidian to glint dully in the infinitely-reflected candle light from the sconces set high into the walls.

Kimmi's jaw dropped. "When did you do that?!"

"When you were hugging your paws to your... self," Isima said softly, blushing at the memory. "I didn't want to approach and make things worse, and I saw a little piece right up next to my feet, and I thought... if we did escape, it might make a nice memento. Maybe an heirloom, you know? I could tell my little ones about the time this great Princess rescued me from the clutches of the evil... uhm... evil whatever they are," she finished lamely. "It's dumb, I knnnnmmmmmfff!"

Her final words were cut off by Kimmi hauling the barmaid high into the air and smothering her stout muzzle with kisses. "Thats!" Kiss. "Amazing!" Kiss. "And!" Kiss. "Perfect!" Kiss. "Thankyou!" Kiss.

Once they'd sorted themselves out, both husky and doe once again on their own feet, avoiding eye contact and adjusting their manes, Kimmi graciously accepted the shard of obsidian. Shi carved a little arrow sigil onto the gleaming white stone, leaving a shower of obsidian flakes behind. "It's not perfect, and we'll grind the obsidian down eventually, but this will help enormously! Do you remember anything else about where they found you?"

"Just that it was... up," Isima replied, pointing to the high ceiling. "Somewhere. I almost got a tummy ache walking through here, staring at the walls, so I don't really... remember..."

"It's fine, it's fine, dear," Kimmi purred, stroking the back of Isima's head and neck with one huge, still aching paw. "We'll figure it out. And now, at least, we'll hopefully not get... AS lost."

When they were walking again, Kimmi deciding to try a series of left turns to see how that fared, Isima cleared her throat. "Does this sort of thing happen to you a lot?"

The huskytaur shrugged. "The details are always different, but... yeah, pretty much."

"Gosh."

"I know."

"That's a life of adventure?"

"Pretty much."

"Hmmm."

Kimmi grinned. "Thinking that a barmaid's life in Milford isn't so bad now?"

The doe's hand stroked the base of Kimmi's back, where hir anthro torso met hir low, heavy barrel. After a few little pets, that hand slipped down Kimmi's side, where there was hardly any of hir dress left, to brush her fingertips against the foremost curve's of the Princess's spectacularly oversized sheath. "There's some... perks to adventure."

Kimmi inhaled through hir teeth, tail wagging vigorously. "You focus on the strangest things at the worst possible times!"

"I'm sorry, I'll keep my-"

"I didn't say stop!"

---

Kimmi and Isima had lost all sense of time. As they walked, Kimmi's huge footpaws starting to grow as sore as hir mitts, the bizarre black-and-white architecture seemed to be having a hypnotic effect on them. Jagged zigzags, sharp angular patterns that weren't quite symmetrical, and unnervingly organic spirals dominated their vision, the individual tiles ranging from dinner plates down to chips no larger than grains of wheat, somehow jointed and chinked together without grout and without hardly any visible seam whatsoever.

The artisanship would have been awe-inspiring to the scholarly Princess if shi wasn't fairly sure that every single ideogram was peering into hir heart with malicious intent.

They came across a few of Kimmi's etched arrows, but not as many as shi would have thought. The passages varied in size, some large enough to allow three huskytaurs to walk without bumping one another, unflickering candles higher than shi could reach, while some required the pair to march single-file. After some deliberation, they decided that Kimmi should walk point in those situations, provided Isima could keep her hands to herself after an incident where stopping short led to the doe getting far to cuddly with the taur's sac.

Branching off of all but the widest passageways where chambers of varying size, each one somehow coated on all sized with the mind-bending monochromatic tilework. There were different underlying architectural styles, columns and colonnades and arches that Kimmi could have described in detail, but every individual feature was clad in the virtually unbreakable obsidian and alabaster.

"But why?!" shi asked for the tenth time. "It... it serves no purpose!"

"It's making my tummy hurt again," Isima pouted, leaning against her protector's side. She had been brave, and more than a little flirty, after being smashed out of their cell. Kimmi recognized the signs of what shi referred to as 'adventure shock'... a mundane life could only handle so much excitement at one time, so one's mind tended to try and portion out the excitement over a longer period of time. Shi hirself remembered being almost unaccountably frisky and giddy at the most inopportune, life-threatening moments, but those sensations faded, eventually to be replaced with a more familiar pit of anxiety, with undercurrents of terror.

Isima's face had that vague terror writ large across it, and she clung to Kimmi as a drowning person might cling to a particularly large bit of wreckage. The 'adventure' portion of their date had worn thin, and now she was a woman who just desperately wanted to be back in her own bed, within her own walls, safe and secure in the knowledge forgotten subterranean priestesses were not plotting her inevitable demise.

Had I ever been that naïve? Kimmi thought to hirself, knowing that shi'd been far, far worse. An entire life raised soft and plump in the highest tower of Estragonia, every book written at hir disposal but as much practical real world experience as your average baked dessert.

_ _

"Don't look at it," the husky murmured, pulling Isima closer and aiming the doe's muzzle into the side of hir breasts once more. "I'll lead us both. And... I'm sorry."

_ _

"Ff'not your f'fault," Isima said, her voice muffled by the Princess's thick fur.

_ _

"It probably is, by this point. I'm starting to think I attract this sort of nonsense."

_ _

"Maybe it'ff f'fo you can f'fave people," the doe suggested, closing her eyes and trying to burrow deeper into Kimmi's sideboob.

_ _

That was an idea that Shingen had proposed, actually, and one that Kimmi had instantly dismissed. His theory ran that, hir very existence was so wildly, vastly improbable, a collection of attributes that should hardly exist anywhere let alone all together, and guiding that physical form through the world was a spirit that, he continued to insist, shamed him for his lack of sympathy and generosity. There might exist a reason, a PURPOSE, for hir existence, and shi would draw the universe around hir until that reason allowed itself to be understood.

_ _

Shi had countered with the theory that everyone's existence was an unlikely muddle of discomfort and unpleasantness, only made bearable by friends and family, and it only stood to reason that the universe was trying to balance the scales by offloading strangers' misery onto hir thick, heavy shoulders.

_ _

"Maybe," Kimmi sighed, not wanting to get into that sort of a philosophical discussion at just this particular moment. "Look, I haven't seen an arrow for a while, maybe-"

_ _

They rounded a corner, a narrow hallway just wide enough for the pair of them emptying out into a great domed chamber. Spilling into that grand hall from a buttressed archway large enough to allow half a dozen Kimmis to pass was a majested, low-sloped staircase that reminded the deposed Princess of hir one experience in the Hall of Coronation back home.

_ _

"Up," shi breathed, squeezing Isima's shoulders.

_ _

"Mmmmf, ok," Isima replied morosely, staring to swing a leg up onto Kimmi's back. "I can walk, I wasn't trying to get fresh with you-"

_ _

"No! UP!"

_ _

Kimmi carefully steered Isima like a toddler, aiming her gaze to the colossal staircase. Candles were set all around the ring supporting the dome, a dozen yards from the mirror-smooth obsidian and alabaster floor. It seemed odd that the temple's vast emptiness required so many candles, but it was an issue shi would be determined to take up with the priestesses after shi'd had a chance to escape and properly bathe and re-arm hirself.

_ _

For now, escaping. Yay!

_ _

Surrounded by a million refractions of light and darkness, the pair began to ascend, arm in arm, hopeful and together.

---

Shingen sighed, feeling cold, gritty granite beneath his scoured, irritated toes.

High above him, a small square of blazing midday hung suspended in the inky blackness surrounding him, illuminating him in a column of pure whiteness. Had he been able to see his reflection, he might have been struck by how heroic he seemed, a lone figure lit by the heavens above, standing defiant in a blank, silent void.

As it was, he was mostly just concerned with finding enough rope to figure out how to get back out again.

The top of the pyramid, as it turned out, wasn't solid gold. It was a masterwork of gilded masonry, to be sure, but the layer of burnished metal was hardly thicker than the material of his robes, stretched out over sharply-cut and tightly-fit slabs of stone. A few careful slices with his blade, which was so far living up to its reputation for perfect sharpness, and the pyramid became about two feet shorter. The entirety of the capstone was hollow, revealing a chamber that seemed, to his ears, to be about thirty feet on a side.

_ _

Peering into the darkness, he found a section of the granite floor had been bracketed out with ancient, rotting timbers. It had clearly been designed to support a ladder that had long since disintegrated. He knelt and dropped a rock through, and was rewarded with a dusty rattling hardly a second later.

_ _

"Down," he whispered into the darkness, reaching into his pack for one of the tiny wax-wrapped pitch torches that Kimmi had insisted he purchase.

_ _

He swung his legs out over the emptiness, where even the bright but indirect sunlight couldn't penetrate, and dropped into the chamber below.

_ _

Starlight! he thought, as loudly and as powerfully as he could, but still not expecting a reply. Mere stone could not keep their thoughts apart, but he could still not detect hir presence. There was something... someone, keeping them apart. Starlight, hear me! Please... please hear me...

_ _

_ _

_ _

Part 6

Hir Royal Grace the Princess Kimmi smelled nature.

Some of hir earliest memories of the tower in Estragonia were scents. The young Princess, even as a pre-adolescent still larger than any two of hir housemaidens, spent a tremendous amount of time at hir magnificent, truly palatial window. The window, of course, faced out to to the northern mountains, and there were very few settlements in that direction. The sprawling, ever-growing population skirted the mighty castle for miles to the south and the east, but to the north there was just the tree-girdled granite of the mountains.

But the wind knew no such limitations, and from hir great height shi picked up scents from all over. In the early mornings, with the sun spearing down above the Portal Pass, the castle generated tremendous thermal updrafts, and brought with it the smells of the morning's baking, the fresh clean smell of hay being swapped out, the salty tang of the harbor warming up. In the afternoons the wind would blow in from the sea, but there would be spirals from the north as well, sometimes startlingly cold. 'Snow', shi would learn, was tiny frozen rain, and a very few of those peaks were crowned with snow even in the hottest days of summer.

The late evenings were hir favorite. With the sun setting out over the water, boats scooting along and looking no larger than hir bath toys (which were, admittedly, still above average), the days last rays would seem to pile up against the forests, the fields, the Murk, and the Portal Pass. Even the Murk seemed almost beautiful in that light, but now the winds were blowing out to the west, and every natural, sylvan scent in creation seemed to float through hir window. Shi thought it was the most wonderful smell shi'd ever experienced, even (and hir housemaidens would have a difficult time believing this) more wonderful than syrup-glazed bacon.

And now, in a bizarre and stomach-churning fractal nightmare of an underground temple, clinging to a buxom serving woman and wearing the tattered remains of what had once been quite flattering evening wear, shi detected that smell once more. Hir tail began to wag furiously, beginning a sloshing wobble in hir hindquarters that made Isima giggle. "Is that a good sign?"

"Trees!" Kimmi hissed. "Trees and flowers! Oh, goodness, I never thought I'd smell that again! Well, ok, I was pretty confident I would, but... let's just say this is what I needed right about now!"

They'd climbed three broad, grand staircases, and Kimmi had had to plug hir nose to try and pop hir ears from the elevation change. Just how BIG was this temple? Shi supposed that if one considered subterranean construction as more an exercise in continuous shoring and the broadening expansion of the footings in order to distribute the weight, then underground temple-building COULD be an extremely efficient manner to create usable volume. But then there had to be issues with air circulation, shi realized. Shi was frowning and humming to hirself, imagining some sort of water-wheel-powered pump and duct system, when shi realized Isima was tugging at hir wrist. "Hmmm?"

"The thumping."

"Mmm," Kimmi nodded. "Some sort of sound baffle system for the water wheels, perhaps, otherwise you'd just be sending vibrations through all the ducts. That's a good-"

"What? No! The... the THUMPING!" she hissed, thick paws flapping at her sides.

Shi could be transported by the odor of a single tree, but shi'd somehow tuned out that the mysterious, omnipresent thumping had grown in volume until it was actually making it difficult to hear each of Isima's syllables. The ominous, implacable rhythm seemed to smother all other sound, so that it was more easily noticed by the regular waves of pressure squeezing hir temples, accompanied by a moment of silence. "Oh."

"Oh?! Is it bad?"

Kimmi frowned. "I... don't know."

"It sounds like a heartbeat!"

"No, the heart has four chambers, in series' of two, which is why the pauses in a heartbeat are irregular."

Isima blinked. "What?"

"Nevermind, just... it's not a HEARTBEAT, is what I'm saying. I'm... pretty sure."

"Oh, I'm reasured," Isima said softly, trying to burrow deeper into Kimmi's flanks. "How're your mitts doing?"

Kimmi flexed hir fingers, and felt the badly bruised joints and crushed tendons responding. "Good enough," shi said, proud at keeping the wince out of hir voice. "Ready for come what may, as my housemaidens used to say."

"Your what?"

"My... uhm... nevermind," Kimmi said again. Shi found that while most people were tickled that they were speaking to a real live Princess, even if they didn't actually believe it, they reacted quite differently at finding out shi was raised by a small army of servants. They had helped bathe hir, dress hir, feed hir, they cleaned hir suite, and were there to attend to hir every need (almost, shi sighed softly). Shingen agreed that it would be best if shi avoided mentioning them.

Weighing more presently on the two escaping prisoners was the fact that the temple seemed to be completely empty of life, there were no pursuers of any detectable kind, and they were ascending towards an unknown and terrifyingly potent thumping noise. Room after room, corridor after corridor, level after level, there was only the black and white friezework on every service, covering what seemed to be an older structure. There wasn't so much as a single chair, a shoe, a cup. Nothing. No signs of life.

The scents of nature were getting stronger, though, and that was enough for Kimmi. Shi all but scooped up Isima around the waist as they climbed yet another majestic staircase. "I'm figuring out the pattern, finally!" shi smiled. "The floorplan of this place. It's probably a square section through a pyramidal prism, which is why all the different levels seem to be getting smaller. Everything seems to be... working around a void at the center of the temple. Maybe the center is solid. Maybe they designed it that way, to support the structure, so it wouldn't collapse? I guess that makes sense..."

"Are you an architect, too?" Isima smiled hesitantly, trying to put her thick split toes down to the ground. She was perfectly capable of walking herself but she didn't really mind being rescued so heroically.

"I... read some books..."

The smell was maddening now, even though there seemed to be no breeze. The air was warmer now, noticeably more humid. Kimmi was reminded of walking through shallows and depressions on hir journeys with Shingen, always in search of a pleasantly cool pond or pool where shi could bathe. Those low wetlands always seemed to collect and magnify the scents of lush flora; experiencing that in the Temple Of Poor Interior Decorating Choices was jarring.

Arm in arm, moving faster now in nervous anticipation of finding themselves aboveground, they scurried through a small side passage that widened out into and through a huge archway.

Where they stopped dead at a low railing. Kimmi's jaw dropped, hir thick arm hanging slack and pinning Isima's elbow to hir side.

"Oh," shi said simply, hir tail drooping once more.

---

Shingen was on his second torch, and was starting to wonder if he'd ever actually find his way out of this granite abyss. The pyramid, whatever purpose it had been constructed for, was growing more immense with every level he dropped down through, but it was with a little bit of reassurance he discovered that the walls were in such a crumbling shambles that he could easily climb back up.

And with any luck, I can find the correct path in this lifetime.

He pushed those negative thoughts down. He had a mission. Starlight was somewhere in here. He had to rescue hir. That was it. It was simple, it was incredibly simple. Spooky pyramid, cursed ground, eldritch magicks stealing away young lovers in the night... that was all just window dressing, or as Kimmi would say, 'that was all just underwire'.

If he were able to pick hir thoughts out of the cobwebs that hung festooned from every sagging, creaking assembly of slabs, he'd feel a lot better. But he couldn't.

One tiny paw rest easy on his pommel, ready to draw and bisect the first thing that seemed to bear ill intentions. So far, the most threatening situation he'd found himself in involved a particularly large and loud cockroach, and the one occasion where he landed funny on a loose stone and slightly twinged his ankle. In the long run, he supposed the temple might eventually defeat him by clogging his lungs with dust, but it was hard to rally against that as an opponent worthy of his training.

Really, he thought, he might just eventually succumb to boredom.

