As always, Shundarr was late.

The rest of the Defenders waited in silence and darkness. The only light came from the glyphs over which they stood that marked their appropriated places around the edge of the vast pillar that rose from the abyss. The light was enough that they could see other such pillars, though these others rose beyond them, out of and back into the darkness. What they stood upon now was a broken column that had once, with its brothers, supported the stronghold that hung over them, now. In times of extreme peril, the columns would retract, lowering the entirety of Blackfang Abbey into the protective belly of the mountain from which it was hewn.

“Where is he!?” demanded Thyriol. He, like the others, had yet to remove his armor. The battle-worn windsuit flickered, causing portions of Thyriol to disappear and reappear sporadically.

No one answered.

Gyrdak leaned on the butt of his golden mace and ran a golden, gauntleted hand over his face and down the length of a white beard flecked with blue AntRoid blood.

Beside him, Kuri stared blankly at the center of the pillar. Of all of them, she was the only one who had discarded her armor prior to teleporting to the Council. She wore a stretch of black spyger-silk across her breasts that pressed them nearly flat against against her chest. Her stomach was bare, save for a hastily-applied healing stone bound to her side by a length of Blessed Linens. Her legs were concealed by a black spyger-silk skirt that reached the floor. The silk swallowed the glyph-light. That her raven hair reflected it was the only indication that it, too, was not made of spyger-silk.

On the other side of her, the metallic mass called Rak stood perfectly still. The dull orange light in his eyes pulsed regularly, like a heartbeat.

Beside Rak, Grumdag growled and shivered. A thin tendril of water reached out from Slryx’s aquapod and stroked the coarse mane that ran from the base of his skull to the base of his spine. Grumdag looked over at her, floating in the center of the bubble of water contained by the magic runes enscribed on the spyger-legged machine below her. Her calm, black eyes smiled at the worlog, soothing him. Her lithe, powerful body was human above her shapely waist. Her her back and shoulders were a sky-blue, and her face, breasts and stomach were a pale white. Webs of translucent flesh reached from her wrists to her hips. Below that, her legs appeared human still, save for the same translucent flesh that stretched between them, forming a wide, paddle-shaped fin. She spoke, and her voice escaped the Aquapod through a voxcaster set into the front of the walking-mechanism.

“Peace, friend.” The voice was as soft as the glow of her Aquapod in the light of the glyph’s. The Grumdag lowered his eyes bashfully and trembled a little as the water tendril stroked his length again.

Dalana’s voice sang in everyone’s mind at once.

He is coming.

Grumdag roared and beat his fists against the tusks protruding from his upper jaw.

“Finally,” Thyriol said. He felt Dalana in his mind, chastising him. He looked over at her. Her mouthless face was perched on a delicate neck that sloped outward into narrow shoulders. Her purple skin gave off a sweet, honey-tasting scent as the sweat beaded against her hairless scalp in the humid subterranean cavern. Her large, pupilless eyes were the shape and color of summer leaves. She crossed one pair of her arms across her scorched chestplate. Two of the thick leather straps had been cut by an AntRoid’s mandible, and her arms were there to keep the armor from slipping off. The second set of arms, below the first, held her spear.

Caution, Thyriol, came her voice. Her green eyes narrowed.

“Caution?” he snapped back, “Alda is gone!”

Grumdag howled.

A light flashed at the center of the pillar. The heretofore unlit glyph sparked and steamed as it came to life. An instant later, Shundarr stood before them, wreathed in clouds of smoke in which lightning flashed and from which small thunder rolled.

Shundarr stood easily twelve feet tall. His armor was removed, and he wore a spyger-silk robe. A black stone the size of Grumdag’s head hung from around his neck, clasped in the dead, scaled claw of a zarkrok. In his left hand he clasped a staff, taller than he by two heads, fashioned from a silver wood not found anywhere on Varigoss. His body was a pale lavendar, and very nearly human, save for its canine features. His short snout sniffed the air, and he turned to face each of the Defenders gathered on the pillar. His glowing sapphire eyes lingered the longest on Thyriol.

