#dirgeposting

I am an anticolonist first and foremost. I agree with communists on many fronts but do not identify as one.

anyways this is the new home of the blogger formerly known as absolvedGravitas! i got nuked. now im back! i'm a nishnabe dyke in my 20's and i've been on tumblr on and off since like... 2014 or so. i'm deeply annoying and i'm not sorry. if you see me using we/us to refer to myself its not a system thing i just like using the royal we. reblog nsfw stuff so consider yourself warned.

got my history BA (emphases on medieval Islamicate & colonial studies) in may of 2024 🎉

real name rights belong to mutuals only if you use it and we arent mutuals im blocking you <3 if you gotta call me something call me VV/ViVi

^literally me

unless were mutuals i prolly wont answer your dms but my ask box is always open

i dont actively vet followers but know that if i catch you following me as a minor i WILL block you, and if you're 18-20 you get one strike before i block.

my main tags are:

#spinning my web - original posts

#caught in the web - asks

#social spiders - mutuals moment!

#👽 - aliens and space stuff

my house, my rules

I dont owe you anything and if you act like I do you can go fuck yourself. This is my blog and I'll do what I want with it.

Something is watching her. Buried warmly in the reprieve of dreams, Minthara feels it still. A sharp, beady gaze levelled on her. There is a malicious hunger to it, and even fast asleep it raises her hackles. But not enough to stir. No, tonight her sleep weighs on her like a comforting blanket, smothering and stillmaking. Often are her dreams plagued with anxieties in the night, revisiting paranoid recollections again and again, hunting for deceit, for openings, for weakness. Better still than the trance, being left to her thoughts as the hours drag slowly, painfully by, the hollowing silence begging to be filled by the deafening echo of Her Will. There never seems to be enough in the day to fill the air with her musings, and it always, always, falls back onto the well walked path of habit, a temple despoiled, an altar blasphemed, and though the crumbling walls of her memory call out for prayer, there is no god worth entreating here. No capricious Spider-Queen, and now no damning All-seeing All-loving sham. The Absolute has ceased to fill the quiet with Her commands, but the silence of Minthara's trance waits for them nonetheless. Better, far far better, to asphyxiate in the noxious haze of slumber. But as of late, her dreams have softened. The sharp needlesting of paranoia stabs just a touch gentler. She attributes it to the tangled form of the tiefling twisted through her arms, his back to the opening of her tent, just too tall to fit comfortably in his entirety within her hammock, so his tail hangs loose over the side, the tip brushing the ground, twitching at the slightest provocation. The sensation of his warm breath stirring the loose strands of her hair, the sleepy affectionate kisses placed thoughtlessly along her collarbone and neck, and, truthfully, the mans aggressive insomnia, does much to settle her into a comfortable rest.

The past few nights have progressively eased into a habit of slumber over trance, and so, securely ensconced as she is, when the pinpricks of her nerves bristle all along her form, she takes note, but does not stir. When her sleep feels more like a weight upon her chest, than the languid unspooling of muscle and tension, it is not so alarming as to catch her attention, to shift into battle readiness with the alacrity due her station. Just nerves, she feels. Just nerves, and a lacking familiarity with proper sleep.

Until there are five clawed fingers clamped around her shoulder, shaking with spasmic force.

Her body snaps to attention before her mind does, sitting upright even as her thoughts sluggishly follow behind, but her hand does not go to the dagger beneath her pillow, so she hasn't perceived a threat or intruder yet. What she does notice, is that there is no weight settled in her arms or lanky limbs twisted through her legs. Blearily rubbing her eyes, her lover comes into focus slowly, crouched down by her side. Her voice comes out husky from sleep, and she makes no effort to disguise the sensual affection in her tone.

"So eager for my touch already, ust-nor? And I was under the impression our last bout had thoroughly exhausted you." She smirked mischievously up towards him. Her lover shakes his head, the motion drawing her gaze as her vision clears.

"Its-no, I-"

His eyes flick throughout the tent, never settling. Minthara sees now that his expression is drawn, tight, his jaw clenched, his face pale. Out of habit she reaches her mind towards his, expecting the intertwining of fingers, soft hazy edges bleeding over into her own, but instead her mental probe thuds into a wall, smooth, perfect, and devoid of any cracks to wedge a finger into, cold and blank.