He figured it had to be evening when he was crossing a large, open courtyard, arches and buttresses everywhere. The floor here was tremendously uneven, as though the granite slabs had been floating on the ocean in long, wide rolling waves and troughs. The ceiling was high enough that he could only barely spot it with his torch, but a few deft flicks and tosses showed the whole thing to be no more than forty feet above.

He was in the middle of one such toss when the slab beneath him slipped from the weight of his foot, ancient mortar crumbling and providing a smoother transition than if there had been none at all, and simply dropped straight down into the level below.

He managed not to cry out, but his arms flew out to the sides, his elbows slamming hard against the gap, decayed stone digging at his bones. The torch finished its climb and dropped back down, landing just in front of his nose. The length of hard, sogged oak was a little over a foot in length, the thicker end wrapped in many layers of light cotton batting imbued in tar pitch. It emitted a warm, sputtering glow, and was now sputtering tiny flecks against his muzzle as it rolled closer.

Over the edge of the hole.

The burning brand slipped over, tipping into the void.

The flames brushed his chest, his robe suddenly adorned with a dozen pinpricks of light as every straggling fibre ignited.

He wanted to draw himself up and through the hole, but there were too many potentialities, too many unknowns. The stones flanking him were hardly in good repair, and either of them could go at any moment. The levels below had been within dropping distance, so he didn't pay that too much mind. His pack, and the chot-mei, was bunched up against the back of his head, and he couldn't risk any damage to it. Perhaps worse, his sword was swinging free below the level of the stones, and a hasty movement might dislodge it from his sash.

Of course, his ruff was also on fire, but that was simple pain. He tuned it out.

After a moment, the torch finished slowly winding its narrow end over the lip of the hole, and it tumbled down into the darkness below him.

End over end.

Shrinking rapidly.

A tiny flickering ember now, plummeting incredibly fast.

He swallowed.

It was still falling.

"Oh-kay," he said slowly, torquing his body to the right like a corkscrew and swinging his feet back up onto solid, or at least presently motionless, stone. Moving as nimbly, as lithely, and above all as lightly as possible, he sprang upright and dashed for the relative safety of the edge of the subterranean courtyard.

On the fringes of his hearing, relatively easy to detect in the utter silence of this tomb, he heard the faintest pop-crackle as the slab of dislodged stone finally struck something solid. He doubted he'd hear the torch.

"What the HELL is that?!" he hissed in disbelief. Visions of him simply letting himself drop through danced macabre through his head, tumbling for a good fifteen seconds. What sort of distance was that? The Princess would know, if shi were here. Shi claimed an entire world existed, composed entirely of numbers, and they could predict many future outcomes if one knew enough variables.

He'd said it sounded like sorcery, but now he was starting to see some applications.

---

For a moment, Kimmi had thought they'd finally succeeded in escaping the temple.

The pair found themselves on a wide crescent balcony, an architectural feature almost identical to the one shi'd found hirself on during hir ill-fated Ceremony of Becoming, nearly six months previous. The sky was dark, delicate little flecks and flickers of starlight giving the impression of a great outstretched canopy of candlelight above them. Spread out below and before them and extending out to some unseen distance were gardens, hedges, and the overpowering scent of what must have been distant trees.

Thud.

It was Kimmi who first managed to adjust hir sense of relative scale, something shi'd always been forced to do as a two-ton taur.

There was no sky.

There were no stars.

Towering as high above them as hir former castle had once towered over the common bipedal citizens, was the canopy of a single tree. A hundred, a thousand tiny candles hung from a thousand tiny vines, each one blinking back and forth between brilliant yellow and a rich azure blue. More blue sparks seemed to descend from the impossible tree, so slow and at such vast distances they seemed to be frozen in place, chips of diamond in perpetual tableu.

"Did we make it?" Isima squeed, doing her best to crush Kimmi's sore paw in her own excited grip. "I don't recognize this area."

"We're still underground," Kimmi said flatly.

Isima laughed, a short, almost pitying sound. "That's silly, look at the stars!"

Thud.

"They're not stars."

"What are you talking about?" Isima's eyes flit back and forth between the vast, unthinkable vistas and Kimmi's own honest, sad expression. Faster and faster they bounced, until Kimmi was certain that Isima had stumbled over the truth but was doing her heroic best to ignore it. "Look! Look at it all! LOOK AT IT!"

The last command, little more than a scream, bounced around the stone passageway behind them, but was otherwise swallowed up by the great emptiness. Their balcony, sharp-edged and mottled with the black and white tilework, was just one of perhaps hundreds, though the only one they could see currently occupied. The wall from which they protruded was a vertical cliff, still with that same eye-twisting design cemented to it. In the peculiar, foglike candlelight emitted by the canopy, Kimmi could just make out the perpendicular walls to either side, stretching off into the far and invisible distance.

"It's a cube," shi murmured, not able to confirm this but somehow sure, given what shi could see of their dimensions. Shi saw the pyramid in hir head, four-sided and likely equilateral, but now it was built around a hollow cube. How much of the internal space of the temple could this hall occupy? At the logical extreme, it would cut the pyramid horizontally at mid-height, creating a smaller, potentially entirely separate pyramid atop. "But why?"

"Why what?"

"Why... ANY of this?" shi snapped, flinging hir arm out wide. Shi'd nearly flung both, but that might have tossed Isima over the edge, and shi managed to catch hirself just in time. "Why us? Why now? Why a temple? Why priestesses? Why this tree?! Why are they trying to chop down the tree!? Why is anything going on!?!"

Thud.

Isima took a step back from Kimmi, but couldn't help but turn to re-examine the tree. The candle-lit canopy that stretched like summer thunderclouds overhead had distracted her from the sight of many more little lights, these ones bobbing in fairly straight lines. They twisted in and around the courtyard below, and spiralled up the base of the tree, a trunk that had to have been as wide across as any ten buildings in Milford.

Thud.

_ _

The figures were tiny, but the robes were unmistakable, and to a girl raised in the thick of a town that survived largely from produce and lumber, so was the axe-swinging action. Hundreds, many hundreds, of bodies swung toy-sized axes with eerie, improbable synchronicity.

Thud.

_ _

A tiny blue spark drifted closer on the most ephemeral of breezes, and alit on the bodice of Isima's robe. She moved to flick it away instinctively, but saw that it was nothing more than a tiny blue leaf.

"It's a petal," she said wonderingly. In the middle of all this strange, nightmarish confusion, a flower petal had somehow landed on the crease of black and white that slashed across her full bosom. "Look. Kimmi, look, it's a-"

But Kimmi's attention wasn't on the axe-wielding masses hacking away at the base of the tree. It wasn't on the canopy, or the candlelight, or even the blue-spark petals that gave the air a shimmering corona, much in the way she imagined the bottom of the sea to look.

Kimmi was looking back the way they'd come, the narrow passageway beyond the high arch. A passageway that was now thronged with monochromatic robes, hoods pulled low and forwards to mask all but their noses. Ninos stood at the front, the matronly husky's warm and comforting smile at odds with the ominous forces massing behind her.

"There you are," she said kindly. "We were ever so worried."

Thud.

_ _

- - - - -

_ _

Shingen's confusion only grew, the deeper he pressed into the arcane hellhole.

It had taken him an hour to find a passage down from the level he found himself on, a level composed entirely of heaving, crumbling arches. He was no expert in construction or design, his skills having largely ceased after helping his mother re-thatch the roof every spring, but it seemed as if the floor weren't supporting the levels above, but rather that it was being suspended from them. The stones here were heavily chinked and caked with mortar, the arches sagging and slumping together, and there seemed to be a sense to it that he couldn't quite grasp.

The Princess could, he thought. Shi'd poke a stick into the ground and sketch a few symbols and spout a load of nonsense that somehow explained the world.

_ _

The level below was little more than a single corridor, high and tapered like a stone lean-to. Descent was rapid now, many formerly bearing walls having collapsed, revealing the yawning chasm of open space to one side. Periodically he tossed a stone through, waiting, counting under his breath until he heard the clay-like crik of impact. The lower level, whatever it may be, was indeed growing closer as he dropped down, level by crumbling level, but was he even on the right path? How far was he from the surface? A hundred feet? Five hundred?

His torch, one of only two that remained, sputtered and dimmed, as though hearing his thoughts and mocking him. Shingen pinched his nose and blew out again, feeling his ears pop. Many of the caves back home wound their way into the guts of the world in such a fashion, but this had all been constructed by hand, slab by slab, joint by joint. It seemed impossible.

When his torch was on its last few moments, he made his way over a cracked, crazily canted floor (or was it a former wall? Could one tell?) to where a huge vertical gash exposed the colossal chamber beyond. His previous torch had been wasted, a blackened scar across his chest a constant reminder, but he wasn't about to make that mistake again.

He lit his final torch from the guttering remains of its predecessor, and then flung the dying little stick out into the void.

It arced high, blazing brilliantly in the sudden rush of rich but stale air. It seemed to create its own bubble of ochre light, touching nothing larger than floating motes of dust. In a moment it was below him, dropping fast. A tiny orange star.

Then nothing.

A chamber this vast, he thought, a vast earthworks project that must have taken the resources of a mighty empire a lifetime to craft... and it was empty.

He stood on the precipice, toes wiggling, holding his final source of light.

"Starlight," he called out, the word swallowed up by the nothingness that seemed to stare back at him.

When it seemed that he'd stood there for a lifetime, his torch already growing hot in his hand, he blinked away a tear and resumed his descent.

Part 7

Hir Royal Grace the Princess Kimmi saw red.

Ninos, the aged but still somehow enchantingly empathetic husky, spread her palms wide. The black and white robes, which Kimmi could not help but associate with the jagged, jarring obisidan and alabaster architecture of the temple interior, swished and swayed.

"You weren't in your chambers."

The tongue speaking those words was warm, harkening back to Kimmi's youth and the fond memories of hir housemaidens bringing hir vats of soup on the frigid nights of that one Crimbo where even the almanacs couldn't recall an icier winter. The great and noble taur hadn't been permitted to journey below hir tower, even then, and the fireplace could only do so much to warm the stones that were being whipped on all sides by bitter ice-filled winds that claimed a half dozen lives that season, but shi'd still spent that one night under a small pile of blankets, with several of hir un-self-consciously nude servants cuddled up against hir, feeding one another soup from wooden spoons and making up scary stories. For such a bitter time in hir life, it remained one of hir fondest memories.

The tongue was warm, but the words were as chill as those northern winds, and more directly threatening.

Isima pulled in so tight to Kimmi's flanks the great taur was nudged slightly closer to the railing.

"What," the Princess said slowly, flatly, voice rich with molten lead, "is all of this."

"All of wh-"

"Let's just skip the part where you pretend to be delightfully and perhaps even adorably flustered by my questions, and consider this the end of our relationship as hostess and guest." Kimmi gestured with hir free arm towards the vast, impossible tree looming behind hir, above hir. Trees smaller than this formed the basis of religions, as far as shi knew from hir readings. Another tiny blue petal landed in hir hair, but was cast aside by a twitch of hir ear. "WHAT. IS. ALL. OF. THIS."

"Oh, that!" Ninos laughed prettily, gesturing to the tree. "That is the Tree of Occam. It's really quite a remarkable sight, isn't it? I would be more than happy to escort you down to the Great Gallery's floor, if you wanted to-"

"You're chopping it down!"

"Well, yes," the husky sighed, shrugging helplessly. "That is unfortunate, isn't it? Such a majestic specimen, but unfortunately the Tree of Occam is an unsustainable burden on the world. You couldn't begin to imagine the damage it can wreak!"

While Ninos spoke rationally, easily, disarmingly, more and more of the black and white robed figures filed quietly onto the balcony. They shuffled with their heads down, paws clasped, feet or hooves or what have they hidden by the swishing hems of their identical outfits. "We're half a mile underground at the very least. How much damage could it do?"

Ninos smiled. "You are most perceptive, Princess. Would you care to-"

"NO!" Kimmi barked, hunkering down. "None of that!"

"None of wha-"

"None of this absolute BULL SHIT where someone talks to me, pretends to be my friend, pretends to talk sense, tries to worm their way into my mind and make it so I can't bring myself to squash them like a bug!" Kimmi slammed one huge mitt into hir palm, a meaty thud that could have felled a small tree. "I'm not listening to whatever you're selling, you insane old woman! You're going to move out of the way, and you're going to let me and Isima leave peacefully, or there's going to be trouble of a sort you've never prepared yourself for!"

"But she doesn't want to leave," Ninos said blandly. "Isn't that right, young one?"

The robed figures, priestesses, servants, slaves, it mattered not, advanced on Kimmi's right. Their faces remained bowed, shadowed, and Kimmi couldn't make out anything but the vaguest shapes of muzzles. They kept their sleeves tucked up to one another, as though fearful of letting in so much as a sliver of light or a puff of air. Kimmi snarled and raised hir fist, more than ready to sweep the first ranks clear off the balcony. "HEY! None of that!"

It was in a flash of furious shame that Kimmi realized that Isima was cowering against hir left side.

Shi spun, but already the plump doe was being wrenched from hir flanks by two robed figures considerably larger than the rest, though still quite a bit shorter than Kimmi hirself. The husky taur lashed out, intending to snag hir almost-lover's shoulders, but hir fingertips grazed nothing but the dirty white of her bodice. "NO!" shi bellowed, rising to hir full and terrible height, fists balled up and prepared to fly.

A thin blade, almost dainty, appeared next to Isima's neck, held by the mate of the thick, heavy black paw that snaked out of a sleeve and across the doe's mouth. Two equally powerful-looking white paws, ursine in nature, gripped Isima's shoulders tightly.

Kimmi faltered, just for a moment, eyeing that blade with anguish. I could do it! I could flatten them all! Crush them against the stones, knock them to the ground below! I COULD DO IT!

_ _

And would Isima survive? Shi asked hirself savagely. You would win. Who would lose?

_ _

"Hush, child," Ninos chided the taur, taking a step closer. "Girls, girls! Treat our young guest with care, and above all dignity! Seriphos believes in the sanctity and preservation of all creatures!"

The two imposing figured flanking Isima eased their crushing grips a fraction, but the doe's eyes continued to bulge from her skull, pleading with Kimmi to save her.

"Let her go," Kimmi rumbled, more of a geological action than mere vocal. She saw some of the robes flinch, ever so slightly. "You can have me, but let her go!"

"Child, child," Ninos repeated, flicking her muzzle back and forth as though scolding a pup. "You don't understand. We already have you both. Why would we-"

Kimmi didn't roar. Shi didn't snarl. Shi didn't inhale to steady hir nerves, as shi was wont to do. Shi betrayed none of hir actions; Shingen's teachings finally paying off. Shi gave no warning, instead simply snapping hir fist out, knuckles leading, fingers curling in smoothly. Shi planted hir opposite hind foot, leaning ever so slightly into the strike.

It was an attack that had cracked and splintered ancient oak timbers, Shingen having set up a training facility for hir in a town with an old lumber mill that didn't mind the show. It focused on hir natural speed, which was considerable, and paid none of hir usual attention to brute force, which for hir was ubiquitous. Sometimes, he had told hir on countless occasions, shi would face an opponent shi could not simply crush.

Hir fist flew true, streaking towards Ninos's bare head like a ballista bolt.

The glow of grim, base satisfaction at feeling it connect didn't last.

Ninos tilted her head around the ham-sized fist, clucking her tongue. Her hand was raised, which Kimmi knew couldn't possibly be; the two-legged husky's arms had been flat by her sides! "That simply will not do," the senior priestess sighed, rolling her eyes. Her small palm pressed against Kimmi's fist, pushing it back with a force that the furious taur couldn't believe, could scarcely comprehend.

Shi dug all four of hir feet in, hunkering and pushing forwards with all of hir might, but shi might as well have been pushing against a statue of bronze. Hir thick, blunt claws dug into the ancient stones beneath as hir great bulk was driven back, inch by inch, until hir sac thumped against the stone handrail.

"As I was saying," Ninos continued, bringing her outstretched palm back to her side, absently wiping some dust from it. "We have you both. Why would we ever let you go?"

---

Shingen had no idea how far below the surface he now found himself.

