Work Text:
Cold settles quickest in the fingers.
Nim flexes her hands inside the gloves as she moves along the cavern ledge, careful to keep her footing on the wet stone. The drop beside her disappears into blackness thick enough to swallow the faerzress glow whole. Only the drifting violet haze remains visible, glittering faintly through the abyss like spores caught on the slow skin of a river.
She pauses as another sound joins the cavern’s familiar chorus.
Among dripping water and distant echoes, a dull, uneven vibration travels faintly through the stone beneath her boots. Too heavy for other svirfneblin footfalls. Too measured to be falling rock.
Nim weaves the illusion around her as naturally as others pull up their hoods. Her hands never stray far from her component pouch; it takes only a moment before she melts into the cliff face, completely indistinguishable from its rough surface.
There, she waits. Her breathing slows until soundless.
The voices reach her a moment later.
Duergar, by the sound of them.
They pass somewhere below the ledge, too distant for their words to carry clearly through the tunnels. Probably only a patrol. Perhaps a trading caravan. Nim does not take the chance.
Cold bites steadily through her boots and robes. She stays moulded to the cavern wall until the voices fade, then the footfalls after them.
The Society of Brilliance outpost clings to the cavern wall several tunnels ahead, tucked high above the faerzress chasms where the air grows warm from volcanic vents beneath the stone. Most of the year it sits empty save for dust, old notes, and whatever spores manage to creep beneath the doors. During the faerzress bloom, however, the station becomes home for the small handful of Society scholars willing to spend weeks at a time studying the shifting currents.
This year, only three of them have made the journey.
The closer Nim draws to the outpost, the warmer the caverns become.
Cold retreats slowly from her hands and feet, leaving behind the dull sting of returning feeling. Above swells huge sponges of millennial growth. Fungal heat-stoves glow from the cavern walls, their vents spilling phosphorescent steam in soft greens, yellows, and golds.
Warm geothermal mist rolls through the station walkways and gathers damp against Nim’s face and lips. Her hand finally loosens its grip around the component pouch at her hip.
Through the drifting steam, Omeluum slowly emerges into view.
At first, it is only height beneath the haze—the suggestion of a tall shape standing motionless upon the outer threshold. Then the details sharpen into shape: the layered fall of dark robes, the long silhouette of its limbs, the slow curl of tentacles touched green-gold by the heat-stove glow.
Every svirfneblin child is taught to fear that shape on instinct.
Omeluum inclines its head once as she approaches, then turns and disappears into the warmth beyond, already certain she will follow.
Nim shoulders the door shut behind her and props her staff into the narrow rack beside the entrance. The station feels smaller after the open caverns outside. Clay pots crowded with tall fungal caps cast most of the station’s light, their pale glow washing softly across shelves, worktables, and scattered reports. Violet flowering moss creeps across ceiling stones, its bioluminescent glow blinking in faint constellation points above the fungal lamps below.
The rich smell of Blurg’s cooking hangs pleasantly through the room.
Mushroom stew bubbles thickly in a large pot, the fungi boiled creamy-soft in rich mineral broth sharpened by the peppery bite of firemoss. Beside it, oil crackles steadily around strips of kelp-wrapped eel, their skins blistering crisp and honeycomb.
The closer she draws to the dining alcove, the louder the bubbling pots and clatter of pans become. Blurg glances up from the cookstove, his concentrated expression softening at the sight of her.
“There you are,” he says. “Sit, sit. Dinner’s nearly ready.”
Nim pulls out her usual chair beside the table. Blurg modified it during their first week at the station after quietly noticing how often she finished meals with her shoulders drawn tight around her ears from reaching so high over the tabletop. The added height leaves her a more comfortable participant.
The legs have been exchanged and extended, just enough to spare her from stretching awkwardly towards the tabletop.
Though Omeluum does not eat, neither of them begin before it takes its usual place at the table.
The eel is served with its spawn: a bright dusting of orange roe stark against the dark kelp wrapping. The pearls pebble pleasantly in Nim’s mouth alongside the crisp pop of seaweed with its pockets of trapped steam.
“This is wonderful,” Nim says, reaching for another piece before she has properly finished the first.
Blurg beams beneath the praise, visibly pleased by the speed with which the platter begins to empty.
“You kept stealing the charred kelp from the pan last time,” he says. “I thought you deserved a proper plate of them. Soft things never seem to satisfy you.”
“They’re perfect,” she says through her mouthful. “Not a lot of soft things in my old granitehome.”
From across the table Omeluum turns its attention towards her.
“Nimdrelgrim,” it says, the thought passing smoothly between their minds. “There is a proposition I would place before you.”
Nim sets the eel back onto her plate. “All right,” she says. “Go on, then.”
Its pale fingers draw together atop the table like the folded legs of a dead spider.
“No individual has ever remained joined to an illithid tadpole for the length of time you endured without eventual ceremorphosis,” Omeluum says. “Nor maintained such extensive psychic integration before separation. I would like to investigate whether the prolonged presence of the parasite has left lingering alterations within your mind—and, if so, to what extent.”
Nim is quiet for a moment after it finishes. Her eyes find the plate where she neatly cuts the eel into morsels.
“All right,” she says at last. “I’m willing.”
Something shifts faintly through Omeluum’s tendrils, then stills.
The first session takes place within the Society’s workroom. Towering counters rise around Nim on every side, crowded with dissecting trays, specimen jars, annotated diagrams, and delicate brass instruments, all arranged for researchers far taller than she is. Even standing at full height, she cannot see across the workbenches.
Omeluum waits beside one of them, eyes fixed upon her as she steps close.
“With your permission,” it says, “I would prefer to elevate you before we begin.”
Nim glances up before giving a small nod.
“You may.”
No four-fingered hands close around her waist to hoist her into the air. Instead, she is enveloped by the unmistakable pressure of Omeluum’s psionics. It doesn’t grip her body, but rather the air around it. A tug, and her feet leave the floor. The slow ascent sees her gently released onto the edge of the countertop.
Even then, Omeluum is far taller than she is. Its alien face rests above eye-level, and she still has to crane her neck to meet the pale yellow glow of its irises.
A faint ripple passes beneath the skin at Omeluum’s temple.
“You remain certain?” it asks.
“I would not have agreed otherwise.”
It lifts both arms before itself, sleeves slipping back to reveal thick forearms; worn slate with amethyst veins. Nothing in the motion hesitates or corrects itself. One arm rises vertically, while the other cuts clean across the air.
