The Infernal Itch Ch. 08

Zarel heard the click of claw on stone and sensed the ambush coming. She turned, swinging a big muscular paw like a club and felt the satisfying crunch as it slammed into the white werewolf's face, sending her sprawling away. Salis would be feeling that one for a while.

Knocking Salis down had the advantage of forcing Alva to charge at her as well, lest she set on the smaller woman and do her some real damage. Alva, one-eyed and battle-scarred, was a canny fighter and more of a match for the inexperienced Zarel. But both of her antagonists were still smaller than her and she'd learned that in a scuffle of claws and fangs size really did matter.

With a roar of effort and a spray of gravel, Zarel drove Alva back against a wall hard enough to dislodge tiles from the roof above it. The other werewolf, normally a somewhat dour dwarf, lost her grip on Zarel and could only swipe ineffectually at her retreating back as Zarel's black and orange form turned and sprinted away.

That bought Zarel a few minutes of peace at least, if she could put enough distance between herself and the two pack members watching over her. The bright full moon, in its third and final night, lit the road before her clearly as she thundered away from them on all fours.

She was thinking more clearly tonight. It took immense concentration, but she could remember their names, her name, and why they were dogging her footsteps. 'Keeping her out of trouble' as they'd explained, as a favour to their pack chief Marek.

Marek. She was strongly considering hunting the elder werewolf down and challenging him. He was the reason for her curse. Both of her curses, in fact. He was also the reason why five of her friends and former Seraph colleagues were in the hands of a devil. Yes, she had a score to settle with Marek.

But not tonight. He didn't know where her captured friends were, so he was no use to her. No, tonight she wanted to put her new senses to the test and see if she could sniff them out.

She hadn't been close enough with any of them to remember their scent in the same way she had with Aavi on that first night, but she could remember the smell of Seraph armour. The metallic, almost acid tang of bronze and the tart smell of oiled leather beneath it. Maybe they still had their armour - she could look for that.

That was a plan then. She'd done a lot of thinking. Good thinking, but it made her head hurt to concentrate for too long. She dropped her pace to an easy lope, something she could keep up all night. She'd follow her nose and her paws and see where they took her...

---------------------------------------------

"Aavi~"

The voice was a hoarse scratchy whisper, but enough to awaken him.

Aavi sat up, feeling a page that had been stuck to his face tear, fluttering away in two pieces. Guilt consumed him immediately - falling asleep in a lesson and damaging a library book! He'd be in so much trouble!

But he wasn't in a lesson. This wasn't the Abbey. He was in a dark abandoned library in the dangerous lower city and someone was calling his name.

Ardour. He breathed a sigh of relief as it all came flooding back. He hadn't meant to fall asleep, in fact it was a very foolish thing to do in an unfamiliar place like this, but no monster was sneaking up on him. It was just Ardour.

He stood and looked for the tiefling, peering around the darkened scriptorium. It wasn't until the last few days away from the candlelight of the Abbey that he'd appreciated quite how well he could see in the dark. It wasn't perfect and he couldn't read by it, but his sight was surprisingly strong in the gloom. He couldn't see Ardour though.

Actually, he could hear her. There was rustling and shuffling up on the balcony, the sound of books and parchment being clumsily moved. What was she doing? He climbed the narrow spiral stair to investigate.

Already grey-skinned in colouration, the tiefling was a perfect monochrome in his darkvision. All except for her eyes which shone lava red, brow furrowed, as she worked at whatever it was she was doing. She seemed to be stacking books, emptying the shelves of a particular bookcase and dumping their contents into messy piles on the ground beside it. Her movements were trembling and faltering, her breathing raspy.

"What are you doing?" he asked, perplexed.

"Found something..." Ardour's voice was hoarse.

"While you were asleep?" Aavi didn't think she'd been awake much longer than him.

"Dreamed..." she wobbled a little and put an arm on the bookcase for balance. Aavi wondered if she was still dreaming in fact. Sleep-walking would explain the strangeness.

"Can you fetch... water?" she rasped, sounding like she needed it.

Aavi nodded and hurried downstairs to fetch their packs. He stopped to strike up a lantern and colour returned to the gloomy library in a warm orange glow.

By lantern-light Ardour looked like even more of a mess. Her skin was flushed dark and shiny with sweat, hair plastered to her face. There were dark bags under her eyes, which looked tired and a little haunted. He could tell without touching her that she must have a bad fever.

"Bad dream?" he asked as he uncorked his waterskin.

Ardour took it and drank greedily, water spilling down her chin. She smacked her lips in obvious relief and poured most of the rest over her face, heedless of the delicate books and papers getting wet around her. She screwed up her eyes and then opened them wide, blinking owlishly a few times as if trying to shake off sleep.

