Vayal Academy

This is Gelstra, arguing with her new girlfriend — who she’s not even sure she likes — about fidelity, in her tiny capsule of a dorm.

“I don’t want you seeing her again,” Gelstra insists, not fully sure of why this is so important to her — other than a vague sense of guilt for roping Svelgi into all this and a knot in her stomach. Certainly she’s not jealous. Okay, yes, she’s the jealous type, always has been, and it’s been quite the area of contention in all her previous relationships; but whatever she has with the racoon is very different from those previous relationships and, again, she doesn’t even like Abana. Not in any sense but the purely physical. So Gelstra can’t quite account for the emotion in her voice as she says: “Don’t. It’s cheating. Just stay here,” letting the blanket fall from her chest to expose a black, pretty bra, perhaps the least functional thing that Gelstra owns (Gelstra, who has just been woken by Abana’s tongue to a screaming orgasm and who is not yet wearing her glasses, meaning that her girlfriend — whose mouth is still damp from her pussy and who she has just ascertained is headed to see another woman — is little more than a blur of white at the end of the bed).

To Abana ‘Redeye’ (she quite likes the nickname she invented for Vayal’s inflexible paperwork, which insists on a surname), the pretty black porcupine’s behaviour remains oddly unpredictable. Gelstra should be experiencing the sort of post-orgasm clarity that usually has her eager to be rid of Abana, to isolate and brood and do whatever else it is that she does when she’s boarded up in this tiny room, alone.

You are not jealous, sweetling? Abana thinks, through their ill-advised mind bond. I did not begrudge you the pigeon, after all.

“That wasn’t- I didn’t even- I didn’t choose that! Gods, I should just let you wipe my mind, like you did hers...” Abana insists that Posy retains no memory of the possession and resultant orgy/exorcism, but Gelstra isn’t so sure. Something about the way the pigeon frowns when she looks at her…

You do not wish to forget her moans. You shared this with me, yes?

“You stole it from me, you mean!”

You do not wish to forget how she wanted you. Is this not infidelity?

Maybe, maybe not, it’s all irrelevant. “Just, please, promise me you won’t go to her.” That poor girl’s terrified of Abana, and hardly without cause.

I must ensure the daemon is truly purged from her (supple) body. Having betrayed her true intentions accidentally, simply through the pure potence of their mindlink, Abana shrugs. It is not my only reason. But the principle one. I must go, now.

Beneath her soft black fur, Gelstra flushes. “I know you were thinking about her.” The memory of the bunny’s face flashing across her mind as Gelstra screamed out her pleasure is fresh in her mind, like a slap across the face on a cold day. I don’t want you to see her. I don’t want you to fuck her, Gelstra says, finally accessing their mindlink in an attempt to communicate her sincerity.

Then I will not, sweet girlfriend of mine, says Abana, with no attempt to conceal the blatant deception. It would be obvious even without their psychic connection.

“Why lie to me? You know you can’t.”

I was being polite. Comforting.

“Stop!” Gelstra throws the covers from her half naked body, pulls a worn button-down shirt over her head. “I’m coming with you. You’re not fucking her.”

Gelstra tries to ignore the amusement and quiet assurance radiating from her girlfriend as she follows her across campus in the rain, spines bristling.

They’re both soaked through by the time they reach Rosewood Tower, mounting the chariots shivering and fluffed up with cold. Abana chitters, staring at Gelstra as they ascend.

We are on a date together. It excites, yes?

No! Stop that! Gelstra is determined that this visit will not be a date, or anything resembling it. They will be in and out, as soon as they’ve determined Svelgi isn’t possessed — even if she has to force Abana from the door bodily.

The raccoon just blinks like an ancient dryad, as if she has seen the future already, is confident in its goodness. This will bring us closer, she thinks.

The few images that flash through the mindlink into Gelstra’s brain are so confronting that she blocks them out near-instantly. None of that can happen. She may barely know the girl, may resent being forced out of her isolation, but she needs to protect Svelgi. She owes the poor thing that much.