For a moment, nothing happens.
The first kiss of contact is the splash of geothermal pools after too long beneath earthen toil. It’s the anticipated return of basalt batolisks as the behir mating season wanes, or the moment the blimbleberries gain sentience.
It just about brushes the edge of her consciousness, and Nim wants to sink boneless to the workbench, letting it fill every unoccupied space inside her thoughts.
Omeluum—purple, ponderous, a whale moving vast across subterranean sea floors—delves deeper into her psyche.
It opens her up—orchid unevenness, tissue disused, a cold sip of gogondy’s ruby rich fish-silt, thick and overwhelming against the lips.
Here, it sifts—mother’s spine-of-Grick-comb parts her hair, the starry nose of a burrowing mole, a Callarduran cleric’s sharp glare.
It is comforting, to yet again have someone crawling through her brain. Every nerve in the torso, limb and head rejoice at mass where no mass ought to occupy. At another consciousness touching hers.
Whenever this has happened previously—when she has accidentally caught a glimpse of dragon wings unfurled against the black starfall of Lae’zel’s inner world, or felt Mysta’s gaze drop to her throat—it had been an incidental slip. Like walking past an open door and seeing a stranger’s life laid bare in a brief fragment.
This is different.
Where previous telepathy fumbled, Omeluum is purposeful. Each new intrusion waits upon the last, giving her time to part around its advance. Sensation spreads through her in dense mycelial webs. Her brain makes a mould that it pours itself into. She startles at the immensity of it; the black eyes of an abyss staring back.
The moment that her mouth opens—involuntary and wished, written and unfixed—Omeluum draws back. It retreats from her mind with terrible gentleness, like roots easily unearthed from wet soil. It leaves her reeling. Stuck in too firm a shape. Straining for the closeness of another intellect.
“There are remnants,” Omeluum says after a long silence. “Not of the parasite itself, but of the pathways it established during habitation. Your mind still answers certain forms of contact with unusual receptivity.”
Nim’s fingers tighten once against the edge of the workbench.
“It does not appear harmful,” Omeluum continues. “Though the extent of the alteration remains unclear. I would prefer to continue these examinations.”
Nim nods, still dazed. “All right,” she whispers.
In the second session, they hit a wall.
She feels Omeluum, in all their psionic might, pressing against the neurological absence her tadpole once occupied, and stopping just short of it. Rope too short, well dug too deep. Either way, its bucket is empty.
The smooth skin across Omeluum’s brow tightens faintly. One pale hand closes slowly into itself.
“I cannot delve as deep as I wish to,” it explains. “Not without drawing from stores I had wished to preserve”
Nim knows what it means. Omeluum only feeds sparingly; brains without use are difficult to find, and their Society is not a violent one.
A beat of hesitation passes between them.
“Physical contact may permit deeper access" it says at last.
She swallows. “Physical contact is fine.”
A pause before the tentacles move. The first contact lands softly in her hair, her white braids gathered and carefully drawn away from her face. The touch to her temple is cool. From sight alone, she would have expected wetness; they catch the light with the same glossy shine. Instead, they possess the smooth slip of polished scales, or heavy silk drawn lightly across skin.
The contact deepens. Water floods the bucket with satisfying weight. Omeluum makes a deep, pleased sound. Not in her mind, but physically; the hidden movement of something soft and concealed within its anatomy.
“Ah. Excellent,” it draws slowly through her thoughts, downwards, downwards, down…
…wedged deep within the family burrow, packed beneath layered rothé-wool blankets beside the restless sprawl of sleeping siblings. Nim is seven; too old for the cherished place between her parents, and too young to not miss it.
Someone from the younger litter—Thuld, she thinks—has crawled into her arms during the night; she can feel tiny feet wedged against her ribs. Beside her, Brilza mutters drowsily and drags half the bedding away in her sleep.
Nim hears her father’s heavy breathing near the tunnel mouth. Beyond the woven curtain covering the entrance, a river of dark water grinds steadily against the rocks.
The last traces of contact peel slowly from her thoughts. By the time Nim fully returns to her current self, Omeluum has already withdrawn its tentacles.
“Your recollection remained exceptionally vivid under examination,” it says. “Thank you.”
Nim stares at it. She had not known it was there to be seen.
The burrow’s warmth lingers in her body far longer than the vision does.
That night, Blurg rests against the arm of the couch nearest the fireplace, broad hands occupied with the slow repair of a satchel split along one seam. A basket of sewing tools rests open beside him; thick needles, spiderweb-fibre thread, scraps of worn leather gone pale with age. Fungal logs hiss quietly in the hearth.
Nim sits beside him with a book spread open across her knees, the page unchanged for several minutes now.
“It can be overwhelming at first,” Blurg says without looking up.
Nim glances over the edge of her book. “What is?”
“The experience of sustained psionic contact.” He pulls the needle through the leather, his lips thinning with concentration. “The silence afterwards,” he adds.
“Most people expect the opposite. That the intrusion itself will be the difficult part.” A small smile touches his mouth. “I reacted rather poorly myself,” Blurg admits. “The silence became difficult to tolerate once I had grown accustomed to the opposite.” He glances towards her. “You, however, seem to be taking it rather well.”
Nim thinks of warm blankets. Of heavy breathing in the dark. Of another consciousness moving carefully through the shape of her thoughts.
“It was not unpleasant,” she admits quietly.
“No,” Blurg says. “Usually, it is not.”
The third session marks a routine.
Nim arrives before Omeluum does. The workroom is still empty when she steps inside. She paces the length of the room once before forcing herself still. The waiting changes once she understands what lies beyond it. Stillness lasts less than a minute.
It barely makes a sound as it approaches. The thin drag of hems across stone, and then the clean click of the door. Nim’s pulse is already answering it. Omeluum’s levitation sends it surging higher still. The movement of robes drawn close against elongated limbs adds another step for her heart to climb. When the tentacles finally settle against her temples her pulse is racing beneath her skin—a furious rush of blood.
She opens more quickly now.
Omeluum fills the space just as fast.
Blurg makes her favourites.
There is salted blindfish served over fermented moss. Pale cave roots dipped in glowgrub sauce. A velvet-cap soup that stains her tongue deep indigo.
