Not this time

"I'm sorry, El'keth, but this isn't a good time. Maybe next time?" She tried to soften the blow with a gentle tone, but the drider still flinched as if slapped. "Very well, Teysa," she said quietly. "Have a pleasant trip." She bowed and withdrew.

Aliara was buckling on her daggers when Teysa returned. "Ah. I expect you want help armoring up? Or is that just an excuse to feel my hands all over you?" She gyrated her hips drunkenly. "You cannot resist, no?"

Teysa snorted. "If you don't want to help, you can just say so."

"Not at all! I would be glad to tighten... your... straps...!"

Teysa held still while Aliara buckled on her breastplate, faulds, and spaulders, then fastened her besagues into place and helped her slip her arms into their vambraces. Finally, she crowned Teysa with a steel halfhelm they had found in the armory. The craftsmanship was masterful, the nasal decorated with looping whorls of silver. Teysa didn't know who had owned it before, but in her line of work, she had gotten used to secondhand armor. The driders certainly had quite the collection, a chilling reminder of their old ways. Teysa hoped that the previous owner of this helmet had gotten away. Far more likely, she had been killed-- or captured, bred, and left to rot in the darkness.

Aliara grabbed a lantern from an iron hook in the wall and the two of them set off through the warren. Caravans arrived and left via a wide-open cavern at the northern border of the warren, the mouth of an ancient road kept in good repair by the driders. Lacking pack animals, they made do with small two-wheeled carts that could be hitched to their powerful bodies. Jez'ria was a tall and muscular drider with blunt features that marked her out from her sisters. Teysa wondered if she had been human once, or something else. It seemed rude to ask. She regarded the two women impassively. "I am told you two vill be guarding me today?" she asked. Her voice was rough with an accent that Teysa couldn't identify, but her Common was flawless. "So fearsome! I have little to vorry about now, eh?" She grinned, exposing a mouthful of needle fangs.

Instead of rising to the bait, Teysa inspected the cart. It was loaded with clay pots, each sealed with a wax stopper, along with a scattering of other things: a small iron lockbox, a couple piles of coins, a leather scroll tube, and two bolts of silk. The cart rattled to life as Jez'ria strode out of the cave. Teysa marched alongside it with her mace drawn. The feeling of deja vu was strong. She fell easily back into her old gait, a rolling march that matched the pace of the caravan. How many times had they guarded some fat merchant or frail diplomat? She had earned a fortune selling her mace. Several fortunes. Where was it all now? What had it amounted to?

Jez'ria seemed tireless. Muscles bulged and humped in her back as she pulled her cart. Like most driders, she was unashamedly naked apart from her jewelry; copper rings lined both arms, and she wore a golden stud in one nostril that connected to an earring via a thin gold chain. They had been traveling for several hours when Teysa felt her stomach rumbling. She held out a hand to get Jez'ria's attention.

"Jez'ria, can we stop here? I'd like to take a moment for lunch."

Jez'ria looked down on her with narrowed eyes. "If you vish. You are tired so soon?"

"Oh, yes. You know, it's walking in this plate. It's quite heavy."

"Hmph." Jez'ria crossed her arms under her breasts. "You are the one who met Mother Lolth under the ground, are you not?"

"I am." Teysa uncorked her canteen and tipped a cold drink into her mouth. "I am honored to have been-"

"I do not see vhy she chose you. You are frail. Perhaps she took pity on you, no?"

Teysa gave her a long, appraising look. "You don't approve?"

"It is not mine to approve or disapprove." Jez'ria shrugged. "The Matron says that ve must follow your 'new vay,' so ve do. She haz earned the right to lead. You? I do not understand vhy she listens to you. You turned avay from ascension. You vere offered Lolth's blessing and you said no."

"That's not really fair," Teysa began. "I mean, I wanted to-"

"Wait," said Aliara, holding up a hand. "Did you-"

With a great, thundering crash, part of the wall blew inward. A cloud of dust and whizzing quartz fragments filled the air. Teysa threw herself to the ground as something enormous burst through the shattered wall and rolled through the middle of their formation. She caught a glimpse of a great grey shape moving at speed, then there was another deafening boom as whatever it was came to rest against the far wall. Coughing and spitting, she got to her feet, and looked around through the haze. Her visibility was severely impacted. That dark shape- was that Aliara? And that larger shadow seemed to be where Jez'ria had been. What were those shapes? Stunted, vaguely humanoid, they capered through the **** dust towards her. Teysa's eyes widened and she brought her mace up just in time. Kobolds!