His mind was filled with the stories Kimmi had told him of hir time in the bleak abyssal depths below hir homeland of Estragonia, during hir ill-fated escape. A darkness with weight, forcing itself against your eyes, pushing your breath back down your throat. He fancied he could have cut it with his sword, and perhaps eased his journey, but it was a brief fantasy.

His luck had turned, inasmuch as it could do so in a dank, ancient, lifeless tomb. Several dozen levels below that horrifying cracked chamber, with his torch guttering and sputtering, he began to find debris beyond the half-inch drifts of crumbled grout and chips of stone. The sticks were heaped and piled around in the corners of the rooms he trudged through, mounds taller than he, and while most of them had mouldered and decayed long ago, there were some trasures. Digging through one such pile, he found there were pockets of dried, dessicated, but above all flammable hardwood.

There were only enough to light a burning brand that could guide him to the next such pile, but at least now he had resources. It was more than enough to keep his mind and his heart on the mission.

He tried not to think about where so many sticks and twigs could have come from, this far underground.

The little rat was approaching... something, he knew. It started as a tickle between his eyes, and became more insinuating and insidious the deeper he delved into the forgotten temple. It was not a fearsome sensation, but it was ominous in a way he couldn't quite place. He'd never felt it before, and he recalled nothing from his readings of the Humble Ancestor that seemed similar.

But when he looked down, straight down between his toes and into the deepest catacombs that must surely exist below him, that tickle between his eyes burned and pulled, guiding him like a fish hook in his mind.

If Kimmi wasn't the source of that lure, he knew shi'd run afoul of whatever was.

"Maybe you were better off in your tower," he whispered to himself, if only to have some sound beyond the scuffing of his feet on the stones. "I highly doubt you'd have found yourself in this predicament if you'd become Crown Princess."

He'd made mention of this concept before, each time turning the Princess from a smiling and bubbly teenager into a dour, sulking hulk of fur and muscle. He understood all too well that hir childhood home, no matter how gilded in luxury and finery, was still a cage. Nothing he could do would change that, or change how shi saw it. Shi'd made hir peace with the fact that shi would undoubtedly endure a difficult life, wandering the world in search of hir place in it.

He smiled, in spite of himself. How close were their choices in life...

"Perhaps I just need to find you a town so fun you don't WANT to leave," he continued, chuckling at the thought. "Plump barmaids as far as the eye can see. No need to meet in the midnight hour in haunted woods cursed by some ancient, forgotten God, goodness no. That would just be silly. Who would do that?"

The flaming bundle of sticks he now used threw considerably more smoke during its short life, but also provided a great deal more light. The rooms he moved through now were fairly level and more or less intact, most of the damage having been incurred higher up. He was finding evidence of other lost habitants now, flecks of black and white stone mixed in with the dusty grey. Here and there rusted metal pitons were anchored into the walls, and even a few simple hinges in the otherwise empty doorways.

It didn't reassure him that there was more evidence of use the deeper he went. Whoever had operated this colossal subterranean empire hadn't been afraid of the dark, that was for sure, and in his experience, that tended to not imply good intentions.

"I'm sure that's just a boundless prejudice," he narrated, skittering down a broad staircase that pierced several levels, bringing him closer to his goal. Whatever his goal might be. "Many good folk live in the deepest recesses of the living world. I'm sure. I just need to meet them, that's all. Kimmi would say that it's important to respect other viewpoints."

At the bottom of the stairs, some of which were still clad in that cracked black and white tile, Shingen tested his lure by staring down between his toes... and stopped.

His head tilted from side to side, as though listening for something just on the fringes of the wind. His whiskers twitched. He spun in place, waving around his makeshift torch and rubbing the pommel of his blade in nervous anticipation.

The tingle was not drawing him down anymore, or at least not straight down. The angle was much steeper, but now it was drawing him back to the cliff-like wall that separated these smaller levels from the gargantuan central chamber. He had further down to go, but his pace quickened. He paused just long enough to cram the front of his robe with enough dry, colorless branches to make one or two more torches, and then he was off. Before long, his jog was nearly a run.

The world around him became more jagged, more monochrome, his echoes coming sharper than ever before, but he cared not.

He was close, and he would not be stopped.

---

Kimmi's hands lowered slowly, but only into a tight boxing stance that Shingen referred to as a 'shell'. Hir shell was hir armor, but it was also hir boundary, hir trigger, hir reflexes made flesh. Once properly trained, one's shell (for they were all unique, warrior to warrior, nation to nation) was impenetrable.

Shi resisted the urge to rub the knuckle that Ninos had caught so effortlessly, wondering if shi's popped it out of joint. Nothing could possibly have withstood that blow, surely not such a slender and unassuming figure!

"What ar-"

Ninos waved hir words away dismissively. "Oh, come now, surely you're not going to ask what I am, are you? Such banalities, from such an unequalled creature such as yourself? They're beneath you, my child. All the fruitless little vermin of this world are beneath you."

The tactic of compliments, if somewhat confusing and creepy ones, didn't faze Kimmi. Shi'd been called 'exceptional', 'unique', 'majestic', 'unparalleled', all manner of things, by those that sought to capture hir, subjugate hir, or simply claim hir as a prize. Shi knew shi was a one-of-a-kind freak; being reminded of it was not the best way to get on hir good side.

Shi split hir focus between Ninos and Isima, the doe still breathing frantically through the ursine mitt clamped across her muzzle. Her magnificent bust rose and fell, and Kimmi felt a pang of shame at even noticing that. "She is not beneath anyone," shi hissed, not sure what else to do. Attacking Ninos had failed, and shi feared anything else would end with a stiletto piercing Isima's supple neck. "She... is kind, and gentle, and more deserving of my respect than any of you!"

Ninos smiled. "That is adorable you think so, it truly is. But you must know that they would never accept you. You are more than just different, child. Surely your travels have taught you that!"

Kimmi snorted. "I've had enough of this. You're not going to convince me, and I'm not going to convince you, and one of us is going to end up a messy red smear on the ground below if you keep working your jaw."

"You can-"

"Stop it."

"Child, you don't have-"

"Stop it!"

"Come here, my dear, let me-"

"STOP IT!!!"

Kimmi clasped hir paws to the sides of hir head. The thumping from the ceaseless hacking away at the trunk of the tree seemed to be forcing hir heart into a similar, slow beat. The candle-stars above hir gave hir a sickening sense of spinning vertigo. Ninos's voice, preternaturally calm and level, pierced the haze of hir fury and seemed to be digging away at the core of hir mind, cut by tiny cut.

Ninos smiled, stepping closer and reaching out as though to stroke the taur's face reassuringly. "There there, child, it doesn't need to be so painful. The passage to Rebirth can be long and arduous, but Unification is peace and tranquility, and _acceptance,_for all, for ever!"

The Princess hunched hir shoulders, squeezing hir eyes shut. Isima was right there, she was just right there, she was hardly an arm's length away, but Kimmi couldn't save her. Shi wasn't strong enough. Shi knew books, countless books, but shi wasn't smart enough to rescue hir friend, perhaps the first person who had shown an interest in hir, without a trace of mockery.

Shi flinched when the priestess's hand touched hir elbow, those robes sliding against hir breasts as Ninos reached higher. "It will be all right," she crooned. "You will know peace, when Seriphos becomes unto you. Simply open your mind and... relax."

Silvery-grey fingers touched Kimmi's temples, and

she felt

lightning

skipping through

hir mind

crashing

a presence

dark

malevolent

seeking

entry

control

be afraid

it spoke

_ be very afraid_

_ _

Isima watched in horror as Kimmi, her great and fantastical Princess, seemed to retreat into hirself. Shi closed hir eyes, shi covered hir ears, shi cowered, shi actually cowered, against the railing like a frightened child. Ninos, a slight and unimposing figure, advanced on hir like a slavedriver, one paw extended, and merely touched the huge husky's cheek.

But... you have to save me, she thought despairingly. YOU have to save ME!

_ _

She reached out towards Kimmi, but one of the brutes flanking her swatted her arm down, crushing it to her side and giving every indication that more force could be applied at a moment's notice.

It was only a few seconds that the pair of huskies stood frozen in that position, Kimmi cringing and seeming much smaller than hir bulk could allow, Ninos standing imperiously and somehow looming over the much larger Princess. Isima didn't know what was going on, didn't know why Kimmi didn't simply spring from hir haunches and run for help, find hir own way out.

And maybe return, if shi hasn't forgotten about me, she cried inwardly.

_ _

Ninos gasped, her ears flipping back. Her entire body flinched, and to Isima's eyes it looked as though the priestess dearly wanted to take a step back. A whooshing, hissing breeze swirled around the balcony, and it took the hysterical doe a moment to realize that was the sound of Kimmi inhaling, inflating like some sort of Harvest Festival float.

_ _

The taur's eyes bulged out, hir lips pulled back in a sawtoothed grimace of pain. Shi rose to hir full height, considerably higher than Ninos could reach, and eventually the smaller husky was forced to pull hir arm back.

_ _

"How did you-" Ninos started to ask, and if any more words followed, Isima missed them.

_ _

Kimmi, who looked to be on the verge of simply reaching out and tearing the priestess in half, opened hir muzzle as far as possible, and unleashed a deafening, defiant roar.

_ _

---

_ _

"Get me out of this ca-a-ave," Shingen sang, softly, quietly, poorly. He was moving very fast now, and the pitter-patter of his footfalls was echoing back and forth endlessly, like an avalanche of pebbles constantly threatening to engulf him. He'd needed something, anything, to gild the maddening noise, and in the absence of the Princess's dulcet, throaty voice, his own would have to suffice. "Because it's nothing but a sticky, dusty gra-a-a-a-ave..."

_ _

That tickle between his eyes was like a screw being turned now. His eyes would water whenever he found himself scanning from side-to-side, passing over whatever distant, invisible point he was being inexorably drawn towards. Progress was becoming tricky, since the point was so very close now, but there seemed to be no straight, uninterrupted path in the proper direction. He was dashing up and down corridors, through rooms, circling back on himself, trying to triangulate a position.

_ _

I hate mazes, he thought grumpily. Waste of good hedges, if you ask me.

_ _

The walls were clad fully in that bizarre, hideous black and white stone tile now, and a few experimental chips and prods with his sword showed that they were hardly a quarter inch thick and flaked away easily enough. They appeared to have been added as an after-thought, growing like moss across the stones. He found several rooms where tendrils of black and white stone spread out across the ceiling, looking for all the world like vines, and as he watched they chipped and flaked and crumbled away.

For whatever reason, they were retreating.

"I hope there's a Princess to sa-a-a-ave," he continued, passing by a narrow but quite tall corridor, skidding to a stop, and backtracking. "I hope that shi remembers to be bra-a-a-ave..."

He looked down the corridor, and gasped when the screw between his eyes wrenched. There was darkness beyond, but down here that meant nothing.

Shingen sprinted down the corridor, and had to catch himself when it widened out through an archway and onto a truncated dais that might, at one time, have been a balcony. The stone balustrade was only intact where they anchored back against the walls; another two steps and he'd have tumbled over the edge and into the void below.

He looked up. And up.

"Oh, no," he muttered.

He was back in that huge, empty chamber.

He held the burning brand aloft, but the meager glow lit maybe a fifty foot circle around him with dull ochre, a semisphere floating in the infinite emptiness, which seemed as good a metaphor as any for how his day was going.

Despite the hollow chamber's mind-numbing size, it felt... full. Impending, even, reminding him of the mountains of his birth after a winter's heavy snowfall, creaking with the spring thaw. Something, somewhere out in that darkness, a weight was about to tip, topple, come crashing down on him and bury him underneath this swampy valley.

He shivered. "Why did you lure me out he-e-e-ere," he sing-songed, tongue dry, swallowing uselessly. He reached into his robe and removed another handful of powdery, bone-dry sticks. He lit a new brand, waving it around to help it catch, and tossed the old one out into the void.

Shingen watched it drop, expecting it to fall forever, but it was barely a hundred feet before the scattering cloud of embers touched the broad, rocky plain below. The immense chamber was filled with debris, piled haphazardly, and here and there tiny flames began to flicker and glow. More sticks, Shingen realized. An endless midden of ancient timber. How could it... wait...

"I was trained never to acknowledge my fe-e-e-ear," he quavered, his keen eyes scanning the detritus. Some heaps were guttering and throwing sparks, and enough of a glow had sprung up to illuminate a rough oval against the sheer stone wall. The sticks and branches were long and thin and pale and white, and could almost have been mistaken for bones.

The femurs and pelvises and skulls, though, could have been mistaken for nothing else.

Bones, he thought, so far beyond tense that he had discovered a new realm of calm. An endless expanse of sticks, and bones.

Just on the edges of his hearing, a ghostly scream rose around him. The burning brand flickered and swayed in his hand, a breeze appearing out of nowhere and dashing him with sparks and smoke. Just as quickly as it had arisen, the scream died away, and he was left in the eerie graveyard tranquility once more.

It was a scream he'd recognize anywhere, even when he couldn't be positive he hadn't imagined it.

"Kimmi."

---

---

Part 8

by Dissident Love

copyright 2017

Hir Royal Grace the Princess Kimmi screamed until there was no longer breath within hir.

Ninos, the warm and matronly priestess that had apparently orchestrated their kidnapping and so recently threatened to slit Isima's throat, took only a single step back. The other priestesses, including the ones gripping Isima's shoulders, were already several yards away and forming a ring around the immense taur, but that didn't stop them from shuffling two or three steps further.

"Interesting," Ninos murmured, eyeing the Princess speculatively. "I wouldn't have expected that from one such as y-"

"WHAT DID YOU DO?!" Kimmi bellowed, staring frantically around. Isima had worked the so-called 'graveyard shifts' at the Royal Milford Inn often enough to have seen that look before, when rousing the sodden souses that had drunk themselves incoherent. Bad dreams, induced equal parts by the liquor and the memories that drink tried to suppress, parting like black waters to allow the dreamer to surface once more. "WHAT... Father..."

Ninos walked slowly away from the confused, enraged husky, tapping her pewter-colored lips thoughtfully. "I suppose I should be grateful," she mused. "I had thought you merely the best this world could provide, and that I would be compelled to simply... make do. But you're more than that, aren't you? You've been keeping secrets."

Kimmi shook hir shaggy head, raven locks flying. Shi blinked furiously, wondering how long shi'd been away, how long shi'd been wandering around hir-... Isima! Shi locked eyes with the terrified doe, memories flooding back to hir. Shi took two steps towards the pretty barmaid, stopping only when one of the robed bears flanking the doe brandished that gleaming stiletto warningly.

"I've grown lazy," Ninos sighed, sidling up to Isima and glancing back over her shoulder towards Kimmi. "My temple usually drives interlopers mad within hours. Perhaps I'm losing my touch. No, you call for a more personal approach."

"If you touch her..." the Princess growled, shoulders and haunches bunching. The robed figures took another step back, even the bears that were restraining the shocked Isima.

Only Ninos seemed unperturbed; to Kimmi's horror, the two-legged husky actually smiled in response. "If I touch her...? Please, continue," she urged, every inch the concerned parent waiting with baited breath to hear about her pup's day. "If I touch her, you will do, what, exactly?"

"I'll-"

Ninos stroked Isima's cheek, and Kimmi realized with a start that shi'd been so focused on how to spring, how to strike at the priestess, that shi'd completely ignored what was actually happening right in front of hir. Isima's head jerked back, and she sniffed, just once, at the touch across her muzzle.

Kimmi froze.

Ninos's smile faded. The priestess took a small step back. Immediately, the bears' grips loosened from Isima's shoulders, and they too moved away. The stiletto disappeared up one of their sleeves. Kimmi thought shi should know which one was armed, but shi couldn't tell exactly where it had gone. The world was still spinning.

Ninos's touch across hir own muzzle had been... it was like...

Hir stomach lurched, trying to put words to the dream-within-a-nightmare shi'd experienced. It had been days, perhaps weeks. Subjectively, at least. The pursuit had been relentless, the night interminable and endless. Estragonia was exactly as shi'd remembered, but never as it had truly been, a shadowy and lifeless husk. Up and down the streets, the grand causeways, the castle's corridors shi marched, calling for hir mother and hir father, just hir mother and hir father...

Isima smoothed her soft, heavy paws against hir robes, the ones that the priestesses had so helpfully provided for her. She seemed to examine her palms, turning her wrists this way and that, before she looked up at Kimmi and smiled.