At length, he spoke. His voice was what happened when thunder was given a tongue.

“We have all lost Alda, Thyriol.” Even though he spoke softly, the chamber still trembled. Thyriol lowered his eyes to the pommel of the shiftblade on his hip.

“No,” Thyriol said, “You lost a soldier. The rest of you,” he looked around the pillar, “lost a friend. A comrade. But I…I lost Alda!” He pounded his chest. “I loved her!”

“You!?” Came a shrill voice from beside Dalana. Axia stepped off of her glyph, toward Thyriol. Shundarr stepped between the two, but Axia shouted around the wizard. Her blonde hair was matted with sweat and AntRoid blood. Her armor all but burned away in the battle, revealing the white mesh underarmor beneath that hugged her body like a second skin. “She was my sister! What have I lost, then?”

We do not even know if she lives or not, came Dalana’s voice, We saw her carried away. Not killed. She could be alive.

Shundarr turned to Dalana, his face grim and shadowed.

“She likely is,” said the wizard.

Silence followed. The Defenders looked at one another.

“Then we shall rescue her!” Thyriol said, casting his eyes around the room for support. Grumdag growled low in his throat.

Shundarr leaned on his staff with both arms and stared down at his own glyph.

“I’m afraid,” the wizard said, “that is not an option.”

Silence, again. This time, a profound silence. The sound of death.

“What?” Thyriol said. “What did you say?”

Axia stepped back slowly, her eyes wide but empty as she took her place on her glyph once more.

Shundarr lifted his staff and slammed it down, sending a deafening crash echoing through the darkness.

“Synthrax has taken her to the Marshes of Drelm.”

“The Marshes…” Slryx’s voice trembled out of her machine. For her kind, the Marshes held special significance. The nightmares that they spawned had plagued the Inland Seas for centuries. To the rest of the Defenders, it was the inhospitable waste left over from a dead empire that vanished aeons ago. Its horrors were legendary. And to think that anyone would venture there willingly…

Gyrdak’s brow furrowed. “So he has a fortress in the Marshes,” he said. There was no surprise in his voice, only a deep despair barely hidden behind a growl.

Shundarr met his gaze and nodded, slowly. “I have seen it.”

Out of his staff leapt images, sights and sounds. The world from on high, from the eyes of one of the hawkhounds that served Blackfang Abbey. There it was, for them all to see, buried deep in the poisonous mist of the Marshes. A single cube of stone the color of sun-bleached bone. In its base, a single gate, wide enough for one man to walk through. All around, in the toxic swamp, swarms of AntRoids marched and toiled, scraping up what stone they could find that was left over from the ruins of empire, carrying them to the fortress, enlarging it by the second.

“Alda is somewhere in that fortress. And between us and her there is the Marsh, and a host of things that only Synthrax, with an army of AntRoids, could subdue. To venture therein, to save but one of us, would cost us more than we can afford.”

“You’re…you’re saying…” Thyriol began.

“Alda’s gone, boy,” Gyrdak said. “Alive or dead, she’s gone. Forever.”

Tears welled in Thyriol’s eyes. “No…no…”

“My father is right,” Kuri said. There was no sadness in her voice, nor mourning. “It is too dangerous. Besides, even if she is alive, she is likely nothing more than another Vessel by now. Another body for Synthrax.”

“NO!” Thyriol bellowed and stepped off of his glyph, unsheathing his Shiftblade. Gyrdak stepped in front of his daughter as she unholstered her flail and uttered the words of power that sent whit-hot energy coursing through the weapon.

“ENOUGH!” Shundarr bellowed, and from his staff leapt a bolt of lightning that split the stone between the two men. All became still.

In the sudden chaos, no one had seen Axia vanish from her glyph in a cloud of violet smoke.

• • •

Alda lay awake, though she kept her eyes shut. The humid air squeezed her body like a hot wet fist, wringing the sweat out of her. She was still clad in her golden armor. Beneath that, she felt hard, jagged stone. She kept her breathing slow and deep as she remembered the battle…the unyielding grip of AntRoid mandibles on her wrists and ankles…the battlefield vanishing as darkness and numbness overtook her. The reality of her situation had yet to settle firmly on her awareness, though she was able to put it into words.