"You're in danger, we need to act fast." His eyes flick to hers and then immediately away. At the word danger Minthara has already swung her legs off the side of her hammock and is rising to meet him, her mind clearing in an instant, her hands meeting his.

"Khal'abbil, tell me, we will meet it together."

His attention never settles, darting around the increasingly cramped feeling tent. His tail twitches and she hears the taptaptap of its tip thwapping the ground sporadically and without rhythm. Though his mind permits no entry, the emotions coursing through him are strong enough that her tadpole picks up on them anyways. Potent nausea, shame, guilt, fear. His words are clipped, sentences functional and devoid of accessory, a caller in the night and the visitation of horrors upon the breath of sleep, but as he speaks a bout of vertigo sweeps through him strong enough to buckle his knees and he starts to crumple, necessitating Minthara to swoop in to support him. As she braces him against herself, his voice trembles with barely restrained anxiety, its timbre scraping against her ear.

"Madness will take over my body against my will, and I will kill you."

Minthara scoffs, a tremble hidden within her steel spine, her arms strong against his shivering form as he stands again.

"You will be compelled to try, I am sure, but I have yet to command a hound who remains capable of biting the hand that feeds it."

She gingerly runs a finger underneath the collar wrapped around the pale azure of his throat, her thumb grazing the buckle of it.

"I sincerely doubt that whatever force driving you to such irrationality will retain enough of its strength to best me after it has thrown itself against the fortress of your will."

She took his hands in her own, burying the stabs of rising panic in the sensation of his callouses. He avoids her gaze, still, fidgeting with her fingers.

"I just wor-"

Before the words finish leaving his mouth he sways, his hands in hers suddenly leaden, stumbles a step backwards to try and steady himself, and Minthara gets a perfect view as his eyes roll back back in his skull before he tips forward, dead weight, and there is a sharp CRACK as his head hits the ground hard, bouncing once before he goes completely still.

"STRAJ!" The expletive tears itself from her mouth before she finds herself at his side, hands hovering over him as power gathers in her fingertips, but then. Her thoughts skip back, unbidden, cautious and risk averse. When he falls unconscious next...

Minthara stays her hand. Dirge lies there on the floor of her tent, more still than she's ever seen him, and for a single illogical moment she fears hes dead. She holds herself from acting, a self inflicted petrification, and watches. His lashes flutter weakly, and she sees only the faintest slivers of crimson iris, the ghost of a burning glow of his pact marked eye hidden beneath half closed lids. Unconscious then. Cautiously she reaches out and brushes his feathery black hair away from his face. A thin trickle of blood makes its way down his forehead from where he hit the ground. The twin black spires of his horns remain uncracked. His skin, normally a faint blue, has gone pale and clammy. Clawed fingers twitch intermittently against the barren compacted soil of the shadow cursed lands. Moving gingerly so as to not risk awakening him, Minthara delicately reaches over to move his hand, slightly, slightly, to test his reaction, and then boldly takes it within her own, squeezing tight, a motion she knows from experience he always returns.

He does not awaken. Dirge's mouth remains slightly agape, the faintest hint of the first of many canines just visible. His mind remains closed off and cold to her. More confident now, Minthara moves with haste to the collection of supplies she keeps within reach of her hammock, prepared for emergencies that did not permit the luxury of dawdling. She gives a withdrawn rope an experimental tug, and it holds itself under strain. It will have to do. It goes tucked underneath her arm, and she sets herself to the task of restraint. A moment of thought. No not here. Too many weapons easily within reach. Outside. Easier to summon aid from there anyways. Minthara moves as she thinks, rolls him onto his back, what if the rope catches on his claws?, she grabs below his shoulders and hoists, should probably bind his legs as well, his head thumps backwards against her knees and he groans weakly, is there any support to tie him too?; his body is corpse heavy in her arms and she drags and drags, out and out, just far enough to give her a split second to react if he bolts, before she lets go and rolls him again. Face down in the dirt, he shifts slightly, and she fears he is coming to already, so her hands move with a speed she did not fully know they were capable of.

