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The Pleasures of Duty

Part 1

For JCFoxman

By Draconicon

While Eizorahn might have been the island that time forgot, the people, thankfully, had far better memories. As Exia Ironsoul loomed over a pair of villagers outside of the mountain settlement of Blackrock, she and her mount, Kazra, listened carefully as they described the passage of her quarry.

"She came through here two days ago, m-ma'am," the multi-colored feathered male said. "I don't know where she was heading, but...but she might have been making her way to the ancient temple down there."

A feathered hand gestured down the steep slopes of the mountain, pointing towards the edge of the jungle and the small boulders atop a building that stuck out from the emerald swathes of land. Exia glanced down, marking it in her mind before turning back to him.

"Anything else?"

"She was...antsy," the female of the pair said, dropping her head and wrapping herself in her arm-wings as if to hide behind them. "That's all we know. We swear. That's all we know."

"I see." Exia sighed. "You have been...helpful. Far more helpful than most people that I have encountered. And for that, I thank you."

The reptilian woman reached for her belt, rooting around in her pouch for several steel chips. She pulled them free, flicked them between her fingers a few times before tossing them to the avian pair.

"Take these with my thanks."

They didn't say anything, merely looked at her with shock. Perhaps they had expected her to strike them down for being less than helpful. Considering the reputation that seemed to precede her and the other Beastriders, she supposed that she wasn't surprised. For all the good that they did, they came with a fierce reputation that never entirely faded, no matter how much good they did in the long run.

She didn't discourage it, either, considering how a little fear helped when she needed to ask questions. The Beastriders had discovered long ago that the reputation of kindly knights did not give them what they needed. Something firmer, fiercer, was required in these savage lands. Their enemies fled before them, and the villagers would occasionally cower in fear, but it was worth it to accomplish the peace and safety that they required.

But that did not mean that they were unfair to those that helped them. The steel was as good as any other currency, better than some, in that it could be traded at any village. The bird-folk would be treated well with such payment.

"Come, Kazra."

Exia pulled the reins of her mount, and they leaped from the mountain path. The dracoline, a long, muscular lizard thing that kept low to the ground, fell fast before thumping against the steep slope of the mountain. Dark, blunt claws dug in, gripping the stone and earth before throwing them forward once more. They soared through the air, then fell, then soared again.

It was in moments like this that they almost felt like they could fly.

At the base of the mountain, they found a river that led from the great slopes towards the temple in question. Exia paused, pulling Kazra to a halt beside it, and dismounted. Her loincloth slid along her thighs, nearly exposing the space between her legs as she dropped from the dracoline. The large beast turned its head, nudging her side, and she patted its neck.

"We'll be on our way again soon. I need a moment."

Not from the fall, of course. That was something that she had already recovered from. No, it was more a moment to re-center herself, to feel better about the mission ahead.

She walked up to the river, squatting down beside it. Her loincloth fell to the ground, coiling around itself as she squatted on her tiptoes. The water reflected her image back at her, and she shook her head at it.

They would think me soft if I didn't arrive on Kazra.

She had the body of a woman that many males would have tried to throw over their shoulders and run off with. She had hips that had more than once threatened to burst the leather band that held her loincloth, and her breasts were barely restrained by leather that had been patched and patched again, fur barely keeping the scaly orbs restrained. More than once, she had been mistaken for a damsel in distress, a woman that was in need of rescuing herself.

Truthfully, she had been happy to see that happen. It was quite...fun...to correct those that made that error. The faces that they made afterwards were generally quite amusing.

But more than anything, she looked at the brand that rested along her hip, running from the top of her hip down to her outer thigh. It was a long, harsh tattoo, a branding that came with being a Beastrider.

She ran her finger along the head of the dracoline that was burned there, then drew her claw along the great sigils of sword and wall behind it. They were the traveling defense of the island, the great warriors that made things okay. They were the ones that linked the villages, that allowed the limited contact between them, the ones that made sure that the world was greater than the little settlements that dotted the island.

