The story of a boy and his pet succubus and their adventures in Pandemonium.

It’s one of those impossible-impossible things like faster than light travel where it seems like such a minor plot device in scifi, but just as going faster than light turns out to not only make time travel possible but just always be time travel regardless of whether your ship is powered by warp drive or fairy magic, artificial gravity has the problem of mathematically speaking always ending up either creating a perpetual motion machine or requiring you to supply enough energy to lift all mass in the universe to its current distance from the new place it could in theory fall to.

Which is a serious problem, because Lyra is standing on what should be the wall at the back of the room, grinning at me.

“That’s okay. This is natural gravity.”

Best lines.

It’s actually far worse than an artificial gravity field: Lyra’s head is beside mine so she can whisper to me, close enough for us to kiss, but her hair drapes toward her feet and her tail dangles limply, trailing on the wall she’s standing on, while my sense of balance tells me I’m standing upright.

“Natural gravity.”

“Yeah, you know, from the Rocks.”

I point. See the Rock under your feet, and under mine?

“I’m on a different Rock, so I have different gravity.”

Behind her, I distantly notice the captain stride up the wall and around the railing to get ‘down’ to her chair below us.

...below me, in front of Lyra.

“That...what would happen if I touched you right now?”

“Well, if you touch me someplace good, I’ll get that snack...”

Mmmm hehe sideways kissing feels weird.

There’s nothing unusual in the kiss beyond the strange geometry and making out with a demon, so I pick up a lock of her hair, which dangles from my fingers toward Lyra’s ‘floor’, but when I release it and let my hand drop, it falls back to rest against her shoulder while my arm drops normally to my side.

What.

Sometimes, science trumps dignity, and I don’t have anything else that will make a good test object. Taking the towel from around my waist, I raise it to Lyra’s eye level, dangling from a finger towards my floor.

“Take this.”

She does, and when my hand breaks contact, the towel flops over hers as if dropped to hang toward her definition of down.

“That is not how gravity works! That’s not even how artificial gravity doesn’t work!”

Obviously we’ve left normal physics long behind, but this doesn’t even make sense - even if the spell powering this were infinitely powerful, it’d have to be fully sentient to decide what matter to pull where...and I don’t think this ship is alive in that way - it’s powered by giants rowing, it’s using iron chains for control, the windows might be made of impossible supermaterial but the rest is wood and metal. Something much weirder is going on here.

“Um...”

Ooh. Now I have your towel. Bwaha.

“How did you get up there?”

“Use the steps, see ‘em?”

Point point.

Where the wall joins the platform, there are a pair of angled panels, made like the floor and wall of more of that black rock, one maybe pi over six radi...no. Reality can have proper units back when it’s ready to start acting coherently again. The lower panel is about thirty degrees off of horizontal, the upper about thirty degrees off vertical. Stairs, from one gravity field to another.

I have to try them, but first, there’s a draft. Holding out my hand: “Towel.”

Mwhahaha, catch me if you can!

“Oi, get back here, you!”

Carefully, I tread the ‘stairs’, and the ship seems to rotate vertiginously around my center of mass as I step from one definition of down to the next, and then break into a run to follow Lyra as she dashes, giggling madly, for the ‘ceiling’.

I can still be naughty. Wheee!

It’s not far up to where the wall joins the ‘top’ of the canopy, but Lyra has a head start because of my inexperience with the stairs and so I only catch her just as she reaches the canopy which is now for us a nearly-vertical wall. She raises the hand holding the towel as if she could lift it out of my reach, and we collide with the not-glass, one of my hands chasing the towel, the other reaching to grab her by the hip but ending up not unhappily with a handful of ass instead, my momentum driving her hips into the window with an impact that pushes a breathy ‘whoof’ out of her and then I’m closing my hand around her wrist and clutching her ass tightly and she melts in my hands, dropping the towel and grinding her body into mine as I settle my weight onto her.

There’s a navigational aid or the like etched into the unglass we’re leaning against, a circular diagram of some kind, but nothing is going to pull my eyes away from Lyra’s curves where she’s pinned against the window.

I’ve always uncomfortably enjoyed porn of girls tied up or otherwise helpless, but inflicting such on Lyra is...the difference between a candle and a supernova. How can it be that this makes her feel loved? Do I misread her reaction? Am I seeing what I want to see?

“Oooh...”

No, this is real.

“That was very naughty of you.” I’m trying to sound annoyed, but my voice wants to crack with laughter.

Unh yeah ow squeeze me show me what you’re made of...

“I guess you’ll have to...mmm...punish me, then.”

Man, it really took me all the way until now to be able to use that line? What a night.

Her mischief is too cute to really be angry at, but there’s still a sense of it being not quite right to just laugh this away, especially with the defiant smirk she’s twisting around to show me.

If she weren’t a monster, if it weren’t for the way she seduced me before, I might get hopelessly tangled in conflicting emotions (after all, if you put this matrix in row reduced form she’s just asking for reassurance of our relationship the way a normal lover would ask for a hug) or miss what’s going on entirely, but instead there’s an edge of demonic polyphony in her moan as I squeeze her ass roughly, and a fang peeks out of her smirk as this parts her lips.

You want to know who’s the Master here, do you? Easily arranged. It’s your ass on the line.

Releasing her cheek to take the base of her tail and reflecting that my monster-girl thing may be practical and not just aesthetic, I step back to pull her into a more bent-over position, still holding her hand against the window as I do.

God dammit tail pulling unf.

Yum...I so totally feel the captain’s eyes on us.

“Do you know what you did wrong?”

“I...hehe...stole your towel OW!”

Whack. I try to make the spank playful more than punishing, in keeping with the mood.

“Are you going to be good now?”

After that weak sauce? Hell no. How uppity can I sound?

“Maaaaybe?”

The second, much harder spank draws harmonics into her gasp, as do the third and fourth. Satisfying.

Just the four blows, two for each cheek, seems right, but there’s still...something else needed.

“Now are you going to be a good...little femme for me?” The conversation in the car comes back to me, just in time.

Fuck damn ouch okay that was actually for real. Maybe I really should quit pushing buttons.

Well. Maybe.

Nod, nod.

You’re letting me free?

“Kneel.”

This should be interesting. Down at your feet, where you’re pointing.

“Tail.” This time I point to a spot beside my foot, and when she lays her tail there I rest my foot on it, keeping my weight on my heel but making sure it’s securely held in place by my arch. There’s a good length of it between her butt and my foot, but not enough to let her rise.

“Now, get the towel and put it back around me.”

“Yes, Master.” See, being good now. This little practice scene has been brought to you by the thoughts ‘I can’t wait until I can really make you make me’ and ‘I need a spanking’.

I hope you didn’t want me keeping my hands to myself while I dress you, because putting my face like two inches from your cock that’s getting all hard from ordering me around isn’t going to make that happen...yeah, no, you’re liking this, huh. Yum.

It’s so far to reach all the way around your waist, guess I’ll just have to nestle your thigh allll the way into my cleavage if I’m going to do up the towel on over there. Sigh, if only I’d thought to do it up on the near side instead, that would have taken so much less time and been much easier and less fidgety...

Heh. Yum tasty.

Maybe the towel needs just a little more adjusting...

Aww. Coo. Love you too, Master.

When she’s done making a meal out of dressing me, I take a horn and push her back down to sit on her heels, then bring her head to rest against my thigh where I can stroke her hair easily.

Held down by my tail and petted. I’ll give you this, you know how to make me feel owned.

Looking up at Master, Master looks hotter by the ges. Looking up past Master, captain-lady is smiling at us.

Nice view out the window. Nice view on the window. I wanna play for reals, enough of the back-to-nature no-toys thing.

“Soooo, Master. Wanna learn how to summon and bind? We don’t have time for a real scene, but I think I can teach you the basic stuff, the captain offered to let us use her stuff so we can do things the quick and easy way. I bet we can get at least a couple practice runs in.”