Wrists together behind his back, two loops then three then another just to be sure, knot tight enough to cut off circulation, a problem addressable later, and experimentally she bends a digit down towards the pulse of his wrist and curses to herself when the keen edge of a claw can graze the fibers. He makes a muffled noise of confusion below her and her thoughts sharply snap this current concern away into a future issue, and she sets herself to the task of binding his ankles together. She moves faster, he isn't as flexible here so theres less worry of wriggling loose, and shes free to be a little sloppier in her work, prioritizing speed over meticulousness. Bound, taut, he has not yet awakened, but he stirs, eyes scrunched closed and his brow furrowing as he shifts and twists, the small movements of one still caught in dream. She hovers over him, stuck in a moment of consideration. There may not be much time, should she risk...? His hands writhe and a claw catches on the rope, and her mind is made. She twists, moves, motion following purpose, a single line of action towards a lone goal, reaches out and-there. She has it, comforting handle wrapped in worn leathers, familiar weight, but behind her-

"Mmmminthara? Minthara?"

Stiff. Then-relaxed. At ease. Nothing is wrong. Yet. Walk back out. Nothing is wrong. Duck beneath the tent flap. Nothing is wrong. How many steps? Two, three, four- watch his motions. Nothing is wrong. He tugs at the wrist binds. Shifts languidly, attempting to stretch, the same motion shes seen and felt a dozen times before. Nothing is wrong. Move closer, ankles are still bound taut, good, his head swivels down as he tosses his locks, familiar, habitual. Nothing's wrong.

Yet.

Dirge's voice slurs slightly, from exhaustion or from the impact of his forehead against the ground, Minthara can't tell. He contorts on the ground to face her, his eyes opening blearily.

"Mm? Minthara? What happened?"

She sits down across from him with careful practiced ease. Sits with her knees up, one arm casually draped across them, the other gripping her mace, pointedly relaxed. She scans his face, gaze eventually settling on his eyes, and finds herself searching them intently for signs of.... something. She doesn't know what shes looking for, but whatever it is, she doesn't find it. Dirge blinks a few times, coming more into awareness. This time, when he speaks, its perfectly clear.

"Did-did I pass out?"

She makes a confirming hum.

"You did."

"Shit, fuck, did I- are you alright? Did I do anything?"

Somethings wrong. She can't pin it down. But something in the back of her brain is shouting, warning, alarmed. He [twists] to angle himself more towards her, leaning in her direction.

"You went down like a stone. I scarce had time to move you from the tent. Your head took quite a blow. Are you alright?"

Minthara tilts her head, equal parts calculating and concerned. He did land quite hard. If she hadn't been so surprised, she might've caught him. Then again, a conspiratorial instinct whispers, it might be for the best you did not have time to try. Her lover rolls back more onto his shoulders and tosses his hair away from his face as he attempts to examine himself, the bright streak of crimson on blue made more evident by the loose strands of black hair caught in the sticky wound.

"I-oh, hrm. I hadn't even noticed. I don't even feel it, truthfully."

Mismatched crimson eyes flick back to meet her own.

"But is that it? Did anything else happen?"

The whisper moves closer to the front of her mind. He wants you to say it. Say you bound him and tied him for no cause at all, so his silver tongue can cut himself free.

She sighs, more exhausted than exasperated.

"There was scare time for anything at all to happen. Truthfully, I am still waiting."

His eyes flick to her mace, then back to hers. Good. The ball is in your court now.

He sighs and slumps into the dirt.

"Oh thank goodness. I was so terrified, I- I thought I might. That I might have done something, especially given these."

He pointedly tugs on both sets of binds.

"But you are unharmed? Truly?"

Minthara makes a point of reclining slightly.

"Truly. At most my heart had quite a jolt."

"Then-" His eyes flick away from hers. The hair on the back of her neck raises.

"Then what do you suppose we do?" His gaze meets hers, then slides away and down. Submissive. Ashamed. Harmless.

"Mm. I intend to wait with you."

He blinks twice, confused.

"To-to wait?"

"Mmhm. To wait."

"That... is unlike you."

"Is it? It is a fool that rushes into unknown territory. I believed you when you warned me, when you were scared. I do not dismiss such concerns lightly."

He makes a thoughtful sound deep in his throat. She knows how it feels, the rumble of it in his chest, moving up into his throat to sit behind his teeth.

"No, you're right. That makes sense." He sighs and adjusts, presumably for comfort.

"Its just- its rarely a pleasant experience, being bound like a dog."

Minthara quirks an eyebrow at that, and allows the corner of her mouth to twitch upwards playfully. Dirge scoffs, matching her. Playacting.

"Oh you know what I mean. This is a far cry from how I usually find myself."

His expression goes more serious.

"How long do you intend to wait this out?"