Large russet hands uncork a bottle of sussur juice. It sings tongue-numbing against the roof of her mouth. They chase it with the liquid fizz of fungal cultures aged in geode beds. She didn’t think Blurg could get any more red, but here it is; the pleasant blush of inebriation sits bright upon his cheeks. Omeluum looks at them with what she thinks is its equivalent of a smile; tentacles briefly tightened before going slack.
“What’s the occasion?” Nim asks as dessert arrives—ice crystals shaved over frozen rothé cream, whipped thick, with a sauce of sweet puffballs reduced into syrup.
Blurg looks sheepish.
“The station has been considerably livelier since you arrived,” he says with a glance to Omeluum. “Particularly at mealtimes. It is… nice, to have someone to cook for again.”
“I fear our ordinary arrangement is somewhat one-sided,” the illithid adds.
Nim grins. A soft laugh. “I’m not complaining. Not even my grandmother can make blindfish like that!” She points a spoon in Blurg’s general direction. “Do not ever tell her I said that.”
Blurg presses a hand solemnly against his chest. “I shall carry the compliment to my grave.”
That wins him another laugh.
The warmth lingering in Blurg’s face softens into something quieter. He glances briefly towards Omeluum before looking back down at the melting rothé cream in his bowl.
“We are glad you stayed,” he says after a moment. “More glad than I suspect we have properly communicated.”
Omeluum inclines its head once beside him.
“You have become…” Blurg searches briefly for the word. “Rather dear to us.”
The sixth session is the breach. Omeluum finds some sort of residue inside her intellect; places where the mind has bent around the thoughts of others in strange ways. Its tentacles tremble against her temples while its pen scratches rapidly across paper.
Perhaps distracted by this pursuit, it does not keep its own psyche under lock. Thoughts spill loose without sequence.
Hunger sharpened to unbearable clarity by the proximity of living thought.
Brine thick with salt and living enzymes.
The strange grief of exile.
And then, Blurg’s moan as tentacles wrap around his—
Omeluum’s robes shift as it straightens to its full height. It takes a terse step back, its tentacles hanging awkwardly in the air between them.
“Pardon me. It was not my intention to share that,” it says. “Not without permission.”
Nim swallows. Her mouth is dry.
“I—”
“I heard about your last session.”
Blurg sits at the kitchen table surrounded by labelled sample jars and loose pages of notes, carefully measuring hookstalk onto a brass scale. The work keeps interrupting itself whenever the soup requires attention; every few minutes he rises to peer into the pot over Nim’s shoulder, adding herbs, adjusting the heat, stealing tastes from the wooden spoon with complete disregard for his own experiment.
“Oh.” Nim continues grinding lichen into blue-green powder. “What did you hear?”
A warm laugh rumbles through him.
“That you received a rather liberal glimpse of me in a… less than professional moment.”
Heat crawls instantly up her neck.
“I’m sorry—”
“Do not be.” Blurg waves the apology aside with a hand before leaning over the pot to scatter another pinch of spores into the broth. “I cannot say I disliked your seeing it. I only wish the choice had been yours.”
The admission catches her hard enough that she looks up.
Blurg is smiling down at her.
Warm lines crease around his eyes. Embarrassment tilts his mouth slightly to the side. Hearthlight softens the heaviness of his brow.
Nim is first to break eye contact. She becomes fiercely attentive to the state of the broth, leaning over the pot to inspect the lichen floating across its surface. The steam rises hot around her face.
“I hadn’t realised…” She falls quiet and stirs the soup vigorously. “I didn’t know you were together like that.”
Blurg makes an amused sound.
“Not sure there is a ‘like that’ with Omeluum.” His broad nose wrinkles faintly as he smiles. “But it likes the intimacy. And indulging me.”
“I see.”
The seventh session begins in embarrassment.
“I do not mind,” Nim says quietly as Omeluum’s tentacles rest once more to the side of her head. “Whatever you might show or see. It is not a problem for me.”
It stills briefly.
“The direction of inquiry is largely irrelevant at this stage,” it says after a moment. “Only the depth and responsiveness of the connection remains of interest. You may pursue whichever thoughts you wish to examine.”
And so she does.
Sensuality flows strangely through illithid physicality. It flits through sensitive tentacle tips, shudders across its soft cranium, and grips the long spine with creeping awareness. She tastes intellects upon the air the way others sense smells. She covets hungrily the weight of collective awareness, and wishes to sink teeth and tongue and lamprey lips into the soft tissue of grey-matter folds.
Then she finds Blurg; a central pillar of its thoughts.
The weight of his laughter moving physically through his chest. The warm-blooded heat of his mouth. The brief glimpse of thick tongue inside a smile gone suddenly open with surprise.
The contact retracts.
“…You are aware,” Omeluum says with immense patience, “that telepathy is not necessary for observing these things.”
Nim’s eyes fly open.
“Our rooms adjoin,” it continues. “You need only knock.”
Right before the eight session Nim touches herself. She’s still wet from it when she shows Omeluum the memory.
Wordlessly, its voice forms an Oh inside her mind. The pale membranes beneath its eyes tighten.
“Does that… do anything for you?" she asks.
Omeluum reaches her before humiliation can.
“Your pleasure is not uninteresting to me,” it admits. “Nor the degree of comfort required to pursue it so openly. I enjoy your trust, Nimdrelgrim.”
“But it doesn’t….” She winces. “Excite you?”
One tendril lifts briefly from the rest before settling again.
“More than you realise. Just not in the same way it might excite someone like yourself. Or,” it hesitates, “Blurg.”
“Blurg specifically?”
A pleased hum vibrates through the mental connection.
“Yes. Blurg, specifically.”
Here, beneath the shell of the world, evening does not arrive through darkened skies. Instead, the rhythm is felt through habitual ease. It settles gradually into the body; the heavy-limbed calm that follows labour, the quiet of animals in dark of dens, and the slow bedtime of luminous blooms curling close against the cavern walls. Far above, somewhere beyond layers of stone, the surface cools, and mist rises through distant cracks where the day’s heat finally releases its grip upon the earth.
For the three of them, evenings mean the soft scrape of pens, turning pages, and embercup tea simmering on low temperature.
Tonight specifically, it means Blurg and Omeluum comparing notes over easy conversation, their words travelling between couch and armchair as Nim watches the green-cored flames of the fungal log hearth.
“There is something I’d like to try,” she says quietly. Yet loud enough to still Blurg mid-sentence.
