The Slave Queen of Etherion Ch. 11

Chapter 11

Malachite Palace, Lysannum

Rodger moved Xenia into Jade's -- now his -- room, saying that he wanted to keep both of his slaves close. The bed was big enough for all three of them, provided that Rodger permitted his slaves to sleep there.

With Xenia moved out of her former dungeon room, Rodger took the opportunity to refit it as a bondage dungeon, bringing in a variety of furniture and equipment. Xenia was highly apprehensive upon being told that she would also be participating in scenarios in the dungeon. Not having investigated the BDSM scene as Jade had via the proxy of Aichiko, Xenia saw only instruments of restraint and torture, and not the erotic possibilities they afforded.

"It's a game, Xeni," Jade tried to reassure her. "All this is just to make the sex better," Jade said.

"Really...?" Xenia was still sceptical. "How would you know? You only ever did any of this as Aichiko, and didn't you say that Aichiko doesn't allow its user to feel pleasure?"

"Perhaps so, but I also spoke to the other subs, and they all said that they do it because this is better than plain fucking," Jade waved her hand at the room in general. "Besides, if whatever Rodger is doing to you gets to be too much, you can ask him to stop."

A tear ran down Xenia's cheek. "In case you hadn't noticed, Jadie, we're real slaves, not free women playing at being slaves until the game gets to be too much for them."

"Most of the subs I spoke to were real slaves, Xeni," Jade said.

Rodger came to Xenia and hugged her gently. "You and Jade may be my real slaves in the eyes of the law, but to me, you're my women. Jade's right, if there's anything that you can't handle, just tell me, and either we'll stop, or not go there at all, until you think you're ready."

"I never told you how I came to be a slave, did I, Jadie?" Xenia asked.

"No..."

"My mother was a noble lady, and she was seduced by a visiting diplomat, a satyr, obviously. She kept the fact that she was pregnant from her family for a long time, long enough that the healers refused to perform an abortion when her family finally found out. Then, when I was born, and they saw that I was a faun and not a human, they used their noble prerogative to declare that my mother and me were slaves. They said that only a slave would fuck a beast and give birth to an abomination.

"When I was four, they took me away from my mother and sold me to some of their relatives. My mother hanged herself in her bedroom once I was gone. They left her there until they could bring me back and show her to me, which was a week later.

"After that, I was whipped every day... and years later when your father bought me for you, Jadie, they told me that I was to be your whipping girl... that whenever you needed to be punished, I would be whipped."

Jade was in tears too. "That was a lie... I don't recall that you ever got a spanking for anything I did. I seem to remember getting quite a few spankings, actually."

"I know... you were all so nice to me, even when I was naughty. But it took me a long time before I started to believe that I wasn't going to be whipped again just because I was disgusting."

"You may have been a slave, Xeni, but we all loved you."

Xenia smiled through her tears. "I know, Jadie. After I became a woman, I was so horny that it hurt when I couldn't find someone to fuck. When your father noticed, he told me that he hoped that I would show you how to make love, because you were obliged to remain a virgin and couldn't find out for yourself. He said that he would make love to me if I couldn't find anyone else, but the choice was mine, and whether I showed you everything or nothing, I could stay as long as I wanted, and if I chose to leave, I could leave a free woman with enough money to set myself up in whatever business I wanted. Of course, I stayed and we went at each other like bunnies, and you know the rest."

Rodger stroked Xenia's green hair. "Thank you for telling us that, Xenia. I'll keep that in mind when we play our games here. Don't be afraid to say you're afraid, okay?"

A few days later, the shoemaker delivered the footwear that Rodger had commissioned for Jade, delivering them in person as an extra service for his royal client.

When Jade saw what the shoemaker had brought: thigh-length ballet boots whose colour matched the satiny blackness of her hair perfectly, with heels the length of her entire foot that would have her standing on tip-toe like a ballerina, her immediate reaction was, "I can't wear those! I'll fall over!"

Then she realised that she had made a mistake, and she looked toward Rodger to see just how badly she had erred. He didn't look happy...

"You forget yourself, slave," Rodger said quietly and calmly. "I'm afraid that I'm going to have to punish you... but that can wait. Please put the boots on now, slave, so that this gentleman can check that they fit."

"Yes, master," she said, then presented her right leg to the shoemaker. The boots fit perfectly, as they ought given the extreme lengths to which the artisan had gone to get accurate measurements. They were tight and stiff, though without a single misplaced ridge of leather, and there wasn't even the slightest bit of spare space, and even with expert assistance, it took several minutes to squeeze her legs into each of them and lace them up.

"Now, slave, please stand up and walk around, and tell us how they feel."

Far from hurting her feet when she stood tiptoe on feet unaccustomed to that position, standing in them was only a little uncomfortable, with her foot flexed so far downward. The close fit and tightness ensured that her weight would be distributed around her whole foot and lower leg, rather than just at the tip of her big toe, and in that respect, they were almost the most comfortable pair of shoes she had ever had. The only problem was that her entire weight was resting on about two square inches of surface between the two boots.

"They're very comfortable, sir," she said to the shoemaker. "It's just hard to balance on them."

"Well, you'll have plenty of time to get used to them, since you're going to be wearing them from the time you rise in the morning until the time you retire at night, save for when you need to bathe," Rodger said.

"Yes, master," she said.

It was hard at first. She was unaccustomed to wearing even ordinary high heeled shoes, and these were far more extreme. She fell, of course, quite a number of times, but every time, Rodger was there to catch her before she hurt herself, help her to an upright position, and send her on her way with encouraging words, a kiss and an intimate caress. It surprised her sometimes how he could get to her side so fast, even when he had been all the way across a very large room the last time she had looked.

However, despite his kindness, he punished her nevertheless. That night, as Rodger, Xenia and Jade were about to retire, Rodger said, "Jade, you may sleep on the rug in front of the fire until I say otherwise."