That, warm, knowing, comforting smile.

"I think," she said slowly, walking up to the stunned taur, "that you won't do anything at all."

Her lips tilted up further, now condescension, now a superior smirk.

"Isima?"

The doe clucked her tongue and shook her head prettily from side to side. "No," she sighed. "Not anymore."

Kimmi opened hir mouth, but thinking back later on, even shi wasn't sure what shi would have said. Before shi could utter a sound, Isima's hand came around in a high whistling arc, striking the Princess across the face with titanic, bone-crushing force.

The world swam before Kimmi's eyes. Blue sparks spun and danced on the edges of hir vision. Shi slumped against the stone railing, feeling it shift slightly against hir bulk. Shi raised hir hands protectively, throwing one forearm across hir eyes, swinging wildly with the other. Never before had shi been struck like that, not even by the colossal, magic-infused giant awrence. Shi didn't imagine any mortal fist could bear such strength, certainly not the fist of the tender, loving Isima.

That hand, which had wielded nothing more deadly than mugs of ale, lashed out and squeezed the taur's throat. Thick corded muscles fought back, shielded by heavy folds of skin and fur so thick shi'd lost more than one comb in it for days at a time, but daggers seemed to be digging into her flesh. The more shi resisted, the deeper they sank.

Shi raised one huge fist, staring blearily into Isima's eyes...

... and lowered it once more.

I can't hit her, shi thought, oddly peaceful as blue sparks gave way to a blizzard of soot. I could... never... hit...

---

Shingen lit a third brand, sitting on the cracked remains of some sort of balcony. There was no shortage of dusty, powder-dry sticks within reach. Building a new torch was as easy as raking his blunt little claws through the debris, sifting out the shattered fragments, and coming up with a bouquet of antique wood that simply could not have existed this far below the surface.

Still, what was one more impossible thing?

He tossed the faded brand out into the void again, watching as it dropped, struck, and burst. Sparks erupted in all directions, illuminating still more heaped dunes of dry-bleached bone. Some were quite recognizable, some fairly simple shapes repeating throughout the intelligent species of the world, but there were skulls, countless skulls he simply couldn't identify.

He'd only seen a handful of rat skulls, apocryphal approximations of what lay just below the surface of his own face, and they were upsetting enough. It never occurred to him that other skulls might be as alien to his own as could scarcely be imagined. Some had far too many teeth, some far too few, some with too many holes, some too long or short or thick.

But they'd all _died_here.

That was what mattered.

The fishhook in his mind was gone. He'd been lured, guided, _drawn_to this place, but now that he was here, he found himself adrift. He sat, perched on the edge of the crumbled stonework, knees hanging over the hundred-foot drop to the graveyard below, and thought. Occasionally, he lit a new torch and tossed the dying one away, trying to roughly map out the space below.

So far, his map was a uniform lumpy white.

He thought about the immense open space, a single constructed chamber that could have held any castle or temple or fortress he'd seen in his travels. There was no sense to it, no rationale that he could discern. It seemed empty.

He glanced down again, noting that a pile of leg bones somehow formed a grinning, winking face, much in the same way clouds sometimes caught his attention.

Well. Almost empty.

_ _

By his estimation, the slowly expanding field of dull orange embers was only illumination a paltry, insignificant fraction of the chamber's total area. There had to be something more to this bizarre construct, something this chamber was designed to protect.

Or contain.

Shingen nodded to himself, reaching a decision. He stood, moved over to where the cracked masonry was jointed into the rippling, sagging vertical walls. He didn't know how old this subterranean oubliette might have been, but he knew that ancient was the only word that could come close to describing the nearly fluid manner in which the carefully-cut stones had settled unevenly. It was no wonder the upper levels were heaved and mounded, with pockmarks large enough to walk an army through.

Fortunately, the advanced decay made climbing down the wall child's play, even with one hand holding his makeshift torch.

"I apologize, forgotten ones," he murmured to himself, ears twitching at the unexpected volume of his own whispered words. "I mean no disrespect."

After a few minutes of careful descent, his right foot landed on a dusky stack of bones that he presumed must have made up quite a large creature's spine. A puff of dust rose to paint his shins, still marred with black from his journey through the toxic swamp above.

Thinking back to his initial entry, he paused. He knew that, should he actually decipher the mystery of this tomb and figure out how to rescue Kimmi, he would have an entirely new set of difficulties related to getting hir back up to the surface. He'd dropped through dozens of caved-in floors before finding actual staircases. There were, to the best of his recollections, no ropes, and certainly not many piles of rubble large enough for hir to use as a ramp.

He remembered hir shared memories of simply smashing hir way out of the vile subterranean gladiatorial pit, and he decided that, perhaps, hir particular set of skills might somehow find a way.

Moving very carefully, stepping wherever possible on debris that had not once been a loved one, Shingen set out away from the wall, heading towards the mysterious center of this mass grave.

---

Hir Royal Grace the Princess Kimmi sat huddled in the corner of hir palatial chambers, wrapped in the cold, damp scraps of bedding that had remained on hir bed.

Hir housemaidens would not be coming through the door with hir breakfast, ever again. Shi knew this to be true, in spite of the buzzing, wordless doubt that hovered just beyond the edge of hir hearing. Hir bedclothes would never again be returned to hir, laundered and fresh and fluffy and pristine. Hir hearth might someday burn with ochre flame again, but shi would have no-one to read hir books to as shi warmed hir flanks by it.

How long had shi sat there? Shi pulled the musty linens tighter around hir shoulders, sure they were simply dampening hir fur and nothing more, but shi needed something to cling to, quite literally. Hir hindquarters protruded gravidly from the tattered sheets, but there was nothing remaining in the whole of the kingdom large enough to cover hir any more.

Shi knew. Shi'd checked.

Days, it must have been. Memories flashed through hir mind. The stables, the kitchens, the Grand Hall. Even the drapes that had lined that colossal gallery, drapes that took eight strong porters to mount and hang, were shredded or entirely absent. The whole of the kingdom had been raided, pillaged.

Sacked, was the word that came to mind. Shi knew it well, from hir histories. The sacking was the end of the period of imperial aggression, the extremely final punctuation mark concluding the bitter and bloody rivalries that seemed utterly endemic of all civilizations.

Of course, hir histories never went into terribly specific detail, but it was that lack of description that got the point across most succinctly. When there was nothing left, what remained to be said about it?

Estragonia was a kingdom of ghosts, and shi was its newly-crowned Queen.

Kimmi tried to draw hir head back into hir sheets, burying hir muzzle between hir breasts as shi'd often done since shi'd bloomed as a younger pup. It was warm, and silent, and safe... or it should have been. Shi felt none of those things. If anything, hir nose felt chilled, hir cleavage scratchy and irritated. Shi sighed, and whimpered, and drew hir legs up closer to hir barrel.

Or shi would have, if hir great and cumbersome nethers weren't constantly impeding them.

With a half-hearted growl, shi kicked at hir grotesque undercarriage. It suited hir punishment, shi supposed, to finally ascend to the throne of hir mighty kingdom and have no-one to oppose hir. No-one to scoff at having such a misshapen beast as ruler. No-one to smirk behind their paws that shi slept in the royal stables. No-one to bray openly at the possibility of hir ever producing offspring.

Shi had the approval rating shi'd always wanted.

There was another crash from somewhere down in the castle, some lower chambers. Shi'd heard them all day (or was it day? The clouds beyond hir high arched windows were dark and grey, but... they'd always looked like that, hadn't they?) but hir half-hearted calls of inquiry had all been ignored. Eventually, shi'd given up. Probably just the rats. There were always rats, weren't they?

Rats aren't so bad, shi thought oddly. There is always a rat, is there not?

_ _

Shi shook hir head. That didn't make any sense, hir obsession with rats. Had shi always had it? Shi remembered cowering at every scratch, every rustle, every single puff of wind across hir mutated barrel, fearful of some skeletal arm reaching out of the shadows to grasp hir with unceasing strength and drag hir... somewhere. Shi'd told hirself not to worry, that it was just rats, nothing worse or more supernatural than simple rats, and that thought had been eerily calming.

Footsteps.

_ _

The softest, gentlest, most velvety pad-pads ascended the hundred stairs leading to hir tower-topping suite. Hir vast residence, bed and bath and lounging area beside the great hearth, was a single circular room, dotted and delineated with trunks and folding paper-backed partitions. Those partitions were shredded, little more than kindling now, and hir trunks were filled with naught but decaying rags.

And so it was that, from anywhere, shi could have seen the tall single door open. Shi happened to be tucked in behind the toppled remains of hir bed, which was just several normal-sized mattresses stitched together, as well as being the largest object that shi could, in hir juvenile stupor, consider hiding behind.

The doe that walked into the room seemed to glow with an inner golden light, swirling just below the surface the way that hir first sneaky tastes of wine had felt. She was a tall figure, heavy-set and rounded in ways that sent the huge husky's thoughts down paths shi rarely explored. At least, shi tried not to explore them when the housemaidens were present; the evidence of those thoughts was rather difficult to conceal!

"Your highness?" the doe whispered, glancing this way and that. She swallowed shyly, and hazarded, "Kimmi?"

Kimmi shivered under hir useless cloak of old sheets, wondering how it was that this singularly gorgeous creature hadn't noticed hir. The bed was low and broad, and in keeping with the state of the castle more looked like a badly trampled mound of old batting than where the crown Princess slept away hir nights. The taur hirself was certainly not low, a powerfully lumpy body trying to draw far too much mass into itself, doing anything possible to avoid notice.

With dawning comprehension, the doe's huge dark eyes settled on the young Princess, and softened. That svelte, blocky muzzle pulled back in a warm smile, and the intruder clasped her hands together in front of her, as though discovering an especially large present beneath the Crimbo wreath. To Kimmi's eye, those twined fingers pressed quite plainly against the well-filled bodice of the doe's simple white blouse, highlighting their rondure, reminding hir of the night shi'd seen hir in the clearing-

Shi winced, static tingling against hir nose. That was probably just a rat, shi thought doubtfully. I've never seen her ever before! Have I?

_ _

"There you are," the doe breathed with obvious relief. "Your Highness, it's not safe here alone!"

Kimmi shook hir head, pushing hir back harder against the smooth stone walls. Once, they had been lined with bookshelves and tapestries, paintings and poems until you might not have known they were stone at all, but all that remained were a few bent hooks and nails. "Nnn," shi managed, averting hir eyes.

The doe stepped closer, moving carefully around the wreckage strewn across the floor. "There is much to be done, your highness. Please. Your kingdom needs you."

"N'my kingdom," shi mumbled, once again tilting hir nose down and nuzzling between hir breasts. "S'just a place, now."

"Oh, your highness, that's not true! It is indeed yours, as the Crown Princess, and you can make it great again! Your people long to return, your highness."

"Don't call me that."

"Your... er, Kimmi," the doe blushed prettily, and Kimmi's heart lurched. Shi wondered how shi could have ever talked back to someone so wonderful! "We can make it all right again. We can make everything right, the way it should have been, but you need to come with me."

The wind howled outside, and Kimmi swore shi could feel the entire tower lurch momentarily to one side. "How?" shi whimpered. Shi stared dolefully up at the young, curvy maiden, wondering who else could possibly be living in the picked-over remains of Estragonia.

The doe's smile filled the huge taur with warmth, and even that golden light seemed to be contagious. "Anything is possible, your highness, with me by your side," she purred. She came around the curve of the wrecked bed, leaning forwards and filling Kimmi's vision. Her hips swayed hypnotically back and forth underneath a flowing skirt that the Princess could have sworn was considerably longer just a few moments ago. Now there was a considerable amount of supple leg on display, and as the doe tilted forwards further, shi became acutely aware that the blouse seemed to have lost a button or two.

Another crash from below, this one closer now.

Rats! Shi thought madly.

"Your highness," the doe breathed, scents of lilac and honeysuckle tickling the taur's nose. "You cannot remain here alone. It is not safe."

All of Kimmi's safest memories were here in this bedchamber, but it was no longer filled with the same vitality and security shi'd known. It was twisted, and now shi felt caught in some sort of trap, walls held back only by a featherweight from tumbling down on top of hir.

One paw quivered underneath the blanket. Shi longed to reach out and take the doe's paw. Shi'd been alone in the castle for what seemed like years, returning home to find not the lively late=summer festivals, but its savaged remains.

Returned home? Where was I? I never left my tower. I... I was forbidden...

_ _

"Princess," the doe was whispering now, nearly nose to nose, her eyes filling Kimmi's world. She reached up, gently stroking the backs of her fingers against Kimmi's muzzle, just the way hir mother had when shi was... when shi was younger, too young to remember.

But shi could remember now, a squalling little lump of fur, four legs and two arms paddling uselessly against hir swaddling. Shi filled hir mother's arms, even at such a fragile age, nearly too large for the royal crib that had been constructed specially for Estragonia's heir apparent. Hir mother, a tall and severely pretty husky, lay plump and tired for weeks after a long and arduous labor, but would allow none to take hir child away from hir. The pair curled up together in the royal bedchambers, and hir mother would sing songs from her childhood, songs written for the joyous imperial event of hir birth, and sometimes songs with no words at all, and always those gentle strokes against hir cheeks, the only things that soothed hir blind, querulous cries.

How could I possibly remember that? Did I just dream it?

_ _

"Child," the doe repeated, reaching out to pull away the sheet wrapped around Kimmi. "It is time. Come... let us make a better world."

Shivering again in spite of hirself, the damp linens moving slick and sluglike against hir fur, Kimmi stood. Hir shoulders were hunched, hir barrel arched, trying to obscure the ridiculous bulges and swells shi'd been endowed with by a cruel twist of nature. "I-"

Another crash, this one from just the other side of the door to hir chambers. The heavy oak planks rattled in the frame, hinges leaking thin rust-red trails of corrosion. Wait, Kimmi thought, that door was just open.

_ _

This time, the commotion splintered the door, creasing down the middle like one of hir old paper-backed partitions.

The doe's expression never changed.

"Come to me, child," she chanted, over and over. "We can change the world. Come to me..."

"I-"

The final blow knocked the door clear from its aged hinges, sending it skittering across the rubble-strewn floor. It had been designed, after all, to keep the occupants inside, rather than to keep intruders out. The nightmare that surged through the portal from the inky darkness beyond was a vast and ragged figure, all powerful limbs and stormy-grey fur, with streaks of black and silver. At first, Kimmi couldn't quite wrap hir head around the silhouette it presented, far too long and tall and bulbous to be anything but the product of hir imagination, but if any fell beast could be responsible for the destruction of hir kingdom, it would be this.

With a roar of unbridled fury, it surged forwards and wrapped its fearsome mitts around the doe. Shoulders flexing, it squeezed impossibly hard, impossibly tight, the doe narrowing to little more than a pencil width around her ribcage.

And with a puff of smoke, the doe was simply... gone.

Kimmi cowered beneath the monstrosity, mind still filled with memories of the doe's touch, those tender eyes, the inviting lilt to her voice. She could have made hir safe again, together they could have restored Estragonia. There would never have been a need to be afraid, ever again...

The beast grunted and sighed, rolling eyes like saucers. "Snap out of it," it ordered, reaching down and hoisting the young Princess to hir feet. "We don't have time for this."

Kimmi wailed, trying to resist a grip that was like iron. "LET ME GO! STOP!" shi cried, flailing clumsily with hir fists. "Leave me alone!"

"Wake up, your highness!" the beast sneered with derision, shaking Kimmi like a stuffed toy. "Wake up and grow up!"

The taurs stared at one another. Kimmi struggled weakly for a moment, but was distracted to note that the fur of hir slender forearm was virtually the same shade as the huge and fluffy paw clenched around hir wrist.

Blinking away hir tears, shi stared up into hir own face.

"There we go," the larger Kimmi said, hir features softening. Nude from hir toes to hir tail to the tips of hir ears, shi was a bizarre sight. Shi lowered hirself, as much as hir nethers would allow, and seemed to sit. "Come on. Let's get out of here."

"How?" asked the younger princess.

"If this is anything like the last time... we don't have long. Seriphos will be back soon."

"Last time? Huh? Who's Seriphos? The cute doe?"