I have been captured.

Against her eyelids, she saw the faces of her fellow Defenders, could see their panic and despair. She saw most clearly the faces of Thyriol and her twin sister, Axia, their mouths open and screaming.

The images fell apart at the sound of stone grinding against stone. Light fell upon her eyelids. She winced, and cursed herself for it.

“Ah,” came a voice, “You’re awake.”

There was no point in pretending any longer. She opened her eyes slowly, allowing them to adjust to the light. As her vision cleared, she saw a figure standing in a narrow threshold, beyond which numerous torches burned. She blinked stinging sweat out of her eyes and pushed her aching body upright. Instinctively, she reached for her weapon on her hip, but found nothing. The figure in the threshold stepped into the cell.

The being was alien to her. Humanoid, made of rippling muscle that pulsed beneath flesh composed of translucent scaly plates that reflected the light of the torches grotesquely. She could not help but notice its formidable manhood hanging between its legs, the veins visible through the pale, thin skin. Kneeling, the member’s bulbous head nearly touched the floor. Her stomach turned and she looked up at its face, which contorted into a grin that revealed gray, crooked fangs. A muscular, three-fingered hand reached out and touched her golden hair. She recoiled. The creature laughed.

“What, you don’t like this one?” the beast laughed. “I claimed this Vessel many years ago, from a planet with a dying sun.” The beast gestured at itself, “This is the last of its kind.”

Alda moved quickly, leaping to her feet. But the beast was faster. A tail lashed out from behind it and struck her in the stomach, sending her sprawling across the floor of the cell.

“Oh, my dear Alda,” chuckled the beast, “It’s no use. You are mine, now.”

As it spoke, two AntRoids entered the cell behind it. They moved quickly, grasped her by the wrists. She didn’t bother struggling. The beast stood up and walked over to her, placed its face near to hers. She wanted to spit at it, but her mouth was dry from fear.

“I am hungry, Alda,” the beast said. Then, its forked tongue crept past its lipless maw and licked her cheek. “I am so very hungry.” It hissed in excitement. Alda felt something touch her leg. She looked down. The beast’s member was stiffening, growing by the second.

No, she thought, No.

In a single, violent motion, the beast’s hands grasped the leather straps on her breastplate and pulled. The straps snapped. The beast laughed and flung the breastplate across the cell. It smashed into the stone walls, lodging itself there.

The beast looked over Alda, at the thin underarmor that hugged her ample breasts. In its eyes, there was a violence, a hunger, like that of a starved animal.

“Oh, yessss,” it hissed.

Alda clenched her eyes shut as the beast’s inhuman hands pawed at her chest. She felt the claws tear through the under armor as though it were parchment. The air against her sweat-covered breasts raised goosebumps across her flesh and caused her round, pink nipples to stand erect. She writhed as she felt the thing’s mouth latch onto her left breast. The AntRoids’ mandibles dug into her wrists and blood trickled down her forearms as her captor’s tongue swirled around her left nipple, teasing it, flicking it. Its right hand held the breast to its mouth while its left hand ran claws lightly over and around her right nipple. She opened her eyes and looked down. The thing’s penis throbbed against her armored thigh and it began to grind against her. This lasted for what felt like an eternity until, finally, the beast stopped and released her all at once. It backed away, looking down at her chest moist with sweat and spit.

“Oh, yessss,” it hissed, “The last time I found beauty worth sating myself on, your world was still young and burning.” Its eyes widened as they ran over her, up her chest, to her face and up her arms. Both of its hands busied themselves rubbing the length of its penis, which was now the length and girth of her forearm.

“Ah,” it said, finding the blood trickling off her left elbow from the wounds caused by her struggling. It stepped towards her. She grimaced as its tongue flicked out and lapped up the blood.

“You know the thing about immortality?” the thing asked when it was done, “It desensitizes you. It makes your hungers…unique. More and more difficult to satisfy.”

She opened her eyes. The thing still stroked its club-like member. Pre-cum beaded at its opening, and with its thumb it passed the vicuos fluid over the veiny length.