Rodger and Jade were still in the honeymoon phase of their relationship, and so it was hard for Jade to be excluded from the bed which had once been hers, and even harder to have to listen to Xenia and Rodger fucking. In the time since Rodger had claimed her and had become her master, Jade had grown accustomed to frequent sexual intercourse, and suddenly being denied sex was hard. Jade cried herself to sleep that night, sobbing silently lest Rodger notice and punish her further for presuming upon his attention and not accepting her punishment stoically.

Days passed, and Jade gradually became accustomed to her ballet boots. Once she could walk, and then run in them, Rodger insisted that she proceed to practise dancing and fighting in them. He turned out to be an accomplished dancer, but when it came to fighting... Jade had a fair amount of experience in self defense, her father had insisted on it, but she had been only a moderately enthusiastic student of the martial arts. Prince Jan had impressed her with his martial skills, but Rodger impressed her even more. Jade had been impressed when Jan and Master at Arms Dweyer, the palace's chief instructor in the martial arts, had fenced for several minutes before Prince Jan had scored a hit, and had tied with the arms master over the course of an hour, but Rodger scored a hit against the Master at Arms within seconds, and proceeded to make hit after hit, while receiving only occasional hits in return, leaving the older man dripping with sweat. Where Jan had been strong, relying on his strength and weight to batter down his opponent's defence, Rodger was lean but fast, and simply wasn't usually where his opponent expected him to be. Jade was proud of her master, and a part of her wanted to see Rodger and Jan fight, so that Rodger could puncture Jan's arrogance and deflate his excessive ego. Suddenly it clicked in her mind: Rodger had faced off against Silvermark with Rodger in full plate armour, and Silvermark wearing a hunting outfit. Silvermark wasn't quite Jan's match, everything else being equal... Rodger would have made mincemeat of him, and would only have had to break his stride stepping over his opponent's corpse. It was just as well that Rodger had also shown such self-restraint, otherwise his sister Amorette wouldn't have met her husband.

Jade thought that Amorette and Silvermark must have both been virgins until they had consummated their union, since Silvermark somehow didn't seem untrustworthy any more, and Amorette seemed to be even more clever than before... though as Silvermark and Xenia had fucked before her challenge, that didn't quite make sense. Jade thought that things were likely going well between Silvermark and Amorette. From the sounds that had come from their suite that could be heard despite the thickness of the walls and given their hand-holding, cuddling and love-struck expressions when they looked at each other, at least they seemed to be getting laid between making preparations for their move to Silvermark's home nation of Harquen in the next few days.

Jade was aching for some physical attention from her master, so much that when he was showing Xenia some of the contents of his sex dungeon, Jade blurted out, "Master, could you please fuck me? I need you so much that it hurts!"

Rodger looked over at Jade. "We still have the matter of your punishment to consider," he said. I will attend to your needs after we have dealt with that... but until then, I want you to fuck anything suitable that you can see in this room."

"Thank you, master!" Jade exclaimed. She looked around the room, but there was nothing suitable visible but a vertical rod device standing in the middle of a slightly raised platform, that he hadn't explained yet, with a rounded metal phallus at its tip. Jade ran over to it, confident enough in her ballet boots that she scarcely noticed that she was wearing them any more, and looked more closely at the polished metal phallus. It looked like something intended to be inserted into a human orifice, though it wasn't at the right height, not low enough to kneel or squat over, nor high enough to stand over... however Jade was desperate, and Rodger had given her instructions to fuck something.

Jade stepped onto the platform, which was a bit more than a yard wide, and stood above the phallus with one booted foot to each side of it, and lowered her throbbing pussy toward it. She rubbed her pussy across its tip, lubricating it, before lowering herself onto it, sighing with relief as the cool metal soothed the immediate ache in her cunt. She felt her pussy lips touch a ring of metal apparently intended to prevent overly deep penetration, and having lowered herself as far as practical, began to raise and lower her cunt over it, the hard metal shaft continuing to massage the walls of her cunt...

"T t t rrrrrrrrrak k k...!" There was a sudden metallic staccato sound as the phallus surged upwards, pressing hard against her pussy lips and her cervix, and she cried out in surprise and reflexively straightened her legs to relieve the pressure, but the phallus followed her pussy upward, and even with her legs straight, it was applying an uncomfortable amount of pressure. She closed her spread legs to gain more height, stepping to move her feet closer to the vertical shaft. That was better... at least now the uncomfortable upward pressure had eased.

"Aaah!" Jade had exclaimed in surprise as the rod ascended, and by the time Rodger looked around to see what was wrong, she had already relieved the pressure it had been applying.

"Ah, I see that you've discovered my one-bar-prison, Jadie," Rodger smiled. "Let's consider this your punishment for your inappropriate outburst when your boots arrived: you may leave if you can get yourself free, but if not, you must stay there until I return to release you from it. Do you understand, slave?"

"Yes, master; I may free myself, but if I cannot, you will come to release me," she acknowledged.

"Very good," Rodger kissed her on the mouth as he hadn't done in days, and caressed her erect bare breasts and rubbed his thumbs over her beringed nipples, eliciting another surge of moisture in her pussy. "Come meet me in our bedroom when you're done here... if you can," he said. "Oh, by the way, you may take your boots off whenever you like... but I wouldn't advise doing that until you're free."

Jade watched Rodger lead Xenia out of the dungeon, shut the door, and heard them walk away.

