The snake makes decisions, the fox listens

Stheno stepped through the broad double doors with a confidence that evaporated into confusion the moment she saw what lay within.

The interior of the Antipaladin class hall was not as she expected. The immortal gorgon had steered clear of temples for millennia, so she did not expect it to follow the same motifs as the Olympian structures that had served as points of worship for her more powerful kin. She did, however, believe that the room would contain at least some kind of familiar trace which would mark it as a place of worship.

That was why Stheno had come here, after all—to discover if there was some way that she could better serve her new Goddess, or her mortal champion.

Blue’s description of the Class Trainer halls had been a chaotic mess of abrupt non sequiturs that jumped from one point in time to the next without apparent pattern, but Stheno had still grasped the essence of what the building offered. Lilith—through her watching worshipers—had granted each member of Kevin’s harem a set of paths each could follow to better embrace their place within it.

Stheno was more than content with the exchange. The power Lilith displayed had lifted from her the curse of untold millennia and freed her to experience life once more.

The man her new Goddess had chosen was not what Stheno would have expected. No hero of old, Kevin did not possess the rippling muscles of Heracles nor the mastery of combat of Achilles. If anything, what he appeared to possess was more akin to the cunning of Odysseus, who never met combat with combat when he could avoid it.

It was not the way of the world when Stheno first walked on two legs, but she could see the potential benefit of it. Certainly, there were many, many worse Masters Lilith might have assigned her to. Kevin was kind, and able to celebrate her own joy as well as his own. If he did not quite meet her ideal of a man in some respects, that meant nothing in the face of what he brought to the table instead.

And, where Kevin lacked, Stheno would have to step up to make up the difference. She just hadn’t expected that her next steps to do so would take her—here.

The interior of the Antipaladin Class Trainer’s hall was dimly lit. Music played a chest-rattling beat that pulsed atop strange screeches that were somehow as melodic and energizing as they were jarring and discordant.

What light there was centered on three black stages like that of a theater, though the performers would likely have plied their trade in a far more intimate setting when Stheno had last visited a city. There were four of them, three women and one man. The clothing the four wore ranged in material from matte black leather to something with a glossy iridescent shimmer.

The latter was in the form of a set of triangles which barely covered the front of the right-most performer’s breasts as she shook them for a cheering audience. The lone woman in the center of the stage hung upside-down from a metal pole. She spun a slow circle around it, one muscular leg flexing and relaxing rhythmically as she pulled herself up and down against the silver metal.

The last woman was bent at the waist, wrists trapped in the hands of the man behind her as he took her from behind.

It was not the only instance of public copulation on display. Here and there, tables and couches appeared in the dim glow of the overhead lights, and on about a third of them, men and women coupled. In every combination she could imagine.

It was as she scanned the interior of the room and her eyes began finally to adjust to the stark departure of the bright lights of the hallway that Stheno met the eyes of the only woman who seemed to have noticed her arrival.

Reclined on a massively oversized and overstuffed chair behind a table stuffed with food, the woman was tall—built on a scale so similar to Lilith, that for the span of a heartbeat Stheno mistook the woman for the Goddess herself.

Except—Lilith’s skin was unnaturally pale. This woman’s skin was the soft brown of the greater gods and goddesses that dwelled on the subcontinent to the east. Her face differed, too—more square-jawed and stronger, handsome rather than the hypnotic beauty of her Goddess. It gave the smile the woman wore a warm, inviting cast that soothed the sting of surprise from Stheno’s mind and gave her the confidence to stride further into the dark towards the woman.

The thud of the doors as they swung closed behind her was lost in the thump of the bass.

“Welcome, aspirant.” The woman spoke as Stheno approached. Despite the pervasive music, the gorgon had no difficulty hearing or understanding the words—they seemed to cut through the sound like a caress, felt as much as heard.

“I greet you.”

Stheno’s polite response was met with a warm laugh from the other woman. “So formal. Please, sit—” she motioned across the table where a smaller chair sat empty, “—help yourself to food and drink, and tell me what brought you here.”

As Stheno’s eyes continued to adjust and she was able to make out more detail, she decided immediately to take the woman up on her offer. The chair looked comfortable, but more interesting was the spread of dishes awaiting her.

Steaming rice, huge ceramic bowls filled with fragrant meats and vegetables in heavy sauces, stacks of thin bread which showed just a hint of delicate charring on the exterior. Stheno’s mouth watered. No sooner had her backside touched the seat of the chair than it lifted off again—this time so she could lean forward as she grabbed and started to load up a plate.

“I understand that this location is where those who grant further advancement along our paths can be found, yes? I came to find the one who would instruct me in the ways of the path my Goddess has set out for me.” Stheno spoke as she moved, just as eager to get to the meat of the matter as that on the table before her.