Two of them came at her with spears. Her mace checked the first thrust, and the crude bone blade of the spear shattered against her steel. Its owner stared in horror at his truncated weapon for just a second too long-- Teysa's mace whirled around and caught him in the side of the head, slamming him off his feet and out of sight. The other kobold hunched over and gibbered madly. He jabbed with his spear, and the point scraped off of Teysa's breastplate. Her return blow shattered his arm with a snap like a bundle of dried twigs. Crying out, he dropped his spear and lurched off into the dust cloud.

Teysa took a moment to get her bearings. The dust was clearing, and she could see more kobolds swarming out of the wall. Resting against the opposite wall was a massive granite boulder. She could see the hole it had made, a rough circle gouged about halfway up the wall. Beyond it was a tunnel that sloped away upward into darkness. Aliara was in the middle of a knot of kobolds with her daggers weaving through the air in front of her. As Teysa watched, she closed them like shears around the neck of an incautious kobold and snipped the beast's head off.

Jez'ria was leaning against the far wall with a sick expression on her face. Her cart was nowhere to be seen, but fragments of clay and silk suggested that it had been directly in the path of the boulder. Dark ichor stained the ground in front of her, and she lay flat against the ground with her legs splayed. Teysa crossed the cave towards her with her mace held up protectively. Close to, Jez'ria looked worse. She was breathing heavily and clutching her side. One of her legs was a crushed and mangled ruin. Another had been sheared off halfway along its length. The broken end leaked black blood and twitched like a beetle in its **** throes. The drider hissed as Teysa neared. "Go! Protect your lover, she needz you more than I do!"

"She can take her of herself!" Teysa replied, hoping it was true. "You're hurt! How bad is it?"

"I'll... ahhhh, I'll live. I have eight of the damn thingz. My spear..." she trailed off into a sibilant growl.

"What was that?"

"Aaaahh! Hurtz! My spear, it vaz in the cart. You vant to be useful, find it for me!"

Three kobolds came running out of the cloud. There seemed to be no end to them. Teysa swung wildly with her mace and they danced backward out of range. These were cannier than the first two; they stayed together, jabbing in rhythm so that she couldn't find her balance. She tried to break for the wreckage of the cart, but they moved to cut her off. Gritting her teeth, she put a shoulder down and charged straight into them. Despite their advantage in numbers and reach, they squawked in panic. One abandoned his friends and dove away; the other two thrust blindly with their spears. Teysa's mace deflected one, but the other pierced the meat of her calf, and she let out a grunt of pain and anger. Then she was past them and they were hurrying to regroup. There, on the ground, was a long iron-shafted spear with a wide tip. Teysa scooped it up, turned, and threw it in one fluid motion. Jez'ria's hand shot out like a snake and grabbed the flying spear behind the head. She spun it around her wrist and flicked her arm out. An astonished kobold who had been sneaking up on her looked down to see the length of steel impaling him through the chest, then dropped his axe from nerveless fingers. Jez'ria rolled the spear to slide his body off of it, then brought it up in a two-handed grip.

Teysa looked around for Aliara. The half-elf was hard-pressed, surrounded by a ring of kobolds. None of them seemed to want to get close to her weaving steel, but she looked like she was flagging, her chest rising and falling with exertion. As Teysa watched, the air filled with a flickering green glow. It seemed to pour out of the tunnel from which the kobolds had sprung their ambush. The thin haze of rock dust in the air caught the light and reflected it oddly, making it look like they were fighting in the middle of a cloud of fireflies.

Aliara dispatched one foe with a lightning-quick dagger through the eye. She was pulling it free when a wizened old kobold stepped out of the cloud. Green sparks seemed to orbit him like miniature moons. His eyes glowed, and when he opened his mouth, the same eerie flicker poured from there as well. He carried a staff in one hand, a twisted length of ancient wood capped with a cluster of mushrooms. His other hand was empty, and he raised it palm-outward and pointed it at Aliara. The green flecks that surrounded him rushed inward like water draining from a tub, then shot out in a solid beam of green light. It hit Aliara square in the face and poured over her. She shook and jittered under the onslaught. The light winked out suddenly, and Aliara stood swaying back and forth for a moment. Smoke curled upward from her tattered leathers. Then she collapsed forward face-down.