Jade thought that getting free would be easy, but it turned out to be surprisingly difficult. She couldn't stand on her tiptoes to lift herself off, since thanks to her boots, she was already on her tiptoes. She could turn on the spot, and could bend over to look more closely at the shaft that was impaling her cunt, and she could see some sort of button on the tube just below knee level. She tried grabbing the bar just below her pussy lips and pushed down with all the weight she could muster... but it didn't budge. She tried leaning down to the button, but the inflexible, unyielding metal in her cunt prevented her from tilting her pelvis sufficiently, and it hurt to try to put her weight on it to move to the side or bend any further. She couldn't jump, it was so deep in her cunt that it hurt her to try to flex her knees, and while she was fairly strong, she couldn't get a good grip on the shaft that was slick with her pussy juices, or on the lip on the phallus shaft just below her cunt, not enough to push the shaft down, or lift herself off it. Her weight on the platform to which the shaft was fixed prevented her from jerking to the side enough to tip the whole assembly over and allow her to fall off... and that didn't consider the fact that the platform was fixed to the floor There was nothing close enough to her for her to reach to get leverage to pull herself over, and nothing above she could grab to lift herself off.

Jade resigned herself to her imprisonment on the deceptively simple device. As a princess, she had spent a lot of time standing still at various ceremonies and events, so this enforced immobility wasn't too unpleasant, and even had a bonus in the form of the phallus penetrating her pussy. So, for lack of anything else to do while she waited, Jade tried to fuck the phallus to get herself off, but even that was unsatisfying given her inability to move enough.

Jade didn't know how long she stood upon the one-bar prison, boredom tends to make short periods of time seem far longer, but her legs were quivering by the time Rodger returned.

"I think that it's time to release you, Jade," Rodger said. "In the future, you might want to remind me to punish you if I have said that you need to be punished, but I'm not able to take care of it straight away."

When he pushed the release and pulled the phallus down and out of her cunt, which was aching once more, and locked it into its lower position, she collapsed from exhaustion, and Rodger caught her, then lifted her and threw her over his shoulder in a fireman's carry. Jade squeaked, and kicked her legs in surprise.

Rodger slapped her backside hard enough to sting. "Stop that!"

Jade had only been carried over a man's shoulder once, when Rodger had claimed her, even including her time as Aichiko, and she was finding the experience somewhat uncomfortable and embarrassing, but also arousing, and it was even more arousing when Rodger had slapped her backside. He didn't carry her far, and laid her down carefully on a hard bench made from rough wood, her neck cradled in a padded curved support. He removed one of her boots, which was not a simple task given that it laced up from ankle to thigh, and after massaging her foot for a minute or two, laid it on the bench and then removed the other boot, but after massaging her foot, he pulled her leg back and to the side, and closed a shackle around it to hold it in place, then took her other foot and pulled it in the other direction so that her legs were raised and splayed apart. Then he took her unresisting hands and placed them in curved notches on either side of her head, and then lowered a board down over her neck and wrists, and snapped a pair of latches to lock it in place. With the board there, she could neither sit up or see what was about to happen to her body. While her neck was supported in a padded notch, her head turned out to be unsupported, so she gradually let it dangle backwards off the edge of the bench.

"Now, Xenia, I want you to watch carefully," Rodger said.

"Yes, master," the faun said obediently.

'Xenia?' Jade thought. She hadn't heard the faun arrive.

Rodger came around the bench, and squatted in front of Jade's face, upside down from her perspective, and kissed her, their tongues fencing ecstatically, for a long time.

"Do you trust me, slave?" Rodger asked her when he withdrew.

"Yes, master."

Rodger walked back around the bench, and began to kiss Jade's body, and then began to caress her too.

"Master...!" Xenia sounded worried and concerned.

"Ssh, Xeni..." he said. "Just watch."

Rodger continued to kiss and caress her body, made all the more delightful by her inability to see what he was doing. Then there was a sudden 'Smack!' and a sting on her shoulder that made her gasp. More kisses and caresses, then a lightly stinging 'Smack!' on her thigh this time, making her gasp again. More kisses and caresses, interspersed with the occasional stinging smack, and Jade's cunt was oozing lubricating secretions down her bum crack. Rodger caressed her pussy, and then a sudden stinging smack on her breast, and Jade orgasmed, not her most powerful, but Rodger hadn't even begun to fuck her yet, and she gasped with pleasure.

"Are you all right, Jadie?" Xenia asked, sounding rather upset.

"Do you want me to stop?" Rodger asked Jade.

"Don't stop!" Jade gasped, that being all she could say. She desperately wanted to be fucked, and moved her knees apart as far as the restraints her ankles were bound within would allow.

However, Rodger kissed her again, between her breasts, then took one nipple into his mouth, and swirled his tongue around it, while he pinched and massaged her other nipple between his fingers, then there was a sudden stinging 'Smack!' on her mons, and she screamed again, cumming so hard that fluid squirted from her pussy. Then, suddenly Rodger was on top of her, plunging his cock balls-deep into her cunt with a single thrust, then he was pounding his hips against hers. Her orgasm had almost died down when there was a "Smack!" on her outer thigh, and her pussy squirted again as her orgasm returned full force. More fucking, then 'Smack!' on her breast, and she shrieked again as her orgasm flared yet again. So it went; fucking and fondling and kissing and sucking as her orgasm faded, then a stinging smack in some sensitive place, and she would shriek again as her orgasm returned, her pussy squirting with the power of it, and then again and again, her throat becoming raw and her voice hoarse. Then, Rodger came, pressing his hips against hers as he ejaculated deep inside her cunt, while he growled with each breath until he was spent.

Rodger lay on top of Jade, and she tested the restraints on her wrists until Rodger reached out and unlatched the board and removed it, then she put her arms around his back and hugged him with shaking arms. A moment later, her ankles were released, and she wrapped her shaking legs around her master's backside, pulling him toward her to keep his cock inside her still-spasming cunt.

"I love you," Jade whispered into Rodger's ear.

"I love you too," he whispered back, giving her an affectionate squeeze as they just lay together in a long, loving embrace.

Without warning, there was a "T T T rrrrrak k k... rrrak k k k," followed closely by a surprised "Oooh!" from Xenia. "I'm all right," she said.