The common room surrounding Svelgi’s dorm is much the same as all the others at Vayal, comfortable and cosy with plentiful seating and a crackling fireplace — the door itself is unusual though, round and root-snarled, like the entrance to a burrow. And, when Abana conspicuously elbows her way in, a burrow is just what they find. Cute little terracotta tiles line the mud floor, and the ceiling is supported by wainscotting of twisted roots. Despite being on the 30th floor, the room seems as if it should be underground — an impressive feat considering that a paneless trapezoid window, also made of roots, lets in the vicious tumult of rain and wind, increased by altitude, that seems totally out of place in the cosy burrow.

Thunder crackles. The smell of ozone permeates from the storm outside. Svelgi lies unconscious in the centre of the room, deathly motionless. Gelstra can only gasp as Abana falls to the bunny’s side, checking her pulse with a practised hand.

Alive, she says, as she pours golden health back into the bunny, but barely,it is fortunate you did not hold us up longer.

Gelstra is not paying attention. She’s squaring up, ready to tear Abana away from the bunny if she tries anything. To Svelgi, eyes fluttering as she slowly regains consciousness, Gelstra is almost as terrifying as the white raccoon cradling her — she is Abana’s guard dog, all black spikes and intimidation.

The newly awake bunny slaps Abana’s brazen hand off her breast, scampers out of the cradle and leaps to her feet. Abana tilts her head. “You should be grateful, lovely bunny. You would have died.”

“It’s out there!” Svelgi says, brain finally catching up, memory rushing back. “It- it has a body. It’s going after-”

Gelstra doesn’t even need to hear it. She knows exactly who the daemon’s going after. Out the door in a flash, she entirely forgets her concern and leaves Svelgi to Abana.

The raccoon steps closer with her gravedigger’s grin. “Ah. Privacy. You can tell me of your circumstance, yes? How you came to be so hurt?”

Svelgi bolts for the door — she’ll gladly explain everything to Gelstra, who, for all her faults, seems to harbour genuine care for Posy Primrose, has some kind of compassion and doesn’t come across as the type of person who dissects feral cats for fun.

Abana intercepts, pulls the rabbit into an embrace (impressed and somewhat disconcerted by how much stronger the uninjured Svelgi was, Abana has been working out pretty much non-stop, banishing pain and fatigue with Restoration) and gropes her ass, intentions plain across her face. “Wait, sweetling; you will need my help. But you must talk to me, yes?”

“I have to- have to-” I have to go! She wants to say; I have to get away! I need help! But she’s weak to the point of exhaustion, of death, so frightened that she thinks she might pass out, and there’s no one here, no one except the white raccoon, this nightmare woman, almost as horrifying as the entity Svelgi just gave shape to.

Her weak flailing succeeds in nothing but aiding Abana in wrestling her to the ground, cradling her head again like a concerned nurse. Svelgi knows she is anything but.

“Speak, or I will hurt you,” says Abana.

“I- It took my energy. Made itself a body.” Svelgi nose twitches, she can barely speak through her panic, but she manages to force the words out, chest roaring, knowing the sincerity of the raccoon’s threat. “It- It got the form from my head. It was awful. We need to go; we need to tell someone!”

Abana’s claws tighten around Svelgi’s skull. “Tell who, bunny?”

Svelgi’s tiny pink nose continues to twitch as she tries to formulate a response that won’t get her killed. Nothing comes.

“You need only stay right here, pet. You need only get well.” Abana tilts her still damp head, taking in the rabbit’s terror with glistening pink eyes and a smile. “You remember how this works, yes?”

Svelgi remembers all too well, the humiliation of the kiss that was her only chance at life. Every nerve in her body is terrified of defying the raccoon though, and when Abana applies pressure to the back of Svelgi’s head, she reaches up obediently, and, eyes screwed shut, kisses the insane Restorationist full on the mouth.

The expected healing does not come though, only the returning kiss, vicious and passionate. Svelgi whimpers, and Abana smiles as she pulls back, regarding the frightened bunny. “The kiss is not enough, it seems. What else could we try?”