And if another of their number were threatened, then it was up to them to take care of it. Nobody else was allowed to see that frailty.

Her fingers twitched, scratching against the design. Not enough to mar it, for it had been burned and etched and inked into her scales to the point where such a thing could never happen, but her claws still made her scales screech.

Frailty. Foolishness, in this case...

She stood up slowly, brushing her loincloth down over herself properly as she glanced down the river. It would take them to the temple, eventually, though she wondered if their quarry was still there. Kolteya had been remarkably swift at moving from place to place, and while they were catching up with her - this was the first village that had seen her less than a week ago - they were still two days behind, and she could have already moved on.

Yet, for all that, Exia felt that they were closer than that. Something...something had happened.

"Kazra."

The dracoline thrust its head between her legs, lifting her up with its long neck. She landed on its spine, grunting as his spines caught her between the legs, rubbing more than one sensitive spot.

Her loincloth spilled to the side, revealing a 'spine' of her own that stuck out between her legs. She shook her head, drawing the cloth over her shaft, keeping it hidden under her clothes.

"Forward. With any luck, we'll find her tonight."

Particularly if they heard the same cries that had been drawing them on for weeks, now. The same soft, lilting sounds that Kolteya had made every night, one of the few non-irritating things that the Beastrider in training had done.

Kolteya...my student...

They arrived at the base of the temple a few hours later. It was ruined, of course. Most anything that was built outside of the villages ended up ruined by something or other. Usually, it was a great monster that was responsible, some huge creature that had come by and decided that it didn't like the look of the man-made structure intruding on its territory.

The villages survived by being on the edge of the forest, or above it, or otherwise avoiding the worst of the big creatures. Those that intruded on the forest floor, or worse, to the center of the jungles, never lasted long. Even the Beastriders avoided those routes unless it was required.

This one, however, looked like it had been ruined a long time ago. There were no recent monster tracks, nothing to show that it had been broken into by kobolds or worse. In fact, it looked almost entirely untouched...

Save for the rope that ran up towards one of the towers along the outer wall. That would have been Kolteya's way in, considering that she lacked her own dracoline.

"Up, Kazra."

The reptile woman leaned back, her tail laying over her dracoline's, moving in sync with him as the beast leaped for the wall and started climbing. His great claws sunk into the stone, pulling them up bit by bit. Soon, they reached the walkway at the top of the outer wall, and could look at the temple courtyard.

There was nothing to see beyond cracked stone and a set of stairs that led up to the main door. Here, she could see tracks. Soft ones, bare feet that had run through the dust of the old temple. Here and there, cracked stone where this trap and that had been triggered, old darts and launchers and ropes and more littering the floor where they had tried to snare would-be thieves in the past.

But no Kolteya. She had made it past the outer traps.

No less than I expected from someone I trained...

With another flick of the reins, Kazra leaped to the courtyard. She dismounted the dracoline, pulling her dagger from her hip and her blade from Kazra's packs. Long blade and short were her preferred means of fighting. In the wilds, a shield meant nothing. If the enemy had a chance to strike, and if they hit, you had already lost. Better to not be there, to have more options to strike back, than to waste time on a shield that did nothing.

"Beware," she muttered, knowing that Kazra needed no more warning than that. They had worked together long enough, been bonded for long enough, that she probably didn't even need to say that. He would have picked up on her mood, and that would have been enough.

They made their way towards the stairs slowly, with her taking her time and him following behind. She kicked rocks forward, nudged suspicious stones with her blades, and waited. Every step was another test, another possible source of death, and they were not going to fall this easily.

Step by step, they made their way up the stairs. More than once, she had to stretch out to make her way over a hole in the stone, her loincloth swishing about in the process, exposing herself more than once. There were times where she had to lean back, to allow Kazra to push his snout against her rump to push her forward enough to make the jump, but he was a beast. He had no inclinations towards her like that.