Teysa let out an animal howl and charged the kobolds with her mace held high. They gibbered and cavorted around her. She ignored the sting of their blades against her arms and legs. All of her attention was focused on the shaman with his staff. That glow was building around him, kindling like a flame...

Just as she reached him, he brought his hand up again. The light was suddenly blinding. It leapt out from him and earthed itself against her like a lightning bolt. She could feel her muscles convulsing and spasming uncontrollably. The mace fell from her twitching fingers and clattered away across the floor. Still the light poured across her. It felt as though her skin was on fire. She sank to her knees, eyes rolling up into her head, arms shaking uncontrollably. The light ebbed and faded, and Teysa fell insensate on her side. Darkness rushed up to claim her.

When she awoke, her whole body was sore and sensitive. It felt as though she was sunburned all over. Wincing, she turned her neck to look around. She had been stripped of her armor; she wore only her quilted cotton gambeson and leather breeches. She was hanging from a horizontal pole to which her wrists and ankles had been trussed. Hooting kobolds carried the pole, and none too gently; she bounced and swayed as they scampered through a long, low tunnel. Occasionally a particularly large rock on the ground would dig painfully into her back or smack her on the back of the head.

Next to her, Aliara dangled in a similar predicament. The half-elf was still **** and Teysa could see a pattern of raw, red flesh on her exposed face and arms. Her hair had been singed at the ends and her eyebrows had burnt off entirely.

Jez’ria was nowhere to be seen. Teysa hoped that they had gotten away, although the drider's injuries made escape unlikely. She tested her bonds, but finding them solid, resigned herself to temporary captivity. Surely the kobolds were bringing them somewhere.

The tunnel opened out into a large, circular cave ringed by torches. Teysa craned to see what was happening around her. The floor was tiered, like an amphitheater, and every level was lined with kobolds. They packed in tightly and the cave echoed with their muttering and squeaking. Her nostrils filled with the unwashed, reptile stink of them... and something more. A rotting, sickly-sweet odor of corruption, subtle but pervasive, underlay the grime of the kobolds. Teysa shuddered in her bonds. It was an evil smell, the smell of a thousand-year-old corpse that has not realized it is dead.

Her jailers cut the ties that bound her to the pole and she crashed unceremoniously to the floor. Still bound at wrist and ankle, she was able to offer little resistance as they manhandled her into a standing position. Two kobolds tried to prop up the **** Aliara; finding this impossible, they straddled her and slapped her hard across the face. She woke with a cry and, after a brief struggle, allowed herself to be dragged to her feet.

“Li, do you smell that?” Teysa asked in a whisper.

“I do. It’s not just kobold BO, is it? What do they have planned for us?” Aliara’s reply was sardonic, but Teysa could hear the fear in her voice. She shrugged and opened her mouth to reassure her, but the crowd suddenly grew quiet. A path opened through the mass of kobolds, and spear-points in Teysa and Aliara’s backs prodded them forward. With her ankles bound, Teysa could take only shuffling, mincing steps, but inch by inch she made her way through the throng. Her path descended as she went, until by the end she was standing at the bottom of a great inverted dome. Above her kobolds chanted, screeched, waved torches, and jeered at their prisoners.

The crowd thinned out as they went, until they stood alone at the bottom of the pit. Before them, the path extended out onto a thin finger of stone on the lip of a great abyss. The smell was stronger down here, an overpowering charnel stink of rotten meat and unguessable fluids. Teysa squinted into the abyss. The darkness seemed to draw in all light. Did she see movement down there?

Their escorts prodded them again, so with ****, Teysa and Aliara shuffled out onto the precipice. The stone was barely wide enough for both of them. A warm, damp breeze blew up from below, carrying the smell with it. Teysa wrinkled her nose and tried to breathe through her mouth.

Something was happening up above. Silence spread out across the crowd, and they parted to allow a wizened and ancient kobold through. He stepped up onto a dais and surveyed the crowd, then gestured at Teysa and Aliara below.

“Tekka wan! Tekka lah! Tekka vo saturon, essai Garagaloth!”