After a few minutes of hearing grunting and small frustrated noises from Xenia, the faun said, "Ah... Could somebody help me please? I seem to be stuck..."

After Rodger had released the rather embarrassed Xenia from the one-bar-prison, he carried Jade to the baths, where they all soaked in the hot water.

"Did Rodger hurt you, Jadie?" Xenia asked, neck-deep in the water.

"When, Xeni?" Jade asked.

"When the two of you were fucking on that bench."

"Noooo... weelll... yes... but it was a good hurt..." Jade struggled to explain. "Good like the ache you get after running, sort of."

"Haven't any of your lovers ever hit you?" Rodger asked Xenia.

"Well... yes, on occasion, but it was usually just a bit of a smack that didn't really hurt. Not with a riding crop, and not like that asshole Prince Earle, who gave me a shiner so that I'd look better to him."

"A riding crop?" Jade asked.

"That's what our master was hitting you with," Xenia said.

"Really?" Jade considered that for a moment. "That wasn't so bad, actually."

Over the next few days, more of Rodger's commissions arrived. There was a whole set of masks, accompanied by a pair of hooded cloaks. Jade and Xenia each had a mask made from tempered black glass that fit closely over their faces, transforming their faces into featureless black ovals. They were thin over the eyes, so that they could be seen through from the inside, but they didn't have any way to tie them to their wearer's heads, instead they had a thin, cork-padded 'U' of brass that was attached to the inside of the mask that each slave would put into her mouth and hold between her teeth. When combined with the black-lined red hooded cloaks, Xenia's having slots that could be closed by black ribbons through which her horns would pass, it gave the illusion that the two slave girls were headless beneath their hoods, while the sleeveless cloaks would only just close around their bodies, but were really intended to be worn unfastened save at the neck, so as to frame their feminine assets.

There was also a pair of masks that were practically identical to the black glass masks, save that they were made from tempered white glass.

"Night masks and day masks," Rodger said of the black and white masks respectively. "In case we go out somewhere that we need anonymity."

"Master..." Jade hesitated, trying to find an appropriate way to voice her concerns. "These masks will prevent us from speaking."

"Slaves have no need to speak unless they are permitted to do so," was Rodger's answer. "However, if the Queen needs to speak, then logically she would remove her mask, wouldn't she, Jade?"

"Yes, Master," she acknowledged.

There were other masks too. There was a trio of white tempered glass masks that covered the face from forehead to nose, and also covered the cheeks, for occasions where they would need to be able to use their mouths, one for each of them. Finally, there was a trio of black leather animal masks. Jade's was a horse mask, which came with a set of other items, a pair of hoof-boots, a pair of arm-extensions with hooves at their ends, the hooves able to be flexed and extended by pulling a bar with the fingers, and a horse tail butt-plug. It too was special, when Jade tightened her anal sphincter, the tail would rise.

Xenia had a similar set, though her mask was shaped like the face of an antelope to match her horns, the hooves of her arm extensions were cloven like those of her legs, there was no butt-plug as she already had a real tail, and no boots as she already possessed a natural pair of hooves

Rodger had a horned bull-mask, boots and arm extensions with cloven hooves, and a bull-tail butt plug.

"These arrived just in time," Rodger said. "There is a meeting tomorrow evening at which we will need these."

Estate outside Lysannum

The next evening saw Jade and Xenia, dressed in nothing but their hooded cloaks and black night-masks board a coach with Rodger, who was wearing his half-mask and ordinary clothes. They travelled out of the city for perhaps an hour, and stopped at a mansion in a large estate.

When they alighted, each carrying their costume with them in a bag, Rodger looked at his slaves before they went inside. In the dim torchlight, his slaves' costumes were particularly effective. Their cloaks naturally hung open, showing the slaves' breasts and lower bodies, while beneath their hoods, there was nothing but darkness and the occasional glint of reflected light.

Inside, they were met by a pretty young slave girl wearing a maid's costume with a bodice that showed off her pierced nipples and slave collar.

"Welcome to the Rut!" the slave girl greeted them with a smile, and what Jade and Xenia recognised as a middle-class accent.

She took Rodger's name and directed them to a changing room where they removed their clothing, Rodger and Jade put in their tails with the assistance of some slippery lubricating grease the hosts had provided, then put on their masks, Jade's hair coming out of the top of her hood-like mask in a pony tail. That done, Jade and Rodger put on their boots, and they all put on their arm extensions.

Leaving the room wasn't as simple as entering it had been. The hoofed arm extensions made using their hands impossible, and the door handles were round. However, tapping on the door in their efforts to open it quickly resulted in the slave-maid opening it for them from outside.

"Beasts are supposed to walk on four legs," the maid said. "But because beasts can't do so many things, there are handlers too. If you need help with anything, just ask. Oh... since you're new, I should say that while you're here, it doesn't matter if you're a noble or a slave or anywhere in between, every beast is equal. So are handlers - yesterday and tomorrow, your handler might be a slave or a lord, but tonight they're your equal... they just have the use of their hands. I'm usually a slave, but tonight I'm a handler, and next time, I might be a beast."

"What can we ask of you?" Jade asked.

"Oh, anything you want... food, drink, sex, help having sex with another beast... Anything you can't do for yourself."

"What's your name?" Jade asked.

"We don't use names here. Tonight, I'm the Brunette Maid, and you're the Black Mare, the Green Antelope Doe and the Blonde Bull."

"Help having sex?" Xenia asked as she clip-clopped down the hallway, following the brunette maid.

"Oh, it happens a lot," the maid said. "You don't realise until neither you nor your partner can use your hands that you rely on them a lot to get cock and cunt together."

"Like grooms with stallions and mares," Rodger said. "They can do it themselves, but it's a lot faster and less frustrating for them if a groom guides the penis to the right spot."

"Exactly," the maid agreed. "Now, we just have to get you branded, and you can join the others."