A fair enough question. She considers it seriously. Until he is well and truly himself, is the answer, but how long to be sure?

"Mayhaps until dawn?"

"Dawn? That's hours from now."

"Indeed it is." You don't like that. Tell me why. Say it to me.

She's scrutinizing him, she knows. Its starting to feel like shes chasing ghosts. Minthara would swear she saw something flicker through his expression, something calculating. But with her attention so fixated, what is inconsequential and what is life threatening? At this degree of focus, they look the same.

She used to be better at this. She used to be the best at this. No, now isn't the time for reminiscing.

"It will be a long night then."

"Mm. So it will be. Such is the price of certainty."

"I'm sorry. I'm depriving you of an entire night of rest."

Minthara shrugs.

"Such is the way it must be."

He rolls flat onto his back to gaze up at the flat black expanse of a curse darkened sky. She dares not brush against his mind. Every battle tested nerve in her body twitches the same message. The danger has not yet passed.

"So you'll be keeping me trussed up all night until you're satisfied then?" There it is.

"No, not until I am satisfied. Until I am certain." Minthara adjusts her position, moves her mace from her side to in front, balancing it on the weapons head, hands resting on its pommel between her knees. Front and center. Implicit threat.

"How do you intend to be certain?" He isn't looking at her mace, instead holding eye contact. Meeting your gaze. Challenging.

"...I simply will be."

"Thats... vague."

"Mm. You will have to content yourself with that, for now."

"I'll... try. It's just..." He breaks eye contact, looking back to the sky. He shifts his shoulders, clearly uncomfortable.

"How will you know? How can you tell?"

She ponders for a moment, drumming her fingers on the mace's pommel. The answer is deceptively simple.

"Easily. You will tell me."

He snaps his head towards her at that, brows furrowed in confusion.

"But- I feel fine, now."

"Mm. Clearly. But are you, actually?"

He tries to tilt his head, lying there in the dirt still.

"I... yes? I passed out, but as you yourself said, nothing happened. Aside from a minor injury to myself."

She does not respond. The quiet drags itself between them for a moment. He breaks the silence.

"We are here, waiting, to see if something is going to happen. By your own admission, nothing has already happened. So why-"

She cuts him off with raising a single hand.

"I did not say nothing happened. I said I was unharmed, and that there was scare time for anything to occur."

Minthara lets steel enter her gaze and pin him to the ground.

"I am waiting to see, in fact, if something has already happened."

Her lover makes a frustrated sound and visibly tugs on his wrist binds, sighing.

"I-Minthara. You have to know how that sounds. You're being paranoid."

Wrong. All wrong. Her grip tightens on her mace as every single nerve screams at her. That's not how he says your name.

No stupor slurs his voice, he is clear eyed and awake. The wrongness is clear and unhidden for a single half instant. It is the tone of something trying very, very hard to disguise itself, to say her name the way a lover would, to curl around its syllables and make itself soft and gentle. But that isn't how he says her name. To hear him say it, it is as if he would pluck the celestial choirs from the heavens to capture just a fragment of the melody of it. A hushed devout reverence, warm and saturated with affection, a delectable offering her proffers only rarely. There is so much love in her name when he says it that for a moment it becomes a language entire, and so he says it only rarely, but every single time it strikes a spark within him that suffuses his features with its glow. She feels it every time she melds her thoughts with his, a devotion as reliable as the tide, an intensity that rivals the glinting divinity that bursts from the point of her mace into a conflux of radiance and pain.

It says her name like a lover would, certainly, but not her lover. Not her hound. It can sense the shift in her, she can feel it, but it doesn't know what went wrong. It tries again. It shifts onto Dirge's side, and gives a small disarming smile, and Minthara feels nothing but the awareness that she has not seen his hands in some time now.

"Minthara, please. Shouldn't we wait this out together? I don't want to keep you here, staring me down while I writhe in the dirt all the hours til daybreak."

His tail twitches. Minthara doesn't know if the movement is purposeful or automatic. It doesn't matter.

"Our current arrangement suits the matter at hand quite well. No, I don't see any particular reason to change it."

"Minthara, come now, you must see that you're reacting disproportionately? I'm fine, you're fine, this is unnecessary. Whatever danger remains, I should be at your side, not here at your feet."

"No, I think you'll do just fine where you are, actually."

It lets its frustration show on Dirge's face.

"Minthara, please. Come now. Release me."

"No."