Exia had long-since learned how to use her momentum to move from place to place. Some warriors among the Beastriders saw her curves as a detriment, something that slowed her down, something that made her soft and weak. Even some among the Ironsoul tribe that didn't know her as well thought the same.

They were all incredibly wrong.

She could throw herself forward, move like water as she used the very weight on her hips and rump and chest to throw herself around. They were counterweights once you got used to them, allowing her to move and dodge and keep her movements in a constant flow. She had developed tactics and fighting styles that took advantage of it, allowing her to swing and slide and even jiggle her way to where she needed to be.

And if that meant that the enemy was staring at her rather than taking her seriously, then that was all for the better.

They reached the top of the stairs without triggering any traps. The main door was opened, and she stepped forward into the darkness. Kazra followed behind, huffing softly, his breath warm against the back of her thighs.

"Slow."

The first step was safe. The second, third, and fourth, likewise. The fifth, however -

SHINK!

Exia reacted instantly, throwing her head back. The razor blade that shot out from the wall spun just ahead of her face, nearly cutting her snout in the process, and embedded itself in the far wall. She slowly turned her head, looking at it.

It was a disk of pure metal, one that had been sharpened to the point where it might have split the scales of her mount if he had been the one targeted with it. To find something like that...

An old place, indeed...

Metal-work had been abandoned long ago, with most villages not having the ore to actually create anything made of it. Stone, obsidian, wood, flint: those formed the weapons of the people these days. Only the Beastriders had the strength to push far enough into the ancient lands to find the ores for their weapons and return, but even their weapons were alloys, made of various things to fill in the gaps. This...this was pure metal, and enough to make a half-dozen daggers.

This place could be a god-send...if one could survive it.

Shaking her head, she took another step forward -

The whirr of something moving beneath her was the only warning she had. She jumped upwards, but it wasn't enough to keep the emerging, spinning blade under her from catching her loincloth. The reptilian woman threw out her legs, bracing herself against the sides of the corridor, waiting for the spinning disk to fall into the floor again.

Unfortunately, it took her loincloth with it, exposing her fully.

"...Damn."

The scaled warrior wiggled forward, trying to ignore the way that her shaft dangled down beneath her, doing her best to ignore the feeling of weight that her suddenly unrestrained sac filled her with. The fact that her other sex was also exposed wasn't lost on her, and she did her best to focus more on the fact that she was gradually moving forward, that she was slowly moving out of the threatening range of the buzzing blade.

She landed on the ground a moment later, shaking her head as she looked down at herself. The faint patterns of lighter scales along her inner thighs, as well as the slightly darker flesh at the head of her shaft, was a trifle annoying to look at. She was used to the slight cover of her loincloth, the weight that it added to keep everything in place down there. Now...

Well, this is going to be distracting.

Stepping forward enough to allow Kazra to leap over the blade and land behind her, Exia nodded down the corridor.

"Hopefully there's no more..."

Kazra clicked its jaws.

"A vain hope, I know...but let's hope, anyway."

There were many traps between the main gate and the central chamber, and she grew ever-more impressed that her student's body wasn't found among them. There were spinning, bladed traps; there were traps that opened up on spiked pits below. There were traps of bondage, of poison, of drugs and more, and each one was more devious than the last. To walk the narrow corridor was to risk imprisonment or death with every step, and she was starting to wonder how the ancient temple had managed to retain any followers for long. Certainly, she wasn't finding any rhyme or reason to how the traps were placed, no pattern that might be followed.

However, there was hope. As the Beastrider disentangled herself from yet another trap - this one trying to pull her down, as if it were some sort of predatory plant rather than a mere hole in the ground - she could hear something in the distance. Something warm, something soft, something...lilting.

Kolteya...

A memory of the other woman sitting with her around a campfire during one of their training days filled her mind, and she shook her head as she thought about the times that they had spent together. Too many days out in the wild for them to be completely at odds with each other, even if the other woman had been...difficult. Impatient. Angry. Problematic. Fiery.