"Branded?!" Xenia asked, concerned.

"Just pretend branding. Its so that if anyone turns out to be sick, we can tell their partners to get checked, and if any woman chooses not to use birth control, it can assist with genealogy... though the assumption is that women will be practising birth control, so in the case of pregnancy, there's no expectation of any paternal obligation, unless agreed to beforehand. The brand will wash off in a few days, or sooner with oil."

The maid 'branded' each of them on the rump with a red number, different for each of them, and took note of the numbers, then tied a small card that hung from a ribbon to each person's upper arm. "The handlers will write down your partners' numbers for you."

They entered a large room with tables at one end bearing food and drink, and thick rugs on the floor. People in animal masks and with animal tails and feet variously wandered about, chatted with others, or engaged in a variety of erotic activities, while people in erotic clothing walked around, participating or assisting.

"There you are, love," a young woman wearing a cow mask, hooves and tail, and also black and white spotted body paint said to the brunette maid in a cultured voice. "Could you milk me, please? You have the nicest touch on my udders of all the handlers," she swung her huge, engorged breasts with large, reddish-brown areolae and thick nipples beneath her chest in emphasis.

The maid fetched two large, clean champagne glasses and put them beneath the cow's dangling breasts, and began to massage them, rubbing from the base of her breast to the nipple, massaging the nipple between her thumb and fingers at the end of each stroke. Very soon, milk began to drip, then squirt in multiple fine streams into the wide-mouthed glass the maid had placed beneath it. Even though the maid was only milking one breast, the other dripped into the other glass.

"Perhaps when the maid has finished milking me, you'll service me, mister bull?" she said to Rodger.

"Perhaps," Rodger said.

A man in a lion mask, with long red hair that looked like a mane, approached Xenia. "Would the antelope like to lie down with the lion?" he asked.

"Let's discuss that, shall we?" Xenia replied, ambling away with him.

The maid had almost completely filled the large champagne glass with milk by the time that the cow's breast was empty.

"Would anyone like a glass of fresh milk?" the cow asked. "My calf is with his wet nurse tonight, and it'd be a shame to waste it."

"I would," Jade said, and the maid brought her the glass and helped her lift her mask and held it while she drank it. It tasted thin and sweet, just as she remembered her mother's milk had tasted, and the memory brought tears to Jade's eyes and a lump to her throat.

"Oh, dear," Jade said. "That brings back memories of my mother... she died when I was little, but she always had milk for me."

A man dressed in a sexy stablehand's outfit caressed Jade's backside. "Are you all right?" he asked.

Jade looked back at him... he was a very handsome groom... and she was here to enjoy herself... "Better now you're here," she said. "Perhaps you could give me a rub-down, and then we'll see..."

Jade smiled beneath her mask as the groom began to give her a rather erotic massage.

Rodger drank the glass of milk that the maid expressed from the cow's other breast, and was surprised at its thin, sweet taste.

"Now, mister bull, all that milking has left me quite in heat, so could I prevail upon you to service me?" she turned to present her bum to him, and squeezed the cow-tail butt plug in her bum, making it rise away from her vulva, which glistened with moisture.

Rodger looked around for Jade and Xenia. He saw Jade having oil rubbed sensuously over her skin by a man wearing a revealing horse groom's outfit, his attention to her dangling breasts eliciting gasps of pleasure. Her horse tail rose as she clenched her bum, and she nodded in response to something he said to her. He stepped around behind her, lifted her tail, and rubbed his cock along her pussy before entering her. He leaned over her back and caressed her breasts again before straightening and taking hold of her hips before he began to thrust his cock enthusiastically into her cunt.

Xenia had by this time also been mounted by the red-maned lion, a passing woman in a revealing white gauze dress casually helping the lion man align his cock properly before moving on.

As Rodger tried to mount the cow woman, he found that without hands, it wasn't easy to find her cunt, but the brunette maid reached between them and grabbed Rodger's cock, then slapped his bum, and when he moved forward in reflex, his cock slid straight into the cow-woman's cunt. Fucking her was unexpectedly enjoyable, for a young, still-lactating mother, she had a tight pussy and strong pelvic muscles, when he had half feared she'd have rather the opposite.

"You were a lot tighter than I thought you'd be," Rodger complimented her once they were both done.

"Thanks. It's good to know that all my exercising hasn't been in vain."

"Exercises?" Rodger asked.

"If you're worried about your slaves if you get them knocked up, get them vaginal weight eggs and have them practise weight-lifting... both weight and duration. Now, before they swell up, and keep it up after they pop, and they'll tighten back up nicely."

"Thanks for the information."

"Thanks for the servicing, mister bull."

"Ah! Mister Blonde Bull!" a heavy man in a pig mask exclaimed. "I'm Mister Fat Pig," he laughed. "Now, we're all supposed to be equal here, but as I'm one of the organisers of this little shindig, I suppose that I'm a bit more equal than the others," he chuckled again.

"Pleased to meet you... I'd shake your hand, but we don't seem to have them right now."

"Beasts and handlers! May I have your attention!" the self-described mister fat pig called out. "We have new applicants with us tonight; mister Blonde Bull, miz Black Mare, and miz Green Antelope. I'm sure that you'll all say hello and make them feel welcome."

This announcement was acknowledged by a round of applause and thumping on the floor.

After that, Rodger was approached by a number of female beasts, the first being a somewhat incongrous miz unicorn (since there wasn't actually any such thing as a female unicorn), who wore a unicorn mask with her long platinum blonde hair forming her mane. She was a small, pale-skinned girl, with hardly any breasts at all, though her nipples and areolae were dark, suggesting that she was a mother, a supposition further reinforced when Rodger mounted her, since her cunt was none too tight.

Miz Cougar was a moderately busty woman wearing a cat costume, with olive skin who lay on her belly with her bum raised for Rodger to fuck.