“I don’t-” but then there’s a hand between her thighs, under her panties, and Svelgi shudders. She can’t stand the raccoon’s touch, wants to be nowhere near her, but she’s just so weak, she’s like a shell — and the only person who can fix that is Abana. She can’t control the quickness of her breath, though, or the weak whimpers that escape her as she hyperventilates.

“Your fear. It is… intoxicating.” Two fingers slip inside her and the rabbit yelps. “I have never felt such pleasure as when I drove my knife into your heart. If you would only say the word, I would leave her, you realise? Let the Alchemist do as she will; it is you I desire. Is this wrong of me? To want you so?”

There’s nobody she wants less, but fear can do curious things to the brain, and so the frozen-in-fear rabbit finds herself, unaccountably, nodding, whispering “I want you too.” Her rational mind screams at her, what the fuck are you doing? But her animal brain is in control, and it sees this as the only way to guarantee her safety. The fingers against her make her cry out as she manages; “I couldn’t do that to Gelstra, though,” a concession to the rational half.

“No, and, perhaps, neither could I. But then… you are bewitching. Remove your top.”

She does.

“Ah, sweetling. So beautiful. Remove your skirt.”

She does.

“The more I see of you, the less I can resist. You will cum for me, yes?”

She does.

As far as Svelgi’s concerned that ought to be the end of that — they need to go after Gelstra and Posy, after all. But as she lies disoriented and drained on the floor, Abana does not pump her full of life, instead leaving her in a cold pile on the ground and rummaging through the ornate chestnut drawers by her bed. She returns with Svelgi’s strap — a hard-conjured, unadorned mass of pleasure-conducting, magically-warm metal — affixed to her now naked crotch. “An assumption about you, my sweet bunny; it is good to see I know you. Hike your hips for me.”

Svelgi rolls onto her stomach and obediently wiggles her ass, heart still hammering in her chest, wondering the whole time why she didn’t run out the door when she had the chance. She even rolls her stockings down, like a good girl, and a moment later it’s inside her. “W-we need to- need to- the others.”

“Gelstra is very brave. Very strong. She will help the Priestess. I must help you, yes? My enchanting little thing. Small, breakable thing.” Abana pulls Svelgi into another kiss, tongue invading her mouth just as the strap — which typically Svelgi wears, even if she doesn’t seem the type — invades her insides. “You like this, yes?”

“I- Yes. I love it.”

“You are very good. I will remember that.”

A silence, the only sound the pounding of Svelgi’s heart, expectation heavy in the air. “Th-thank you, Abana.”

“Hmm. It does not sit right in my ears. You will call me Master. You shall be my apprentice. I have much to teach you.”

“Yes, Master.”

Abana rewards this coerced obedience with another possessive kiss. Her newfound peak physical condition lets her maintain a frankly unbelievable pace, and as Svelgi stretches out her body begins to betray her, begins to wonder why she was so scared.

Desperately, she tries to wrangle her mind, to herd her stray thoughts back into the rational bastion, but a finger on her clit makes it impossible. She thinks, perhaps, that she can retreat into her fear, her terror, but the reminder of how fucking scary Abana is just makes her moan louder, perform for her, throw her hips back like she needs this.

“You will feel such bliss,” Abana whispers, “and I will fill you with my kits.”

Rabbit biology is such a curse, because that promise does something to her, triggers a moan bordering on a scream, draws a “please, Master,” from her. Her legs shake as she cums again, panting, struggling to pull herself together, to find a way out, but Abana digs her claws in and rolls onto her back, leaving Svelgi to straddle her backwards.

“Such a perfect body.” She slaps Svelgi’s ass to spur her movements. “Prove your devotion.”

And Svelgi does. Her cotton ball tail twitches as she rides the terrifying woman, so certain that safety only comes from obedience, performance. “You feel so good, Master.”