"Minthara, please, this is getting ridiculous. Let me up."

"No."

"Minthara. Release me. Let me out."

"I will not."

It tugs sharply on its wrist binds, pushing a growl out of Dirge's throat.

Minthara straightens her back and looks down at the pathetic wriggling thing. She refuses to play pointless games any longer than necessary.

"Allow me to be clear, to save you any trouble. I will not be allowing you to get up, or get out, in any capacity, until I am assured beyond a reasonable doubt that he is returned to me. You will sit there, and writhe fruitlessly in the dirt to no avail, and you will either abandon this endeavor, or come morning I will drag you kicking and screaming to the center of camp where every last person here will keep you useless and restrained until I get what I want. Is that understood?"

It took a moment to fully grok the entirety of what she said, and then she watched as its expression flicked between angry, incredulous, confused, before it settled on something that could possibly pass for the face of a lover, unduly scorned and told they would be spending the night on the couch, and to that end it even had the gall to scoff at her.

"I don't know what you think is going on, but-"

"I have no intention of debating with you, vermin. You have been duly informed of what the next several hours of your existence will look like, as a courtesy owed to the flesh you currently inhabit. Satisfy yourself with that, and with silence."

It stared at her a moment, in shock. Then, after a beat, it relaxed, and started to chuckle, and Minthara could hear just beneath the wry amusement, a cold calculating cruelty.

"You treat me as if I've become a stranger to you! That's cold. Especially when we're SO well acquainted."

"I may be acquainted with the man who's face you wear, but I do not know you. Nor do I care to."

It spoke next in a trilling sing-song, mirthful and mocking.

"Liarrrrrr, lying little Minthara~. You must feel it, deep in your blackened soul, you must know what I am to you."

It laughed, cutting and malicious, ringing out like the sound of a bell.

"A gift, a gift, yes, I will offer to you a gift, a wedding token!! Enlightenment for one so utterly dull and deliberately stupid"

Having fully given up on its ruse, Minthara watched impassively as it dropped the saccharine veneer of affection, its expression twisting her lover's features into something equal parts sharp edged and hungry. It caught her gaze with its own, and the razor thin scars cut deep into Minthara's back began to ache horribly.

"It wasn't painless." Minthara inclined her head slightly to the side, confused.

"Paralysis had begun to set in, neurotoxic, attacking her nervous system, unable to move her tongue well enough to form words. Able to do naught but suck in air and wheeze it back out as her lungs began to stiffen." Her blood froze in her veins, her body going very, very still.

"It settled in her stomach first, a burning agony that spread up into her chest, then moved into her limbs. She had the sensation of asphyxiation, and of choking on vomit, all at once. In the Pits, when the Draegloth come to shred her flesh asunder, she screams your name into the dark, and with each breaking dawn her only peace is the silence that follows when you are not there to answer her."

It rolled her lover onto his back, arching his back up to pull uselessly at the binds restricting his arms, his neck bent sharp for it to maintain eye contact with Minthara.

"You are known to me, Minthara Baenre, and you will know me further still. You think this one will be different? He will awaken with your gore painting his skin and the muscle of your ventricle still caught between his teeth, or you will put him down like a dog, like a hundred other lovers before him. "

Minthara shifted her sitting position slightly, her face a careful neutral mask.

"Tell me, beast, do you usually waste so much time on your hunts painting fictions for your amusement? Or is this an honor you've reserved solely for me? I must know if I am to react with the appropriate amount of respect, as due your station amongst the lowest of degenerate predators."

It laughed and laughed, the sound rolling out of Dirge's throat like thunder, and the death saturated ground beneath him seemed to soak it into itself.

You felt it before you saw it - something squirming within shriek-feeling kin! before you heard the snapping of bones, smelled the rich scent of iron in the air. Poor nobody-woman, Fist turned cultist turned monster, but she was nothing, no one, and now she's gone, unmade before your eyes as within her skin something new, resplendent, awful, rips its way out to a horrid, panicked birth. It's first moments are fear, dread, defensiveness, its first lungful of air part and parcel with understanding its first thought - SEEK AND DESTROY - but in those precious heartbeats, you are already moving, predator meeting prey. It is born - it sees you, feels you - it understands - it fights, but you are there and its world is already over. It is nothing but terror, delicious and acrid, and as your hands stretch to meet its soft, gore spattered skin, it has already mastered its legs with a speed that makes you jealous. Oh if only your own first moments had been so skillful! Its heel pushes back off the wooden floors and then - up and away it floats, your clawed hand clutching empty air. But it isn't enough, not for you. Mayhaps if it was entangled with the faerie instead. It leverages its impressive psionic might to push itself back, away, and repulses you, but another step has you close the distance regardless and your heart swells with joy the moment your raised fist meets tender meat.