The crowd cheered and began to chant. The voices overlapped and ran into each other, but they repeated the same word over and over:

“Garagaloth! Garagaloth! Garagaloth!”

As if in answer, there was a deep, rumbling growl from the pit. It echoed across the room and hushed the crowd. Teysa risked her balance to look down. Yes, there was definitely something moving in down there— something sinuous, like a nest of snakes. Fear rose in her gut. Had these kobolds found a dark patron, here in the Underneath? What sacrifices might it demand of them?

There was a short, sharp shock in her lower back. At first she thought she had been stabbed, but as she fell, she twisted around and saw a kobold standing over with with his spear butt extended. The other escort jabbed Aliara in the small of the back with his own spear haft, then turned and ran. With her hands bound grasping for the platform was out of the question. Teysa screamed as she teetered on the edge for one heart-stopping second, then plunged into darkness.

Warm air rushed around her as she fell. She closed her eyes tight and prepared for the impact. Agamor, I will see you soon.

Something slapped into her back with a wet squish. It arrested her fall as it curled around her. She felt a constricting pressure around her waist. Opening her eyes, she saw something thick and pink, like a long, thin tongue, wrapped around her midsection. It sprouted out of the darkness below, and it was not alone. More fleshy limbs emerged from the gloom, catching Aliara as deftly as they had caught her, wrapping around arms and legs and hips. A cluster of them swarmed over Teysa. They glistened wetly and smeared her with a foul-smelling mucous. She was still descending, but slowly, as the strange things retracted.

As she sank, the air grew hotter and wetter, until it reminded her of the rainforest. The stink all around her was overpowering, the rotten-meat smell and the nauseating odor of ****. High, high above, the ring of torches shrank to tiny pinpricks. All around here was darkness so thick that she could not see her hand in front of her face.

The tendrils wrapping her set Teysa down gently on a soft, yielding surface. It was warm and pulsed under her fingers. She came to rest against one wall, which was warm and coated in something wet and sticky. She shivered with revulsion and tried to pull away, but something ropy and muscular reached out from the wall and wrapped itself around her neck. More probing fingers of warm flesh encircled her elbows and knees, her hips, her wrists and ankles; they seemed to extrude from the walls and floor and grow back into it. Teysa struggled to no avail. The tendrils were everywhere; they crept under her clothes and tore outward, splitting her gambeson down the back and shredding her breeches to pieces. Her silk undertunic parted beneath their caress, as did her cotton smallclothes, leaving her naked and shivering. The ties that bound her wrists and ankles fell away, though she was still restrained by the muscular manacles.

Questing tendrils snaked down her shoulders towards her bosom. They circled her breasts like coiling vipers, spiraling in towards her pink areolas and the sensitive peaks of her nipples. Somehow, despite the awful smell and the horror of her surroundings, her nipples stood out as hard and proud as chips of diamond. She groaned in dismay as the tips of the tentacles found them, caressed them, rested delicately against them. Then, all at once, two sharp stars of pain exploded in her chest. She felt the tentacles lancing into her milk ducts, tunneling, anchoring themselves inside her.

A light shone down on her from above. It was dim, but it did more than texture the darkness. Teysa squinted up to see a figure descending towards her. At first, she was confused. Had one of Agamor’s angels come to collect her? The figure was humanoid, nude, obviously feminine, with broad hips and a prominent swell of bosom. Her stomach curved outward like a pregnant woman’s, and she seemed to float in midair. The glow was coming from her eyes, which shone with a golden light. She faced downward in a diver’s pose, floating closer to Teysa until she was an arm’s span away.

“Welcome, stranger,” she said, in a breathy voice. There was a strange echo behind her words. They seemed to arrive in Teysa’s mind just before reaching her ears.

“W-where am I?” Teysa asked. She found it difficult to look at the woman’s vacant expression. How was she floating? She had no visible wings.

“Garagaloth. All are one in Garagaloth. You will join us in Garagaloth.”

“W-what is Garagaloth?”

The woman smiled. She extended an arm and gently cupped Teysa’s cheek. “Garagaloth is peace. Garagaloth is love. The all-mind of Garagaloth knows you, stranger.”

She withdrew, and Teysa squinted into the gloom. Her eyes were beginning to adjust. She saw something moving between the woman’s legs and stared. Her eyes widened in revulsion.