When she stands he extends his hand, steadying as she steps closer across the couch. His hands tighten as she wobbles upon the uneven bolster. When she arrives she braces against his shoulder, her fingers gripping sturdiness beneath the thin robes.
“I’d like to test a theory,” she says.
A crooked smile breaks across Blurg’s face. “I believe the Society would encourage intellectual initiative.”
Across from them Omeluum leans forward in its armchair.
Nim moves slowly forward. The kiss against Blurg’s cheek is shy and modest. He goes utterly still beneath it.
Surprise opens plainly across his face; wide eyes, parted mouth, the beginning of a smile arriving slowly enough that she may watch it form. Warmth gathers deep in his cheeks, joyous and private. One large hand tightens around hers.
It is Omeluum who speaks first. “I feel I should disclose that your theory already has considerable support,” it says. From the corner of her eye she sees tentacles moving across its chest.
“I had begun to suspect we were not entirely subtle,” Blurg adds.
The sound of his voice is closer than before. She feels the impact of his words as air upon her cheek. His head has tipped slightly towards her without seeming to move at all. Not enough to presume. Only the quiet tilt of his head, the focus of kind eyes seeking hers, and the sound of shallow breaths leaving audibly through his nose.
When she leans closer this time, Blurg meets her halfway. His broad nose nudges gently against her before their mouths find each other.
The kiss is careful. Warm. Softer than she expected from someone so large. She feels the faint scrape of laugh-lines shifting as his mouth curves helplessly against hers midway through. It’s infectious. When they part she is smiling too.
She does not move far. Blurg’s breath still brushes warm against her mouth.
“You really want this?” she asks.
“Nim,” he says, filling the name with fondness. “You sweet thing.”
His thumb strokes once across her own, while his other hand lifts to tuck stray strands of hair behind the point of her ear.
“Very much so,” he admits, his voice rougher than it normally is.
“And…” She glances at Omeluum. “You’d be okay with it?”
The illithid is studying them, long fingers wrapped around the armrests. She gets the distinct feeling that it has not looked away once. Its pupils shrink into pinpricks. One tentacle coils over another in a languid dance.
“I would welcome it.”
Firelight glimmers wetly across its eyes.
“If you permit it,” it continues slowly, “I would even observe. Or participate.”
She becomes abruptly aware of her own breathing. Each inhale arrives slightly uneven, catching somewhere high in her chest before leaving slower through parted lips. Her fingers twitch once against Blurg’s before tightening.
“I’d like that,” she admits. “Both of them. Both… both of you.”
Blurg glances meaningfully towards the doorway before looking back at her with visible restraint. “I would very much like to pick you up right now.” One heavy hand settles carefully at her waist. “May I?”
Nim nods before she can overthink it.
The grin that breaks across Blurg’s face is immediate.
Then the room shifts sharply beneath her feet.
He lifts her with startling ease, drawing her flush against the wide warmth of his chest until instinct takes over and her legs close automatically around his hips. One of his arms settles securely beneath her while the other spreads heavy across her back.
She lets out a breathless laugh, mirrored by his smile. He nuzzles against her cheek before carrying her into the corridor.
Nim has never been in their room before.
A spelled lantern hangs overhead, its amber light softened through smoked glass. Shelves line one wall, crowded with notebooks, specimen jars, and loose stacks of paper. Robes hang together from iron hooks nearby; Omeluum’s long dark layers beside Blurg’s broader coats.
The first thing she notices, however, is the bed. It dominates their quarters; oversized, low to the ground, buried beneath a sprawling nest of layered quilts and numerous pillows.
Blurg sets her down carefully in the middle of it before lowering himself onto the edge. The mattress sinks noticeably beneath his weight. Omeluum follows after, a silent hovering presence. Behind it, the door eases shut without visible touch.
“Where would you like to start?” she asks nervously. “I don’t know what you normally do.”
“What we normally do is not of importance,” Omeluum replies, its voice unfolding through her thoughts. “A new variable has entered the equation.”
“Ah. Then…” She looks at Blurg.
He is much easier to read than his partner is. Interest lives plainly in him; in the restless movement of hands against the bedding, the shift of his throat when he swallows, the small glances he keeps stealing towards her mouth.
“What would you like to do?” she asks.
“I’d like to kiss you again.”
The simplicity of it draws her smile.
“A good start,” she allows.
Blurg shifts closer across the mattress. The bed sinks further beneath his weight as he turns towards her. Nim rises onto her knees, leaning upwards while he bows his head slightly.
He begins the movement, but he does not finish it, instead stopping just short of her lips.
Nim leans the final inch herself.
She is met by the immediate loss of his restraint. Blurg kisses with the focus of long anticipation finally given somewhere to go. His mouth moves eagerly against hers; deep steady pressure close enough to endanger breath, and the occasional rough inhale whenever she shifts closer between his legs. One of his hands slides from her waist to the small of her back, keeping her tucked firmly against him. The other hand closes hard against the bedding.
Nim tests the shape of the kiss with a brush of her tongue. A grin takes his mouth before he opens it, holding his row of sharp teeth still as she braves entry.
Venturing deeper into the kiss, the size of his mouth becomes impossible not to notice. She’d not be able to match his maw were he to open it completely. Thankfully, he confines himself to small movements; the minute workings of his mouth against hers, and the mindful touch of his tongue within it.
Omeluum has drifted closer to the bedside.
Its hands remain clasped neatly before it, but the tentacles betray movement the rest of its body does not; slow curling motions, brief flicks at their tips, the occasional tightening against one another whenever the kiss deepens.
Nim lets her hands wander upwards. Blurg’s hair is bound back, as it always is. With careful, careful movements she loosens the tie and feels the heavy grey spill across her fingers. Finer than she expected it to be. It falls softly against the leathery red of his neck.
In response, Blurg’s hands close firmly around her waist; almost large enough to meet across her back. She lets herself be pulled into his lap. Nim grinds against him, grateful for loose pants granting her a generous feel of him, already hardening.
It lasts only a moment. A moment before he lowers her backwards onto the bed, and her eyeline is broken by Omeluum towering above her head. A pulse passes at its temples.
First Blurg draws his shirt over his head. Then he descends against her neck, pointy teeth grazing lightly against her skin. Hands find the buttons of her overdress. She helps him chuck them open. First comes the outer layer; the sleeveless shift of underflax fibre. Then the billowing shirt with fastenings too finicky for his large hands.