If the nymph sees your face, she says nothing, or maybe there isn't time for it. A savage grin cuts your features, eyes blazing with delight, as you grab a fistful of its face tentacles, drag it forward - helplessly its hands come up, to blast, to claw, you don't know - and your fist connects again, and as it does the familiar rush of power surges through and out, a blast of eldritch force carries it back, away, and two of its tentacles rip clean off as its back slams against the wall, and then forward again into you, bounced against unforgiving physics. 15 feet is your limit, but you can push them every time you connect, and in the shared language of thought that pulses in the air between you, you feel it understand, bone deep, what the last moments of its life will be. Its body lurches forward towards you, but you have already readied a second blow. Theres a hideous crunch as you feel its ribs turn concave beneath your knuckles, its shoulders colliding against pitiless wall, and again, a third blow, and this time iridescent blood sprays you like the swell of the tide. Psychic power ripples against the surface of your mind, a thousand probing digits seeking to dig and tear and rip, but your mind is cold steel and compressed will, and it finds no purchase.

The hot blood invigorates you, a barebones trickle of water drizzled overtop the all consuming blaze threatening to swallow your mind, and you ride it to pin the illithid as it tries to regain its footing. Your body twists and your hands come down, again again again, and it feebly tries to claw at you, anywhere it can reach, useless desperation, but you are inexorable, you are armageddon, you are the end and you are here. Overwhelmingly, inescapably, you are here. It is a ruin of meat and bone as you finish, panting hard from the rush, its limbs twisted from sockets as the force from your blows contorted its torso, mangled and pulped its soft skull.

Your bloodlust must be palpable, filling the air like a suffocating fog. This meager offering wasn't enough, not nearly enough. You need more, your fingers twitch with desire, compulsion, instinct, Urge, and you are halfway intending to shred the rooms remaining occupant before her voice shocks you from the haze.

"Hells - I'd heard tales of mind flayers. Talons sharp as daggers, and tentacles yet more fearsome."

Not that it got the chance to demonstrate either, you think to yourself.

The womans voice - the nymph's voice, you correct yourself - is soft and lilting, gently inviting. Otherworldly creature that you are, you can feel the ethereal strangeness about her, and the fascination of it is enough to stay your hand for a moment. When you turn to face her, your expression must be a nightmare, you can feel the flat coldness of it, but she continues unperturbed.

"But no tale did justice to its ethereal beauty. It floats like a butterfly, its blood shimmers like silver."

There is undisguised yearning in her voice, bold and shameless, and it caresses your spine like a lover would. Behind your eye, your worm writhes self consciously.

You cast a glance back towards the heap of gore you left on the floor. There is truth in her words. In all its alien strangeness, there is a quiet elegance, married to its murderous potential. For something such as you, its appeal needs no explanation.

Your voice is a low, drawling murmur, rumbling within your chest as you pitch yourself down, an attempt to maintain some semblance of privacy.

"Your client is dead. I thought you'd be more upset."

"Who? Oh yes - Jara. I will miss her coin, it's true. Though perhaps this is not what you meant."

A half smile flitted across your face at that. A familiar flippancy. Why waste time and thought on the walking dead? Everything that mattered existed solely in the now.

"Free your mind of her. Let us look forward, not back."

Heedless of the blood splattering your person, or perhaps enticed by it (likely the latter), she closed the distance between you, effortlessly stepping into your personal space. Your fingers twitched, her warmth and nearness stirring the heat within you. You could smell her, so powerfully clear now. Sea foam and rain, vistas of dew kissed flora swaying in an unhurried breeze. The way a placid lake tugs on the soul, conspiratorily inviting you to slip within its depths and let the waves lap overhead. She was small next to you, but her presence fills your senses with the same fulfilling totality the Grove did. You know without doubt her touch would be akin to a cool hand against feverish skin.

You want to ravage her, taste her flesh between your teeth, feel the hot gush of her blood on your fingers. She can feel it, pulsing off of you in waves. She smiles, coaxing, and traces a finger down the lines of your jacket, while you hold yourself so very still, and watch.

