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Z’rell palms through the folds of Minthara’s mind. Minthara feels her slipping between her thoughts, parting memories from instincts, doubts from desires, ratting out her weaknesses and hesitations. Searching.
Searching for undeniable proof that her renewed devotion, her atonement, is real.
And she does not want those thoughts scrutinised, for doubts rise readily in her mind. Minthara focusses with every shred of her energy on something else – the first useful thing that comes into her mind – her use of the vampire spawn’s body. Tries to flesh out her memories with something resembling closeness and some mimicry of affection. Tries to make Z’rell believe it. Believe that she cares, that the slave is more than just a tactical dalliance in her bid to keep the right people at her back, perhaps a little indulgence in the male’s somewhat attractive body.
“My my,” she goads, a cold kind of amusement curling through the connection “your lust for the neck-pricker is succulent. I’d like to take a bite out of him myself.”
Astarion shifts awkwardly beside her, as though it is crossing his mind to object to being discussed like meat between predators, but Minthara is pleased that the slave-spawn bites his tongue. The ladies, after all, are speaking, and Minthara cannot spare a fragment of her concentration.
She throws what emotion she can behind the thought, singing of possessiveness and jealousy to shroud the hesitation in her thoughts. But she feels the sceptic raise its head in Z’rell’s mind. Can almost hear the disbelief that the daughter of a great drow house of Menzoberranzan would ever mate with a male slave. She is tempted to push back, to attempt to beguile her into believing that she is somehow reformed. But that path is dangerous – to defend herself too eagerly would be to invite scrutiny; scrutiny that she can ill afford.
“With the Absolute,” she continues with a warm quiver of zeal at the edges of her voice, “your fantasies can become more real than flesh.” She feels Z’rell prying in the depths of her mind, scouring the tucks and wrinkles. “The pleasures of the mind can surpass those of the body. I have already been blessed to stand in her presence. It was bliss,” she says, eyes brightening with her steely faith. “She gave me everything that I wanted.”
Regarding Z’rell for a moment, she cannot help but become curious. For what power would the Absolute grant to one of her most faithful? Asking the question can only make her seem devoted. “Show me,” Minthara requests. “I would see the power that she has granted you.”
Z’rell’s shallow tusks lift against her lips in a malicious grin. And then it is as though floodgates open in her mind, Z’rell’s consciousness smashing into hers. Not only her mind. Her body. Minthara can feel the whisper of her fingers sliding between her breasts, down over the plane of her stomach, finding the nub of flesh between her legs. The phantom sensation of a slick wetness spreads like a hot balm, fingers massaging into the furrows. There’s more. At first, it’s a sharp sensation, running like pins over her back. Then it sharpens. Cuts. Like knives, and Lolth, it hurts but her throat betrays her with a deep moan, feels her heart pound in her fingertips so violently she wonders whether her fellow adventurers can sense it pulsing through the air.
Just like that, it’s over.
She is left, standing in the shame of her pleasure. That phantom wetness is phantom no more. She feels the moisture seep into her silks.
“She gave me many powers. This,” she smirks, “and the power to cut the thread of life with a thought–”
Raising her hands, she silently invokes a spell. The light of the weave pulsates between her fingers, and then collapses in on itself, taking the hulking ogre standing beside her with it, the light draining from her beady eyes and crashing to the floor as though someone had simply reached into her mind and extinguished the candle between their fingers. Minthara stares at the crude lump of muscle for a moment. Efficient. Power left idle invites challenge, after all.
Z’rell watches her closely then. Perhaps there is a shred of suspicion, still, but there is also expectation, a measuring in her glance, as though inviting Minthara to stand in her shared wonder. She seems satisfied with what she sees, and her brows lift a little, softening her face, her voice suddenly brusque.
“Should you wish to have an audience with the General, Minthara, you shall need to show me that we were wrong about you. That you are a worthy acolyte after all. She has blessed you with a second chance; there shall not be a third.”
Minthara nods. “Naturally, Disciple. I would expect nothing else. I assure you that you will not be disappointed.”
“There is something you shall need in order to pass through the shadowlands. If you will follow me, I will show you to Balthazar’s chambers. The rest of you,” she says, scanning her eyes disdainfully at the entourage, her eyes lingering on the males, “will remain here.”
“No! I do not think it is a good idea for you to traipse around this place alone–” Astarion pipes up.
“Quiet,” Minthara barks back, watching Astarion’s fangs bare for the shortest moment before falling into a pathetic, almost fearful little grimace. “I may enjoy you, but in Menzoberranzan, a male who interrupts a woman’s business will rapidly lose their tongue–”
“Minthara–”
“You too, wizard. You will wait here, as the Disciple has bidden you.”