When it finally comes undone, he stops, perhaps not expecting skin bared so soon. She lies lavender beneath him, bantam breasts brushed deeper lilac with excitement.
His mouth opens, then closes again.
“Nim,” he says. “You look…” He stops. “Gods.”
Entirely abandoning his previous project, Blurg touches the side of her chest. It's a careful caress; long claws rest lightly across her skin, sending goosebumps shivering outward from the impact. He massages her with his palms, kneading her until her head turns against the bed.
Then, finally remembering her partial undress, his hands lower to her waist. Long nails unspool the drawstrings of her pants, and then he hooks his claws in the waistband of both underwear and trousers alike, pulling them clean off.
When she spreads her thighs, it is Omeluum she is looking at. Patting the bed beside her, she bids it closer. After a brief moment it obeys, gently floating downwards and settling by the side of the bed. The grace of long arms is traded for strength as it holds itself propped close to her head, its oblate face turning intently to the sight of Blurg lowering himself between her legs.
The first contact comes from his hands. The pad of his thumb strokes slowly up her seam, parting the wet skin. She knows his fingers to be too clawed for putting inside, but he caresses her cunt with closed digits, knuckles brushing her clitoris.
Nim’s stomach tightens. Above her head, her hand gropes for purchase. Finally finding it, Omeluum’s fingers close instantly around hers. Its digits are far too long for her grasp; it reaches down across her wrist with grounding pressure. She squeezes back.
It soon becomes clear that Blurg favours his mouth. Previously restrained, he now opens wide. Enveloped by wet warmth she is treated to the firm drag of his tongue. It laps intently, thick muscle of velvet strength. She bites her lip when the broad press of his tongue pushes deeper still.
Omeluum’s voice floats below even her own thoughts. There is a sharpness to it.
“While I enjoy pleasuring him,” it begins, “I cannot sate him by receiving the same thing. Giving—that is something he has wanted for a long time. Let him hear it, dear one.”
The plea echoes insistently through her mind. Let him, let him, let…
The first moan breaks shivering from her lips. “That…” she lets out, and gasps. “Yes, just like that.”
She feels Blurg’s attention sharpen. Narrowed eyes. Fingers tightened against her thighs. His eyebrows drawn inwards in imploring need.
“Good,” emphasised, whispers in her mind.
Her every sound provides impetus for his hungry mouth. When she moans he joins her with a deep rumble against her cunt. She bucks once into his mouth before his grip steadies her again. Her legs are hooked more firmly over his shoulders. Lavender against red. Her legs look so short draped across him.
Above, Omeluum’s attention has gathered upon her face with clinical exactness. The muscles at the base of its jaw shift beneath thin skin. Her fingers tighten hard around its hand.
Nim’s mouth is occupied with other things now; loose sounds, swallowed gasps, lax syllables. When she speaks to it, she does it directly instead, offering the thought across their bond without bothering to shape it into words.
The question is a picture; a heap of cloth slipped past alien limbs.
The answer is illithid fingers undoing its clothing.
Omeluum is gradually unveiled before her. A smooth domain of delicate membranes. Elegant inhuman simplicity; so is the seamless expanse of its purplish grey, unmarred by any unnecessary anatomy. Its body remains unnaturally still, broken only by the slow movement of ribs and breathing slits, and the constant curl of its tentacles.
By the time her eyes can map its naked shape, Blurg has brought her impossibly high. Her breaths rise ragged from her chest. At her temple is the cool caress of Omeluum’s tentacle. She nods her head, the gesture quickly drowned by the restless turning of her head against the bed.
When Blurg’s tongue tips her above the edge, her mind is shared.
Their next kiss is wet, and tastes of salty sap-fingered mushrooms and mosspear nectar. Her hands are clumsy against his chest, his hair, and finally the sash around his waist. Tied too tight for blunt, numbed fingers, he eventually has to help her with it.
His pants are tented dramatically by his straining cock. She watches eager as it springs free, her first thought: Oh. Impossible.
Larger by far than any gnomish cock she’s seen, Blurg rises heavy-rooted from a rough nest of grey curls. The coarse hair only deepens the impression of him; his cock stands out against it, dense oxblood and darkly veined.
So enthralled by the unveiling is she, that she forgets to look at his face at first touch, instead focused solely on the texture; both smooth and rough. The shape is blunt and thick, with dense cording beneath the skin. Pronounced ridges rise like scar tissue along the length of it.
Her hands barely manage the girth of him; broad as her wrist beneath her grip. She traces the unfamiliar shapes to his quickened breaths. Her fingers soothe the cinnabar of the enlarged head. The faint lavender of her skin looks cool against the iron-red.
A strained sound leaves Blurg’s throat when her thumb drags slowly across the head of him. His hips twitch once beneath her hands before he stills them again. She sees the muscles of his stomach tightening.
When she glances upwards, Omeluum is already watching.
Its eyes are lanterns in the dim light; bright beacons betraying intensity.
“Perhaps you’d like to help me,” she suggests.
From its body emerges a low rumbling. It leans down across the bed, tentacles already in motion.
The touch does not settle immediately upon any single thing. One tentacle drifts absently across the bedding. Another traces the inside of Nim’s wrist, lingering briefly above the quick flutter of her pulse before sliding down Blurg’s thigh. A third settles against his stomach, feeling the sharp tightening beneath red skin as his breathing roughens.
Only after the mapping of those wandering touches do they converge upon him. A light touch against the bulbous tip. Omeluum curls pink around it, while another tentacle climbs the base of his shaft.
Its limbs have soon covered him completely. As with stalagmites swallowed by cavegrowth, the cock disappears completely beneath it. Nim watches as the tentacles slide against each other, flexing and constricting in turn. It's a hypnotic movement, like fumarole steam fronds curling instinctively towards the heat of a nearby vent. She follows tendrils of shifting skin, pink into purple into pale.
Blurg throws his head back with a rough sound. Nim watches the muscles jump beneath the red breadth of his back, shoulders tightening sharply before sloping into the mattress.
“Come here,” he beckons, eyes openly beseeching.
He catches her mouth the moment she leans close enough. The kiss is desperate with distraction; broken breaths, rough pressure, the occasional helpless sound escaping him.
Omeluum only draws back once Blurg is panting frantically. When the tip of his cock is weeping, and he’s been flushed and teased a deep mahogany.