"No, not... exactly. I'm going to need you to pay attention, all right?"

The younger version of Kimmi, the one who still cradled hir bookbag in hir arms when shi and Shingen were bedding down for the night, the one who squeaked whenever an owl hooted in the darkness, the one who saw youngsters playing in the streets and felt nauseating stirrings of envy, the one who still wished hir mother and father pleasant dreams before sleep stole over hir own eyes, simply nodded, and listened.

The huge Kimmi, the one who had simply smashed hir way through the heavy oak door, spoke of a journey away from Estragonia, and through a terrifying underground realm. Shi spoke of meeting Shingen, a young and extremely gifted, if naive, warrior, and the misconceptions that bound their fates together. Shi spoke of their encounters with the Law, an ancient collection of magical relics that brought the iron fist of fascist rule to the countryside.

Kimmi the younger grinned and clenched hir own fists with the hasty retelling of how Kimmi the older had managed to triumph, believing the men under the sway of the relics were themselves truly good.

But then they came to the town of Milford, and the late night meeting with Isima, the doe. The elder Kimmi tried to skim the details, but even shi grew a little misty-eyed and dry-mouthed when it came to describing how the bar maiden had looked under the moonlight, stepping into each other's embrace.

And then they were spirited away, and it was darkness. And chains. And misdirection, and conversations with the affable but clearly evil priestess, and the Tree, and the stiletto held to Isima's neck. How even now, outside of this peculiar vision, Isima was under the thrall of that force, and was once again trying to somehow overpower Kimmi's mind with dreams of loss and horror.

The door to the bedchamber, which was once again whole and upright, swung slowly open. The doe stepped through, a warm smile on her face. "You are most rude," she sighed, rolling her eyes good-naturedly. "But a remarkable creature! I can't recall the last time-"

The pair of Kimmi's stood, the larger one moving to one side. "That's not Isima," shi murmured. "It's a lie. It's just... another lie. More lies, Kimmi. That's what awaits you beyond the walls of this tower. Abduction, and imprisonment, and domination... and always, more lies."

"When have I lied?" Isima asked, eyes wide with genuine surprise. "I could no sooner lie than I could kill you, dear child! I only want to help you. I want to help everyone!"

The smaller taur took a step forwards. "You want to help? Help... me?" shi asked, voice wavering.

"Yes, child!" Isima gushed, clasping her paws to her bosom once more. "If you would just let me explain, we can do such great things together."

"And that's why I'm... here?" shi continued, gesturing to the shattered, sacked remains of hir childhood home.

For the first time, the figure wearing Isima said nothing, but the smile didn't budge one iota.

"I'm underground right now, because I wanted to experience one moment of happiness? I've been chased through some sort of madness-inducing temple? You've abducted my friend, and threatened to kill her?" The older Kimmi watched with pride as hir younger self's hackles rose, as hir posture straightened, and hir fists clenched properly. Shi might only be some figment of hir own imagination, but it was hard not to feel a moment of pride. "And now you've locked me in some horrible nightmare, some perverted memory, of my childhood?!"

"Dear, I-"

The younger taur seemed to swell, and this time there was no faint puff of black smoke; the princess simply detonated in a coruscating, incandescent hurricane of white fire.

---

Isima flinched, once again recoiling from the deranged, semi-naked herm. Kimmi was still slouched against the stone railing, but shi scrabbled mightily for purchase against the stone, pushing, driving hirself forwards, directly into the bemused doe. Spittle flew from hir lips, and whatever words shi was trying to form could not escape hir clenched teeth; all shi could manage were rough, caustic wheezing sounds.

"Again, you-" Isima started.

"GET OOUUTTT!!!!" Kimmi roared, so loud now that, as the echoes died down, shi was vaguely aware that the chopping sounds coming from the base of the impossible tree had faltered and faded away. Shi gripped Isima's shoulders, hir paws so large that most of the doe's torso disappeared into that fluff. "GET OUT NOW!!!"

_ _

The entity calling itself Isima for the moment struggled, and Kimmi swore shi saw confusion flicker there. Shi still could not believe the raw strength that the doe now possessed, easily shaking off the enraged taur's grip. It was like trying to stop a windmill's gears with hir bare hands (something that shi had tried, after another poor experiment with wine, and a wager with Shingen. Shi had, of course, paid for the wrecked windmill in the morning and helped build the replacement.)

Kimmi tried to wrap hir arms around Isima, but shi genuinely feared causing her friend any harm, even inadvertently. Now more convinced than ever that this was Seriphos herself, she of the... what was it? Rebirth? Some nonsense like that. Some being, some deity, shi didn't particularly care, had invaded hir friend's body, hir mind.

_ _

The taur suddenly cried out, pain blooming in hir stomach. Shi staggered, and took another powerful blow from the soft-looking doe, this one across hir jaw. This time, it was no open-palmed slap; knuckled dug deep, and shi felt a crunch in hir skull, tasted blood trickling down hir throat. Shi gasped, and staggered, but managed to stay upright.

"I knew you were lying," shi grinned, crimson staining hir teeth in the grim candle light. "I knew you were just another-"

The third blow, delivered by a furious looking Isima, ended that thought with great finality.

---

The wind howled at Shingen's back, and his ears perked once more at what could only have been Starlight's distinctive voice. The breeze died away as quickly as it had arisen, and then the temple was as still as it had always been. It didn't faze him; few things did anymore.

He'd been walking for several minutes, moving quickly and lightly, as much as was possible when traversing a carpet of perhaps literally countless bones. He supposed that, in a fashion, it was become easier. The woody debris was growing thicker and thicker, with ghostly waist-high deadfalls becoming more common. They were incredibly unstable and fragile, however, so it behooved him to stick to the lower, more calcified paths.

The brand held high above his head guttered and dimmed, and he assembled a new torch without hardly thinking. He tossed the smouldering remains over his shoulder, leaving an orange ball of light in his wake, beating and pulsing in the darkness like a living heart.

Shingen paused, gently placing the brand on the ground and picking a slender, desiccated stick from the piles at his feet. He raised both hands above his head, gripping either end of the stick in his fists, and held his breath.

CRACK

He was left with two small fragments, but he kept his arms raised. He closed his eyes. He stilled his heart, feeling the thrumming in his chest calming to well below his sleeping rhythm. There was only the hiss and crinkle of the brand burning at his side, but that was easy to tune out. After so many hours underground, every tiny rasp of friction, the tumble of even grains of sand, seemed to boom in his ears.

Seven... eight... nine...

His right ear twitched, picking up the first echo, and a moment later its partner from the left. Much to his joy, there was a third one from directly ahead.

"Almost there," he whispered to himself, picking up the brand and adjusting his course to the left a few degrees. He couldn't imagine what he would find there. In the back of his mind, he fancied coming across some ancient titan or god, pinned by golden chains for all time. Perhaps a portal to some distant past or future, or into his own mind. To recall the stories of his youth, perhaps it would be a trial by combat, where he would be forced to duel to the death against some four-armed monstrosity constructed from the crumbling bones around his feet.

The general slope became steeper, and soon he was forced to pick his way along an escalating deadfall that seemed large enough to have buried a town as small as Milford. He didn't think there could be this much scattered deadwood in the forest he'd passed through to reach this temple, let alone hidden inside of it.

When the crunching, crackling hill suddenly disappeared beneath him, the slope up transitioning instantly to a nearly vertical drop off, he cried out in dismay and tumbled for so long that he was able to hear his laments echoed back to him. His limbs drove into the dry, splintering sticks and bones, shattering them as easily as he might pierce the ice limning the meditation ponds back home.

Eventually he reached the bottom of the crater, surrounded on all sides by the scattered embers of the now-ruined torch. There was no light source brighter than a glowbug. He picked himself back up, brushing the thick coating of unidentifiable dust and debris from his robes, his sword scabbard, and his sturdy, boxy shoulder pack. There was no damage, but he knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that there was far more skeletal remains embedded in his fur than he was strictly comfortable with, to say nothing of the powdery drifts falling from the pack and the scrolls of his chot-mei within.

The flecks of orange light faded to red, then a bruise-like brown.

And then he was alone once more in the crushing darkness, with only the sound of his own breathing to keep him company.

Shingen sighed and started to reach into his robes for his flint and steel, intending to start a new torch, but his paw froze. There was not complete darkness, he realized. It pressed in on his eyes the way swimming to the bottom of the well would squeeze his skull, but there was something low and off to one side that felt... different.

He oriented himself, blinking and allowing his eyes to adjust. He could feel his pupils widening, little swirls of color on the fringes that he knew were in his imagination, but they were being pushed aside by an azure aura that seeped through the sticks and bones at the center of the crater.

The rat approached cautiously, marveling that the light shon through his toes with every step. The glow seemed to be composed of distinct layers, spheres within spheres within spheres, each burning brighter and bluer. He knelt, parting the sticks and bones with his paws, soon switching to digging when it became clear the source of the illumination was close to the surface.

He'd imagined gods and demons and monsters, true.

He hadn't expected to find a tiny blue tree, blazing with inner light.

Part 9

Hir Royal Grace the Princess Kimmi swam woozily back up to consciousness from a bleak, soundless dream. Black and white images, sometimes still, sometimes jerking as though time itself were stumbling backwards and forwards, swirled and sluiced around hir. Shi could move, or shi thought shi was moving, but hir limbs lagged as though wallowing in tar. Shi reached for ghostly portraits of hir mother, hir father, hir housemaidens, of Isima, but without exception they were pulled backwards by forces unseen, and shi caught nothing.

Darkness crept in around the edges of hir vision, but then light bloomed before hir, so brilliantly white it left streaks of blue-

-and shi sat up, hir strained whine finishing in a frightened, puppyish yelp. Shi struck something with hir bust, and flailed hir arms wildly, trying to protect hirself from fists so powerful, shi couldn't hope to withstand them.

Shi struck a glancing blow and there was a cry of pain, which shi immediately crawled away from. Hir four paws tangled together, blunt black claws scrabbling against glass-smooth tile, and shi rose to hir feet only to trip and sprawl headlong once more, coming to rest against a wall.

Furiously, shi tried to focus hir eyes, tried to make some sense of the jarring black and white streaks shi saw all around. Am I still dreaming? It doesn't feel like... I'm drowning... and my head... oh GODS my head hurts...!

_ _

"P-princess?" wheezed a terrified, feminine voice.

"I'M NOT A PRINCESS!" shi screamed, surprising hirself. Where did that come from? I didn't mean to say that! Even if it's true!

_ _

Shi stopped thrashing, rolling onto hir belly, or as much of hir belly as hir overendowed hindquarters would allow. Shi pushed hirself up, six paws on the floor, before righting hirself and slowly, slowly, standing straight, proud, imperious. If shi was going to die at the hands of some angry old god in the bowels of the earth, then gosh darnit shi was going to do it with some dignity.

It was only then that shi could blink the stars and rheum out of hir eyes, and shi saw only an empty, square room. Empty of any decorations or accoutrements, that was, but not of inhabitants. Isima sat against the far wall, knees drawn up to her own bosom. Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth, which only reminded Kimmi of the thunderous crimson throbbing rooted in hir own jaw. Shi flexed hir muzzle, and it moved only with tremendous protest and resistance, but it DID move. Miraculously, shi hadn't broken anything, or more accurately, Seriphos hadn't.

Kimmi glanced down, and realized where shi'd made contact with the knuckles of hir great right hand, and retraced the last few moments. Sorrow, and rage, blossomed in hir heart. "Who are you?" shi asked coldly.

The doe sniffled, still rubbing her cheek. "Isima, Princess," she whispered. "I... I am not... it's not inside me anymore... I didn't mean to, I swear!" Tears were running down her face now, her boxy muzzle wrinkling in shame. "I thought... I thought it was the way out! It showed me the way out!"

Kimmi's expression softened, and shi knew that the entity was no longer possessing hir friend. Which just made hir rage all the worse, shi realized, directing it at hir careless fists. Shi rushed forwards, practically sliding on the jerkily-tiled floors for the last few yards, wrapping hir arms around the wounded, frightened doe and cradling her to hir breasts. "I'm sorry," shi said, squeezing hir eyes shut and burying hir nose in Isima's chocolate locks. "I didn't... I wasn't thinking..."

"I didn't mean to leave you behind!" Isima wailed, trying again to hug the taur back but only barely able to get her arms around Kimmi's vast curves. "It led me out, led me back to Milford, but without you, and I thought I'd never see the sky again, and I left you behind!"

_ _

The husky understood immediately. "It wasn't real, it wasn't real, it was only a dream," shi cooed, stroking Isima's back as she hitched with sobs. "That's what it does, that's how it gets into you... it feeds you dreams, feeds you nightmares, and then promises a way out." Kimmi tried not to think about the fact that shi was still mostly nude, or that Isima had been divested of her priestess's robes and was once again clad in the mostly-intact but still quite skimpy gown shi'd been wearing in the clearing. There was a considerable amount of fur rusting up against fur, with Isima's warm lips and damp cheeks nestled quite far into hir cleavage.

"It was so real," she whimpered, squeezing as tightly as she could manage. "It was so real. I smelled fresh air again, I could see the sky, just for a moment, but when I went up, when I went out, it was just more darkness. And then... and then I hit..."

"Ssshhhh, I'm fine," Kimmi lied, hir tongue playing along hir swollen gums and tasting blood. There was a stitch in hir belly, and every breath brought a ragged, tortured pulling somewhere inside hir. These were minor pains, barely even inconveniences, and they did nothing but fuel hir desire to smash, hir desire to bring this temple down around hir own ears with mindless vengeance. "I'm made of sterner stuff, as Shingen used to-... as he says."

The doe nodded, shifting her weight in a manner that brought her bare arms to within a claw's width of hir dark nipples. What's wrong with me?! Kimmi thought frantically. Why am I having these thoughts NOW?!

_ _

The pair sat like that for a long minute, Kimmi's breathing the only sound reaching their ears as Isima's crying slowly petered out. The taur managed to get ahold of hir meandering thoughts, shifting hir own grip on the doe's body enough for Isima to lower hir own arms safely, but now shi was feeling a tingling warmth spreading through hir nethers. It was something shi'd felt many times in hir life, but feeling it around other people was always new, and rare, and somewhat disquieting.

"How long have I been... down?" shi asked at last, adjusting hir hind legs to ease the pressure. "We were on the balcony, and..."

Isima nodded, remembering the 'and'. "I don't know. Not an hour, I don't think. They... dragged us down here, and locked us in. I... I think the door was on that wall, but I can't remember." She pointed off to the right, but Kimmi understood all too well. With the bizarre tilework of this temple fully present, the perfectly-fit doors could have been anywhere.

Hir paws throbbed, and shi also doubted shi could batter hir way through such solid stone a second time.

"Then I... touched... that Ninos again, and it was gone from me." Isima growled suddenly, an unexpected sound from the gentle soul. "It likes to live in her. She's willing."

Kimmi could understand that, as well. Months, years, more down here in the darkness? Shi'd withstood Seriphos twice, but how long could that last? The second time, shi'd only barely arrived in time to rescue... hirself. Shi frowned, recalling more of that dream with a mixture of confusion and surprise. How, exactly, HAD shi rescued hirself? And which Kimmi had been truly 'hir', the youth huddled under a rotting sheet, or the monster who broke down the door? And if shi were truly both, then... how?

Shi scanned the room, not willing to give up. Not just yet. "Did they say anything? Did they say they'd be back?"

Isima shook her head, or she tried to given that it had become wedged between Kimmi's breasts. "They didn't speak at all. They just... dragged you in here. I walked in on my own, I guess you could say," she added bitterly. "If it happens again, Princess, I will fight. I will fight it with everything I have. I won't leave you behind ever again, not in a dream, not ever."

_ _

The Princess smiled. "You won't have to," shi murmured, pressing hir lips to Isima's forehead. "But... let's hope it doesn't come to that, hmm?"

Shi didn't like seeing the doe's brow furrowed with fury, didn't like the way her muscles seemed to tense and twitch. It reminded hir too much of hirself.

Then shi blinked, and reached up, over hir vast and overly-proud bosom, and plucked a single blue petal from Isima's hair. "These petals again," shi mused, turning it over and over again between thumb and forefinger. "They rained from the tree like... well, like rain, I suppose. Sorry, I'm usually a little more well-spoken. But... these aren't petals from a tree, they're from an orchid."