Lae’zel clicks her tongue disapprovingly. “So little discipline among the men of this feeble Faerûn,” Lae’zel sneers with disdain. “I shall see that they do not run for the shadows while you do business with the Disciple.”
Minthara nods her approval. She may not think much of Lae’zel’s naïve, doctrinal obsession with gods and sovereigns, but she does trust the gith’s discipline well enough for the task of keeping the males tethered.
“Very good.”
Turning on her heel, she follows the Disciple Z’rell across the hallway into Balthazar’s vacant chambers, shutting the heavy oak door behind them.
“Who is Balthazar?” she asks. If she is to be confronted with further foes, she would know it.
“A favoured servant of the General,” she grunts in reply. “He has been sent to retrieve a relic of great importance, somewhere deep below this land. He has been gone for some time. Too long, in fact.”
As Minthara surveys the room, she notices the strewn innards of numerous corpses, the floor and walls bloodied with viscera. She examines a nearby body with fascination, seeing the way the bone juts from lacerated flesh, the torn fascia and muscle beginning to shrivel and turn.
“I see there has been a harvest,” she observes. “Balthazar’s doing?”
“Mm,” she agrees, smirking a little as she kicks aside a severed arm. “His. Mine. There was no longer any need for their lives to continue, and good reasons for their end. We saw to them. Not so unlike your efficient removal of those goblin lowlives.”
It is true. Not wishing to dirty her own hands, Minthara had ordered the pitiful creatures to carve open their own bellies and spill their guts onto the floor. “I do not like to linger on menial tasks,” she replies simply. It had been efficient, nothing more.
In that moment, she cannot help but notice the Disciple’s eyes wandering over her, the deathly pale prosthesis of her lost eye lagging a moment behind her other.
“I should like to test your faith,” she croons, as though offering a sacrament and threat in the same breath. “I would see if the Absolute truly smiles upon you. Would you stand in the Absolute’s glory? Bask in Her bliss?”
And just like that, that sensation begins again. That magic that threads through the air, thicker this time, a syrupy current of energy that flows directly into her, cunt swelling with a throbbing ache. The ridges of the Disciple’s illusory fingers press flat over her mound like a burning brand, massaging deeply into her sensitive flesh, forcing a shudder through her sweat-glistening body.
Minthara finds herself breathless before Z’rell has even begun. Snaps her lips closed into a tight line, so as not to soil her own dignity. But she watches, all the same; watches Z'rell, her sturdy frame, legs parted firmly on the gut-strewn floor grounded by her heavy black boots. Her wrist is raised, fingers moving in time with the wicked sensation. And then they crook in the air. Twist. Minthara bites back a gasp as she feels the thick fingers stretch the soft flesh at her entrance, parting her.
“This is all you can conjure?” Minthara teases, but she is not ready for the pain that shoots up her spine, and then the feeling of two sharp tusks drawing across her back. From across the room Z'rell grins, light flashing in her eyes as she bares her tusks, and she feels them pierce her, leaning into the cruel, thrilling drag of it
“Your little man-slave may be pretty,” she says, “but he is weak. His fangs small and shapely and polite, not unlike the sweet appendage between his legs. He cannot give you this.”
Lolth–
She feels sparks run down her back as the crisp, sharp sensation of her tusks bites into the muscle on either side of her spine. It hurts, yes; but Hells it feels good, too, and before she can gather a thought, the phantom sensation of those meaty fingers inside her grows, twists against the nub that makes her writhe, extracting a long, deep moan of intense pleasure.
Z'rell chuckles.
“I have seventeen husbands scattered across the Sword Coast. All of them mere meat. Come. Let me pleasure you in ways only a woman knows how.”
If Minthara hesitates, it does not last long. For if there is one thing Minthara understands, it is the joy of female flesh, pleasure unsullied by the flailings and crude desires of the lesser sex.
She hums deeply, pleased with Disciple Z’rell’s efficiency, and by the rolling sensations inside her. Striding with as much composure as she is able over the mess of dismembered corpses, she wraps her arms around Z'rell's neck. Her olive hands reach out, the tip of her finger tracing the soft skin of Minthara's lips.
Minthara pulls. She might be slight, but she is strong, and Z'rell is lowered into her embrace as Minthara drags a tongue slowly, softly up over her lower lip and up her tusk, lingering against the danger of the sharp point. For a fleeting moment, they remind her of the vampire – those tiny teeth, the bark much bigger than the bite. Nothing to truly offer a woman of noble blood. Not like this fine specimen. Robust and assured, of good stock. If she could, she would breed with such a woman. Their offspring would be worthy of the great houses of Menzoberranzan, fierce and strong-blooded.