“You want to touch him,” it says.
“I—did you see?”
Several tentacles twitch. “Your desires are written plainly, Nimdrelgrim. I need not read your thoughts when I have eyes to see.”
She feels herself blushing.
Nim fits neatly between his knees. When her hands close around him he lets out a ragged breath through his teeth. Hot beneath her palms; he is heavy and twitching. The beads of precum look delicate pearlescent as they spill against the darkened skin.
Blurg is watching her with naked want. The sweetness of his scholarly face is broken by a desperate expression.
He’s already been brought to the brink once, so it doesn’t take long for him to fall apart under her hands.
“Some wizardry?” she suggests. Glassy eyes find hers, but the meaning doesn’t seem to register.
“What?” he manages.
“I have spells,” she says unhelpfully. Her hands squeeze lightly against his head as she moves upward. His eyes wrench shut.
“Yes,” he says breathlessly. A confused nod.
“I could make you feel good.”
Finally, understanding settles across his face. He nods more purposefully.
A scrap of weave is all she needs. Nim reaches into the air and draws something sheer loose from the fabric of the world; a thin shimmering veil that pools weightless between her hands. Night-coloured light slips across its surface in fluid ripples. When she gathers it around her fingers the spell clings softly, silken as water and faintly trembling with contained motion.
The weave settles translucent across his cock, and tingles faintly against her palms as she offers him some initial light strokes. When she can catch his attention upwards, demanding the full meeting of his eyes, she makes it vibrate around him.
Blurg groans.
Her hands tighten around him, holding it flush against the sensitive skin.
He bucks upwards into it.
Nim—”
The word breaks apart beneath another helpless sound. His hand closes hard against her side.
“Please,” he manages. “Gods, please…”
Several uneven breaths pass before he manages words that resemble thought again.
“Come closer,” he says urgently. “Please. I need you closer than this.”
Even his arms, trembling, are able to lift her easily. What she thought would be another needy press against his chest, or some other equally undefined closeness, instead sees her promptly turned around and settled above his face. His hands stay clamped around her legs while his squat little nose grazes the inside of her thigh with instinctive want. A kiss to the soft skin there before he reaches upward, tongue returning to the dampness of her sex.
Her spell is still glimmering across his cock, vibrating around him as he thrusts slightly into the empty air. It is Omeluum who places thick-fingered grips below his knees, to draw them forth, and angle his hips upwards enough that she may still reach.
From this new vantage she can see Omeluum’s full attention on her hands. A hard rhythmic pulse moves visibly through its cranium. When she moves again, drawing the trembling spell slowly across him, the illithid sounds a strange trill and leans further in.
At the urging of Blurg’s hands she rolls her hips against his face. The shift is tentative, and she hears a frustrated snarl taking shape between her legs.
Since Blurg can’t speak, Omeluum speaks for him.
“More,” it insists. “Your full weight, if you please.”
“I don’t want to hurt—”
“He can take it,” comes its response. A shrill edge has entered its unspoken voice. It has lowered itself fully onto the bed now, dark eyes fixed on the movements of her hands across Blurg’s shaft.
Slowly, Nim relaxes her legs.
She spreads wide across his open mouth. The tongue that enters her is long, taper-tipped. At every squeeze of her hands she feels it twitch inside of her, lazy and massive. She uses it as a point of reference: her palms are moving deliberately around his tip, thumbs rubbing spelled weave solidly against his underside, but as soon as his tongue forgets itself and his breathing hits erratically between her legs, she lowers the spell to his base. There, she watches the heavy jut of his cock jolt beneath her eyes, Blurg flexing under the sudden absence of her hands.
She lingers with her hands clasped low around his length, a ring of gentle vibration and barely-there movements. His cock leaks impatiently as she waits. Waits for his attention to return fully to her cunt before drawing slowly upwards again. Lightly first, then gradually narrowing her grip on every stroke. Her fingers find the ridges spanning him, pressing magic closer to the raised skin. Quickly, he returns to trembling.
The third time she does it the points of his claws bite into her flesh. Blurg goes suddenly rigid beneath her. She feels him whimper helplessly against her cunt.
“That is enough,” Omeluum instructs.
The spell slips from her hand like water, pouring down her arms into nothingness. His cock, when she releases it, is glistening in strained shades of dark-dipped red.
It is not Blurg that lifts her, but Omeluum. Its psionics effortlessly spins her in place, before gently lowering her onto Blurg’s abdomen.
She smiles down at him, taken by the moisture spread across his mouth, his hair against the blankets, and the dazed breathlessness with which he gasps.
“Gods, Nim…” he says, every word a labour, “Please. I want you properly.”
The thought sends a thrill through her body. Her palms spread across his chest. Just south of skin his pulse is galloping.
“I’d like that very much,” she says.
When she inches lower—low enough to feel the rigid line of his cock against her backside—his hands grip cautiously around her thighs.
“Wait.”
She rubs lightly against him. He sighs and closes his eyes.
“We should warm you up first,” he lets out. “Before we attempt anything.”
She grins. “I’m feeling pretty warm already.”
“No. Inside. We should…”
Her cunt is aching; an insistent pressure that is throbbing low through her lap, and yet, annoyingly, she knows Blurg is right. It would be foolish to attempt it without first relaxing her muscles for him.
His hands are convulsively wrapped around her legs, claws making barbed indents into her flesh. Sharper still are Omeluum’s fingertips; it will occasionally use them for trimming quills, thin feather shavings falling severed to the ground.
No, if she truly wants to be stretched, there is only one real option available.
“Omeluum?” She twists in place, cranes her neck.
It’s not far away—it’s been edging steadily closer for a while now. Its tentacles are curling together, excitedly coiling themselves in anticipation.
“Yes.”
“Care to assist?”
The first tentacle untangles from its brethren to find her face. It lingers cool against her feverish forehead.
“Please,” she adds, and it twitches against her skin. “You seem terribly eager to put those things on me.”
Forgoing psionics, Omeluum lifts her bodily. She is scooped into its arms, and her thoughts catch briefly on the overwhelmingly smooth texture of its skin; all fungal velvet, worn river stone, or the slick smoothness of subterranean salamanders. Her back is pressed high against its chest, so that she may hook an arm around its neck, her fingers gripping gawkily against its shoulder.