"We don't get orchids around Milford anymore," Isima sighed. "My ma says they're too delicate for our climate."

"Anymore?"

The doe nodded. "My ma has a book she got from her ma, and it's full of pressed flowers, and there was a dozen pages of these big blue orchids, so big the book almost wasn't big enough to hold it. Petals looked just like these. Didn't say where she'd got 'em, but ma says they don't grow here no more."

A thought tickled at the back of Kimmi's mind, and shi reached up curiously. Fingers moving of their own accord, shi removed another petal from hir own hair, blindly but accurately. Shi now held two between thumb and forefinger. "It's so odd," shi said wonderingly. "How they could grow underground, in the boughs of a tree, if they're too delicate for up above..."

Shi rolled the petals again, and blinked, nearly dropping them.

Now there were three petals.

Shi closed hir fist around them and squeezed, and when shi opened it there were four petals.

"Isima...?"

Isima looked up, a tiny spark dancing from her eyelashes and grounding itself against Kimmi's silvery fur. "What is it?"

Kimmi used one claw to move the petals aside, and there now seemed to be five in hir paw. "When did your grandmother press those flowers?"

The doe pondered. "Must've been more than seventy years ago. It was when she was a girl, my ma weren't even born yet, but my ma was the youngest of the six sisters. They say the hills used to be alive with wildflowers in those days, rainbows stretching full circle through earth and sky." She sniffed, and a spark tumbled out of one nostril.

This all seemed so... worryingly familiar to Kimmi. Shi felt warm despite the chill stones, shi felt light despite the weighty throb of hir many bruises and contusions. Shi turned hir paw over, showering hir bust with a dozen petals, more than a few landing on Isima's muzzle. The doe blinked and giggled, lifting her head up to smile at the huge husky.

"Isima..." Kimmi whispered, feeling a flush rising in both cheeks.

"Yes, Princess?" Isima's voice was low and throaty, that faint rumble sending a jolt through Kimmi's body that caused both hind legs to jerk and draw up tightly against hir nethers.

"I... I think the petals are trying to help us..."

"I think so, too," the doe agreed, dreamlike. She stuck out her tongue, nearly going cross-eyed, and was not surprised in the slightest to see a pale, ghostly-blue petal resting there. She flicked her tongue against her lips, sending it tumbling down into the depths of Kimmi's decolletage. "They feel nice."

"They do feel nice." Kimmi fought against the fog that was settling over hir mind. I'm talking like a simpleton! Gods, I feel drunk... and this is NOT the time to be drunk! What's going on?! These petals are... they're helping, I know they're helping, I don't know how I know but I know, they're helping, but why do I just want to grab Isima and... and...

_ _

Sparks were dancing along both Isima and Kimmi now, flowing in little rivulets and leaping into the air. The room was lit by a handful of those ever-present candles, little waxy spires that gave no heat, emitted no smoke, and never seemed to flicker, but they were as dim as embers compared to the swirling pyre of tiny blazing motes crawling over the two prisoners.

"I... have an idea..." Isima said, blushing fiercely. Even the sparkles wreathing her face flashed to pink.

"I do, too," Kimmi agreed, bringing hir nose down to rest, warm and wet, against hers.

"It's a crazy idea."

"It's insane," the taur agreed, tugging down the lacy shoulder straps of Isima's gown. Shi scooted hir barrel back, lowering hirself until shi was eye to eye with the doe, and able to take in more of her beauty. "This simply isn't the time for this."

"Absolutely!" Isima raised her arms over her head, letting her palms dangle against her unkempt hair. She giggled and swung her hips, helping the taur fumble hir way through undressing the all-too-willing barmaid. "You should stop."

"I should stop," Kimmi nodded dumbly, hir paws encircling the doe's surprisingly slender waist, the fabric bunching up against her hips. Shi stuck hir tongue out the side of hir muzzle, concentrating with all of hir considerably addled mental acuity on the task of removing Isima's clothes. Eventually shi just hooked hir pinkie claws into the material and forced it down, assisting with the inevitable ripping and tossing the garment's remnants aside.

"You should definitely stop," the doe grinned, swinging her hips one more time and sending a considerable amount of firm, full flesh bouncing.

Kimmi had never, exactly, seen a woman naked before. Shi'd seen hir housemaidens in all manner of undress, but they were careful at all times to keep a modicum of decorum. Sometimes, when shi was alone with one or two or three of them, they would discuss certain... areas of interest, and the ways that it seemed nature had designed them to work. In hir more recent adventures, shi'd seen many taurs of all genders walking around without a stitch, but that seemed to be an entirely different animal, so to speak.

Isima was, to Shingen's eyes, a thick and sturdy figure of a woman, but no doubt a fine figure of one, as well. Kimmi agreed, not really having any particular form of judgement. Hir housemaidens ranged from the waifish, girls who seemed to possess only a single diameter nearly from ankle to neck, to the voluptuous, with many varieties of curves inwards and outwards, to the rotund, whom shi much preferred to cuddle up against when it was story time. Shi enjoyed the seemingly endless variety by which the women of the world were created, and after hir escape from Estragonia shi'd discovered that the men came in at least as many varieties.

Hir near-constant desire to get much, much closer to those varieties was currently taking a back seat to hir singular, all-consuming lust for Isima.

One fluffy, silvery paw, trailing sparks like a solstice firework, slid up the back of Isima's leg and came to rest cupping one soft, warm and inviting rump cheek, while the other started at the doe's hip and ascended to caress the outside of her breast, before completely enveloping it. Isima gasped, her fingers still twined in her own hair.

"This is madness," she breathed, taking a step forwards.

"Agreed!" Kimmi managed, before hir arms encircled the doe once more, their lips grinding together, and the pair of them fell heedlessly to the ground.

---

For a long time, Shingen simply sat with his legs crossed amidst the heaps of detritus and bones and dust, and stared. Occasionally he would shift his weight slightly and move another skeletal remain out from beneath himself, adding it reverently to the pile to his left. He began to worry that, if he continued in that manner, he would eventually dig himself a pit straight down, and the pile would collapse and bury him completely.

The stack was small yet, though, so he continued to sit, and stare, and ponder.

The tree was small. That much, he knew for certain.

What baffled him was that the tree was actually immense, with vast and intricate interlocking canopies forming at different layers, like storm clouds building on a horizon. Great broad boughs erupted from the trunk, splitting and spreading and weaving until the individual branches were so small as to be virtually invisible. There were limbs no thicker than one of his own hairs, and he knew that they must split further... they were simply beyond his capacity to identify. Truly, this was an archetypal, perhaps gods-touched tree, dwarfing a forest as a more commonplace oak might dwarf the shrubbery around it.

It just so happened that the immense tree was little more than sixteen inches tall.

It also glowed, a faint blue aura flaring like a heartbeat, but that was nether here nor there. The scale held the little warrior enthralled, hypnotized. It was not a sapling, it was not a freshly-planted seeding, it was the great and venerable ancestor to perhaps all trees in this existence.

He raised his paw again, curiosity compelling him to touch those boughs, those viridian leaves the size of dust motes, but he stayed his motions. Something told him that neither the tree, nor himself, would enjoy such a contact.

Shingen hunched his back, bringing his nose below the lower limbs, into a space large enough for perhaps a small house cat to curl up. There was something falling from the tree, and he'd originally assumed them to be those infinitesimal leaves, but they were much brighter, and much bluer, and somehow even smaller.

He reached into his robe, and touched the smattering of lotus petals that he'd kept close, ever since his discussions at the Inn. Had that really just been the night before? Or had it been a day and a night? Or a week?

As soon as his fingertips brushed the velvety petals, the turquoise field of light pulsed and expanded, enveloping his crossed legs. The rat froze, not blinking, not even breathing, but there was no need for alarm. There was no pain, no warmth, no sense of anything beyond the field of light now encompassing a considerably larger area. He squinted slightly, even though he knew that this glow was hardly more than the light thrown by a single dying match.

His fingers crept a little further, moving to cup the petals in his paw. The aura trembled and brightened, exuding anticipation. Shingen wasn't sure how he knew that, nor how he knew that that tumbling patina of microscopic motes were more petals like the ones he nearly held, but he knew. It reminded him of the first time in the Celestial Gardens, beholding the small stone-footed cottage which contained the_chot-mei. _ The cottage was old, far older than the Order that had sprung up around it, and it was only with the most dutiful and diligent care that it had managed to survive (though Shingen also secretly believed that the perpetually freezing temperatures would also help preserve it). The cottage had been the home of the Humble Ancestor, where He had taken to writing down the tales of his journeys, a mixture of prose and poetry and good-humored wordplay and, sometimes, downright cryptic streams of consciousness that were still being deciphered to this day.

All within the Order knew of the cottage, and only a handful of exalted acolytes, and of course the Low Masters themselves, had ever laid eyes on it. Shingen had been struck with awe at the sight, even as the alarms blared in the distance, smoke twisting and rising up into the pre-dawn sky. With capture, torture and a likely execution nipping at his heels, he'd still approached with the tiniest, most cautious of footsteps, as though expecting the Humble Ancestor himself to emerge through the cottage's poorly-fit, slanting reed door and shoo him away like the errant child that he was.

That same trepidation, a mixture of awe and desire and terror, flooded every fibre of his being... but this time, he had something more important than his own safety to give him solace, and guidance.

"Starlight," he murmured, his paw lunging to clutch the petals tightly, as though attempting to sneak up on himself.

The blue aura flickered, retreated for a moment as though inhaling...

... and then expanded to envelop the world.

---

Kimmi's mind, the small part of hir that was watching the proceedings with rapt, vaguely horrified fascination, was reminded of hir time in the gladiatorial arena far below Estragonia. There, shi'd been put on display by the game-makers for the great gambling events that seemed to dominate that bizarre insectile society. Once shi'd been prodded and weighed and measured and hawked to the passing throngs, shi'd been turned loose in that sandy, bonfire-lit pit with a half-dozen other captured taurs, and made to challenge the great scarred boartaur for dominance over his mate.

Shi hadn't been able to help hirself, or even control hirself. The denizens of that world had drugged the poor, already-pregnant bovine taur, compelling hir to exude pheromones that drove Kimmi and hir four-legged brethren wild with violent, voracious lust. If it hadn't been for Bister's intervention, hir dragon-for-hire coming to hir rescue long after shi'd given up hope, shi almost certainly would have claimed hir prize... and lost hirself, possibly forever.

Since then, whenever hir thoughts strayed too far into the territory of admiration, leaning more into the pleasant tingling of genuine arousal, shi couldn't help but associate those feelings with hir time in the pit, and the grotesque shame instantly slammed a cast-iron lid on hir desire.

But now...

Kimmi was sprawled out, all four huge husky paws splayed and twitching out of synch with one another. Hir hands gripped Isima's hips, helping guide the doe as she tried to twine her legs around Kimmi's surprisingly narrow waist. The princess's breasts bore down heavily against Isima's body, all but pinning her to the ground as Kimmi's muzzle explored the doe's own proud swells. With each passing moment, Kimmi's rump rose higher and higher into the air as hir sheath filled ever larger.

Isima arched her back, grinding her hips against the taur's upper belly. With her head thrown back, eyes closed and tongue lolling, she blindly twined her fingers into Kimmi's unkempt black curls, shedding great crackling waves of electrical sparks.

"What's... what's happening...!" she panted, steering the taur's huge head from one nipple to the other, wishing she were a more impressive woman to more easily fill Kimmi's oversized paws, and apparently oversized appetites.

"It's the flowers," Kimmi said quickly, in between breathless kisses and nibbles. Unlike Isima, hir eyes were wide open, raptly memorizing every incredible, intimate detail of the doe's sturdy and oh-so-naked body. It wasn't TOO different from hir own, at least in certain areas. It was just... smaller. Quite a lot smaller. "They're... doing... something..."

"Wh-why? And why NOW?"

"Happened in the clearing!" Kimmi snapped, head flying up with the sudden realization. The excitement faded from hir expression, though, replaced with a half-lidded grin of desire, and shi lowered hir muzzle once more to nuzzle at Isima's belly button. "It happened... before we were taken. I think it was trying to help us then, too!"

"That was helping?!" Isima had dim recollections of the moments before she found herself wandering, dazed alone, through the chambers and corridors of the temple. She remembered light, and comfort, and happiness, and... oh, yes, she definitely recalled some lewd thoughts in those moments, now that her memory was being sufficiently jogged. "It didn't... seem... helpful..."

That was true, Kimmi supposed, but help came in peculiar forms. Shi hadn't expected help acclimating hirself to the world at large to come in the form of a monumentally lethal, and somehow insecure, little rat warrior. Shi hadn't expected a tiny black bear in the bowels of the Estragonian underworld to literally slap some sense into hir, while shi was driven fully out of hir mind with pheromone-induced desire. Shi hadn't expected to make friends with the only creature shi'd yet discover that had been able to best hir in physical combat.

As hir nose wriggled and writhed a path through the the snowy white fur of Isima's lower belly, shi made a mental note to send Lawrence a letter, once this whole 'evil temple' issue was sorted out.

"H-how is this helping?" Isima asked, her voice rising in pitch until Kimmi's ears began to twitch in response to frequencies that shi responded to on a more instinctive level.

"I... am not... sure... exactly..." shi managed, interrupting hir meandering smooching only when absolutely necessary. Shi was steadily working hir way south, hir mind a mixture of panicked chaos and sublime contentment. "I'm just... having faith, at the moment."

"Faith in whaa-a-a-a-A-A-A-AT?!" Isima's jaw locked up towards the end, choking off her query in a muffled gurgle.

Kimmi had detailed files concerning the differences between male and female anatomy, and of course the myriad ways they could be combined into grrls such as hirself. Hir housemaidens had smuggled hir a few academic texts, some of them rather distressingly medical, but when it seemed as though they raised more questions than they answered, there had been the stories.

Oh yes, the stories, shi reminisced, laying cuddled amidst a pile of hir housemaidens as they blushingly but brazenly recounted their own romantic adventures of the past week. They had told themselves that was for the Princess's all-important education, as these were matters that simply could NOT be left to the hymenal, whatever that was. The stories had also raised many more questions, and they answered as best they could, but there were, frustratingly, some barriers that even hir housemaidens were not allowed to cross.

Kimmi crossed those barriers now, inhaling an explosive scent as hir over-eager tongue began to lap into the soft, inviting valley between Isima's thighs. Shi'd worried that hir bookish, sheltered upbringing and over-analytical mind would ruin this moment for hir, but that moment of curious introspection was itself but a passing thought. Hir heavy paws inched themselves around the doe's wide, powerful hips, more cradling her rump now, and all but hoisted hir off the ground in hir eagerness to explore.

The taur's muzzle was far too busy to form words now, while Isima was only managing a few mindless, bubbling sounds that could only generously be called speech. Kimmi's tongue was tremendous, as befitting a grrl who weighed well over a tonne, and filled the doe in ways that even a few of her gentleman suitors had been unable to, using all of the tools at their disposal.

~That's nothing~ came a voice unbidden into Isima's mind, and her eyes popped open. She struggled to tilt her neck, to look down her body, or more accurately up her body, as Kimmi's grip on hir waist angled her further and further into the air.

"Wh-... was th-that...?"

Kimmi's eyes woozily focused, while hir lips continued to part Isima's. Shi cocked an eyebrow curiously, not willing to cease pleasuring hir lover long enough to reply.

"A... voice..." Isima panted. Her entire body twitched, her thighs clamping down hard on the sides of Kimmi's head, but she might as well have tried to crack a boulder for all the effect it had. "A voice!"

_ _

Kimmi had heard the same voice, but in hir state had just assumed that was hir own subconscious, and that such random internal vocalizations could very well be normal in situations like this. It was hir first time, after all, and shi had many notes to take and questions to ask. After, of course.

But the way Isima spoke that single word gave the enormous herm pause. Was that not just me talking to myself?

_ _

~No, sweetie~

_ _

Oh. That's odd. Then who was it?

_ _

~Me~

_ _

Oh. And you are?