Or you’ll jump me as soon as you see me tied up, that’d be fine too...

“I’m pretty sure I have the demon I’m mainly interested in right where I want her.” I put the briefest pulse of extra weight on her tail for emphasis.

Eeep! Omigod, I totally just squeaked like a cat getting hurt or something. Way to scare a femme, you’re heavy you know!

Umum. Composure. I was saying a thing that was gonna get me some good play, what was it? Right.

“Don’t miss that ‘and bind’ part.”

The diagram on the glass, something about it...

I look up from the vista of Lyra’s gaze to take in the etchings properly, and the obviousness nearly knocks me on my ass.

It’s a pentagram, diameter somewhere around eight feet, etched into the window, complete with Infernal text filling the double-circled perimeter and a halo of inscrutable magic symbols around the outside.

“You use pentagrams to summon demons. Of course that’s for real, duh.”

How distracted was I to not work this all out the very first time she gave the slightest indication of kinkiness?

“...and then bind them in place and control them.”

Her response is the wicked grin she’s so very good at.

“Which you think is totally kinky. I can’t believe I didn’t see this right away.”

“Wait, isn’t that why your god supposedly has such a problem with these?”

“I don’t think...never mind. What does it feel like? Does it hurt you?”

“Oh my god so comfy. It’s like floating in water, except all secure feeling. You have to be cool with feeling helpless, though, because there’s no wiggling out the way you can do with restraints and a lot of patience sometimes.”

“Not that, um, that’s the voice of experience or anything.”

“Heh. What does happen when you struggle?”

“It’s like...heavier gravity back to where I should be, the further I move from it. Usually I can move my head enough to make out, but not much else.”

“What about if I pulled on you?”

“The gravity moves, pulls me along with it. It’d be your binding, it won’t resist you, but if you pull far enough the binding breaks. Come on, let’s try, you know you want to.”

“Hell yeah I do. How does it work?”

“We need some stuff from the chest thing over there. Let me go and I’ll fetch it?”

I’m guessing the weight off my tail is your response. Poing!

The ‘chest thing’ in question is a long, low iron-bound box sitting against the wall. True to form, Lyra makes sure I get a nice show, bending over instead of kneeling, tail raised in a question-mark shape, as she searches for what’s needed.

Sheesh, knife play much? No, wait, like half of those are actually dildos. Silver or steel? Eek, is that copper? Better be careful, can’t tell in this light. Other people’s toyboxes...

Aha. Right? Yes.

Now, brush? Oh, strapped to the lid. Okay. Wait, fuck, cleanup rag! There, now we have everything.

Playing. Puts! A spring. In my! Step bounce bounce bounce.

I’ve been gone way too long.

Straightening, she struts back with a star-shaped box stacked on a ragged-but-clean piece of cloth and a long thin object in her hands, having clearly taken my instruction before about giving a show to heart as a general rule, and kneels to present them to me.

Feels weird. Is this my style? What the fuck even is my style? Usually the people I play with just kind of stash me someplace while they get everything ready, or have specific tasks for me.

Yes, take the elements, there you go.

Well, slutty and scenic is me. I can pose while I talk, that’s kind of subby, right?

When I take the box and brush and cloth from her, she leans against the pentagram, arms folded behind her to arch her back, wings half spread, hips cocked, expression sort of awkwardly mischievous, lights of Sade Hall arrayed behind her, and in this moment I decide it’s very good for me that we’re going to a place that almost certainly doesn’t have Internet, because I have to dismiss an impulse to add the image to my deviantART favorites.

It’s still a tableaux I’m going to remember for a long, long time.

You’re smirking about more than what you’re about to do to me.

“What’s funny?”

“Irony. I grew up on fantasy and scifi but I always had to prove to my parents that the magic in them was either morally neutral or some kind of Christian allegory, because they were always suspicious that it was going to end up being this exact thing.”

“Heh.”

And now we’ll both be glad I’m such a sorcery nerd, because unlike so many subs I actually know how to do this well enough to teach it. It’s not going to make teaching and bottoming at the same time any less weird, but at least we can do it.

“So, demon summoning, the short-short, short-short, your playmate is horny and impatient version. This is just like with the sword ritual, except it’s this time it’s all your soul powering it because we’re being explicit about who’s the top and I can’t do a lot to help drive the ritual if it’s supposed to be about dominating me. So, you have to understand how this works, same reason again.”

“All a pentagram actually does is focus and contain energy. You can do a lot of stuff with that, but focusing and containing my energy is the most fun thing. So, Spirit, Earth, Water, Air, Fire. Each point of the star has an element associated, see the symbols at each point? Those are the elements I’m made of, physically, so that binds my body. With me so far?”

She gestures to each one as she names it, indicating four triangular symbols between the rings, and then a circle above the top point of the star like a tiny halo.

“I know the other four, but Spirit’s new to me.”

“Water makes stuff soft and wet, Fire makes it warm, Spirit makes it alive. You get the idea.”

“Yeah.”

“Now, the thing about Spirit is that there’s lots of kinds. Every demon’s a mix, but generally we have one that’s like, the foundation. When you call someone a ‘spirit of’ something, this is what you’re talking about. I’m a spirit of Lust, that’s what it means to be a succubus, but lust is really complicated, which is why I’m sentient, if I was an animal like that cacodemon we saw, I’d take one taste of you and it’d tear me to bits.”

“But that also means there’s a lot of different kinds of spirit of lust. It’s ruled by four...no, bad way to put things. Alright, so you know that thing in books where you have the big giant coming of age ceremony and get assigned a label that’ll define you for the rest of your life?”

So help me god, if there’s a hat downstairs that analyzes my sexual preferences, I’m...

Alright, let’s be honest. I’m so totally trying that shit out.

“Yeah...”

“It’s the exact opposite of that. The gods are like the elements, everybody’s a mixture of all of them, people change over time, et cetera, though usually you have one anchor that stays around. You and me are probably always gonna be mostly Sade, for example, which is why we’re headed for Sade Hall instead of one of the other Homes.”

“Wait, me?”

“It’s a way of talking about what your soul is like. Doesn’t matter if it’s a human or succubus soul.”

“So, four gods of lust. These are their names and titles here, and these are going to be horrible explanations that leave a ton of stuff out but should be good enough to let you summon me.”

No, I totally don’t need to turn around and get on tiptoe point at the two on top, but that’s not going to stop me. We are trying to set a mood here, and you do so love my butt.

“This says ‘Lilith the Seducer’. Lilith is like...well, ve’s where the whole ‘you know you want to’ thing comes from. Think equal parts raver and that fantasy everyone has at some point with lots of sexy naked people chilling out in a really lush jungle, but also the fantasy with the person who’s so hot you can’t handle it trying to entice you into fucking them and you’re going with it despite yourself because they’re just that good. You’re not supposed to because they’re just concepts and not like, alive, but I might have got a little desperate and said a little prayer to Lilith right before you kissed me that first time.”

“Sade the Wicked. But it’s not wicked as in evil, it’s wicked as in when you see someone pull off something totally badass in a porn and you’re like ‘wicked’. Sade’s one of the most complicated, but I’m Sade, you’re Sade, this one I think you kinda feel, unless I waay misconstrued our scene on the raft up there.”

We’re the beautiful monsters. Even now, I’m not sure I’m okay with how much I like that idea.

“Venus the Thoughtful. Thoughtful as in when somebody gives you a present you didn’t even know you wanted but you totally did and you’re like ‘aw, how thoughtful’. Hearts and flowers and...I dunno, nice? Lovey? But also kind of hardcore in its way. Promises of undying love and stuff like that.”

“Valkyr the Strong. Ve’s basically the god of badass. Um. Courage and stuff—”

‘Ve’ again, she’s not misspeaking. Presumably a way of patching gender-neutral pronouns into English? Gods have the tendency to transcend categories.