“Take her,” it said to the AntRoids, and the machines moved forward, dragging her across the floor to the threshold.

From behind her, she heard the beast say, “We’ve only just begun.”

• • •

Axia thumbed the accelerator on the MechaHawk, slowing it as it entered the mists that marked the border of the Marshes of Drelm and activated the windcloak.

By now, they’d probably realized what she was doing, but it hardly mattered. Shundarr had said it himself. He wouldn’t send any Defenders into the Marshes. She was alone, now. Despite what the coward Thyrion said, despite his apparent rage, she knew he would rather fall on his own shiftblade than venture within a stone’s throw of the poisonous mist which, even now, thickened around her. She had taken a Breath-Helm from the armory, and beneath that had secured a Blessed Linen across her mouth and nose. Whatever may kill her, here, it wouldn’t be the toxic fumes.

There was a flash of light somewhere ahead of her. She increased the helm’s magnification ten times, but saw nothing more. She slowed the MechaHawk again, this time bringing it to a full stop. She hovered there, gazing out over the machine’s wings. Then, another flash of light, this one from directly below her. The flashes preceded no sound. It was not a weapon…and yet…

Something slammed into the MechaHawk’s left side, spinning it in the air. Axia struggled to steady the machine, looked over at the point of impact. The wing was gone. She was spiralling, now, hurtling towards the ground, pulling the mist down with her like a cyclone. She lept, hitting the black, stagnant water at the same time that the ruined machine’s plasma core ruptured.

Blue flame engulfed the marsh in an expanding sphere of killing heat, feeding itself rapidly on the noxious, flammable fumes rising off of the still, toxic rot.

Axia looked up. Through the mirky water, she saw the flame spread over the water’s surface as something thick and wet coiled around her and pulled her deeper and deeper into the void.

• • •

Alda was naked, now, from head to foot, her wrists bound over her head in heavy shackles attached to a long chain anchored in the ceiling far above her head. Even her long, golden hair had been secured behind her head so as not to obstruct any part of the her nakedness from the three figures that stood before her.

There was the first beast she had encountered, the Pale One. To the Pale One’s right, there stood a creature with pitch black skin that stood like an ape on fat, leathered knuckles. Its face was long and eyeless, and it had two sets of jaws for two wide mouths, out of which flicked fat, wet tongues with strange bumps on them arranged in neat lines. Its body was wide and hairless, and between its legs there pulsed an erect member that forked midway down its length into a Y-shaped organ. Pre-cum danced in the light of the fireglobes that hovered near the chamber’s ceiling. To the Pale One’s left, there stood a figure taller than the others, all bone and sinew, Its eyes were wide black disks set into a long, slender neck that extended and retracted as it stood, as if nervously. Its flesh was a bright, garrish pink. From its shoulders protruded bony, thin arms that terminated in chitinous pincers. Its legs bent backwards at the knee. Between them, its swollen member looked strangely out of place on its narrow frame. It was easily as wide as her thigh, and it bobbed up and down as she watched it, fear building behind her eyes.

So alien were these beings from herself and from one another, and yet they all shared the same Mind; the malicious, incorporeal enemy that called itself Synthrax. Each of these beings had, at one point, fought Synthrax for its planet’s freedom, for its species’ survival. These that stood before her were the fallen Champions of dead worlds, defeated and repurposed as only a few of the multitudinous Vessels in which Synthrax’s boundless consciousness took residence.

All around her, the wall of the chamber was a single, unbroken mirror, a solid ring of reflection so that no matter where she looked, she saw herself. Her lithe, naked body dripping sweat. Her perfectly round breasts that hung heavily against her ribcage and shook as she lifted her legs, pressed them together, trying desperately to hide her nakedness from the Vessels.

“Don’t be shy,” the Pale One said.

The Black One stepped forward, crossed the chamber to her in a gallop.

“No!” she begged, “Please!”

The Black One’s hands grasped her thighs and pulled them apart. It lifted her knees over its broad shoulders and stood upright so that she hung upside down, her back against the monster. She felt its solid erection between her back and its chest, its length reaching from the small of her back to her supple, quivering buttocks.