A thick cylinder of flesh rose up between the woman’s legs and disappeared into her pussy. Her labia stretched grotesquely around it to accommodate the invasion. A second, smaller tentacle behind the first was firmly planted between her butt cheeks. The tentacles pulsed and flexed as she moved; they were supporting her, like horrific marionette strings. They disappeared into the darkness behind her, and as she faded from view, Teysa caught a glimpse of many long, thin tendrils encircling the woman and hiding her from view.

Something brushed against Teysa’s thigh and she screamed. It felt thick and blunt and probled blindly at her like a mole. She tried to squirm away, but the tendrils holding her were pinning her tightly in place. The two that had pierced her breasts were still affixed, and an awful, numb warmth was spreading through her chest. She let out a low moan of fear as the thing between her legs squirmed ever closer to her helplessly exposed pussy. Attempts to close her thighs were fruitless; the bonds holding her were like iron. The bulbous tip of the tentacle drew closer to her, closer, closer... she screwed her eyes shut as it positioned itself against the delicate velvet folds of her quim, knowing what had to come next.

Muscles bunched, squeezed, and with a single powerful motion, the tentacle corkscrewed deep inside her pussy. Teysa howled as she felt it tunneling into her. Heedless of her attempts to stop its progress, the tentacle shoved aside her organs in its frantic quest. Her stomach instantly tented out around it. Her once-tight channel was **** open, her labia bulging obscenely. She could feel it moving inside her, seemingly of its own volition, twisting and plunging, searching, deeper, deeper... and yet somehow the warmth spreading outward from her impaled nipples was the more insistent sensation. She moaned and writhed, trying to escape, but to no avail. Her whole body was tingling now, and the heat was building in her breasts and in her ravaged pussy. Her hips bucked unconsciously against the tentacle, driving it even deeper into her. It had reached her cervix and its progress was temporarily halted. Biting her lip, Teysa squirmed like a butterfly on a pin. A tiny part of her mind was howling in pain and fear, but it was being submerged beneath a rising tidal wave of primal lust.

Almost unnoticed, a second, smaller tentacle was probing at the tight ring of her ass. As she gasped and writhed, it slipped inside and began to coil in her rectum. As it slid into her, ring by ring, the arm-thick rod lodged in her honeypot began to press deeper. It did not thrust sharply, but applied a mounting and insistent pressure that began to wear away at her defenses. Something spurted from the tip and, unable to escape the tight seal of her overstretched pussy, pressed against her inner walls. Her eyes rolled back into her head as her body surrendered.

Unable to hold back the invader anymore, her womb gave in. The tentacle eagerly filled up her most intimate place. Teysa's mouth yawned open and she let out a delirious cry as Garagaloth seeped into her every crack and crevice. Another tentacle darted into her mouth and snaked down her throat, but she didn't notice. All three tendrils pulsed and throbbed, churning up her guts and twisting into her innermost places. She held back no secrets. There was no portion of her undefiled. Waves of pleasure rolled over her as Garagaloth rewarded her for her submission. She twitched in her bonds, eyelids fluttering, drool leaking down her chin as her mouth was plundered.

All three tentacles pulsed once, then shot forth a great quantity of warm goo. It instantly filled up the deflated sac of her womb and stretched it to its utmost extent. Simultaneously, her stomach and bowels flooded with the rancid spunk. The tentacle in her cunt plugged her up so firmly that it allowed no leakage; unable to escape, the goo poured into every corner of her womb. It suffused her cells and seeped into the fabric of her soul. Her belly swelled up as what seemed like gallons of fluid poured into her. It shot out of her sinuses, painting her cheeks, and splashed from the ravaged ring of her ass to splatter across her thighs.

Garagaloth loved her. All of her pain, her fear, her worries... they slipped away in the face of Garagaloth's overpowering presence. Some tiny part of Teysa remained to cower in abject terror, but the rest of her worshipped Garagaloth. Her mind, her body, her womb; all were offered up to Garagaloth's altar, all plundered by her jealous deity. Agamor was forgotten. Lolth was forgotten. The warren, El'keth, all went by the wayside. Soon, she was overjoyed to see that Aliara had joined her in Garagaloth. The two of them spent their days in praise and devotion, bearing Garagaloth's spawn and communing with him in endless ecstasy.