There had been many problems, but they could have been resolved with patience. They could have been untangled and made better with time. Kolteya, however, had not been willing to give that time. The other Doryaan, of the Starseeker tribe, had left them and gone running off to find her own strength and power. Exia had been following her for weeks, as teacher, as trainer. Now, perhaps, she had finally -

Bzzzz!

A second trap?!

She flung her head back, and Kazra dropped with her. He kept her from falling back into the hole trap, but the spinning blade from the ceiling still spun right over her chest. If it had not been for her instant reaction, she would have been cut right in two.

Yet, for all her speed, the blade passed between her breasts, cutting the bra that held them back. As she caught her breath, the spinning blade pulled the leather and fur away, almost like a pervert stalker, and she was left completely naked.

...Well, this wasn't part of the plan...

But at least she had her weapons. She could still fight. That was the important thing.

The Doryaan let her mount push her upright again, and Kazra hopped over the hole to join her. She shook her head as she looked down at herself.

Without the brand, no one would take me seriously now, she thought, looking at her naked self. Her breasts were out on display, shamelessly shown, and her curves were impossible not to look at. Despite all the effort that she had put into making herself strong, her current lack of attire made her look like some pleasure girl that a chieftain had collected for himself rather than like the powerful woman that she actually was. Weapons or not, her naked state left her looking rather...

Shameless, was the best word, she supposed. It wasn't the right one, nor was it the one that reflected everything that she was, but it was the least bad word.

Shaking her head, she walked forward down the great hall, doing her best not to focus on the feeling of her shaft swing between her thighs, or the feeling of her thighs occasionally grinding up against her sex.

Eventually, they reached the end. There were no further traps, but there was a great surprise waiting for them at the end.

"Kolteya..."

The other Doryaan was here, alright, but not free. She hung in the middle of the room, suspended, frozen in a crystal. Not a natural one, either, she realized a moment later as the tingles of magic tickled at her scales. This was a place of power, one that had been forgotten, perhaps, but one that still surged with magical energy. Someone, or something, still ruled here that the world had forgotten.

She had barely taken a step forward before the floor erupted in blue-white light, streaks of it shooting up like raging water off of river rocks. Exia jumped back, holding out her sword and dagger, but the light kept coming, rushing up from the ground, forming shapes that were more like eels than anything else. They slithered through air like fish through water, wriggling, squirming, angrily moving.

"Intruder..."

"Thief..."

"Another..."

"I am no thief. I have come only for her," Exia said, pointing across the room.

Her words did nothing to still the many voices and spirits around her, and spirits they were, in bulk. She could hear the voices whispering around her, even if she didn't know what they were saying. The Beastrider could, however, hear the rage that burned in their voices.

She would have cursed if she didn't know it would have made the situation worse. Her weapons were useless here. Aside from the one enchanted dagger that she had somewhere on Kazra's saddle, her other weapons could do nothing against the departed. More than that, the Beastriders were forbidden from dealing with the dead. That was the province of the priests, and the priestesses. They were not to fight them, lest they banish from the living world something that was not yet ready to go.

But she had to get Kolteya back, if only for the fact that a teacher could not leave her student.

So, she sheathed her weapons on the dracoline's saddle, taking a step forward. Her toes nearly touched the flaring earth, the blue-white light casting heat above the stones and dirt.

"What did she do?"

"Sneak and hide..."

"Steal and run..."

"Caught and punished..."

"Keep and hold..."

Exia should have guessed. Her student had tried to find another shortcut, another way to leap towards being a Beastrider early. There was no easy way forward in the organization. You had to earn your way there, earn your way from the bottom to the top, and if you didn't, then you were not prepared for what awaited you.

An experienced Beastrider, or even one that had actually earned the right to move with a beast, to hold their bond, to learn the world around them, would have been able to handle this. They would not have been able to fight, but they would have known the dead were around, would have realized that stealing from this place was a bad idea. Kolteya, arguably, deserved her fate...