“Is that where Valkyries in Norse mythology come from?”

“Holy fuck, do not mention the Viking age around a Valkyr, you’ll never hear the end of it, they have it as bad with warmonger stereotypes on lost planets as we do with being evil.”

“So the names in the ring, you use those to bind my soul. Have to have both body and soul to actually nail me down here.”

As she points to each one in turn, I realize that the text in the circle is actually four phrases separated separated by the triangular symbols at each point of the star, and at the bottom of the pentagram there’s a blank space between the circles.

“What’s with...”

“The space down here?” Point.

Okay I’m having way too much fun bouncing around and posing and bending over and stuff. I hope this looks sexy and not ridiculous. Or at least sexy and ridiculous.

She has to toss her head cutely to get her hair out of her face when she straightens, and somehow manages to bounce her breasts just a little doing it.

“This is for my name, or title if I didn’t have a name, because targeting is life and death. What’s that random chat thing that we found out has no girls on it that one night? Omegle? Yeah. Imagine if connecting to somebody on that meant they showed up in your room. So you always want to know who you’re summoning. Fortunately, I’m a succubus, which means I have a body and you can use a piece of me to make sure you definitely get me, but we should still use my name too, it’ll give that little more pull.”

“No, relax, stuff like nectar or a lock of hair or a horn shaving. Except I’m going to be all hardcore and suggest you use some of my ichor, that’ll give you the strongest pull your first time.”

“So, there’s your metaphysics lesson. Ready to learn how to actually do this?”

“Oh yes.”

“Alright, so then this is the part where I tell you the incantations in Harry Potter actually make sense.”

“Yeah, they’re all hacked up Latin. Wait, what?”

“Heh. They are, but, think about why. ‘Expecto Patronum’, you have to go look the words up to really know and yet it kinda feels like you know what the spell’s going to be as soon as you hear the words, because there’s so much of Latin in English, but it’s like...those words are really old symbols that’ve been with you your whole life, they have meaning that’s deep down inside you, but not bright and sharp like words you use everyday. It’s like they’re in the dark and that makes them powerful because they mean something to you, but not something fixed. They just...focus you a certain way, which is exactly what we need here.”

“You’re making it sound like I’m going to actually end up saying ‘Expecto Patronum’ shortly.”

“It’d probably work, honestly. Aren’t I pretty much your happy thought?”

Aw! I was joking but that face says you aren’t.

“That’s the thing about all this ritual stuff, it’s not like a machine. You can’t just go through the motions and have it work. It’s like...it’s kinda like we’re trying to mindfuck reality itself. It’s all about the energy, the like, mood, we create and what we do with it, and what we communicate by what we’re doing. As long as the meaning’s there things aren’t going to fuck up if you don’t say exactly the right words and there’s a ton of room for putting your own style, which is good because you want to do this the way that feels meaningful to you. The more you make it your own the stronger it’ll be, remember that.”

By which I mean, invoke lots of nice domly energy. But if I say that to you right now, it’ll just make it harder for you, because you’ll be trying to do it for me instead of because that’s your way. Nrgh, communication! There’s got to be a non-sideways way of asking for this.

“So, open up the box of elements there, let’s see what we’ve got to work with.”

Ugh, listen to me, who’s topping this? It’s just, I know what I’m doing...

Right, there’s a box in my hands. It’s star-shaped, five-pointed, and made of polished metal, a masculine and well-hung figure embossed into the lid, spread-eagled in the way I suppose Lyra is about to be against the window. It takes me a second to get that the lid is actually five lids, one for each point, that open outward from a hinge at the point, leaving the center pentagon closed: it has its own lid, a hinged circle just large enough for a finger.

Lyra slinks over to peer into the box as I open each panel.

“So, what have we got, let me see?”

Nice ‘n warm, definitely consecrated. Good energy, yum.

“Oh wow, actual Spirit. Fancy. So, five points, five elements, right? See the symbols on the inside of the lids?”

Wait, gold dust? Boo. Candles are so much better, you can get a little wax play in and it looks so badass dripped on the altar. Weird choice, she’s clearly not a cheapskate, maybe it means something to her even if it is just stonesinger practice?

The box is thick, made of a metal that’s solid but light like titanium, and the insides of the lids are shallow dishes, each embossed with the corresponding elemental symbol.

“These are physical representations of the spritiual elements. Looks we’ve got some literal Earth, probably from the Grove downstairs, the water there will be purified Sea water, that’s going to be gold dust for the Fire unless it’s copper dust in which case yikes, the streaky-shiny stuff here will be quicksilver mixed with something that’ll make it actually stick to what you’re trying to anoint with it, that’s the “Air”, and then this up at the top is Spirit distilled from the Sea. And the middle is ink for writing my name. They’re all consecrated for this, I can feel the warmth, so you’ve already got some pretty strong energy to start the fire with.”

“Isn’t that dangerous for you? Is it not like the sword?”

Oh, hey. Useful. Mwaha...

“So um, you know how in Evangelion, they were trying to merge a human with Adam, and instead they ended up with Second Impact?”

“Yeah...oh.”

“Yeah. Our own personal version of that. You’re not supposed to be able to see consecration energy that way, I really don’t know what happened, I wanna show it to somebody who knows more than I do when we get a chance. Anyway, it’s a different energy, the sword’s a weapon, these are just for binding. Even if they were as powerful as the sword, they wouldn’t harm me like it did, though I suppose you should be ready for me to be bound so tight I can’t even talk or something. You seem to be pretty strong at this stuff.”

There, if that doesn’t give you the confidence, nothing’s going to.

“Okay, so. Five elements, five points, four limbs and a head. See where this is going?”

“Yeah. No wings or tail?”

“Apparently not. It doesn’t look like the captain’s pet up there has either, I’m guessing this is usually for vim, so it’s a pentagram instead of an octagram. It’s just as well, you have to double up on some of the elements and it gets confusing if you’re new.”

“So they’ll be left free.”

“Yeah. Don’t worry, it’s not like there’s gonna be buckles I can undo with my barb, not that I’ve ever tried that, nosiree.”

Grin.

“So there’s three big parts to this: first, you need to turn the pentagram from some lines on glass into a piece of bondage gear, which you do by anointing it with the elements, same element on same symbol. Those are mixing dishes on the lids, when we cut me I’ll drip a little ichor in each one and you can mix the element with it before you paint it on.”

You need, you can. Subby phrasing, so subtle but so matters. I’m glad illiterate girls bore you so, it’s making this a lot easier to pull off.

“Do you get what I mean when I say that what matters is your intent, and that the anointing and all that stuff is a way of taking that intent out of your head and putting it into reality? Like we did with the sword? That’s why there’s not particular magic words, it’s just like there’s a billion different ways for you to tell me to fuck you. You intend to use these lines to tie me up, and you’re making that intent real.”

“Yeah, I think I grok it.”

“Good. Next, you do what’s called taking hold, which is the tricky part, because it’s two things at once that you can’t really do separately.”

“One, you anoint me with elements, one for each point, same as the pentagram. When we do it, I’ll kneel down so you can do my palms and soles.”

There’s enough of that pose in your konachan favorites that I’ll let you figure out the connection from needing access to both palms and soles.

I wish I could just hand you an iconography sampler. Is there a way to communicate this so you’ll be coming up with the idea on your own, instead of following instructions? That’ll help so much, if I can just...eh, nothing for it.

“You’re trying to make a connection between me and the pentagram, and getting me ready to be bound.”