_ _

~Helping!~

_ _

Realizing this was perhaps NOT the way these activities normally proceeded, Kimmi very slowly extricated hir tongue from within Isima's searing loins, an action that caused another wave of shuddering and gasping from the plump doe. Hir tail wagged back and forth, low with concern at how hir lover seemed to be limp and bedraggled and hyperventilating.

Shi started to ask Isima if she was all right when it was hir turn to cry out. Hir tail shot up, joined by hir ears, and hir dark eyes bulged. Hir flews flapped as shi exhaled through hir teeth, all six paws clenching into fists. Had shi the presence of mind to look around, or to even focus hir eyes in the same direction, shi might have noticed the glow emanating from beneath hir belly, a glow that sent sparks skittering across the black and white tiles floor beneath them.

Isima's head lolled forwards once more, wondering why hir majestic lover's ministrations had ceased. This gave her the view of a lifetime, as far as she was concerned, when Kimmi rose to hir full and terrible height, looming so fearsomely that the candles themselves seemed to shrink back against hir might. Blue motes of light swirled around them like summer fireflies, and in that moment Isima knew that she was hopelessly in love with the Princess.

Still sprawled out on the glossy chamber floor, now marveling that the chill stones seemed nearly too hot to touch, Isima also saw why Kimmi had suddenly become extremely preoccupied.

"Oh, my Goddess," she breathed, wondering for the briefest of moments why she'd said that last word. She'd never done that before.

Kimmi's sheath had swollen immensely, until it filled virtually all of the space between hir belly and hir paws, forcing hir hindlegs wider than hir hips would normally allow. It bulged like a thing alive, beating in rhythm with hir heart. Isima doubted that, if she were to crawl around to the taur's side, she'd be able to get her arms around that colossal beast of a maleness, and it was still in its dormant state!

With a cry that was drenched both in frustrated agony and blessed relief, Kimmi's awkwardly overstuffed sheath retracted, albeit reluctantly. Against hir silvery flanks and snowy white underbelly, the inky black column of canid flesh that pushed forwards stood out in stark contrast.

Kimmi shuddered, yipping and warbling like a pup getting hir first proper bath. Hir shoulders sagged, tension melting out of hir as the pressure that had been building finally found a release. Hir forelegs shuffled apart to give hirself room to grow, guiding hir still-soft member as it continued to spill forth. The tapered tip pushed against Isima's heavy split toes, inching forwards against her calves. The supine doe had to part her own legs further when the taur's maleness, already bigger around than her plump body, reached her knees before showing signs of slowing down.

"Sweet... Goddess...!" Isima breathed, petting the breathtaking and utterly impossible glans. Each delicate touch caused it to twitch and throb. It continued to grow longer, but it was now being matched by its expanding girth. Only half of its length lay snuggled up beneath the taur's barrel; at least eight feet of it had forced itself beyond, the very tip resting heavily in Isima's lap like some great, glossy-smooth hound.

With a start, Kimmi realized that this was, as far as shi knew, the first time anyone but hirself had ever touched hirself in that fashion. The housemaidens had teased hir, to be sure, but they were absolutely certain to back off when it seemed as though hir sheath were in danger of overfilling. In the gladiatorial pit, shi'd been horrendously aroused and engorged, but it had been almost an afterthought. Hir various 'baths', taken when Shingen was at least a mile away, had always ended with hir paws roaming freely across hir maleness, and only hirs.

Shi tried to fight it, the practical side of hir mind distraught at the thought, but in that moment Kimmi knew that shi was hopelessly in love with the waitress.

"Helping?" shi asked hollowly, casting hir eyes about the room. Shi didn't expect an answer, not this time, and none was forthcoming.

"Hmm?" Isima asked, wrapping hir arms around Kimmi's shaft as best as shi could manage, struggling to haul more of its ever-expanding volume onto hir lap. It was becoming difficult as it continued to grow, firming up to the point that it was almost shoving Isima aside as it straightened. It was ridiculous, she thought, it was absolutely impossible that_anyone_ could be so gifted... so she didn't even pause to consider how it could be so, and instead brought her lips to the heavy ridge just behind the glans, smooching with wild abandon.

That was another first for Kimmi, and shi nearly blacked out from the sudden drop in blood pressure as shi hardened magnificently in one final, explosive thrust of hir hips. Isima, who was a little more experienced than her wide, earnest eyes and innocent tail-swish might indicate, anticipated that reaction, although perhaps not quite on that scale. She tightened her embrace, throwing one leg over Kimmi's endowment for good measure, and simply held on for dear life.

"O-oh my," Kimmi managed, twisting hir torso to the side and staring down at... well, hirself. Hir heavy footpaw, normally so huge even when held against the scale of hir body, seemed almost cute as shi stroked it across the side of hir shaft. This was definitely more than there had been in the pit, definitely more even than hir last sunset pond-bath. Was that a thing that happened, she wondered, it gets bigger if you're with someone you l... like?

The taur took a step back, squeaking again when hir sac bumped up against the wall to hir rear.

Isima hugged again, pressing her arm-filling breasts against the underside of Kimmi's cock and squeezing as tightly as she could manage. She could barely so much as dent the tight, throbbing flesh. She dragged one leg up the side, feeling the ridges of the tightly-bunched tendons and still-swelling veins. "Helping?" she breathed, wondering if it was possibly to simply be crushed beneath one's mate.

"What?"

"You said... helping, earlier..."

"I did?"

The doe dragged her tongue slowly up the underside of the tip of Kimmi's shaft, giggling as her arms were rewarded with even more girth. "You did."

Kimmi's tail swished vigirously, and with each pass shi could feel the space beyond hir hindlegs growing more and more crowded. Hir balls, normally full and heavy and snuggled up tight against hir rump, had filled out enormously. Rumbles and gurgles and unnerving churning sounds that shi more felt than heard accompanied every shuddering wave of growth. They rest comfortably on the tile floor now, the upper curves rising higher and higher behind hir, reminding hir of the festive balloons that shi'd seen for the first time after liberating one of those foothill towns from The Law. What was the name of that town? Shi thought madly, trying to ignore everything that was happening to hir body. Hill... something? No, that's silly, just because it was in the hills doesn't mean it had to have Hill in the NAME...

Isima appeared to have no issues focusing on the problems directly in front of her, namely that most of hir body was pinned by Kimmi's member. The taur found that shi could flex those wonderful internal muscles and somehow lift the entire column of onyx flesh a foot or two into the air, but it inevitably came thumping down onto the stocky doe with an oof and a giggle. "S-sorry!"

"It's... very all right," the doe purred, wriggling her backside and guiding herself out from beneath a maleness that might have been too big for her entire bedroom, back in Milford! As it was, the chamber the pair found themselves in was nearly too small, with Kimmi's pupmakers squeezed up against one wall and barely a yard between the opposite face and the tip of hir cock. Despite her unabashed nudity, she couldn't help but blush as she sat up, taking in the gorgeous taur's form. "I must say, I knew you had to be big, but... uhm..."

Kimmi nodded, blue petals falling from hir tousled hair. "Actually, this is bigger than I thought I was," shi mumbled, trying to stand in such a fashion that hir four thick legs weren't just hugging the base of hir member. It seemed to be impossible, however, and every tiny motion of hir lower body just sent ripples of pleasure radiating through hir. "I don't think this is helping."

"Helping," Isima agreed, plucking another blue petal from her cleavage. Almost absently, she placed it on the broad upper arch of Kimmi's shaft as she stood up. It seemed no more than a speck of pale blue against that shiny black landscape, but was soon joined by more. Isima bounced and swung her hips as she walked, making a little trail of blue petals leading towards the taur's body. "This is helping!"

"How?"

The doe opened her mouth, but she had no answer. Instead she simply shrugged, completing her path of petals, and reached out to wrap her arms around Kimmi's slender waist. The husky was much taller than the plump Isima, however, and the doe's muzzle could only reach up to mid-breast on the huge princess. "I don't know," she smiled, leaning her hip against the side of a canine maleness that seemed as thick as any tree in the forest. "I just..."

"Have that feeling," Kimmi nodded in dreamy agreement, bending forward slightly and pulling Isima into a sitting position where hir shaft sprung proudly from between hir forelegs. Shi kissed the doe's forehead, then the little golden path of fur between her eyes, and then the tip of her nose, before their lips locked once more.

The petals were forming tiny drifts around Kimmi's footpaws now, blown by a wind that could not have existed in the small, sealed chamber. The drifts were significantly more pronounced against the sides of hir shaft, as well as hir still-filling sac, with more petals appearing all the time.

"I'm going to run out of room soon," Kimmi sighed, stifling an anxious, high-pitched giggle. "How crazy is that?"

Isima's brows arched, and the leer spreading across her muzzle would have made Kimmi back up nervously on any other day.

---

Shingen reclined in the boughs of the Tree Of Life, sunlight streaming through the wind-blown canopy and dappling him with brilliant spots of warmth. His fingers were laced behind his head, his sandals dangling by their straps from one toe. It was a lovely tree, it was a lovely day, and he couldn't recall the last time he'd felt so idle, so humble, so at peace since journeying down to the lowlands.

His toe stopped bouncing, his sandals halting their jaunty little dance.

Why would I be at peace?

_ _

His eyes flicked from side to side. Branches thicker than the whole trunks of the mighty oaks surrounding Milford sprung up around him, putting him in mind of an entire forest wrapped around a single vertical axis. Staring straight up, he could make out the broad, nearly flat immensity of the great tree's trunk. Its curvature was almost impossible to detect, especially when the bark was fraught with wrinkles and creases deep enough for him to hide in.

Have I become the size of an ant?!

_ _

He knew that was not the case. Angling his head to the side, he could see thick, dense greenery below him, forests stretching out for miles and miles in all directions. On his third day below the thaw line, after leaving his home, he'd found himself on a craggy granite escarpment, and his breath had been taken away by the immense panorama of lush greenery, scribbled through with dazzling rivers of blue and white. He was reminded of that sight, except there was no sundered cliff.

"This," he said softly, but with great import, "is a very big tree."

~Thank you!~

The little rat didn't move. Bit by bit, he started to pick through his memories of climbing the Tree Of Life, of finding the perfect bough, of relaxing, of enjoying himself. For one thing, none of those things really seemed like anything he would do. For another, he was almost positive he'd just been underground. "Is this your tree? It's very nice."

~Oh, I'm so glad you noticed!~ The voice was high and sweet and feminine, and seemed to be holding back an avalanche of mirth and good cheer. ~It's not everywhere that it can grow to its full potential!~

"Oh, I would imagine so," Shingen agreed carefully. "Soil structure, rainfall..."

~And babies!~

"And... I'm sorry, what?"

~It's a little reductionist, but the term Tree Of Life isn't entirely inaccurate. There's been, oh, COUNTLESS worlds where 'a tree' would have sprouted, certainly, especially one with help from ME, but without folks to fill the world with new life, there was no reason for it to exist! I've always been fond of this particular world, you know. So many interesting lives... so much passion...~

If it was possible for a disembodied voice to sigh wistfully, this one most certainly did so. It was almost a struggle for Shingen not to smile; he was instantly put in mind of Starlight and the way shi would flop around whatever bed shi had been given, usually half of hir raw bulk spilling over onto the floor, and try to make smalltalk with the reserved little warrior. Sharing the Bond with hir, he knew that shi was missing a very certain kind of companionship, one that he could never provide. He'd considered hiring some travelling housemaidens to accompany them on their journey-

A thousand multicolored birds squawked and exploded from the endless fractal chaos of branches around him, sending countless bright green leaves and tiny blue petals tumbling into the sky. Laying back against the boughs of the Tree Of Life, it had just been himself, his robes and his sandals; he wasn't sure where his sword had come from, since that had most certainly not been within reach, but it sang in his grip now, trusty and cold. Shingen stood in a simple Kneeling Mule stance, wrists low, blade angled high, scanning in all directions.

~Where did you get that sword, little one?~ The voice wasn't upset, or even perturbed. Shingen was not the most social creature, even with Kimmi's enforced lessons on talking to waitresses and the elderly, but he was still reasonably certain that the invisible speaker was merely genuinely curious.

"It is my Sword," he said simply, not really caring to elaborate any further. "Where am I? Where is the temple of bones? Where is my Starlight?!"

~Hmmm.~ Despite the lack of any visual cues, Shingen could see fingers being tapped against pursed lips. ~I brought you here to talk, little warrior, and I had hoped that I could convince you to assist me, but... I can see into your heart, and you would never abandon your mission to pursue my own.~

"Never," he agreed, not entirely sure what his heart could be telling without his knowledge. "Again, where is here?"

~Oh, it's not a HERE-here sort of a here,~ the voice chirped happily. ~You're still in that nasty pile of bones, but we're having a nice little chat nonetheless. The location seemed appropriate, no?~

Shingen remembered the tree buried in the endless field of remains, a tree no higher than his knees... but the sort of tree that could dominate worlds. A microcosm all unto itself-

~I could NEVER dominate!~ the voice said, aghast. ~I... well, I suppose I really could if I tried_but it's just not _me! Goodness, no! No, if I were going to take charge of a whole world like that, my worst edicts would be 'naked Tuesdays' and 'dessert for lunch', probably.~

With each passing sentence, Shingen started to wonder if Kimmi had been the one destined to partake in this deliberation. There was more than a passing similarity in their patois. "I don't suppose you've been looking for a... er, husky, have you? Tall, four legs, friendly, bit of an anger issue?"

~YES, oh my me, yes, I'm so sorry! Here I am prattling on, when that's why I BROUGHT you here!~

Shingen's grip relaxed a hair on his sword, but he refused to show it. "That brings me joy," he said blankly. "Where is-"

~Shi is not in your world anymore.~

His grip re-tightened. "Ah."

~But don't worry!~ the voice added hastily. ~Shi is of a world somewhat next to yours, as these things go. Cosmically, you might say. Shi... hmmm. Do you know what a book is?~

Shingen's tail swished, just once. On a creature with less self-control, this might have manifested as an exaggerated and exasperated face-palm.

~Sorry! Sorry! Your mind is full of SCROLLS, I didn't know if books were very big in your... nevermind! Imagine a book... a book of infinite width, with pages finer than the finest silk threads!~

The rat dutifully imagined it, wondering of that was what Kimmi thought of when shi drifted off to sleep every night. "That would be a long read."

~Now you know how I feel! Anyways, somewhere in the middle of that book, is your world, all on a page. Your Starlight, as you call hir, has been moved to an adjacent page, sort of through a... a hole in the page. Yes, that works. A word, a single letter, has been burned out of one sheet of the world. Oh, dear, I'm no good at metaphors...~

"The temple," Shingen said, ears perking up. "It was designed to... to harness power, or control it, or contain it. That is how-"

~YES!!!~ The soundless cry nearly drove Shingen to his knees, and it set another flock of apparently-imaginary birds into flight. ~You're quite bright, thank you, yes, the temple was like this blot of ink, completely soaking and obscuring that wonderful, wonderful letter! And... ok, the ink blot made a hole, that doesn't work so well as a metaphor. Maybe the ink blot bled through to adjacent pages. That might work better. Can I start over?~

"WHERE IS SHI?" the rat snapped, starting to feel his hair straighten, as his mother would have said.

~I'm sorry, I'm really sorry. Like I said, shi's not in your world, exactly, but I am in contact with hir. Shi's... well, shi's not having a SUPER fun time, but shi's doing better than could be expected, I would have to say. Not many grrls in hir paws would have lasted this long! Right now, I'm trying to help hir escape-~

"ESCAPE?!"

~-but my influence is limited in the demesnes of Seriphos. Fortunately, shi hasn't killed my tree there yet, so I've got that going for me. But... and this is the tricky part... I need your help, little warrior.~

Shingen just stared. Without anything to attach to the voice, this meant he was staring at a section of tree trunk significantly larger than the inn at Milford, and likely several of its outbuildings. "You need... my help."

~I... can't... exactly... bring hir back to your world,~ the voice said with a distinct note of evasiveness. ~I can see, and traverse, and communicate, and speak a billion and one languages, but I can't just move people through the layers of reality wily-nily.~

"I... see."

~And I can't leave hir on_that_ world, because it's all but a lifeless ball that I was trying to rescue, so there's nowhere for hir to go if shi gets that far!~

"I... see."