Svelgi isn’t quite the Conjurationist that someone like Alyx Fartrot is, so the strap can’t mimic what Abana would feel if part of her were inside the rabbit’s tight hole, but it does feed Svelgi’s pleasure into her, and that’s enough to have her bucking up, firm grip on those shapely hips. “You wish to bring my bliss?”

“Yes, Master!”

“Good girl.”

She lets Svelgi ride, and then, on the precipice of her own orgasm, Abana wrenches the girl back to the ground, on her side, hips bucking so fast Svelgi worries it’ll injure her. With a frantic shake she cums, moaning, “Take my seed.”

And then the two, utterly exhausted, lie entangled with each other on the surprisingly soft floor. Abana roll Svelgi over and holds her against her breasts, strokes the back of her head and coos. “You are most cruel, little bunny. Now that I have had you, I can never return to my girlfriend; if I am with her, all my thoughts will be of you.”

From someone else it would make Svelgi guilty but, she hates to admit, also really fucking pleased with herself. From Abana though, it’s only terrifying — being in her thoughts at all is. Svelgi remains frozen, doing nothing but panting faintly against white fur, like hot breath against cold snow.

Abana cannot help herself fussing over Svelgi. “You are the prettiest thing in the Academy. I know it to be true. And so naughty, using this beauty to steal me away from one who cares for me.” Her hand runs over Svelgi’s ass. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

“I’m sorry, Master.”

“You are afraid of me.” Abana’s nostrils flare as she inhales the cocoa smell of Svelgi’s fur. “I will offer you a way out.”

Svelgi’s heart jumps, certain she must’ve misheard, must be imagining what she wants to hear. But her joy dies when Abana presses the hilt into her paw. With a hand on Svelgi’s wrist Abana guides the knife up to her heart, rests the tip against it. “You need only drive this into me, and you will have nothing to fear. I will be dead, and you will be free of my attentions.”

Svelgi’s hands tremble. She can’t! She just can’t! She… She doesn’t want Abana following her everywhere, doesn’t want Abana fucking her, but… but she hates violence! She can’t fight, and she certainly can’t kill.

“No?” Abana asks, almost innocent. “I cannot excise you from my mind, sweetling. I cannot suppress my blistering desire for you. If you do not do this, I will be here, for ever.”

All it would take is a push. Just one push forward — think of it like chopping up carrots. She’s chopped up so many carrots. Surely she can… Surely she can take this offer.

Abana shifts her weight forward. The knife pricks her skin and blood trickles down it. The sight of it is enough to dash Svelgi’s courage entirely; the knife clatters to the ground. “You cannot do it. Because your soul understands we are meant for each other.” A rough hand on the back of her neck makes Svelgi freeze like a kitten carried in its mother’s mouth. “I will show you there is nothing to fear. And in return, you shall serve.”

A sudden blinding pain in Svelgi’s mound, just above her hole, tells her body to thrash away, but Abana’s grip is iron strong. “I claim you,” the raccoon whispers, etching a brand into Svegli’s skin with her razor claw. “You are mine, now, until your death.”

Svelgi’s blood drip-drip-drips onto the floor, sealing the pact. Her head down, she whispers, “yes, Master.”

“Good girl.”

Across campus, Gelstra, running desperately towards Posy’s room, practically slams into the gorgeous pigeon, walking in the opposite direction across the crystal path. Posy is looking up at her with that same expression of puzzlement that she’s worn ever since the memory wipe.

Gelstra, for her part, thinks she must have fallen over and hit her head, because how can it be true, how can it possibly be true? Posy here, safe, in her arms? When the beautiful Restorationist looks up at her and says “Gelstra! I was, um, just looking for you,” Gelstra decides she must have hit her head after all, and now she’s dead, Posy too, transported to some heavenly plane overseen by some kindly God. She accepts this good fortune, but, still too aware of the imminent danger to count her chickens, she throws a hand around Posy’s back, propelling her forward while she says “Good Gods, Posy, you’re okay; we need to get you safe.”