The Blonde Soldier was a handler wearing an erotic soldier's dress uniform that presented her ample breasts and was open at the crotch. She rode on top of Rodger, leaning forward and encouraging him to lift his mask so he could suckle her barbell-pierced nipples.

After the red lion, Xenia was approached by the Black Goat, who appeared to be an incredibly muscular curly-horned satyr wearing a goat mask and forelegs. He had no trouble finding Xenia's cunt without assistance, and lifted her entirely off the ground as he pounded her pussy vigorously for some time, bringing her to three orgasms before he came himself, filling her to overflowing with his semen, then abruptly leaving.

After the groom, Jade was approached by the fat pig, and when she accepted his request, he pressed her down onto the soft, thick carpet. "Would you like me to fuck your arse or your cunt, my dear?"

"My cunt, please," Jade replied, having never had anal sex; it had been sufficiently odd to have the tail plug in her anus without also being fucked there.

The fat pig entered her with the help of a male handler who was passing, and lay on top of her as he fucked her cunt. Jade had to admit to herself that while she liked the weight of a man on top of her, he was a little heavier than she preferred.

The Black Goat approached Jade next, his cock still wet with Xenia's juices, and though he seemed very animalistic, far more so than the other costumed men to the point of almost being repulsive, but he had a strangely compelling sweaty scent that made Jade's cunt lubricate as soon as she caught wind of it.

The goat-costumed satyr sat down beside Jade and lay back on his arms. "Come! Sit!" he demanded, twitching his huge erect cock, and Jade found herself complying automatically, only wondering as she was lowering her cunt onto his massive cock why she was doing so. He was both thicker and longer than Rodger, enough so that her pussy stung a little as he stretched her open, and as her hips settled against his, the head of his cock pushed hard against her cervix. He put his arms around her, beneath her arms, lifting her slightly, then he began rotating his pelvis back and forth, thrusting his cock in and out of her cunt and grinding his pubic bone against her ringed clit. Jade's nipples rubbed up and down his coarse-haired chest as her breasts bounced in time with his thrusts, providing extra stimulation. She orgasmed quickly from this treatment, but he continued to fuck her, her nipples beginning to feel raw from their continual friction against his hairy chest as she orgasmed again. She leaned back, trying to move her nipples away from his chest, and it seemed that only a moment later, he was standing, and she was dangling head-down, still impaled on his huge cock, supported by his arms in the small of her back. She put her arm extensions down and pushed at the floor to relieve the strain on her back. Her head felt tight and flushed from her upside down position, and then he began to thrust again, withdrawing his huge cock almost to the point where it lost contact with her pussy, then ramming it back in until it bottomed out, bumping her cervix in a manner that would have been painful had she not been so aroused. She groaned with every inward stroke, then she screamed as she came again under the onslaught of his relentless pounding, her arms shaking and a rush of wetness flooding across her belly, legs and bum as her pussy squirted from the power of her orgasm. Still he thrust into her, harder and faster, her orgasm continuing, and fluid covering her taut belly, with rivulets running down her legs and back and chest. Then his huge cock seemed to swell even further, if that was possible, before he stopped thrusting, pressed himself deep into her, and his hot seed erupted deep within her cunt. She could feel the contractions along the underside of his cock as it pumped his seed into her, filling her until she could take no more, and it erupted from her pussy. Then she found herself lying alone on the soft, thick carpet, her cunt feeling raw and empty as her body continued to quiver and her cunt spasmed from the aftermath of her powerful orgasm. From the corner of her eye, she saw the Black Goat seize a giggling young woman wearing a dog mask, who screamed with surprise as his still-erect cock invaded her cunt, though her repeated cries of "Yes!" as he hammered her backside showed that the unexpected intrusion was a welcome one.

Xenia dropped down onto the carpet beside Jade. "I think I'm actually done for the night," she said. "What about you?"

"Oh, I'd say I am too," Jade replied. "I don't think I can stand right now. What about Rodger?"

"He's over there, getting fucked by some sow," Xenia nodded in the appropriate direction, where Rodger was lying on his back, with a woman wearing a pig costume, and having three pairs of breasts down her chest and belly, was energetically fucking him. She looked fat on first glance, but that was an illusion caused by her extra breasts, she was actually rather athletic in build.

Jade looked in the direction Xenia had indicated. "Are they real, do you think?"

"I'd say so," Xenia replied. "She was fucking a handler earlier, and she was responding like they were real when he sucked on them."

It appeared that the event was winding down, since beasts and handlers were leaving the room as they watched. Rodger came and assisted Jade and Xenia to rise with a helping hoof. They returned to their changing room, and donned their travelling clothes.

As they left their changing room, they were approached by a big satyr with a chiselled, hyper-masculine face that verged on the grotesque, framed by massive curly horns, who was accompanied by a pointy-eared elf slave girl wearing a slave collar, nipple rings at the tips of her pointed breasts, and a diaphanous gown that covered her slender, shapely figure without concealing it at all.

"M'common dasir posiera del glassom schlavir," the satyr said to Rodger. "Kennim er ermiss chadare del nocto copfen schlavira sen del eledhel schlavira ghrei monnit furrein?"

The elf slave girl translated, "Ambassador Faltorios of Vaewolt offers his compliments to the owner of such lovely slaves, and offers to trade myself in exchange for your black-haired slave for a period of three nights." As she said this, the elf stepped closer to Rodger so that a whiff of her exotic perfume drifted toward him, and her body language suggested that she would like nothing more than to go with him, and fulfil his every fantasy.

Rodger felt hot and light-headed. He was tempted to agree, but of course, Jade wasn't truly his alone, she also belonged to her nation. "You would have to ask her," he said, then wondered why he hadn't said 'No' outright.

"Dasiro g'speggut den..." the elf slave began.