“Two, you’re getting hold of me in your mind, finding what’s me in all the craziness of reality. It’s like...so, you know how people kind of make a room different when they’re there? Like their presence kind of feels like something? It’s like that. The way I smell, the way I sound and feel, the way my being there makes you feel. When you say you miss someone but it’s not because you miss talking to them or fucking them, just miss them being there, that thing. Feel it. Feel it like I’m right there, and then feel it like I’m right there and you’re holding me down. Except I am right here, so we can supercheat and you can do that while you’re all close to me anointing me, and the act of anointing will be a physical expression of what you’re doing in your head so it’ll be even stronger.”

“Okay. I think I get it.”

“Oh, crap, there’s an order! I’m sorry, Master, I almost forgot. When you anoint the pentagram, and then me, too, go widdershins around the star, starting and ending with water, because I’m Sade and Sade’s the water god.”

“Counterclockwise.”

“Yeah, that.”

“Okay. Then what?”

“Then, the fun part, the evocation. You’ve gotta keep hold of that sense of me, and then while you’re holding onto it, invoke the elements - like ‘by the fire of burnination’ or whatever, except actually dramatic instead of lame - and then invoke the gods, the same way. You can do whatever order except remember the counterclockwise star starting and ending on water for the physical elements, but then at the end you invoke me by name and tell me you summon and bind me. You’ll probably wanna make a thing of it in whatever way makes you feel impressive, you are technically telling reality to shut up and obey. Usually people do stuff like raise their arms, or use the brush to splatter some ink or ichor on the pentagram as punctuation, or whatever. Slapping the circles is popular, if you’re feeling violent. That sort of thing.”

“Give it a good hard mental push right at the end and there I should be, nice and helpless.”

Invoke the elements, and try very, very hard not to think of Captain Planet...

“Then how do I get you down?”

“If you just pull me off, you ought to be able to break your own binding pretty easily, even if I can’t even blink. Failing that, usually...”

Aha.

“Yeah, here. See how there’s a break in the circles that’s filled in with ink right here? Erase the ink - it should wipe off with your finger - and you break the circle, which does the same thing as it did when you broke the circle after we consecrated the sword. Kind of mean, but useful if the ship is crashing or whatever.”

“Emergency release, got it. So is that everything?”

“Well, we’re missing the sexy way to get me down.”

“Do tell.”

“It’s um...ugh. Spiritual stuff is so hard to describe in English. It’s called a Dismissal. Basically, you tell me I’m freed from the physical bondage to please you or serve you or some such thing, some kinda purpose, and make a gesture that’s like getting me down or means something like that - it’s like the rest, just pick something that feels right. Or instead of the purpose you can try something that’s like, you’re letting me free on a condition, like exchanging the bondage for some other constraint. Infernal lets you screw around with the order a lot more because conditional verb markers but in English it helps to put the condition first so you can end on something like ‘you are released’ so that it’s more, like, definite-sounding. It’s like, you let me off the pentagram, but the energy of the binding is still wrapped around me, and the meaning you give to the dismissal forms it some. It doesn’t stay long without any kind of structure to keep it around, but for a few seconds or minutes you’ll...hm. ”

“That thing, the feeling of me from when you were Taking Hold, reach for that and you’ll probably find...I dunno, something more? I’ve never topped, so I don’t know how to describe the way it feels, but that’s what people say. It’s like, something you can hold onto or do something with, you’ll get an idea of what it is and you can use it to do something or another to me. It’s really variable because you’re just letting the energy kind of do whatever so even the same people saying the same words don’t usually get the same thing every time because stuff always means something a little different every time when you get this close to poetry, but...yeah. The surprise is kind of part of the fun, just don’t expect it to be remotely literal to what you said.”

“Thing, though - the simpler the words, the more powerful the dismissal. It’s like...think of smoke. You can push it around but you can’t draw a picture, and the more you try the thinner it gets. It’s like that.”

That’s...sounds amazing, really. Must try.

“Can it be dangerous?”

“Nah, you can’t really focus enough energy to harm somebody unless you’ve got something to contain it, and unless you’ve got superpowers I don’t know about there won’t be any much energy coming from the scene itself - the energy you create playing with me figures in too - because we don’t really have time to do much past practicing the ritual. You might make me fall on my face or something, but that’s not as big a deal for me as it’d be with a human bottom, and whatever it is isn’t going to be a lasting change or anything. Especially with this circle, see how the element symbols are doubled up, extra ones outside the circle? It’d be really hard to do anything to my head with this, it’s only for tying down a body. I’m guessing either the co-pilot or captain up there have some kinda limit with mindfuckery and this makes them feel better.”

“Cool. So now is that it?”

I’m already thinking of interesting dismissals.

“One last thing.”

Okay. Focus. Collect thoughts. Know what I’m saying. I’m making a Very Important Point, not just using a pet name. Gather strength and...

“Try to remember you’re not in church, Altar Boy. Unlike that, this is supposed to be fun, and you’re supposed to be creative with it. The more you do that, the better it’s going to work, so go for broke.”

There. Sheesh. Still like trying to balance on a lubed-up rock.

Altar Boy. No, not anymore. I’m something different now.

It’s like all the rest of her seductions, barefaced manipulation that’s no less effective for the obviousness.

I’m something different now and I am going to have some fun with this.

“Oh, wait, one more one more thing. If you want extra-easy, you can make me stand against the pentagram after you anoint me so that the first time you’ll only have to stick me down. Up to you, some people find it easier, some don’t.”

“There. Now we’re ready for real. Do you remember everything?”

Yeah, yeah, give me the dubious eye waiting for me to remember one more one more thing all you want, I’m not going to, because we’re done.

To both our amazement, I’m able to rattle off both the ritual and mythological lesson with only very minor corrections, a skill I’m undecidedly proud or embarrassed to admit comes from doing programming tutorials on a computer that was slow enough to make switching between web browser and development environment painful.

Try to set as subby a tone as I can after all that, awkward as it may sound.

“Okay, I’m ready, Master.”

Which is pretty awkward. I need like, style lessons or something. Thank Sade I can be sure you won’t want me all polite like Mintie. Who’d have thought you’d actually get off on a femme swearing?

“Are we going to cut me, or am I biting myself?”

Cut...oh. The opposite end of the brush is a knife, a scalpel-like blade I’ve somehow managed not to cut myself with while holding the box, but I’m iffy on my ability to cut without cutting dangerously deep, and I’ve seen that Lyra knows how to use her fangs safely.

There’s an anticipation between us, dangerous and exhilarating, as she waits for my answer, and I let it linger, feeling the moment, and then pull her face to mine by way of a horn and kiss her gently.

“Bite your hand and give me some ichor.”

Munchouch!

Water, Air, Fire, Spirit, Earth. There, five elements, five nice blobs of ichor.

“Kneel.”

Yep, called it. Sit on my heels, palms up on my thighs, wouldn’t be much of a first night without ending up in the standard slave pose at some point. Nice touch, leaving me like this while you do up the pentagram.

Water, Air, Fire, Spirit, Earth. Just painting over the symbols, well, good. Basic but classic. I suppose a spoken collect would make you think of church too much, more’s the pity...

I should probably stop picking apart my Master’s technique while we’re doing a scene that’s affected by my emotional state quite so much as a first summoning. He’s not being unsafe, that’s enough.

This time.

Dip the brush in an element, dip it in ichor, twirl to mix, clean it in the rag after each element. The mercury (it’s weird not to fear it, but if nectar can do something as fiddly as fixing carpal I’m sure it can handle a little heavy-metal poisoning) and gold glitter in the brush’s wake, but the other elements vanish into the dim.

At the end, Lyra’s name in ink mixed with ichor, looking awkward in my unsteady hand at the bottom of the pentagram, English text sticking out against the elegant Infernal script. The beginning is the worst, like the capital ‘L’ doesn’t want to be drawn there.

Now, Taking Hold.

“Hands behind your back, and bend over a little. More.”

OMG, the pic with the pink leather bondage gear. God damn I had no idea how much I’d missed being her. Let’s see, there were cuffs on my upper arms too, and my arms were cuffed folded behind me, not just back there, do I have to be a skinny hentai girl to make that work? Oof...nope! Go Sade superpowers. She had the cutest fists but for this you’re going to want my palms out.