Its hands spread her legs wide. Snaking limbs flit against her inner thighs, returning damp. Just as it did with Blurg before, Omeluum doesn’t immediately strike home. She feels a tendril dip the hollow of her navel. A pink tip flicks against her nipple, while another winds slowly around her arms.
On the bed, Blurg is watching through heavy lids. His cock bobs as he props himself upon elbows, lifting himself higher to watch.
The touch against her temple is familiar by now; algid pressure and unimpeded psychic contact. Omeluum sinks into her mind until her thoughts are something they both occupy.
“You are certain?” it asks.
“You already know I am,” Nim replies.
The first tentacle slips unhurriedly into her cunt. Thicker than at least two of her fingers together, it goes slow.
Blurg’s tongue has left her oversensitive; every inch drags a twitch from her thighs. Nim’s eyes shut in immediate relief. A shudder tears through her body; hands gone weak, her stomach clenching around the sudden satisfaction of finally being filled. The pleasure leaves her loose-limbed, a deep ache spreading thick through her body until even her bones seem to soften with it.
As with lamplight flaring suddenly in a dark space, the first impression arrives too brightly for detail. Her perception strains uselessly against the sheer wash of it, then begins—little by little—to perceive the contours of the thing filling her.
The tentacle sits snug and soft against her insides. It enters her thinning with pliant give, and then, deepening, draws upon underlying resistance. Her cunt quakes, brimful around expanding strength and unexpected firmness.
Omeluum doesn’t drive in and out of her. It opts, instead, to pulse in place. Through their connection she can follow the trajectory of her own synapses. Can feel Omeluum intercepting it.
With access to her brain, finding her pleasure is easy enough for it. It licks along her inner seams, discovering. Shifting muscle solidifies against the place her own fingers never reach quite properly.
The second tentacle presses against her opening.
“I suspect she will feel even better than you anticipated,” Omeluum says. Not to her, but to Blurg on the bed.
He shifts closer on the mattress. A grin is spreading across his face. “Mm,” he rumbles. “You are making it increasingly difficult to remain patient.”
Upon another tentacle slipping inside her, Nim throws her head back against Omeluum’s shoulder. Cheek grinds against its smooth skin. She kisses it, until her mouth fills with moans instead.
Directionless comes Omeluum’s raspy response. She hears only half of it. “... relinquish this.”
Her knees tremble against the widened penetration, but the stern grasp of its hands holds her steady still. There is the familiar sting of being stretched, but Omeluum is mindful enough that it never evolves past a pleasant, thrumming ache.
The thick polypi flex against her in slow, fluid sequence, swelling firm one after the next beneath the slick softness surrounding them. A third has lowered to the outside of her sex, where she shudders from another contraction along their lengths.
On the bed, Blurg bites his lips. A battle for his attention is taking place; his eyes flit constantly between her face and her cunt filled and spread.
“Easy,” he murmurs. “You are doing beautifully.”
Pleasure is a path with richly planted borders. With Blurg, Omeluum had wandered it slowly, pausing to examine the branching veinwork within dark leaves or inhale the nectar of moonmilk orchids in nightly bloom. With her, however, it walks unerringly.
Through the shared bond of their thoughts, the path steepens towards its inevitable end, and Omeluum hastens her down it. She cums shivering, her sobs mirrored by a faint click that passes somewhere within Omeluum’s throat.
Its tentacles slip from her with undulant gentleness. The tips that stroke her cheeks, her lips, the shape of her ears, all leave trails of wet across her face.
Before putting her down on Blurg, Omeluum’s hands shift upon her. The grip that had held her thighs spread loosens, broad palms instead settling beneath them while its touch lingers warm and attentive against her skin.
“Her legs are too short,” it says into both of their thoughts. “Sit upright; she will need you to hold her up.”
Blurg pushes himself upright at once, broad shoulders resting against the wall behind the bed as his hands reach instinctively for her waist and thighs. His breath catches when Omeluum finally lowers her into his lap.
Warmth closes around her from all sides. Her thighs settle across Blurg’s lap while his arms gather tightly around her back, pressing her chest firm against the heat of his own. The contact feels almost feverish after Omeluum’s cool skin.
“Fuck, Nim,” he breathes. “Finally”
Her hands slide upward around his neck. Fingers bury themselves deep in the thick softness of his hair, catching briefly where shorter strands curl damply at the nape. Blurg bows into the crook of her neck with a rough exhale, heat spilling across her skin as he breathes her in.
Omeluum crowds close behind her, a restless presence at her back. Its sinuous tendrils reach past her shoulders and into the shared space. They land wet around her throat, feeling persistently for her pulse. Others grip possessively across their faces; a fumbling slip across her head, while another presses insistently to the grey of Blurg’s temple.
Blurg’s cock rests hot against her stomach. She moves against him, and his exhale shudders against the shell of her ear. Her legs are still weak from the orgasm; she has to strain to lift along his length. Strong hands close around her buttocks, helping to hold her up.
His cock is not uniform the way a gnomish cock would be. Instead of a homogeneous length of flesh, Blurg waits below with irregular, swelling shape. The bulbous tip gives her immediate pause as it presses against her cunt. It spreads her greedily as she descends, taking it into herself with mouth open under visible strain.
After the swollen tip comes a natural rest, before she again feels him widening. Omeluum's tentacle twitches against her forehead. Its hands hurriedly cover Blurg’s.
“Just this, for now,” it firmly instructs.
Blurg makes a guttural sound; something choked, impatient, and very, very loud. Yet, he doesn’t push further into her, instead schooling his eagerness into shallow movements and frustrated grunts.
The slow back-and-forths feel incredible. Nim feels herself go limp in his grip. Her eyes drift close, and her mouth presses damp against his shoulder, accidentally alternating kisses and moans with a faint trail of drool.
Omeluum’s hands remain fixed across Blurg’s. Not until she’s completely relaxed does it let go, allowing him full access to her cunt. He doesn’t move at first—simply eases his hold on her. Her weight does the rest. She sinks down, exerting herself around the widening bulk of his cock.
By the time they are flush, she is panting from the effort of accommodating him.
Blurg straightens, and with a trembling palm across her cheek he makes her do the same. There, he simply looks at her. The lines around his eyes crease as he offers her a smile. Filtered through Omeluum’s dual connection, she feels the pulse hammering in his throat.
Momentarily, she lingers in the bodily relief of no longer containing only herself.