But there was no way that she could leave her here. Not now that she had found her.

Looking at the crystal floating over the altar at the far end of the room, she could see the other woman's face was frozen in time, her mouth open wide. The soft croons of her old songs still came from her lips, vibrating through the crystal that imprisoned her.

Exia shook her head again.

"What must I do to free her?"

"A thief for a thief?"

"I am no thief. I am Exia Ironsoul, a Beastrider of honor. I did not sneak here. I came openly and honestly. And now, I ask you. What must I do to free her and take her from here?"

Her question seemed to surprise the different spirits around her, as they were quick to start swarming and hissing among themselves. They were unclear, it seemed, on what to do.

Kazra hissed behind her, but she held out her hand, calming her mount. It wouldn't be able to help her here. The spirits were too many, and could just as easily encase the dracoline in the crystal as it could her. A fight to the death would be pointless, and it would only mean that the spirits had three trophies instead of one.

The spirits were the ones that had been angered, which meant that they were the ones that deserved to set the terms.

Eventually, the wriggling lights in the air above descended, forming a cluster of tendrils like the weeds that clustered around the ocean coastline. They swirled about, some running along her toes, others reaching further towards her calves. Wherever they went, they stroked her like the wanting hands of a lover, but with less of the adoration that she was used to getting as she passed through the bigger villages that were less afraid of her.

Instead of adoration, the tendrils stroked her with dominance, with strength, with power. They pulled at her instead of requesting her, tried to drag her off her feet. Exia stomped down, setting herself and bunching the muscles beneath her curves to hold her ground.

"Speak your terms. I have yet to agree."

There was a hissing in the air again, an angry sound, but she held firm.

"Speak. I am no thief. I have broken no terms. Tell me your challenge, so I can decide to take it."

"Stand among us..."

"Let us touch..."

"Let us test..."

"Stand strong..."

"And take her back..."

"Collapse in weakness..."

"And be like her..."

To stand strong was the code of the Beastrider, but even now, she knew that they did not mean in combat. Already, more tendrils were trying to stroke their way up her legs, to touch her, to feel her in other ways. The spirits were lonely, she supposed, and she knew that they were going to push her to her utter limits.

But to save another, she would try anything.

"I accept."

She stepped forward, and the tendrils around her legs lifted her up, pushing her into the air. More and more of the wriggling streaks of light joined together, forming tendrils and tentacles of ghostly form around her, supporting her and then -

Exia gasped as her limbs were gripped, her ankles and wrists pulled out to the sides, held apart as she was left suspended almost a dozen feet over the floor. Her shaft dropped slightly, no longer supported against her thighs, and her breasts bounced at the violent movements of the ghostly limbs.

As she tried to focus enough to speak, a tendril pushed past her lips. Not roughly, but firmly, nonetheless. It pressed down on her tongue, holding it still like a dominant finger, suppressing her from speaking, and it slowly pushed down into the back of her mouth. Her head was tilted back, holding her in place, making her arch her back slowly.

Still other tendrils reached out for her breasts, pressing under them, lifting them up. The sheer heft of them was evident, even to her. Despite the support of the ghostly limbs, she could feel the weight that they still had, the way that they were trying to fall again. The limbs pushed them up, then let them drop.

"Mmmph..."

The weight and pressure of her breasts -

"Large boobs..."

"Heavy boobs..."

"Proper boobs..."

She would have rolled her eyes slightly at the way that the spirits commented on them, but later would suffice. For now, she allowed them to play with her 'boobs', focusing instead on holding strong.

As they writhed around her, forcing pleasure onto her body that she didn't quite expect, she felt other tendrils slowly wriggling and slithering and sliding their way up her legs. Some tickled lightly against the bottoms of her feet, and still others slid between her toes, but she could feel the others that were rising up her thighs all the more keenly. They spread her legs further, and as other tendrils found her rump cheeks, spreading them, she could feel the chill air of the room against both her feminine sex and her...other hole.