"Sa konnot!" the ambassador cut the elf girl's translation short. Then he stepped up to Jade. "Glassoma schlavira, meploré, unnensee dee mimiren, é miselan scholt dee gebir monnita é daggita zoful geyeuse dee konnich gerdank den..." he crooned to her, reaching out and gently grazing the skin of her breasts with both his calloused hands. "Yes?"

Jade didn't understand the ambassador's language, but as he spoke, it seemed that he was promising her erotic delights that she could scarcely dream of, if only she would go with him.

Jade reached out for Rodger without thought, without even realising that she had done so, and just as she was about to submit to the ambassador and step forward, Rodger's hand met hers, and suddenly her thoughts snapped into crystal clarity. Her night mask didn't permit her to speak, but she raised her chin and shook her head firmly.

An expression of frustration and anger flickered across the satyr ambassador's craggy face, but was gone just as quickly. Now he spoke to Rodger again, "Dasir, densee kyner schlavdrafen dasee schlavira du negessa dusé? Dumonser d'schlavira é negesdu negaren fonsé!" Faltorios seemed to be asking Rodger what kind of master he was to allow his slave to say no, and that he should order her and not take no for an answer.

The beautiful elf slave leaned toward him with pleading eyes, and reached toward him.

Rodger was about to reach for the elf slave, but his fingers were entangled, and he looked down to see that Jade's hand was holding his. When he looked back up, his mind was clear.

"I'm sorry. Ambassador Faltorios, my answer must be 'No.'"

Frustration and anger raced across the ambassador's face, and he drew a deep breath and roared, though within moments, the roar modulated into a deep belly laugh that went on for some time.

"Such love," he shook his massive horned head. "So lucky you are... For most, only lust there is. Lust and regret."

Malachite Palace, Lysannum

In a spare moment a couple of days later, Rodger went to see Biblis, to ask her about the 'regio' that she had mentioned while they had been on their way to find the unicorn who had become his sister Florimel's mate... and about another matter.

Biblis explained that the world has length and breadth and height, but magic could at certain times and in certain places take on a dimension all its own, separate to the usual three, and those with the magical senses to observe them could travel along the magical dimension. Otherwise, without magical senses, such regiones could be passed by and a person would be none the wiser, unless by chance they accidentally moved along the magical dimension. Should they do so, they might wander for a great deal of time before finding their way back, or in some places, where the regio levels went high enough, they might instead chance to climb along the magical dimension until they emerged into the magical realm.

"Now, that just begs the question: How did you come to notice that we had entered a regio so promptly?" Biblis asked once she had finished her lecture.

"Wasn't it obvious?" Rodger asked.

"Only to those with the sight to see," she replied. Biblis narrowed her eyes as she looked at Rodger. "Hmmm... could you tell me your exact place and time of birth?" she asked, pulling out a large flat square wooden box with a round brass plate with a tiny dimple at its centre, and a brass ring with lines scored across it, that was almost as wide as the box. She pulled some drafting tools out of the box, then closed it and put a sheet of parchment on top. She used a compass to draw a circle, the graphite rod clicking into notches in the brass ring on the box lid. She used the notch bump-marks and a ruler to divide the circle, and quickly drew a number of astrological symbols around the circle.

Rodger told Biblis what she had asked, and Biblis opened a curtain near her desk to reveal a massive orrery on castor wheels that looked as if it would be very difficult to move despite them. She moved a pointer to a particular position, then wound a handle, counting each full turn, then carefully turning the handle a fraction of a turn, looking at a dial and needle as she did so. As she did this, some of the model planets moved about, and when she was done, she looked carefully at the resulting positions and angles and noted them down on the parchment, then used set-squares and protractors to draw lines between the various planetary symbols and measure the resultant angles.

"Gah!" she exclaimed in disgust after staring at the chart for a while, and threw down her protractor with a clang. "Nothing... Quite a fortuitous horoscope, actually, but not a thing to explain your sight..."

"I don't know what to tell you..." Rodger began.

Biblis was staring at him with narrowed eyes again. "Tell me, Prince Rodger... Just where and when did you deflower Princess Jade? On the altar in the cathedral when you consummated your union? Or was it earlier?"

"Weeeelll..." Rodger was reluctant to say.

"Oh, come... come... We both know that these things happen when they happen, with or without benefit of clergy. This could be important!"

Rodger told her what she had asked, adding how he had found the raping stone.

"There!?" Biblis asked. "You really deflowered Jadie on a raping stone? Tell me, what happened? Every detail!"

As Rodger recounted the story, Biblis asked questions that seemed almost irrelevant, like if and how Jade had been tied, and if, when and how she had screamed, and if their eyes had met, and what she had done when untied.

Biblis quickly drew up another horoscope, this time turning the orrery's handle backward a little after setting up the pointer. She quickly scribbled down the positions and drew lines connecting them. She measured a few angles, but not as precisely as before, as if merely confirming what she could already see.

"By all the gods both fair and foul! You deflowered our Jadie on a raping stone...! That raping stone of all the benighted places you could have picked...! With her consent! And at that particular moment!" Biblis murmured to herself. "You weren't a virgin too, were you?" she suddenly asked sharply.

Rodger laughed. "No. Really... no."

"Oh, that's right, you'd never have convinced Xenia, otherwise," Biblis mused. "I really think that I need to see what happened for myself."

"How would you do that?" Rodger asked.

"Magic, of course."

"I'd like to see that," Rodger said. "I've wanted to be a magus since I was a boy."

"That too... hmmm? Well... watch closely... look into my eyes..." she said, then when Rodger complied, she waved her hands in a complex pattern of gestures and chanted, "Intelligo per oculos mentis memoria praeteritorum!"