His forehead falls against her own, breath rough and uneven between them. Broad nostrils flare from the strain of his restraint.
Hold tightening, she is gripped by strong, clawed hands—hands that have forgone sword and spear for the benefit of a scholar’s quill. The tentacle pulses at his temple, and through it flows fear, stark and sharp. Beneath it she feels the force with which he is holding himself in check, every movement carefully governed against the possibility of hurting her.
What code does a hobgoblin scholar keep, she wonders. What private principles remain when conquest has been traded for study, curiosity, and gentleness? She wonders, too, if she is testing them now.
Nim smiles. She turns her head just enough to kiss the corner of his mouth.
“You won’t break me, you know.”
Despite her encouragement, the first move is still hers to make.
Her fingers tighten against his shoulders as she tries to lift herself. The effort drags a shaky breath from tender lungs; her legs are still weak beneath her, body softened and oversensitised. Even so, she manages another movement, slow and uneven. Then another. A pattern emerges.
Blurg makes a rough sound low in his throat.
“Nim,” he murmurs warningly, though his hands are already tightening around her hips.
Her next attempt falters halfway. Her weight slips heavily back against him, breath breaking apart into a weak laugh against his mouth.
That seems to decide it for him.
Carefulness yields, little by little, to necessity. One arm secures itself firmly around her while the other steadies her weight, guiding her through the slow rhythm she no longer has the strength to maintain herself.
A strange, warbling call stirs within Omeluum’s throat; wet, resonant, almost cetacean in its depth. The bond carries its pleasure through her before she can guess at the meaning of the sound.
The illithid has settled appreciatively close. She feels the cool length of its body hovering just short of her back.
With every movement Blurg makes—with every thrilling thrust into her cunt—more of Omeluum finds its way onto her body.
By the time Blurg is moaning openly, his eyebrows drawn tight in ardent overwhelm, tentacles are tangling in her hair, becoming one with the white of her braids. Another wraps gently around her throat, still monitoring her pulse.
Blurg squeezes his eyes shut. A groan wrecks his throat, and the last of the tentacles grips her head with surprising strength. One she doesn’t think she could wrench herself out from, lest it permitted it. At the back of her head she feels the ghost of its mouth suckling at her scalp.
From body to brain runs trafficked pathways. Impressions, excitement, the documents of her nerves, all rush past at blinding speed, thick with cognition. To Omeluum, all that traffic has a taste.
“So clever,” it thinks.
“So clever,” it thinks hungrily.
Nim is clever. She knows that the feed for such a mouth is thoughts. It wants to glut itself on the feedback they generate, drink its fill of impressions boiled down to their clearest form, and wash it down with the cerebral confusion of instinct and want.
It is not a wish she resists. The opposite; she wants to completely saturate the sponge of its intellect. Drown it in excess. Wants to offer it the same fullness she has already been given herself.
She lowers her hand, fingers rubbing rapidly against her clitoris. This is for you, she thinks.
She remembers, intensely, the sensation of a spell sparkling across her fingertips. Take this. Take all of it.
Her mind summons the dizziness of combat, her heartbeat whipped into hare-speed. Yours.
Blurg is driving harshly into her now. Yours, too.
Spores falling against an eyelash.
Incense burning on an altar to a forgotten god.
The Elder Brain, immense and wonderful.
Thin strands of thought dislodged, and lost. Yours, yours, yours.
Omeluum’s presence flickers wildly through the sky of her mind, like storm-light skipping between distant peaks, each new thought another place for the current to strike.
The bond grows hazy with excess. Thoughts overlap in softened repetitions, returning again and again to moments Omeluum seems unwilling to relinquish. Its pleasure spills through the connection unchecked.
Through the tentacles threaded through her hair, she feels faint shivers passing intermittently through its body.
Beneath the flood of thought, Omeluum begins to open with almost embarrassing ease. Composure parts softly around the pressure, like overripe fruit splitting under a thumb to expose the pale flesh within.
Blurg is feeding it too. Bouquets of synapses. Presents wrapped with intelligent folds. All flow into Omeluum; the end-point of thoughts.
A centre between them; it becomes their brain.
In her mind, Blurg cums three times.
First the seedbed of sensation: Blurg himself.
His body breaks in involuntary shudders, each pulse matched by the violent jerk of his cock against her walls. Their shared brain gives her a sense of herself; the hot, tight drag of her cunt against the swollen head of his cock. She clenches around him, and feels the sob he grinds out through sharp-bit teeth.
Warmth, pressure, friction; too intense to separate. And then, the blunt physical overwhelm of his body emptying itself. Energy leaves him in pumping bursts. His chest aches from heaving breaths. Everything else drops away. She becomes aware, suddenly, of his heightened sense of smell when he buries his nose in her hair.
Secondly, Omeluum.
The orgasm reaches it as a transmission compressed past ordinary tolerance; instinct, pleasure, muscular exertion, relief, all folded into one. Despite the strain of it, Omeluum receives the signal greedily. Beneath everything else pulses a familiar constant: the profound satisfaction of Blurg’s happiness. The feeling is old in Omeluum now; worn deep by years spent beside him, but it still holds the same shape. Love blooms bodily through its brain.
Thirdly, herself.
After an evening of careful restraint, Blurg’s claws finally break the skin. It's a small nick. Nothing really.
His face is impossibly red, cheeks deepened by blood pooling just beneath the skin. Thin lines field his face like delicate lamellae on a mushroom's fragile underside. She likes the parting of scarlet lips to reveal pink. The tremble that runs through his ears. The warm wetness spilling steadily down onto his legs.
Nim raises her hand to touch his chest, his chin, the tentacle still cradling his temple. She kisses each of them.
They do not speak again until later, when damp cloths have cleaned the evidence of sex from their bodies and the lights have been lowered over the intimate heap of cooling limbs.
Nim lies tucked between them.
Blurg’s immense body rises and falls heavily beneath her cheek, every breath sinking him deeper into drowsiness. One arm remains fixed around her even in rest, hand spread broadly between her shoulder blades.
Beside them, Omeluum has drawn its tentacles close against its body, their occasional twitching movements suggestive of lingering oversensitivity.
Under dark’s blanket she smiles to herself.
“Well,” she says, “I think the experiment was a success.”
Blurg emits a rough, sleepy grunt of agreement.
“Replication remains an important part of the scientific process,” Omeluum notes.
One of its tentacles uncurls towards them again.