“It is indeed.” The woman’s voice was lightly accented, though it was not one with which Stheno was familiar. Despite her long life, the Gorgon had remained in a relatively fixed area for most of it, and while she’d met many in the years before the curse, that had been in a world now gone. “I am Mohini, and I serve as the instructor in this place.”

Mohini paused there for just a moment, then added, “Here, the path is called ‘Antipaladin’, but the word does not sit easily on my tongue. While the meaning—that of a crusader not for their gods, but against them—is familiar to you, the connotations it carries are not.”

Stheno nodded, but since Mohini didn’t seem to be looking for input, she focused on the food in front of her instead. Ripping off a piece of the flatbread, she used it to scoop up some of the rice, then ladled some of the meat and sauce over it before shoving it—still steaming—into her mouth.

It was heaven.

Complex flavors flooded her until a soft moan escaped her lips. Stheno’s attention drifted briefly from the woman across the table as she lost herself in the flavors, only returning a few words into Mohini’s next sentence. “—those who prefer to define themselves by what they oppose. You yourself seem to be among their number, but I prefer to be defined by what I am, rather than what I am not.”

Stheno took a few moments to process the woman’s words as she chewed. The soft meat practically fell apart in her mouth, while the warmth of the spices in the sauce settled in and took up residence. It lingered even after she swallowed, which helped soothe the momentary flare of regret that occurred when she did so. “I—for most of my life, the gods were a daily presence in my life. I would gladly have traded a hundred of those years for the chance to spit in their eyes just once, but—”

She shrugged. “I can see your point. There is power in denying them even that.”

Mohini smiled. “There are those in this place who believe that it is their role, their calling, to shape their charges into what they should be. I prefer instead to guide my students into the best versions of themselves. You need not agree with me just to make me happy—I will help you as long as you are willing to open your mind and put in the time to explore the paths I offer.”

Stheno nodded eagerly. “Yes. Yes! I am. I would know what paths are open to me.”

“Perfect.”

Hwa stirred, and immediately regretted it. As a kumiho, her body recovered from exertion and injury far more rapidly than any mere mortal, but apparently her exertions the day before had been more strenuous than she had realized.

Worse, it revealed that her motion was restricted, and when she opened her eyes to attempt to identify the culprit, she also discovered that her vision was blocked by some kind of blindfold. Careful exploration revealed that while her wrists and ankles were bound by the accursed cuffs the hostess had affixed the same day she arrived, she could wiggle around the rest of her body.

By the feel of the air on her skin, Hwa was naked. She was on her hands and knees, which limited her movement, and whatever furniture or device she’d been attached to, included some kind of padded rests or benches for her arms, legs, midsection, shoulders, and head. While that meant that she wasn’t nearly as uncomfortable as she might be—in fact, when she allowed herself to relax, she discovered that it was surprisingly comfortable—it meant that the only real motion she could manage was to raise her backside into the air.

Hwa was tired, she was thirsty, and as the seconds ticked on in silence, she realized that she was well beyond anger—she was furious. “Who did this to me!?”

The effect of what was intended to be a shout was somewhat spoiled when it instead came out as a somewhat raspy croak. It accomplished something, though, because a few seconds later she heard the sound of footsteps as someone—presumably her captor—approached in response.

“Oh, good—you’re awake! Here, let me get you something to drink.”

It took several seconds for Hwa to place the voice. Not because it wasn’t familiar, but because her mind refused to accept that the speaker would dare be involved in anything which would result in such an indignity. “Kevin!?”

A moment later, Hwa felt a straw press to her lips. They closed around it on instinct as she sucked, and was rewarded with cool, pure water.

Unable to help herself, the kumiho drank greedily.

“Drink as much as you’d like. There’s plenty more where that came from. I have juice, too, if you feel like you need something with sugar—I’m not actually sure how much kumiho nutrition differs from human, but you seem to be able to eat and drink the same things as everyone else, so I didn’t think it would be too different.”

Behind the blindfold, Hwa’s eyes glared at Kevin. While she might not be able to see him, the proximity of the voice betrayed that he was standing right in front of her. With the cuffs around her wrists and ankles holding her firmly in place, though, he might as well have been miles away—there was no way she could reach him.

Rather than give him the satisfaction of watching her try, and fail, Hwa continued to drink while he continued to talk. “You know, I was a little worried about what to do with you when you passed out. I mean, I knew that I had to do something—I’ve gone out of my way to give you as much leeway as I could, given that we’re both trapped on this show, and you didn’t ask to be here any more than I did. When all you were doing was running off and getting into trouble on your own, I figured that was fine.”