"Thank you," she mumbled at last, handing back the mostly empty waterskin. "Strange dream..."

She went back to clearing the bookcase, hands a little less clumsy. She still wasn't right though, Aavi knew.

"Are you looking for something?" he tried, "I could read for you...."

He drew closer to examine the books she was removing. Some primal instinct in his brain was telling him to keep his distance, that she wasn't safe. But that was silly, he trusted Ardour.

"There's a passage..." a bemused Aavi thought she meant a specific piece of text for a second, before she continued. "Behind the bookcase..."

Huh. It didn't look any different to any of the other heavy bookcases in the library. Well, she was the rogue. Aavi started moving some of the dropped books and papers before she trod on them.

"Strange dream..." she mumbled again. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled.

"Do you want to sit down?" he asked gently, "I could try to heal you."

"There's a seat inside," the tiefling pronounced with a certainty that worried him, "I'll sit there."

He had all the books out of immediate danger now, so he stood back to watch as Ardour cleared the top shelf. She was still wearing the new outfit, all dark leather straps and tantalising glimpses of grey flesh beneath. He'd been trying not to stare at it all day, but he was fairly certain that the distinct bulge in the front of her leather skirt had not been there earlier. But if she was aroused, that made her current obsession with rearranging the furniture even stranger.

With a triumphant grunt, the tiefling finished dumping the contents of the bookcase and reached around it to grasp one edge of the heavy piece. She set herself there and heaved, trying to pull it away from the wall. Her tail arched upward for balance, lifting the back of her skirt and affording Aavi an eyecatching view of her strong glutes as she worked. He tried not to stare.

The bookcase resisted, top-heavy and awkward, as Ardour growled and pulled for all she was worth. Aavi could see she was trying to swing it away from the wall, but it wasn't cooperating. In fact it was wobbling alarmingly.

"Careful, it's going to tip-" he cautioned, unsure whether to intervene.

"Just need to... drag..." Ardour had her teeth clenched with the effort, sinewy muscles standing out on her bare arms as she heaved at it.

She clearly had a vision, but the bookcase wasn't going along with it. In fact, Aavi could see the moment that its swaying progress reached the point of no return.

"Look out!" he cried, just as the tiefling threw herself aside with a curse. The heavy bookcase pitched forward and crashed down onto its front with a boom that rattled the balcony. A dark space lay behind it, where there should have been only a wall.

"Are you ok?!" Aavi scrambled over the fallen bookcase and through the choking cloud of dust it had thrown up to find Ardour sitting on the ground clutching her shoulder. She was grinning though, sharp pearly teeth bright in the lantern-light.

"Found it."

She had, Aavi had to agree, found something.

---------------------------------------------

The faintest desert breeze brought a thousand scents to Zarel's nose. It was a sense she still didn't understand, maybe never fully would understand, but it was always working. Her concentration wandered, mind flickering between conscious thoughts and base bestial impulses, but her nose was always alert, always trustworthy.

Right now she didn't know whether to trust it. Her nose said there were Seraph, or at least people wearing that familiar bronze armour, where Seraph most definitely should not be.

The ruined church before her was much too far from the Abbey for them to have visited safely. Its narrow windows were dark and admitted precious little of the ambient moonlight, leaving the interior shrouded in gloom. The roof looked ready to collapse inwards at any provocation. Zarel's Seraph training told her this was a potential deathtrap of either monsters or falling masonry.

And yet, that familiar scent drifted out through the darkened doorway. Acrid metallic tang of bronze and copper, oiled leather, human sweat. It had to be Seraph. And that meant it had to be her missing friends.

Zarel drew closer, letting her bulk block out the moonlight passing through the building's entrance. She listened for any reaction, but the ruin remained as still as it had been. The doorway was human-sized and she'd be vulnerable as she squeezed in through it, but there was nothing else for it. She ducked her head, hunched her shoulders and squirmed under the ancient stone lintel.

Nothing attacked. She squatted in the cramped vestibule and waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkness, ears straining for movement. The church was a small one, just a single hall with an altar at the far end. Rows of uncomfortable looking stone pews sat under a low dome that was probably ornamented with religious imagery, but she couldn't make it out in the gloom.

Nothing moved, but the smell was stronger here. Human bodies, metal armour, the constant arousal caused by the Itch. Something else, too. Anticipation? Fear?

Zarel stalked forwards. It was ok if her friends were afraid - they'd been through the same things she had and they didn't have the lycanthropic curse to protect them. She would protect them, they could join Aavi and the tiefling in her unlikely pack. She made an encouraging sort of whine, the most nonthreatening she could manage.

There was a flutter of motion from the dome above and a lot of things happened very fast. Something heavy crashed down over her shoulders, just as a bright flash erupted before her face and stole away her darkvision. Figures were standing up from behind the pews, audible from the scrape of metal on stone. Somewhere, an owl let out a piercing screech.