And by bend over, you mean far enough to be asking for an ass-fucking. Yes Master.

It takes me a moment to realize where I’ve seen the pose she strikes and why I’ve asked for it, and another moment to for the slow-motion thunderbolt of what it means that she remembers the image before I do to hit me: I’ve had the pieces, and the guide to their assembly, but been too distracted to assemble them.

What might the past five years have been, if I’d known? If I’d understood what I was feeling in those times, those certain images or fantasies that seemed to burn like stars and haunt me even through the following day? Could we have made contact?

“You remember.”

This totally pins my wings, too, I wouldn’t even need wing binders. It’s always kind of sexy feeling like I am a knot and not just held by them.

“Happy thoughts. This was one of my favorites. I miss the gag.”

And the dildo you’d always decide I had strapped into me to make me drip like that.

She remembers fondly. Of all the uncomfortable-looking things about BDSM, I’d always assumed that gags were entirely for the benefit of doms. But then, Lyra is...atypical.

Instead of putting my foot in my mouth by any possible reply, I respond with a kiss to the top of her head, and then move behind her to her feet and upturned palms, almost starting the star of elements in the wrong direction before I remember she’s facing away from me.

For some style, I finger-paint (it seems wrong not to touch her directly for this) a crude version of each element’s corresponding symbol, using the box as a reference, rather than just smearing some of it onto her.

Pale grey skin. Maddening, flowers-of-lust scent.

Okay, that’s kind of soothing even with how hard it is to hold this position without actually being tied up. It’s almost enough to...ooh.

Something’s taking hold in my manner around her during these times: instead of walking around in front of her, I realize I can pull her head back gently by her hair, just enough to reach to draw the circle of Spirit on her forehead. She makes the dominant gesture worth my while, exhaling soft pleasure and arching her superhumanly flexible back rather than lowering her hips as I pull, eyes rolled back to peer at me.

Kindness. Wicked smirk. Breasts I could drown in...

You look so beautiful when you’re concentrating on me. I wish I could watch you anoint me.

A presence of contradictions, beautiful and monstrous, brilliant and vulgar, softly submissive but never demure.

And my entire adolescence, a warm, lusty presence haunting my dreams. I have hold.

The image she’s mimicking haunts my mind - from this angle her proportions are so like that of the improbable girl it had depicted. I’m reaching through her hair for the collar that encircled her neck in the image before I realize what I’m doing...and almost cry out loud when my hand finds leather anyway: the thin strap of her necklace.

Collars collars wait until you get a collar on me, yum...

Very well. I tug gently, and she takes the hint silently, straightening and rising as I continue pulling, and following deftly as I shift my grip and place her against the pentagram, the pendant jabbing into my palm, warm with the heat of our bodies and somehow paradoxically comforting in the way its point digs into my flesh, reassuringly, unavoidably there.

Oooh, that’s a different sort of flavor. That’s...huh, I thought you had to be succubus to feel the amulet’s consecration. Maybe part of you knows what it’s about and you feel that somehow?

Bump. That’ll be the pentagram, then. Arms out, spread legs a little, good.

Okay, here we go.

Now how do I make a thing of this? I’m not, on the whole, given to the sort of theatrics that’d be appropriate here, and it’s further hard to come up with anything that doesn’t make me feel like I’m in danger of becoming that certain less savory brand of LaRPer...though, in my defense, they aren’t aboard dirty-old-but-superhot-woman-Charon’s ferry on the way to sexy hell and they don’t have any actual demons to summon when they’re doing this sort of thing and they didn’t just anoint their lover’s head with stuff that based on how it acted and felt on my finger is almost certainly not made of atoms.

I wish I’d planned, but I have this ugly habit of forcing myself into Indy Ploy situations when I’m uncomfortable.

No time. Let’s go with quiet and intense, that’s me. Taking up the box of elements from where I’ve set it, I take a finger dipped in each element and then the dishes of Lyra’s ichor, underlining the symbols of the elements as I name them, falling into a stilted poetry as I go:

“By the Water of all Seas.”

“By the Winds that carry us across them.”

“By the Fire of stars and hearths.”

“By her Spirit, pure and nasty.”

Hah! Nice. Grin.

“By the Earth on which we stand, rocks in the Water.”

Oh, well played closing the star that way, you noticed that the Rocks are technically Earth, cute...goddammit, critiquing again. I was starting to fall into subspace a little, too.

“By Lilith, the Seducer.” In my mind, a vast endless garden, a pandemonium of orgies and dances. There’s a flaming sword that turns every which way, but the only people it’s keeping out are the moral guardians.

Maybe this should be more of a sticking point for me, but there’s a strange satisfaction in crossing this supposed moral event horizon and finding it to look different from the other side just like all the others. These aren’t gods you worship or serve, which is good, because I’m starting to see as we move so literally away from it that I was never particularly good at either of those things. Kneeling is, simply - the metaphor is unavoidable in this situation, but still mind-breaking - not my kink. These gods are just...true.

“By Valkyr, the Strong.” Valkyries, Valhalla, straight from the myths, I can’t imagine it needing or wanting to change to join this pantheon.

“By Venus, the Thoughtful.” Of all things, an anime fanart that scrolled by once on my tumblr and lodged in my head and harddrive: an angelic girl standing in front of a sunset, the sun outlining her body through her flimsy nightie, white-feathered wings spread wide, her face a perfectly captured, sweet and innocent “I’m going to fuck you so meaningfully you’ll forget your name” smile.

“And by Sade, the Wicked.” Lyra. And so much more I can’t begin to do justice.

Momentarily lost, I look for the first time since we began actually out the window.

And words fail.

Words run away and hide under the bed.

But I’m transfixed, because monstrous things look beautiful to me.

There are specks in the water, thousands, scattered as far as I can see, all moving downwards, in the same directions as this ship, and then the nearby specks resolve into figures, people, monsters, creatures beautiful and unspeakable, winged men, horned women, things I can’t describe, every size, all swimming together in groups or alone or pairs.

Nearby, we pass a huge masculine succubus - short white robe off one shoulder like a greek god and with massive white-feathered angel wings and a paper-white-skinned devil tail tows along three naked human-looking women, one holding each hand and the third clutching his tail.

Beside them, two women together, one dark-haired and slight, one blonde and sturdy, both human-looking, no way to tell who’s predator and who’s prey, wearing nothing but glowing tattoos and jewelry that glints in the light shining up from below us, keep pace with a regal-faced, black-clad woman holding the leashes of two slightly-built, green-skinned succubi, one masculine and one feminine, who wear nothing but the collars to which the leashes attach.

(Lyra and I: which of us is the predator? Her form, spread ready to be bound inspires a need in me that is so very like hunger...)

In the distance beyond them, an actual dragon so help me god, with a human-shaped rider who waves to a tentacled silhouette nearby as they pass, the tentacles saluting smartly in return.

Darting past them, a group of shapes that move too fast and lithely for me to convince myself I haven’t just seen a school of mermaids.

Among the swimmers are ships like ours, some larger, some smaller, some shiny metal or matte-black, every design of propulsion system, one ship ensconsed in scintillating hexagonal forcefields that obscure its design, all heading downwards with us.

And everything in between. And more. The sleepers aboard this ship were a sample, sleeping and seen in shadow, human enough to fit on and desire a ship. Awake and seen in the lights that shine up from below us, they’re transformed, terrifying, beautiful, dreams, dreams, and things that are both.

By Sade, the wicked...

“By these elements...”

I’m stepping back, covering my free hand in the remainder of the ichor-and-element mixtures, the haunting of Lyra’s presence gripped mentally by the neck.

Hand raised, then falling: “Lyra, my succubus, I summon and bind you here.”