“Let us see what you hide beneath that hard exterior,” she purrs. Deft fingers pry at the buckles of her spidersilk armour, one side, and then the other, casting it gently to the floor without a glance, eyes burning into hers.
Minthara watches greedily as the Disciple unpins the clasp embellished with the symbol of the Absolute from her chest and slips off her midnight blue robes, revealing a vast plane of deep olive. Her skin is pleasingly tough, as though she is clad in a natural layer of leathery armour. Minthara hums her approval, sliding three fingers between underneath the warlock’s broad breasts, weighing them in her palm and teasing the pebbled of her nipple with her thumb, stroking around her waist, feeling the generous bulk of her hips. Her fingers brush against the thick, gently curling hairs which peek above the hemline of her briefs. Dips her hand inside, enjoying the gentle scratch of her coarseness until, guiding herself down, the sensation turns smooth and warm as she passes over her plump cunt, feeling the way her inner labia peek out between the rise of her lips, her clit already engorging beneath her touch.
The Disciple huffs quietly while Minthara teases with the pads of her fingers, running smooth strokes along her mound and sliding her fingers into the wet seam of her pussy, heat rising through her skin as blood rushes through her loins.
But then Z’rell is urging her down, pressing at her shoulder. For a moment, Minthara thinks to resist, to push Z’rell down in her place, press her foot to her chest, but she doesn’t. Sees the steadiness in Z’rell’s eyes, a self-possession to complement her own, and yields, watching her slide her briefs to the floor and kick them idly to the side.
“I wonder what a highborn daughter of the dark will taste like?” she murmurs.
Z’rell lowers herself. Slips Minthara’s silks from her legs.
“A bittersweet poison? The salts of the deep earth?” Settles her knees down on either side of her face, exposing the swollen meat of her cunt, and Minthara hooks her hands under her thighs to pull her down onto her, but before her lips meet her, she feels the jolt through her own groin as the warmth of her tongue presses against that place between her legs.
As it laps over her, she feels for the first time the delicious roughness of the half-orc’s tongue, the perfect friction running between her shaven folds, raising her hips to greet her. Minthara rewards Z’rell with an indulgence of her own. Embraces her slit with the flat of her tongue. Soft at first, then more, sealing her lips over her clit and suckling gently, rolling her tongue down one side, then the other.
She tastes sharp, saccharine; like the tart black cherries that grow in the arbors of her home.
The air grows thick with their shared breaths, the rise of their husky moans through the rhythm of their touches.
Pulses deepen to relentless throbs.
Z’rell’s greedy tongue burrows into her and Lolth, it feels good, too good, she can feel her walls squeeze helplessly against the intrusion.
Even as Minthara writhes, she presses her fingers into her the Disciple’s glistening wetness.
Smooth here. Rough there.
Splaying her digits wider, Minthara stretches open the space inside her, the knuckles of her fingers grinding against that swollen pearl of nerves that make her buck and writhe–
A primal need surges. Wants to feel her. There. Pushes her up and over, rolling the Disciple onto her back, pressing her muscled thighs open.
Hells. The heat of her as she lunges over her, pressing their cunts together, the slick rub of that most tender of places and the glorious unity of their womanhood–
“Come, daughter of Lolth.” Z’rell’s voice drips with zest and zeal. “I feel the call of the Absolute. She would fill you with her blessing, as would I–”
Then that bright, silky light floods her mind. Z’rell feels for her tadpole with her own, and then their minds bleed into each other once more.
A vision comes flooding through her eyes, more real than the blood-soaked chambers where their bodies scrap for purchase against the wet stone– she can see Z’rell, lining herself up behind her, hips bearing a generous, girthy appendage held taut by two leather straps hooked under her legs and jutting from her body. But more than that, she can feel the thick head splitting her lips, teasing her open, just a fraction of a time, tiny pulses which edge deeper and deeper as her insides ease around the stretch. That sensation inside her is so intense, so fucking intense, that she can almost convince herself it’s real.
Far more than the meagre exertions of a man, Z’rell’s finesse caresses her just where the fire ignites. Anyone of less dignity might have cried, screamed, but Minthara lets a deep hum of pleasure grit through her teeth as she rubs herself against her, rolling the Disciple’s fleshy clit between her thumb and forefinger. She seems to seize under her touch, the muscles moving beneath the folds of her pussy, the hole dilating and clenching in time with her ministrations.