She blushed slightly, feeling half-there ghostly limbs pressing against her. They were real and unreal, firm and intangible, a contradiction in terms but no less pleasant for that. They rolled themselves up and down along her sex and her other hole, teasing them, wetting them with some sort of ephemeral goo, making her relax until -

"Mmmph!"

They slid in, slow, but inexorable, pushing in further and further until she swore that there must have been no more room inside of her, and yet they kept going. They were impossible, without any way to slow them down or stop them, stretching her and warming her and cooling her.

Impossible...impossible...

They pushed in so far that she swore that she must have been bloated in the stomach, but when the tendril in her mouth twisted about, pulling her head down again to look at what was happening, she saw no such thing. Her belly scales glowed, yes, but that was as far as it seemed to have gone.

But there were still three more tendrils coming.

Two rose for her breasts, the slender, pointed tips rubbing in circles around her nipples. The tendrils that held her breasts - her boobs - circled and bound them, squeezing them until she gasped from it. Her nipples were hard, pointed, and the new tendrils rubbed against the risen nubs, almost like they were trying to find a way to push in.

The third tendril, on the other hand, was rubbing along her...her cock. It had risen up quickly at the pleasure that her slit and her rump had gotten, and now, it was throbbing, eager, twitching, and dripping.

She was huffing softly, barely holding onto reality as it was as the tentacles in her holes started to pick up the pace, rubbing against her inner walls, plunging into her faster and faster. If she was not held so firmly, she would have been bouncing all over the place, her boobs rising up and slapping down against her chest again, her rump cheeks jiggling and smacking together from the harsh, pleasurable use that her back hole was getting. Her sex was warming up rapidly, almost on fire from the pleasure that the tentacle down there was giving her.

But that was nothing compared to the sudden penetration that came from in front.

As one, the three tendrils penetrated their targets. Her nipples and her cock suddenly swelled as they were filled from within by something so large, so thick, that they had no choice but to get bigger. Her body was wracked with the strange feeling of swelling and forced pleasure, the sensation rising until it finally spiked.

"NNNGH! NNNNNNNNGH!"

She thrust her hips and arched her back, impaling herself further on the glowing lines of power that the spirits had summoned. The pressure of that, combined with the rapidly-increasing speed of the thrusting tendrils between her legs, shoved her over the edge.

"MMMMMMMMMMPH!"

She screamed against the gagging tentacle in her mouth, her cock trying to shoot its seed, her pussy trying to squirt to the floor, but both were blocked by the tendrils that were pressed against her. There was no release, only great need building up.

The spirits swirled around her, endless invisible hands running up and down her thighs, up and around her rump. They were grasping, almost groping, but too intangible for them to really get a grip. All they could do was tease her, and that was more than maddening. She squirmed in their grip, panting softly as she felt herself climbing towards another orgasm already, the need between her legs rising to match the need in her chest and in her shaft.

The ghosts whispered to her, reminding her of her peril. If she lost out, if she could not outlast them, then she would become a crystal just like her student. She would be left with nothing but time, in a trance and on display like a collectible in a perverted collection.

I must hold out...I must...hold...out...

Kazra called out for her from the floor, and she knew that her mount was afraid for her. Yet, at the same time, its call was enough to bring her back.

The bond of a Beastrider was not merely to allow them cooperation, after all. From one another, they drew strength, surety...and stamina.

She pulled at Kazra's strength and endurance as the tendrils rolled her about in midair, turning her so that her boobs and her shaft hung down to face towards the floor. Gravity impaled her, forcing her deeper onto the tendrils pushed against her, and she could not help but moan.

Yet, at the same time, she felt her mount's strength surging through her. It stabilized her, reminded her of her goal, and of her own great power. She was here for a reason, and she was not leaving without achieving her mission.

Kolteya would be leaving with her, and no ghost, no matter how perverted, or how pleasurable, would dissuade her from that.

The End