On ‘here’, I hit the window above Lyra’s head that bows to make room for the blow, ichorous palm open and flat, and with a dull smack it—

WHOOF.

—reality jumps, and instead of flat against glass my hand is curled around Lyra’s horn where her face is level with mine, her head cocked a bit by my hand which had been centered above it holding her horn in that position. She’s trying to straighten, weakly, and I let her.

...face level with mine, which is impossible because there’s nothing for her to...

Ooohf, did it...yup. Can I...nope. Stuck but good.

Siiiiigh. I forgot how comfy this is.

...oh. She’s suspended a good foot off the floor, spread-eagled in the center of the star, one limb on the centerline of each point, hands splayed and feet pointing where they dangle as if some force holds them to the glass, tail dangling limply and wings folded tightly as she does when leaning against something, head still lolling a bit in my grip, grinning broadly.

Her presence against the glass reveals what has to be an intentional arrangement of lighting that casts the shadows of two control chains crossing over her navel, invisible before because there was nothing to catch them but the unreasonably transparent glass.

And I’ve got her head at the perfect angle...

OmiGOD making out while bound is so hot. I swear you find a way to kiss me deeper every time, mmm...

Her mouth is soft, and yielding, but, oddly, she resists when I pull her horn with the motion of the kiss.

Mmm...yep, bound tight, see? Pulls me right back to the middle when you let go, I can barely even turn on my own.

She’s bound, not resisting: what I feel is the magic fighting me. I’ve forgotten that the binding will be stronger to her than to me, and, moreover, it seems to hold every part of her with equal strength. Without my hand pulling, she’s able to follow my mouth only fractionally, and I can feel the tension of her muscles working against the force when I lay an affectionate hand against her neck.

My other hand needs to not be full of tools anymore.

Seriously unf this is amazing, I dunno if it’s just been too long or if I never knew just how much I like this, I...hey, come back! Boo. Nnnf. NNF!

Well, it’s not a weak binding, that’s for sure.

She tries to follow when I break the kiss, but can’t lift her head more than half an inch despite struggling mightily, and whimpers quietly when I’m finally out of reach.

Setting the box to the floor, I step back to take the scene in. She’s lying there, totally relaxed, as if the window is a horizontal table, chest heaving with the effort of struggling (does exertion make her feel winded, despite not getting winded?), looking happy and now a bit lustful.

“It worked.”

Pant. “Don’t sound so surprised. Oooh...”

Hands on my sides, hands tracing down my front just under my breasts—

Gaspgaspgaaaasp fuck this always makes me feel so sensitive...

“Feeling vulnerable?”

“Y—” Waitohfuckgasp “EEEEEEEEP neep neep neeeep YES!”

Omigod and I thought I was ticklish when I was free. Gah. Never thought I’d be so glad the people I played with back home were so serious.

Oh crap, now what are you going to...nnnnn...ooh. Okay, yes, like that. Less tickles, more pinching of nipples. See how...gasp...that can make me squirm too?

Keeping my hands off her is hard (if blessedly unnecessary) normally, but like this it’s impossible. Another kiss, but with this one I reach between her legs for her tail, other hand cupping a breast, and bring it up between us, pulling it tight against her cunt, feeling her strain beneath my other hand, squirming against the binding and moaning harmonically into the kiss.

I’m close to her, and making out draws me closer, until the back of my hand on her breast contacts my own chest, and her tail beyond where my hand grips it is in reach to trail the point of her softened barb down my face, a tender warm point like a fingertip tracing the contours of my cheek and neck, tickly-arousing but sweet and then burning in my mind with the remembrance of the effect stroking the point has on her.

We could, I realize as my cock fights to escape from the towel and get between her legs, have sex like this, and even with the audience it’s likely we would if I weren’t so curious what the dismissal is going to do.

Ooooh hell yeah, just a little more, come on...you’re a nice Master, you’ll say yes...

Releasing the breast that overfills a hand for which I custom-ordered a keyboard with the key-spacing increased by a full millimeter over standard, I break the kiss to take a step back, still clutching her tail, and she looks out of lustful half-closed eyes, disappointed to lose the kiss but still concentrating on something: she’s still stroking my face with the point of her tail, having settled into a rhythm in the soft place behind my earlobe that’s all kinds of noticeable now that I’m less distracted by the rest of her body.

“Are you about to come by playing with my ear?”

Nod n—...nrf. Keep forgetting.

“If you...let me...keep...going...oooohohgod...”

Swallowing the universe of implications, I gently pull her barb from my ear and kiss the tip, licking it slowly, and then, remembering the sensitivity of the other two points, shift my grip and, two-fisted, give them the gentle rolling pinch one does to nipples before letting her tail drop free.

“Soon. We’re going to try out this dismissal thing first.”

“AH!”

Holy FUCK unf they really do multiply when you play with more than one...

“Please soon...”

Jeez, begging without even thinking about it. When a Hollow Heart wants something and knows how to get it...

“As soon as we’re alone.”

“Audience is...fine...”

“Soon.”

Now, how to do this? Presumably she’s going to drop free when Dismissed, so I should be ready to catch her. Well, that will make a good gesture: I wrap my hands around her waist, ready to encircle her as she falls.

“Get ready.”

Mm, hands.

Okay. Better look Master in the eyes for this instead of doing the downcast thing.

Two endless abysses, starry with the reflection of my face, rimmed - impossibly in the monochromatic red light - with purple fire.

They do glow.

Take hold, her presence in my head as well as in front of me.

Short. A phrase, if I can. Poetry, overcompressed. Sliding my arms around her and pulling with the final word: “Lyra, I release you into the bonds of my will.”

Whooop! Whoah, hehe, always so weird weighing something again...ooh. Oh that’s weird, that’s...yum, it’s all silky. It’s all silky and it tastes like you, unf...

There’s a moment of resistance and the something snaps around us as Lyra comes free and reflexively wraps herself around me, gripping tightly and laying her head on my shoulder...

And then I’m transfixed again, because I’ve looked out the window.

Okay, so what does this...oooh. How literal. Nnnf...sheesh, almost as strong as when I was on the pentagram. Not bad for your first shot, Master.

Framed by Lyra’s horned, metal-haired head, half-unfolded wing, and grey arm around me, metered out by the red-gleaming pentagram etching, beyond the ever-densening crowd of swimmers, is...

Mountains. An undersea asteroid field. A city, exploding, ignoring up and down and horizion in the same way the Sea does, illuminated by the light of its own windows and that of great lights hanging in the Sea between the buildings...

Statues. Great figures, massive stone effigies in gleaming black and alabaster white and every color between, contrasting as they intertwine, the same style as the inlay on Cleavage’s blade but on the scale of buildings, of mountains, of planets in the distance, every size down to the limit of sight and up to geologic, every gender and every possibility in between, every possible kind of monster, tentacles and scales, claws and horns, wings feathered or batlike or translucent like fairy-wings catching the light in that rainbow-edged high-refractive-index way only possible by way of gemstone, all reflecting the riot of variety in the demons swimming alongside us, a...

Words fail, and mythology breaks.

This actually is Hell. It must be, because here’s the wall of tortured souls, but these souls are in ecstasy.

Ecstasy and agony.

And it’s not a wall, it’s a web worked throughout the endless 3D fractal of this place. There are places that are more buildings and mad geology and places that are more empty Sea, but there’s no hard boundary anywhere.

An orgy worked in stone. Every sex act, speakable and unspeakable, is written here, in perfect pornographic detail - why, I realize, would succubus sculptors do anything but disdain a line between art and pornography, if they know of one at all?