Then the burn. A searing heat erupts between her shoulder blades. As though Z’rell has reached through their minds with hot knives, tracing lines of fire down her spine, following the curve of her hips and the sensitive skin of her inner thighs. Her own strangled cries fill her ears, the harsh sensations feed the throbbing between her legs, giving teeth to her pleasure, “Yes”, and she hums, resonating so deep she is sure Z’rell can feel it in her body.
The Disciple gives a throaty, amused laugh. “A true faithful,” she murmurs, pausing to grunt through her own exquisite gratification. “You understand both sides of the blade of pleasure.”
She’s close. Minthara can feel it, the growing, pulsating pressure, and her thumb bears down on her clit, rubbing deeply, faster now into that bundle of nerves. For every movement of her hand, Z’rell answers with that psychic invasion, fucking into her with her mind, deep and smooth and vicious and perfect.
This hunger demands to be sated.
Now.
The grinding and pulsing and the hot power of those massive thighs is too much – Lolth – her back arches as though to break itself, humming a long, loud note as her orgasm explodes through her limbs. She feels Z’rell jerk. And then a heated gush of fluids spurts from her – “Fuck, Minthara”, she groans – and Minthara somehow feels a fervent warmth shooting inside her through the phantom appendage still impaled inside her in her mind. Her juices drench the smooth lilac plane of Minthara’s stomach and the pulsating space between her legs. Then another. And another.
And as they groan through their aftershocks, their eyes meet once more, panting, and then laughing with exhilaration.
“Do not return to that band of misfits,” says Z’rell. “Stay. Serve the Absolute. You have seen Her power, and she has seen fit to offer you her rapture. I know it. I feel it.”
Minthara feels it too. Knows now for certain, as it rushes through her veins, that the Absolute’s power is no illusion; feels it as a faint, unfamiliar heaviness in her body, growing inside her.
And so she does. Takes up her place beside the Disciple, as though she had never been cast down. The trust in her loyalty comes rapidly amongst the cultists, who do not question her return, reforged easily enough with Her blessing and their high-ranking officer at her side. And she passes the moonlantern to Lae’zel, the only one she trusts to do her duty.
Four weeks later
Minthara’s body is a disciplined instrument, so finely tuned, that she should notice the slightest disruption. And she knows something is strange. A quiet insistence beneath her navel that does not ebb with her trance.
She stands in Z’rell’s chamber in Moonrise Towers, fingers splayed low over her abdomen, testing the firmness of her flesh. A slow, coiled heat grows within her. Not the fleeting, pleasurable kind that Z’rell had drawn from her. Closes her eyes. and feels the vast, formless presence of the Absolute, permeating her body, offering its blessing, feeling Her cradle her belly.
Her eyes open.
Of course.
***
She finds Z’rell on the upper balcony, watching over the dark ships that come in the night. Z’rell senses her. Does not even turn. “I did not expect to see you this late, Minthara.” Minthara stops beside her, back straight, chin lifted with the certainty in her heart and her pride in her renewed faith.
“I am with child.”
She watches, gauging Z’rell’s expression. She turns then, something flickering across her face. Confusion, first. Then… What? Recalculation? Reordering her world to fit a truth she could not previously have comprehended. And then a warmth brightens behind her eyes.
“The Absolute…” she breathes like a prayer.
“It would seem so,” Minthara says, voice steady and worshipful. “No man has been permitted to lay his seed within me,” she continues, “There has been no transaction of flesh capable of creating a child.”
Z’rell lifts a hand, hovering just short of contact as though the space around her belly has become sacred.
“She chose this,” she says, voice unnaturally high with fervour. “Chose you. Our devotion has been rewarded.”
Minthara smiles at that, pulling Z’rell’s hovering hand onto the slight curve of her belly. “A pure child borne of women,” she says, pushing gently – maternally, even – into the soft bump, “and conceived with the will of the great Mother. There can be no higher honour, Minthara.”
For a moment, she says nothing. Feels a lightness wash through her, a soft burn of pride, triumph even. Thinks of the mewling drow men scrapping at each other for the privilege of sullying their bloodlines, thinks of the bitter little vampire and the way he trailed helplessly after her like a bedraggled pup. “Our child shall not inherit weakness,” she agrees.
They stand side by side in the cursed light, the land below swallowed in that creeping shadow. Dark, she thinks, but Minthara knows darkness. She was raised in darkness, of the land, of the soul, and yet through it all, the unyielding light of the Absolute seems to pool in the cradle of her hips.
Z’rell stands close, and Minthara sees in her posture the unmistakable pride and surety. Not in that way that male ambition so often rots into their brittle, grasping displays, with their incessant need to assert and possess.
Perhaps the echo of her better judgement does still ring somewhere deep in the back of her mind, but the signals are blissfully drowned away in the wash of joy and devotion.