“NO!” she screamed as the Pink One approached her, its massive, wide penis bouncing as it crossed the chamber in three great strides.

“YES!” It hissed. It grabbed her jaw in its pincers and twisted her face sideways.

“PLEASE!” she cried, “Please STO–“

Her cries were cut off as the Pink One slid its penis across her lips sideways. It would never fit into her mouth without shattering her jaw. She screamed against the massive thing even as her mouth moistened it, the fury of its thrusts causing her breasts to bounce against her neck, sweat dripping onto the floor.

The Black One growled low out of its two mouths, and then immediately set to work with both. Its topmost mouth clamped down around her hairless womanhood, and its bottommost began kissing and licking the cheeks of her buttocks, its rough tongue reddening her trembling flesh, slathering it with saliva.

“YESSSS! YESSSS!” The Pale One screamed. It rushed across the chamber, shoved the Pink One away from her mouth.

She was able to pull a single lungful of air past her lips before they found themselves wrapped around the Pale One’s pulsing cock. She felt its head slam against the back of her throat, its scrotum smack against the bridge of her nose. She gagged, air bubbling out of her nostrils, her eyes wide. The Pale One pulled out and thrusted again, and again, and again, each thrust more violent than the last, grunting and screeching.

She could see herself, upside down in the mirror through the Pale One’s legs. Her face was flushed and red. Saliva dripped out of her mouth and down her face with every thrust.

The Black One increased the viciousness of its attack. All at once, the full lengths of both beaded tongues lashed forward into both of her holes. Tears poured from her eyes and she screamed around the Pale One’s member as saliva and her own juices spilled down her writhing body, down her quivering breasts, pooling beneath her chin and pouring down her face, blending with the tears.

The Pink One’s pincers began mauling her breasts, squeezing and teasing her nipples until she was sure they would be shorn off. Its impossibly huge penis became a solid presence against her throat and chin, sliding back and forth sidways in the wet mess that continued to drip from her, using it as lubrication as the monster, quite literally, fucked her throat.

The Pale One was thrusting so hard that she feared its pelvis would shatter her teeth. Its scrotum was a steady presence smacking her forehead numb.

She felt the heat building inside her, a warm, white fire coiling around the Black One’s beaded tongues.

No, she begged her body, Please don’t.

“HAHAHA!” The Pale One howled, “She’s going to cum!”

No…Please…

But it was too late. Pleasure the color of lightning exploded against her eyelids as she clenched them shut, and her womanhood gushed a fountain of hot fluid into the eyeless face of the Black One. The ape-like beast raised its head and howled in delight.

The Pale One pulled itself out of her in time to allow her to scream. All three Vessels stepped back from her, dropping her back upright, dangling from the chain.

She opened her eyes to see herself, a sex-stained, blood-flushed mass, her body dripping sweat, cum and spit. Her breasts were scratched from the pincers and, in a few places, the claws had drawn blood.

“Well done, Defender!” the Pale One chuckled. The other Vessels chittered and gnashed their teeth.

She couldn’t tear her eyes away from her own body. The brutality of what had happened…the malice in it…and yet, she could not look away from the aftermath, even as the Pale One came from behind her, its hands lifting her heavy breasts upwards, pressing them against her chin.

The Black One appeared on her left. It grabbed her face in its leathery palms and kissed her mouth hungrily, its alien lips rough against her flesh, its two mouths sucking the spit off of her tongue. Then, it stepped away again, careful not to obstruct her view. She watched in the mirrored walls as it spat onto her scarred breasts.

“Lick,” the Pale One said.

WIthout thinking, she extended her tongue. The Pale One pushed her breasts higher, harder. She lapped at her own flesh, licking up the spit.

The Pale One released her breasts, letting them fall, and ran his fingers over rest of her, probing her holes, sliding its member up between the cheeks of her buttocks. “You came, Defender.”

The other Vessels chittered.

“Now,” it hissed hotly in her ear, “It’s my turn.”

TO BE CONTINUED….

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