His tone was reasonable, conversational even, but something about it seemed off. “Of course, since I took the time to find out what kind of show this was, I knew that there was no way Lily—Lilith—was going to let you avoid me forever, but I figured that I’d make that be her problem, not mine. The thing with the stocks? I figured that was the opening salvo, and we’d wind up seeing more of the same.”

Hwa sneered as Kevin brought up the time she’d been trapped until he had arrived to ‘free’ her. He’d certainly been free with his hands. She doubted that there was an inch of her skin that he hadn’t touched as he administered her ‘punishment’ to shorten her time in the stocks.

The straw let out a whistling noise as she all but inhaled the last of the water. “All out? I’ll get you some more.” The straw was removed, then promptly replaced.

Hwa’s throat seemed to burn with thirst, so she fought back the urge to reject it—to spit out invectives at the pitiful human—and instead drank greedily. “But either Lilith wasn’t happy with that, or you were more willing to screw over the rest of the party than I thought, because yesterday, you went and dragged Penny into your schemes. I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt and put some of the blame for that on Lilith, because I can tell that you aren’t aware of the part of the transformation that keeps you from being aware of it, but not all of it. If you’d been willing to be a part of the group and work with everyone else from the beginning, I could have told you what was happening and we could have worked together to fix it.”

Hwa had no idea what the man was talking about. Obviously, part of it referred to her scheme to compromise the siren in her moment of weakness, but unknown transformations?

“Before the dungeon, I probably would have found a way to let this go. I shouldn’t have—what you did to her—” Kevin’s voice raised as he cut himself off to ask, “Did you know that some of that lipstick you used is permanent? Penny might not be bisexual now, but she’s a whole lot more hetero-flexible than she was before you got your hands on her.”

Rather than stop for an answer, though, he gathered himself quickly and continued in a more even tone, “What you did to her was ****, more or less. Even extending what grace I can because we’re all trapped on this show, I can’t let you keep running around if that’s going to happen again.”

Hwa released the straw and asked, her voice smoother after a glass and a half of water, “And what do you think that you’re going to do instead?”

Kevin sighed. “I had an epiphany—or was guided to one—yesterday. I can’t just sit back and let Lilith be the one running the show. She’s clearly willing to do that, but it seems like she’s just as willing to allow me to take a more active role, if it means that things progress in a direction that she likes. In your case, she set up the mechanism for your control the first day that you got here.”

Hwa’s arm twitched as she reflexively tugged against the bindings on her wrists in response, only for Kevin to correct, “Not that. Well, not exactly. The cuffs are symbolic. What really binds you is your first transformation. I can tell when you’re telling the truth. That means you can’t lie to me, Hwa.”

“Fine. I promise I won’t do that again.” Hwa said the words, and meant them, even.

She certainly wasn’t going to do that again.

The next time, she’d do better.

“Not good enough. You see, the other part of the lesson was that if I’m going to take an active role in all of this, I need to be willing to choose what kind of a relationship I’m going to have with someone. Not having a relationship isn’t an option—this isn’t that kind of show.” Kevin sounded calm and almost… resigned, as he spoke.

Hwa paused, then asked simply, “What kind of a relationship do you think you are going to have with me, other than ‘fellow prisoner?’”

The touch of Kevin’s hand on her shoulder nearly made Hwa jump, but she managed to control the instinct at the last second. It still came out as a shiver that ran down her flanks, followed by an almost imperceptible growl that escaped before she could swallow it. “Not the kind of relationship where I have to wonder what you’re going to get up to, the moment my back is turned, for one.”

His touch was not in a particularly sensitive area, but here—blindfolded, bound, and naked—Hwa couldn’t help but feel the sense of almost perverse intimacy in it. Despite doing no more than laying a few fingers atop her shoulder, Kevin had announced something.

Had shown that he was unafraid to touch her.

“What, so you’re going to **** me in return?” Hwa couldn’t keep the scorn—or the bitterness—from her voice.

Kevin, once more, sighed. “See, this is your problem. Or one of them, anyway. You assume that everyone is like you. I don’t—” He took a surprisingly shuddering breath, then went on, “I don’t want to **** you, Hwa. If I had my choice, I’d just send all of you back to Earth. Still. None of us deserve what’s being done to us, not even you. But, as I’ve previously mentioned, that’s not an option for any of us. Since I can’t send you home, I’m going to have to figure out what kind of relationship will work for all of you. For everyone else, that’s probably going to mean sitting down and having some frank discussions over the coming week. For you?”

The hand trailed down Hwa’s shoulder to her neck and stopped as he touched her cheek. “I’m still going to do my best to keep from giving in to what Lilith wants, but… I’m also going to do my best to make sure that you aren’t going to be a danger to me, or to the rest of the party.”