This is utterly baffling to the pigeon who, as far as she knows, hasn’t interacted with Gelstra since the Temple Ceremony and who, just recently, has been having a lot of very illicit, darkly pleasurable dreams about the porcupine that she thinks must be some kind of spiritual sign. So Posy, half-convinced that she needs to convert the clearly heathenistic Gelstra but very anxious about how, finds that the only thing she can stammer out is, “Where are we going?”

“Shit! I don’t know! Where could… the church! We should go to the church!”

This suits Posy’s purposes just fine, and as far as avoiding the daemon goes, it’s the best idea Gelstra has. Kanaya’s chapel amongst Vayal’s gardens, sanctified and warded, is a safer place than any other. Unfortunately the two are already observed — the daemon, in its spindly form, watches from the shadows of a nearby tower, perched beneath it upside down like a massive bat. It survived Abana’s trick in the body of Svelgi’s jumping spider, and then forced the Conjurer to give it a more suitable form.

The body it ripped from Svelgi is defined by its long limbs, almost like a woman on stilts. Its skin is black and formless, a trickling river of obsidian, bleeding at the edges like leaking gas. Tendrils of inky black almost resemble raven hair, and the pockets of void across where the head might be could be taken to be a rigid grin and unblinking eyes.

Gelstra leads Posy through the gardens at a frantic sprint — the priestess wonders if her dreams didn’t have another purpose, because surely a woman so eager to shelter in the chapel cannot be a Godless heathen. The porcupine, meanwhile, wonders if she has really done it — truly saved her love. When the winding garden trail takes them to the unassuming chapel (cut stone brick and plain windows, the least colourful building in the Academy) she thinks surely this is proof the whole thing’s just one long dream, but just in case she rushes in, panting as the door slams shut behind them.

“Do you want to pray?” Posy asks, taking Gelstra’s hand, which just about kills her on the spot.

“That would- wait. What happened to the wards?”

“Hmm? Something’s wrong?”

“I’m a Mystic. We’re attuned to these things. It feels the same as the rest of the Academy.”

“One of the Fifth Year Restorationists applies them every morning. They should be here. There’s always supposed to be someone- ah!” The sound of the door opening startles the pigeon, who is frankly starting to feel a little skittish, while Gelstra’s heart pounds out of her chest. Posy does not see the creature enter, skitter across the ceiling, and so to her — it seems she has jumped at nothing.

“I apologise,” says Posy, “I haven’t been sleeping well; my nerves are fraught.”

Gelstra can only stare, horrified, as behind the love of her life, the huge, shadowy new form of the daemon folds down from the ceiling.

She opens her mouth to warn Posy, but there’s no time. One of the long, stilt-like limbs shoots out and pins Gelstra against the wall, puncturing her gut like a plump waterskin. Barely paying attention to the thrashing of the porcupine, the monster looms over Posy, emanating malevolent joy.

Posy’s terrified but ultimately bewildered expression tells the daemon everything she needs to know.

“You have damaged her,” the daemon spits toward Gelstra, twisting its mantis limb into Gelstra’s stomach to a yelp of pain. “You have undone my hard work.”

“Leave her alone,” Gelstra manages, as Posy’s mind catches up and she drops to the ground, praying. She gets out a syllable, maybe two, before the daemon’s hook wraps around her beak and silences her pleas. It stands there, the two of them in its grip, pondering the best punishment.

“It is a shame your love is not here,” it says, to Posy, who shakes her head. “Ah, you cannot deny it. I have seen your mind. I know you desire the bunny.”

There’s a distant, hazy memory, like one from infancy, of Svelgi’s hands on Posy’s breasts and her lips on her neck. It must be from a dream, it must — the Church doesn’t proscribe fantasy, only action. Even then, it’s an idle thing, a thing she doesn’t choose. Her head twitches again. “I have been within you, inside of you. I know you desire the bunny. You will admit it to me.”

Posy lets out a tiny whimper, disoriented to the point of sickness as the tendril releases her beak. “How- how do I know you?”