Biblis' eyes drew Rodger's like magnets, and he was unable to look away, then memories began to surface, starting with Jade emerging from the travelling stones, punching out Prince Tigh when he grabbed her, and surrendering to him in preference to Prince Silvermark when Rodger had said that he wanted to possess her. As the memory of Jade dressing down Silvermark even as she lay across Bronze's rump passed through his mind, some part of him heard Biblis chuckling somewhere in the distance. Then there was the memory of locating the raping stone, and the journey there, and Rodger binding Jade and deflowering her. He became quite aroused at the erotic memory, even when for some reason he focused on the position of the sun and shadows, then tears ran down his cheeks as he wrenched his attention back to the moment that he first gazed into Jade's beautiful green eyes as he made love to her. Somewhere in the distance, he heard Biblis gasp with shock and swear, but that was of little importance in the face of his memory of their orgasms, and the hug which his love had given him in thanks for the pleasure he had given her once he had untied her. Biblis blinked, and the flow of memories stalled, much to his disappointment, but when she opened her eyes again, he pushed, somehow, and the flow of memories resumed, as he recalled their journey away from the raping stone and the evening and following morning he and Jade had spent together making love again and again before they had returned to Lysannum. Biblis swore again in the distance and closed her eyes, but when she opened them again, the flow of his memories resumed with scarcely any effort at all. As he remembered the journey back to Lysannum, he vaguely heard Biblis swearing, her voice full of fear, like someone who had gone hunting for rabbits only to find an angry dragon in her snare. Rodger remembered riding into the square in Lysannum with Jade lying across Bronze's rump behind him, before he claimed his love by right of...

SMACK! Biblis slapped Rodger across the face as hard as she could, then covered her eyes with her hands. "Rodger!" she snapped.

"Ouch!" Rodger exclaimed. "What! Why did you interrupt?"

Biblis peeked out from between her fingers like a child looking to see if the boogeyman was still there, and glanced quickly at Rodger. When nothing happened, she hesitantly lowered her hands.

"Oh shit oh shit oh shit... what have I done?!" Biblis muttered to herself, rocking back and forth and shaking visibly. "Nobody ever told me what to do about this!" she reached out a shaking hand to the first horoscope and looked at it, then swore again. "Shit! Not right, not right! Triagia, not Etherion... Too high, much too high, it has to be lower!" she pulled out a map of Triagia, and another of Etherion, and dug through a hastily-located textbook, adjusted the orrery, then made some measurements and adjusted the first horoscope. She looked at it for a long moment, then suddenly pushed it away and backed away from it as if it was dangerous.

Then Biblis glanced back at Rodger. "Tell me, Prince Rodger, how many older brothers do you have?"

"Six," he replied. "Why do you ask?"

"And your father?" Biblis asked, ignoring Rodger's question. "How many older brothers does he have?"

"None, of course..." Rodger replied.

Biblis visibly relaxed a little at that revelation.

Rodger wasn't finished though. "... but as it happens, he once had six too, when he wasn't much more than a baby, but they all died along with my grandfather, King Justyn, when Eve the Pretender attempted her coup, except for his younger brother..."

"So, you're the seventh son of a seventh son," Biblis interrupted again, visibly tensing up again. "Did no one think to test you for the Gift? Didn't you have a court magus?"

"After Eve the Pretender?! I think not. After her, magi weren't trusted for a long time... except for Scurrus, the court jester, but that was probably because he was a drunkard, and it usually took anyone half a day to wake him up enough that he was able to do any tricks at all. He was the only spell-caster my grandmother trusted, but even then, she was always careful to keep her grandchildren away from him."

"May the good gods preserve and defend us!" Biblis exclaimed. "And spare us from ignorance and prejudice!"

"What, may I ask, is going on?" Rodger was getting tired of Biblis skirting the issue, and was sounding rather impatient now.

"Let me see if I can explain..." Biblis began, trying to still her shaking hands. "By rights, given that you are the seventh son of a seventh son, and you were born under a number of particularly auspicious planetary aspects, had you been discovered by pretty much any magus worth his salt, you would most likely be a magus now, and a powerful one to boot.

"However, that isn't where the coincidences end. You come here, and win our Jade, who was a virgin princess at an age when she is at her physical and mental prime, and she's said to be the most beautiful woman in all Etherion, with the Blessing of the goddess Lyssa, no less. Now, I'm generally suspicious of such extreme descriptions, but I will admit that there are only a handful of women in all the world who could reasonably compete with Jade in a contest of beauty. All that should make for a virgin gift second to none... but there's more. You deflowered Jade on a raping stone, of all things, with not only her consent but her active desire for such a deflowering, at yet another particularly auspicious time and place, you gave her far greater pleasure than most virgins or even experienced women usually experience during sex, and finally, to top it all off, when the two of you looked into each other's eyes, you didn't just fall in love, as might happen between any willing virgin and her lover at a raping stone, it seems that the two of you just happen to be true loves. Again, I'm wary of hyperbole, and I don't believe that each person has only one possible true love, but less than one couple in a thousand are sufficiently compatible as to be able to be considered true loves. Finally, you're perfectly happy with the way you are... except that you always wanted to be a magus...

"Now, the combination of all that ought to mean that you'd have received a virgin gift that could give even the most mundane clod of a peasant imaginable the Gift of magic. I've only ever heard of one other union with a virgin gift with as much potential, and that was many hundreds of years ago. Now, you... by rights ought to already be a magus, and on top of that, you add a virgin gift of a magnitude that I doubt has been exceeded in all the history of Etherion... and your only desire is to become a magus.

"So, considering that when I cast a spell on you, you hijacked it and inverted it and recast it twice without using a single word or gesture, and it's a flipping sixth-magnitude spell that by rights ought to be impossible for any apprentice to cast, save directly from a book, and doing that would probably leave them too exhausted to stand, and hijacking a spell as you did isn't something that I've ever heard of anyone who wasn't an arch-magus doing -- someone who has been studying magic for the better part of a hundred years or more -- and you haven't even been flipping initiated! Perhaps that would explain why I'm so frightened and upset!"

* * *