And with them are written the emotions, the lust and pain and hunger and hope and fear and need and love, carved into the stone faces with a sense of life I’ve never seen in stonework: A bound woman, spread-eagled and affixed to the rock she’s carved from - among the statues are rocks, mountains hanging in the sea - face-down, twists around to sweetly kiss the angel-winged man who stands over her, hand in her hair, a whip captured in the moment of being shaken out of its coils in his other hand. Two men, one with long tapered horns curving back along his skull, embracing, the horned one supple, wrists held behind his back by his larger human partner as they kiss. Unapologetically phallic tentacles from an indeterminate source twine through the scenes, wrapping limbs or gripped for support, penetrating where they will, devoured with the lusty hunger I saw on Lyra’s face during that first ritual. And on, every possible combination of partners and activity, caught in moments of connection or passion or wicked-grinning fun.

And here, on the doorstep, I understand: people have seen this, and turned back, fought back through the ordeal we survived to come here, turned away from the greeting the captain gave me, cast aside companions like Lyra.

Who would do that?

The ones who saw Hell here, and described it to the rest of us, because they’re the people who looked at this, and saw only the agony. Only the danger on the faces of those statues holding whips or floggers or just raising hands to strike. Only the fear on the faces of those statues gripped by the neck or held to the rocks and fucked with cock, finger, or tentacle.

None of the lust, none of the care, none of the excitement and love.

To see this, and turn back here, you have to be someone who can look into the light that burns like the birth of a universe for us monsters, and see only darkness. Look into that light, and not even see it reflecting off us.

They see Hell here, because they carry Hell with them everywhere they go.

For the course of human history, those are the people who’ve described this place to us, and today I’m seeing the truth just like I’ve felt the truth about this in the fire Lyra’s helplessness sets in me. This was the light that claimed Persephone, and for millennia poets have called it the kingdom of the dead because they couldn’t see.

Something pulls at my mind. Lyra, struggling, trying to turn her head. We’re wrapped together in cords, as if the force that bound her to the window has come free with her and snapped around us both as I took her in my arms. She embraced me with a happy sigh when I pulled her free, but she had no choice: the cords bind her to me as tightly as they held her to the window...cords is the wrong word.

They bind like cords but merge and separate like something fluid, clinging and stretching and reforming like...well, come...but they obey my will, drunkenly, tightening or dissolving to reform elsewhere with a thought, and they pay no regard to physicality: strands around limbs tie us together, but, following the strands I find myself falling vertiginously through Lyra’s body, seeing ‘places’ I could wrap strands to still her breathing or silence her voice. It’s bizarre, like a new sense, not a vision that obscures the mindshattering view out the window, but makes me unsteady on my feet all the same.

Lyra pulls again, and I withdraw all the bonds above her neck, her fingers splaying against me as they reform at her hands.

“Mmf. This is fun...”

And stretchy, I bet I can almost grind...mmm, almost. Rubbing against you is nice, anyway...

It takes me a moment between Lyra’s squirming and the view to form words.

“What does it feel like?”

Almost, it moves around almost like rope, if I can just wiggle my hips out of it a little...oh, right, question.

“It’s...mm...it’s all silky and warm but it feels like it’s you touching me, not just a...binding. It’s almost like you have...tentacles or...something...this is awesome...”

Her voice is full of lust, still horny from my playing with her tail, presumably.

Well, we can do something about that. Can we use whatever this is tying us together to do it? The cords seem to obey strange, shifting rules: when I release my arms from around her, she stays wrapped, bound, but trying to pull the cords to lift her into the air is impossible like trying to lift myself by my own armpits, and yet I’m able to carefully unwrap them from around myself and free her legs so that she’s lowered gently to the floor as if I’ve set her down.

Wait, fuck, can I stand? Oh, legs free, okay. Arms sorta free, too, good, because even I’m about ready to take things into my own...whoop, oof.

Yeah, should have seen that coming.

She reaches between her legs as soon as she’s free, so I pull the cords that still wrap her arms and they come together behind her back, leaving me with a tangle that draws them down and arches her back fractionally when I tug on it. Glorious.

“I said, soon. You really don’t mind an audience?”

Mrf, come on. You wanna show off and you know it.

“Do...you?”

Not as much as I probably should. I steal a glance up at the captain, but she and the co-pilot are intent, she watching out the window and adjusting course constantly while he focuses on the ring of panels that surrounds him: piloting in this crowd must be somewhat of a challenge.

Experimentally, I pull at a strand that metaphorically wraps around one of her thighs, pulling it up to grind against her cunt, but this is apparently impossible: the magic is definitely pulling at her body and not controlling her muscles, but it’s bondage magic and can’t be used like an appendage to probe and stroke.

Well, there’s another approach to what I want to do...

That little smirk, what are you going to—

Wait eep no I need that to stand don’t...whew. Mmm hands holding me up by my waist, but what ooooh oh god dammit unf why do I have to have such sensitive thighs...

There’s just enough coherence to the cords to bring her thighs together tightly and make her squirm to rub them, but I can feel that I’m pushing the magic to its limit, making the cords begin to unravel and dissipate. I’d wanted to fix the tip of her tail between her thighs, but there was a tearing moment that told me that level of complexity would push things too far for the magic to hold, so instead it ends up just looped into the bonds that hold her thighs. Best carry out my evil plan if I’m going to get to.

I hope I have the social conventions of this place right.

Now, carefully, not wrecking the spell anymore. Can it handle this?

My tail is free? Oop! Nope. My tail is bound to your hand? That should be...whee!

Okay, that was cool.

Pulling bonds individually tears at the already-weakening magic too much, but it’s possible to take the bonds wrapping her arms and torso and pull them over us both all at once so that she’s whipped around to lean with her back against me, legs bound to mine, arms bound to mine, and I find myself wishing again to have remembered to doff the towel, but now there’s no time.

There’s just enough precision left to line her hand up with mine where it’s bound to the end of her tail and draw the three together, the bond snapping over them all like a latex glove. Her barb is just the right length to lay my first two fingers along its length with the point between them while I grip the rear point to my palm with my thumb.

Okay, this is going to be interesting. Yes, holding it in front of me I see how you’ve got my tail, I can feel it too lemme tell you. What do you...oh. Do the same thing with my hand so both pooints ooh are held, okay. I can have some fun with thaaaat. Can’t reach the tip this way but think I’d just be in the way anyhow, if I know what you’re about to do to me...

“Now, question. Your tail and clit come separately, right?”

Nod nod nod. Why...ooh, fuuuck, I see where this I going. Good thing I’m tied up.

“We’re gonna make them both come, but you have to save whichever one is first so they both come at once, or at least as close as we can get them. Understand?”

Grin. Nodnod.

“And do have some fun with that tail-point in your hand, or anything else you can reach while I play.”

What else can I reach? Folding my other arm around her to cup a breast pushes her other hand up from where it’s splayed around my wrist and I let it slide through the bindings until her open hand is cupped in my palm, our fingers interlaced, so that I’m holding her holding her breast, raking our ten fingers gently over the nipple, rewarded with a cooing unevenness in her answer:

“Yes Master.”

Oooh, that...oh fuck, two fingers and a tail-tip, you can nestle ‘em around my clit and it even keeps your fingernails away, oh FUUUUCK...

She arches against me, moaning quietly, head lolling, when I rake the group of fingers and tail-tip up her outer lips, and after a moment strains her legs, trying to open, reminding me I need to spread my own to let her, a maneuver that leaves my towel only dubiously attached, mostly held by the pressure of her body against mine, and then I’m going at her clit properly and she’s moaning out loud...

“Ooo—” Wait crap gasp holy fuck it can bind that? Whoah...

Oh my fuck so intense against each other oh FUCK it feels like I’m gonna explode when you pinch the back point too wait I can play with the one I’ve got if I could just concen...traaate...

Ooh, okay tail, just hang on now...hang...