The daemon snarls, a sound of utter fury. “You see what you have done?” It draws the blade-like leg from Gelstra and lets her slump to the floor, gushing blood. Posy turns but finds the same spectral limb now resting on her head, holding her in place while tendrils of black energy wrap around her wrists, preventing her from casting and tearing her clothes from her. Another tendril wraps again around her beak, cutting off the cries of protest.

Posy’s hand, swimming in the daemon’s dark energy and no longer under her own control, goes to her cock. There, totally naked, in the cathedral where she has spent close to every evening of the past month, the already hard Posy jacks off for the first time in her life. This sight, which should be blissful to the daemon, feels somehow unsatisfying. The priestess does not remember!

“You will be punished,” the daemon hisses toward the half-dead porcupine. “But first, feel my mercy.”

Gelstra screams in agony as tendrils of dark energy grab her and yank her across the chapel floor, depositing her in front of Posy with her ass up and her face mashed into the floor. She feels her stockings and panties tearing away an instant later.

Despite her earlier horror, Posy’s sweet voice cries out in a new kind of desperation when her steady hand stops its movement, cock falling on top of Gelstra’s waiting warmth with a maddening slap.

“Fuck the porcupine,” whispers the daemon “and I’ll let you heal her. Refuse and she dies.”

Gelstra, despite the fact that she is almost entirely dead at this stage, wiggles against the intense pain in her side, trying to free herself, unaware that this only makes Posy’s need stronger. “Don’t do it, Posy,” she manages, determined that this time, she will protect the pigeon. “It’s… I’s okay. Just- just let me die.”

The daemon says nothing, simply enjoys the torment playing across the pretty acolyte’s face. So much need in this one! Repression of her passion has only succeeded in turning it fierce and monstrous — free from its bars now, it masters her.

Posy is ashamed, terribly ashamed, that her decision to fuck Gelstra has nothing to do with saving the Mystic’s life and everything to do with the uncontrollable need coursing through her. She is unable to think of anything but the hole presented before her. The daemon has total control of Posy’s magic at this stage, which is good, because otherwise Posy would forget about the Restoration all together.

She buries herself completely in Gelstra, who is soaked, and as she does, the daemon sends beautiful, golden Restoration magic coursing through her and into the Mystic. All this combines to make Gelstra feel, aside from the uncontrollable guilt of getting Posy involved in all this, better than she ever has.

“Posy, I’m sorry,” she whimpers. The daemon withdraws its grip on Posy’s beak, curious to see what she might say. It’s almost disappointing that the priestess-in-training just moans, too distracted by her need.

It’s up to it to make this more interesting. Its ethereal tentacle slips in Posy’s ear, tickles her mind, dredges up those buried thoughts of the bunny. A moment later, Posy’s arms tug against her bindings, and the daemon gives a little slack — the right choice; they go straight to Gelstra’s hips, holding her for leverage so she can fuck her harder.

“Svelgi,” Posy moans, which Gelstra supposes she deserves, given how she’s fucked this all up thus far, but still it doesn’t help the sting. “Svelgi, gosh, Svelgi.”

Despite the humiliation Gelstra feels, her body has nothing but bliss. Every thrust of Posy’s pretty cock makes her tremble, builds something within her. With her strength returned she bounces back eagerly, ignoring that Posy continues to mutter Svelgi’s name, that she has her eyes closed to picture her.

Fuck it, Gelstra thinks, she deserves this. She learned to disguise her voice before she even came to Vayal, and the daemon lets her cast the spell. “It feels so good, Posy,” she says, in Svelgi’s cute voice.

“Oh, Svelgi!” Posy cries, her hips now really moving. “I need you.”

“I need you! Just fuck me, please.”

Posy’s always appreciated Svelgi’s voice the most (this being the one thing she was allowed to appreciate), and so she hilts herself in her and cums. The throbbing of her cock is enough to throw Gelstra over the edge, too, and she tightens around her as she does, moaning like Svelgi would.

“Well done,” the daemon whispers, as the two pant and Posy’s softening cock falls out of Gelstra. Sedating Restoration flows down the appendages and into both girls, sending them to a deep, peaceful sleep.