Her gaze intensifies. Your breath quickens, and your heart skips a beat.

Realization dances across the surface of your thoughts. The woman's senses are heightened, and her fires stoked. The mind flayer is no mere curiosity, but an object of desire.

You lean in, ever so slightly, as if sharing a secret with a lover.

"The creature aroused you, didn't it?"

Her response is quick and unbothered.

"Why should I deny it? My urge is as natural as the grape upon the vine."

Ah, what a rare delight to be amongst the company of those who appreciate the sleek elegance of the ethereal, the violent, and the eldritch.

She tilts her face up towards you to meet your gaze, her hand lingering over your chest, and graces you with an inviting smile.

"But perhaps there are other flavours that might satisfy my palette."

You are comfortably entwined with your beloved, wrapped tight around her finger with no hope of release, but you are no stranger to hungers beyond the material, physical. The nymphs inhuman presence, her mercurial affections, her appreciation of aberration, it fascinates, entices, intrigues you. Enough to offset the compulsive need, enough to coax you into accomodating whatever bewitching delights she surely had in store.

When you speak, its closer to a rumbling purr, your curiosity piqued as it is.

"What did you have in mind?"

She shivers slightly against you.

"Rapture."

Her body language shifts to something more confident, seducing. Like slipping into a well worn glove. She pulls away, fingers trailing.

"Close your eyes and listen."

You feel her circle you, careful, attentive. Her presence surrounds and engulfs you, a comfortable weight. Its familiar magic, old and wordless, and it tugs at the depths of your soul, beckoning.

You see only darkness. Her voice shines through it, warmer than sun yet cooler than night.

"The all-being. Here, there is no suffering. Here, you want for nothing. Here, you are anything."

Her voice is layered with will, presence, and it gently, but firmly, pushes you down within itself. Having willingly taken the bait, you don't put up a fight. It swallows you up, as if you had sunk your head beneath the surface of the river. It is a weightless, soothing sensation. A balm against the burning roiling madness sealed within your being. The seperation between you and outside grows thin, and effortlessly the presence reaches out towards you and brushes a hand against your innermost self.

"You have one word. Tell me, what will you be?"

The sensation of water being drawn from a well. Up and out of you, like a sigh. You've been here before. You've felt this before. Long, long ago, in a different life, as a different self. A star fell from the heavens, beckoned by his desire, and he lied there, wrapped in arms of burning light and dipped ever so graciously down as if in dance, and the star had drawn his wish from his soul, breathlessly. His wish is your pact, though you cannot, will not, remember what he said. That word lived and died in that ancient moment. You have something else now.

Her hands delicately trace the line of your cheek, her thin fingers caressing your skin with just the barest suggestion of touch. For things such as this, there is no thought or consideration.

"Unburdened."

The presence reaches in, pulls out, and there in the dark something small and vulnerable shivers when so exposed, but before it can ache, there are a thousand gentle touches against your skin, inside your chest, soothing ministrations against all your blurry outlines. Her hands caress your face, run fingers down your chest, rub into your shoulders where the skin grows taut as something failed to break free of you. Her hands gather you up within her small palms and delicately she closes them around you, safe, secure, no barrier between you and her.

Her voice paints the world behind your eyelids, a steady heartbeat.

"The crimson tree is felled, her saplings sprouting from forsaken branches. The sky is wide, open, and full of stars. The vast horizon beckons, within the reach of your fingers, an endless journey away. A wolf strides unhurriedly to her den, and no serpents strike at her feet. In the meadow, you reach out to pluck a wildfower, and it does not bleed."

Your flesh shivers, your heart bursts. True ecstasy, for one fleeting moment.

As ecstasy gives way to contentment, satisfaction, you feel yourself surface the river, the presence receeding. The nymph's slight form is pressed against your chest, trembling slightly.

"Open your eyes."

She pulls away from you, meeting your gaze. Her tongue darts out to lick her lips, as if savoring some rare delicacy.

"I'll remember you. And you'll remember me."

She strides back to lounge languidly on the bed, confident and relaxed. The mess of viscera rotting on the floor goes ignored, her hunger satiated for the time by whatever it is she's gotten from you. For what it's worth, you're certainly a satisfied customer.

You excuse yourself with a polite nod, and delicately step over the haphazardly strewn mess of your earlier bout, shutting the door to the brothel room behind you.