Momentarily: her eyes widen and she gasps, fighting the bond, when I pull the small band I’d found in my first plunge through the spell’s strangeness, the one that quiets her voice, then relaxes into it, having realized I’ve saved her this piece of self-restraint, and then she’s inhaling in an endless gasp, filling her seemingly bottomless lungs for the explosion I know is coming and then—

Oh fuck, oh my fuck, just a little...oooooooh yum fuck I can’t control UNH

She comes all in a burst and there’s a snapping feeling in my head as bonds let go with the force of it - she strains against me with a strength that almost knocks me off my feet, breath exploding in a silent scream that pushes the magic to its limit as she fights to make noise and then it’s over, almost suddenly, and she’s panting and shuddering with oversensitivity at my playing.

“Wow. OhmiGOD that was intense.”

Pant. Flop. Really glad I’ve got the binding holding me up right now.

Ooh, the binding and now your arms around me, okay, that’s cool.

...our arms around me. This is the oddest bondage.

Feels weird only being able to whisper, I never knew I liked my voice so much...

“Feeling good now?”

It’s a genuine question, this was a bit of an experiment.

Nod nod.

“That tasted almost as good as when you cum. Unf.”

To say nothing of cumming so hard I can’t stand up anymore. Jeez.

“Good. It’s fun getting you off.”

The binding is in tatters, still holding us together but only barely and fading away perceptibly as Lyra pants limply against me, head lolled back against my shoulder. Something above or behind us catches her eye and I follow her gaze.

“I can tell...”

Heh, that got both your attention up there, didn’t it. Enjoy the show?

Sniffsniff. Captain was clearly into watching us, but it’s not...it’s just sweet like when people watch you play in a dungeon. Huh.

The captain is laying back in the pilot’s seat, smiling a lopsided smile at us, until the co-pilot says something to her and she snaps her attention back to the window, hauling one of the control sticks with a maneuver we can feel even through the artificial gravity.

“Apparently you put on a good show.”

“You put on a good show, I was just the instrument this time.”

“I do want to learn to play you like one.”

“Hot.”

Nuzzle nuzzle grind.

“You’re going to make me lose my towel if you keep at that.”

“Tragedy. And you’re all hard under there, too.”

I know, I know. Making me cum in front of strangers is already a bigger step than most new Earthlings will take at a time, I’m already going to get all the kudos just for getting this far. I shouldn’t expect you to already fuck me in front of someone we know, let alone this lady I’m not even really sure about. But come ooooon...oh, fine.

“Sooo.” Grind. “How did the word get into English, anyway?”

Phoo! I’m actually worn out from cumming like that, even with all the lust it got out of you. Guess I should just relax if you’re really not right about to fuck me.

“Huh?”

“Lyra. It’s the Infernal word for...”

Oh god dammit English. Infernal word for what? Toy? Implement? Musical instrument? How the Balls do I render this connotation? Bleh. Well, go with where this got started.

“...instrument.”

And like ten pages of notes on poetics and music and play. Mrf.

“It’s a constellation, the harp. I forget if the word is Latin or Greek or something else, but you have stars and they’re prettier than anything in the sky, so...”

“Aw!”

Ki...nnf. Okay, fine, I can reach your cheek at least. Kiss.

Oh god, home. Dear Sade I had no idea how glad I’d be to see the Falls again, I mean I’ve only been outside what, two or three times?

Home.

She relaxes into me again, hanging against the last of the binding. I could tear it away with a thought, but it seems somehow more right to hold her to me while the bonds fade so that after a few moments she’s hanging only against my encircling arms and leaning her weight against me, and we - I, Lyra’s weight is on me, not her feet - stand thus regarding the view for a while, watching the buildings and mountains loom slowly closer, peaceful.

The statues decorate, support, interconnect, are, buildings in every style, gothic cathedrals with no top or bottom, double ended towers free-floating but for where they’re made part of the larger whole by intertwining statuary, massive terraced complexities dotted with the multicolored lights of windows like stars, and the buildings are worked of stone, or steel-and-glass, or insane techno-medieval fusion like the wet-dream of a strung-out JRPG environment designer, or are simply massive un-engineered mountains of black stone that seems to be composed of long, narrow shards all fused together along an almost parallel axis so that they seem like explosions of darkness radiating out from some unseen epicenter, lights glowing here and there along the seams.

Surrounding the statues, and buildings, and mountains, as if holding everything together, are massive, ornately carved stone rings, arches, buttresses, connecting parts of the Hall, encircling buildings or groups of statues or entire continents, some disappearing into the sea of buildings as if defining arcs from one place to another, and then the sea of buildings itself is formed into waves, mountain ranges, tendrils, some already looming above us in the distance, shapes recalling the horizonless surface of the Sea above us.

There’s a logic to the architecture, buildings near each other almost but not quite sharing an axis of up and down, sharing similar kinds of architecture, and the styles blend into each other with a sort of fractal organization, gothic with gothic but blending with a complicated boundary into techno-medieval that melds to science-fiction glass-and-steel obelisks.

The Hall seems to go on for miles like a mountain range I can’t see the end of, but below (I thought, before, that the ship must have leveled out as we boarded, but no: we’ve been diving straight down the whole time, Lyra and I have just been standing on impossible artificial gravity rocks as we are now) us one section in particular is looming up, dominated by miles-long rocks suspended near each other like a mountain caught in the middle of being shattered by some titanic hammer-blow, the shiny black stone of Cleavage’s blade and the raft predominating, architecture where the rocks are engineered somewhere between gothic, medieval, and JRPG baroque. In the gaps between the mountains is a strange, shifting white glow, shining with an inconstant inner light, obscuring the inside of the...ravine? Valley? Describing this place in geologic terms feels like talking about the mizzen mast of a fighter jet.

We’re close enough to see the swimmers begin to find doors, windows, or other apertures in the buildings and rocks. Hundreds simply vanish into the white blur...

“The white between the rocks...you called this place the Falls.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s waterfalls. From the back.”

“Yep. Pretty, huh?”

“How does...that’s not how...”

Hehe. Grin. “Not how gravity works?”

“...yeah. Fuck.”

“You’ll get used to it.”

This is romantic, but time’s a tickin’ and I wanna play. It’s going to be all kinds of drama once we get inside what with meeting friends and all.

“So. Bet you can’t summon me from another room.”

“Challenge accepted. What do we do?”

“It’s exactly the same, except you’ve already anointed me and the pentagram so you can skip right to Taking Hold. They should be good for at least one more summoning.”

Do we need...nope. Still some ichor left on the box if you wanna do it that way.

“Dont keep me...” Blech, pillow-stuff. God, so picky.

“You should probably get me right back down if you wanna try a third summoning as much as I do, though. We have to go soon.”

“Duly noted. Shoo.”

Flounce flounce bounce either you’re into heels or I’ve just got strong calves whee.

Fuck. Brr. I wanna go back to Master...okay, chill, self. He’s not even an aslu away.

She pads off, tiptoeing to preserve the elements on her feet, and disappears through the curtain that brought us in here, her absence like a hole in the world. I’d feel melodramatic, but tonight we’ve faced certain death together, defied an angel, and I’ve lost my humanity and virginity to her and as safe as we seem to be here it’s still teraparsecs beyond unfamiliar, and technically speaking I’ve spent eighty percent of the past five years with her inside my head, day and night. So yes, it feels a little off that she’s not right by my side.

Yeah, forget it, I’m not going to feel okay being apart until we can do Hollow Heart Summoning. That and I’m going to fucking implode from curiosity if I don’t find out what the big reveal about how you learn it is pretty soon.

We must be able to, right? This feeling, this is supposed to be what powers it, we’ve got that alright.

We’ve been touching so much, I fancy I can still feel her on me: just the thing to Take Hold of. Rubbing more elements-and-ichor onto my palm, I square off in front of the pentagram.

“By the Water of all Seas...”

Last time, I ended up with her horn in my hand because of where I hit the pentagram. I adjust my aim, judging the position precisely by last time’s handprint that’s still left on the glass.