~And as far as I can tell, shi's got folks from a dozen worlds with hir, and I.. I can't imagine how I'd ever get all of them home. Time is... time isn't exactly a straight line, you know, not when you're caught in an ink blot.~

"I... see."

~I don't talk to mortals very often,~ the voice finished, with what simply couldn't have been a girlish giggle. ~But... what do you say? I help you, you help me? We both help Starlight?~

Shingen blinked, watching the sunlight stream through the canopy and paint strange, dancing figures on the bark.

"How, exactly, am I able to help you, given that you yourself are a... a goddess, I'm presuming..."

~Oh, thank you for noticing!~

"... and yet you yourself are unable to directly intervene in hir current situation?"

~Well...?~ the voice said slowly, shrugging invisible shoulders. ~I might have a plan.~

---

This is the worst plan ever, Kimmi thought manically, tongue lolling. Of all time!

The chamber certainly seemed smaller now than when shi'd woken up. Shi'd been forced to back up further, sidling along the wall, until shi was squished into one of the sharply angular corners. The sheer weight of hir arousal was taxing even hir strength, doubly so when shi was forced to spread hir paws so far apart just to maintain contact with the ground.

For whatever reasons, which all seemed to make sense at the moment in spite of Kimmi not being able to specifically call any single one of them to mind, shi trusted the strange exhortations of the silvery-blue petals. It helped that Isima was also under the sway of the mystical force, which they were both convinced was at least a far more benign entity than Seriphos. In hir current state, Kimmi found that shi was quite suggestible. Particularly when the person doing the suggesting was naked, gorgeous, and seemed to know what she was doing.

"I have no idea what we're doing!" Isima groaned, the strain in her voice making Kimmi wince. "This... this isn't... I've never...!"

"M-me either," Kimmi panted for the tenth time. "But... we are!"

Kimmi was rapidly discovering that the word 'impossible' did not mean what shi thought it meant. All manner of impossible things had happened to hir, and shi'd actively sought to do more impossible actions right back at them. Just in the last day shi'd had to add, what, six more items to that list? What was one more?

But even to hir, this seemed especially impossible.

Shi leaned back on hir haunches as much as shi could manage, until hir forepaws were only resting two toe-pads each on the tiled floor. Isima rose another foot or two into the air, gasping and moaning in response as Kimmi's flesh tensed and flexed deep within her, stretching her still further. The doe's split hooves waggled uselessly in the air, her little puff of a tail vibrating fast enough that Kimmi thought it might start a fire if it kept up.

Moving slowly, carefully, dream-like, Isima had stroked and kissed her way to the very tip of Kimmi's maleness. The teasing had been maddening, drawing another ripple of growth or two out of the stunned taur, but that had been nothing compared to when the plump, sultry doe had swung one leg across hir tense glans and ground herself against Kimmi's too-sensitive flesh. It had been, yes, impossible, but that hadn't stopped Isima from bracing her palms against the far wall of the chamber and rolling her hips in a very skilled, practiced manner. Nothing should have happened, nothing at all; Kimmi's tongue had explored those pink folds only moments before, and that had been a snug fit! There was simply no way...

_ _

And yet, those folds had parted, blue petals swirling up into the air as though in response to Isima's cries of bliss. Kimmi's shaft, far wider than the poor doe's body, pushed forwards slowly at first. The taur was digging in with all four paws, driving as gingerly as shi dared, and wondering why this seemed to be the only way to save themselves. All at once, though, the resistance seemed to cease, and shi ploughed several feet in one single thrust. Shi struck the far wall with a dense thump, but shi was tightly encased by Isima's snowy white belly fur.

Several minutes later, some semblance of self-awareness was returning to the dizzy and woefully erect Princess. Hir eyes never left Isima's distended figure, marvelling at the way her rump seemed almost cute and petite now that it was perched tightly against hir slick black shaft. Hir one regret was that, due to hir staggering size, shi couldn't even come close to reaching any part of Isima with hir hands, no matter how hard shi leaned forwards, shoulders burning with the effort. There was simply too much of _hir_between them, easily ten feet of tensed endowment between the husky's forelegs and Isima's forcibly-widened opening.

The doe was leaning forwards, armed wrapped around her colossally stretched-out womb. She stroked and nuzzled the taur's cock through hir own thinning fur, not even the slightest bit worried. It felt too good, she'd decided, for this to possibly be a bad idea. She was still breathing, which shouldn't have been possible; the crushing weight against her insides should have made that a fool's effort. She moaned and squeezed with her thighs as much as she could manage, her lover's onyx flesh slicked with her own juices.

She felt a strange, liquid churning deep within her, and all doubts were instantly banished. She pressed her palms against the very tip of Kimmi's shaft, which had pushed deep enough inside of her to extend well beyond the top of her head, and angled her body back as much as she could manage.

That single motion seemed to tighten every part of the doe's anatomy around Kimmi, and the taur cried out again, a high and keening howl reminiscent of hir ancient feral ancestors. "Are.... are you... all right?" shi managed. Hir thick, fluffy paws were stroking endlessly up and down, back and forth, but seemed to be far too small to drive hir to the climax that shi knew was the eventual goal of coupling. Shi'd heard many stories, and read more than a few books on the subject, but this was still virgin territory for hir.

"Goddess... yes!" Isima called back, flexing internally with what muscle control remained. "I never... never imagined it could be like this!"

Kimmi privately had feared it would be like this, but this was a lot more positive than hir overly-worried mind had proposed. Shi'd taken measurements over the last few months, both of hir own anatomy and of some of the folks they'd met on their journeys. It had been under the guise of trying to understand how dress-fitting measurements worked, but the results had always been the same: shi was simply too large, perhaps by several orders of magnitude.

And yet, Isima was still managing to work her way down the length of Kimmi's shaft, though inch by inch at this pace might take far more time than they had to waste.

A small gust of petals swirled around hir, brushing Kimmi's cheek tenderly, as though trying to soothe hir.

"Thank you?" shi murmured, touching hir musky fingers to hir muzzle.

~You're welcome!~ came the voice, faint but distinct, just on the edge of hir hearing. ~But I would like to apologize...~

"Why?"

~Because this might be a little scary, but please don't worry! And when the moment is right, you must act!~

"H-how?" It was becoming difficult for Kimmi to speak now, a tightening in hir chest spreading along hir arms.

~I don't know exactly, dear, I can't actually see what's going on where you are, but... Shingen says I can trust you to know what to do.~

Kimmi gasped, hir paws clenching into fists. Other parts of hir seemed to clench, as well, and Isima cried out joyously as she was stretched even further around the taur's immensity. "You... he... he knows where I am?"

~S-s-s-s-sort of...~ the voice said evasively. ~Don't worry right now, though! This is your first time, you need to enjoy yourself!~

"I... I am... I am..." Kimmi said, still trying to catch hir breath. Hir legs were shivering in spite of the oven-like heat the chamber had acquired.

"Kimmi?" Isima asked, staring back over her shoulder, eyes bulging.

"I am... I am..." Hir silvery-black tail thrashed, beating madly against the thick stone walls. Its arc was being interfered with by hir sac, however, twin fluffy white orbs continuing to fill behind hir. Shingen could have used one of them as a bed, if he were here, and if they grew any more then Kimmi hirself could lounge on them! Why would they do that?? What is the point of being so big??

_ _

~You know, I'm glad you asked that,~ the voice said with a conspiratorial chuckle.

A taut, worrying creaking filled the chamber, reminding Kimmi of the sound hir tower had made in the high spring storms rolling in off of the ocean. The castle had stood for more than four hundred years, and shi'd been endlessly reassured that it could not be toppled by mere wind, but that sound... it had always stuck with hir. This made it doubly worrying when shi realized that sound was coming from hir own flesh, hir cock thickening before hir very eyes. The twisting, criss-crossing veins flexed and bulged, so tight shi could feel them individually. At the far end, where shiny canine flesh became damp doe fur, Isima's legs beat uselessly. Isima was making throaty gulping noises, but in a way Kimmi knew they were sounds of encouragement.

A moment later it was Kimmi's turn to cry out as hir barrel was hoisted into the air when hir knot, occupying most of the space between hir four legs, bloomed all at once.

~Eeeee, I love this part~ the voice cheered, and Kimmi could swear shi heard clapping.

"I-Isima?"

"Wh... wha... wha... wha...?"

That seemed to be the limit of the doe's ability to converse, so Kimmi pressed on. "Whatever h-happens, Isima... I want you to know that I love you... and I will see you free."

"I... I luh... I luh... I luh..."

"Shhh, dear, shhh," Kimmi groaned, hunching forwards. The gurgling, churning sensations that felt like lightning rooting just behind hir tailhole increased in power and intensity until shi felt shi might explode. And, in a certain way, shi supposed, shi was about to.

"Mmm... mmm... mmm!!!"

Kimmi lifted hir head, determined to watch the events play out, events that were now far beyond hir control. Isima's belly had been a skin-tight silhouette of the taur's maleness, but now it was starting to round out, filling slowly. The doe's hands played across it, pawing and stroking as she blossomed into full rondure, and for a moment Kimmi had thought that this had all been quite a big deal made about not very much at all.

Hir jaw dropped, though, and all shi could manage was a thin keening when shi felt some sort of dam within hir collapse, and all of the tension that had been building swirled and concentrated into a single ball of fire deep within hir loins. Shi could hear just as much as shi could feel the underside of hir shaft bulge immensely, the pressure within hir pupmakers forcing hir already excessive girth larger still.

Isima looked already to be pregnant enough to give birth at any moment, but that had apparently only been the first few accidental drips of Kimmi's passion. The modest sphere of her belly expanded with a vigor that stunned them both, now fully six feet across and dwarfing the doe's body. The chamber walls were too close to allow this, and the expansion drove Isima back against Kimmi's shaft, filling hir deeper still.

The next geyser of seed was more impressive, and the next even moreso. Kimmi had barely drawn breath when Isima's belly had grown full enough to touch not just the far walls of the chamber, but the floor and ceiling as well. The taur reached out, hir paws now able to caress the doe's sides. Another shuddering release, and Isima was pushed back into Kimmi's arms, hir breasts pillowing up around hir lover's head.

Isima squeaked when her belly extinguished two of the high sconced candles. She could see virtually nothing except a quivering landscape of white that stretched off in all directions, white that she knew was her own flesh but now far more than mere skin and fluff. She felt Kimmi's hands on her backside, and she fumbled madly trying to reach them. Her own arms were all but sinking into the growing bulk of her belly, but she managed, with the taur's help.

"I-impossible," she managed, her body now pinned between Kimmi's bust and her own womb.

"I know," Kimmi breathed, nuzzling the doe's ears, squeezing her hands reassuringly. Kimmi thrust and came, over and over again, but each emptying of hir sac just pushed them both further and further into the corner of the chamber. More worrisome, at least to Kimmi, was the knowledge that hir balls had not shrunk in size even remotely. "Just... hold on..."

"Y-yes... Goddess..."

Two more candles were snuffed out, and now Kimmi could hardly make out anything behind the advancing wall of Isima's bloated belly. It had to have filled almost the entire chamber by now, leaving only the single remaining candle above them to gutter, as though it had already worked out its impending fate.

Another surge, and Kimmi was driven not just back but up and onto hir hindlegs. Isima slipped out of hir grasp, the doe now nestled between the taur's forelegs. Hir knot was still ragingly engorged, and even the assistance of the strange, eldritch petals could not help Isima to take that shape. If anything, it simply served to tighten their connection.

The weight was all that Kimmi could feel now, the pressure of Isima's seed-filled form on one side and the solid stone walls on the other. Even Isima's wiggling little arms and legs seemed distant and muted.

A moment later shi was forced back enough that hir head struck the candle, knocking it loose and extinguishing the tiny flame. Blue sparks seemed to explode behind hir eyes, and shi pawed madly at the encroaching wall of fur and seed that was growing tighter, harder with each passing second.

But they weren't sparks, shi realized. Tiny blue petals adorned what shi could see of Isima's womb, giving hir a strange sight indeed, as of the constellations falling to earth.

Shi came again, and again, and again, and soon shi was pinned as securely as a fly in sap. Again and again, and shi could no longer draw breath. Again and again, and somehow shi still continued to produce seed, feeling the chamber to its utter limits.

Again and again.

~You can do it!~

Kimmi's body lurched to one side, and shi tried to yowl in surprise. It reminded hir of hir trips in the wagons, when Shingen had wanted hir to travel incognito; the carriage would lurch one way at a rut in the road, pause, and then lurch the other way when things smoothed out. This time, however, shi was being roughly shoved in one direction only, apparently in time with hir continued climax.

~YAY!~

Kimmi's eyes flew open, and once again there was torchlight all around hir, diffuse distant flames and the scents of nature. Hir arms pinwheeled, and even that took hir a moment to process. Hadn't shi just been in that accursed chamber? That too-small, ever-tightening cham-

A stone slab the size of hir favorite encyclopedia struck hir head, and shi realized that the chamber had been the first to surrender, not Isima. Shi blinked away the pain of the impact, still running off of the wonderful, world-encompassing high of hir climax. More blocks, many still decorated with the black-and-white tilework, spread out around hir in a growing pile of scree and debris as the pair tumbled through the vast, and still growing, hole they had made in the temple.

Above hir, the Tree of Life released a shower of bright blue petals, as though in celebration.

"Oh-h-h," Kimmi gasped, drawing a huge breath. At long last, shi could feel hir orgasm beginning to subside, the detonations of seed now slowing to merely that of a babbling brook. Perhaps one after a heavy rain, but nonetheless, it was something that shi could make a metaphor out of, and that was heartening.

As much as shi hated to end the strange and exultant coupling, Kimmi began to walk hir hind legs slowly backwards. Hir huge forepaws padded down the taut, vertical surface of Isima's belly, eventually revealing Isima herself. With every tiny step, shi unsheathed more and more of hirself from Isima's belly, like Shingen drawing his sword. Although shi was fairly certain that Shingen's blade had never quite been so... wet.

When shi had all four feet on the ground once more, shi found hir eyes level with the back of Isima's head. Hir paws crunched on soft soil, thick with dried leaves and wilted petals and what seemed like ankle-deep drifts of bark. The doe's legs wiggled, adorably but quite uselessly, several feet off the ground. Most of her bulk was still within the chamber, but a goodly amount billowed forth like bread rising from a pan.

Shi knew shi had to move, and move quickly, but shi simply couldn't leave Isima in this condition. Not yet, at any rate.

"Urk?" Isima mumbled, her head lolling to the side. Her eyes swam, unfocused but aware.

Kimmi snuggled in close, hir paws roaming everywhere. Shi kissed Isima's cheek, hir neck, the top of hir head. "You... are incredible," shi growled. "You... you shouldn't have been stuck down here with me. You shouldn't have been anywhere near me, ever. But... you were. And... I'm sorry."

The doe hiccuped and giggled, reaching up to scruff her thick fingers through Kimmi's hair. "Hee," she nodded, as though that were that. She stretched, or at least her more normally-proportioned portions stretched, her arms and legs wiggling against the overwhelming mass of her belly. "S'kay."

"It's not okay!" Kimmi whined, still nuzzling the wildly overinflated young woman. The bone-rattling thunk was filling the air once more, distant lines of torches tightening like a noose around the base of the huge tree. There were illuminated balconies above them, one of them almost certainly where a possessed Isima had beaten the taur unconscious. "You should have been out with a normal grrl, not some... ME!"

Isima rumbled and purred, her new curves giving her considerably more depth. "I... am so glad... to have seen your world. Even if it... tried to kill me a little."

Kimmi felt hirself drawing more out of Isima, and realized shi was softening, actually shrinking. It had always been a slow process after hir exploratory baths, but it seemed to be a great deal more efficient when someone else was involved. A glance back over hir shoulder confirmed hir sac was almost back to normal, which was to say soon they would be merely as large as a pair of wine casks.

"I'm going to get you out of here," shi vowed. The emotional import of hir words was marred by the champagne-cork sound of hir shaft popping free with a splash of seed against hir underbelly. "I... don't know exactly how, yet, but... we've got a friend. S-s-s-somewhere."

Isima nodded, pulling a light blue flower petal out of her cleavage. "I think you're right."

STAY TUNED... Part 10 is already live on Patreon, Part 11 is halfway done, and they're both doozies! I love you all!