Zarel roared and tried to rush forward toward the source of that blinding bright light, but the heavy net tangled her limbs and sent her sprawling. She thrashed, panicked, trying to kick it off. Footsteps echoed around her as the figures converged, seizing the edges of the net and dragging it tight. She could overpower a single human easily, but not the combined strength of so many.

The overpowering light - apparently a spell - winked out as quickly as it appeared. Someone struck a lantern in its place. Panting, trapped and beaten, Zarel looked up at her captors. Staring back at her in a mixture of triumph and fear were her five missing Seraph companions.

---------------------------------------------

Aavi watched as Ardour padded about the secret room, dutifully angling the lantern to illuminate wherever she wandered. This didn't seem like the purposeful 'checking for danger' she'd done when they entered the library, though. The tiefling shuffled dreamily around the room, muttering to herself.

"No chains..." he heard her mumble as she poked at a shelf high on the right-hand wall.

"And no locks..." her tail thrashed in unconscious agitation as she plucked a bright red leatherbound book from a shelf and turned to Aavi. "What is this book?"

Aavi, lingering on the room's threshold, squinted at the title. Oh dear. His blush was instant and hot.

"It's called, um, the Tome of Carnal Power..."

"Huh." Ardour's grunt was hard to read. She tucked the thick tome under one arm and continued poking and prodding at the shelves.

"Huh?" Aavi found he was growing impatient with the inscrutable tiefling. "What do you mean? And why did you pick that one specifically?"

"Dreamed it was chained up there." She shrugged and waved more books at him, these selected seemingly at random. "What're these?"

"That one is an 'erotic bestiary' and the other is something about harpy mating habits..." Aavi hoped he wasn't going to have to read off every title. "They're all books about sex."

"Huh." She discarded the two books to the floor and wandered off to inspect a shelf on the opposite wall.

Aavi took a deep breath, reminded himself that he liked the tiefling when she wasn't... whatever this was... and reshelved the two ancient books. There was something about that first tome though, the one she was still holding. He wanted another look at that later.

His eyes fell on a dusty leather couch in the centre of the room. She'd said something about there being a seat and sure enough, there it was. It faced the back wall of the room, where a silver vase affixed to the wall held the skeletal stalks of some ancient flowers. Beside the vase were a pair of drapes, ancient tattered things that had sustained centuries' worth of moths. They were so ragged that he could see through them in places, to what looked like a painting hung on the wall behind them.

Curious, Aavi made his way over for a better look.

"Stop!" He was just reaching for the curtains when Ardour's yelp made him jump. She hurried over, suddenly alert.

"It's trapped," she pronounced with that eerie certainty again.

"You dreamed it?" Aavi asked and got a nod.

"It's important, I think. But it... uh..." she floundered, seemingly lost for words for a moment. "It got weird. When I looked at it."

She was at his shoulder now, very close. She was staring at the wall though, even as she spoke to him. He had a feeling he knew what she meant by 'weird', but he still had to ask.

"Sexually weird?" he tried to sound as detached as he could, even as he noticed that bulge in her skirt again in the corner of his eye.

"Yeah... I, um... there were ghosts and I fucked myselves and everything sort of got ruined? Like years passed while I did it." Ardour cleared throat. "That didn't make much sense did it?"

It didn't. And yet...

"So it's a magical trap." Aavi suggested. "The dream was a warning from the gods about it. Maybe it paralyses the victim so they're stuck here forever."

He noticed her small flinch at his mention of 'gods' but his own mind was racing now.

"But there's something important in the image, so we need to look," he decided. Time to try some more paladin magic.

Lyrti had given him healing powers and a power to sense evil creatures, but he knew there were talents he hadn't tapped into yet. Spells like those practiced by the Abbey's clerics. What he needed here was more than mystical senses - he needed defences from external influences, protection from evil.

The proper gestures and words came to mind even as he thought it, sparking into thoughts so fast that he had to act them out now or risk forgetting again. He intoned the words, hands glimmering with soft golden light as they formed the required shapes and motions. He heard Ardour gasp a moment later.

"Your eyes are glowing," she breathed, eyes focusing on him properly for the first time since she'd awoken. She bit her lip. "And your hair is sort of... floating..."

Aavi could feel his hair standing on end, tickling his ears. He blushed and cleared his throat, secretly pleased with the attention. Then the magic was done and he was ready.

"Let's find out what's so important that your dream sent us here."

---------------------------------------------

"Got her?" someone asked.

Zarel knew the voice, but right now she was too distraught to put a name to it. The net tightened and flexed as many hands worked at it, tying the heavy weighted ends together. The result was a shifting and constricting prison that defied her attempts to wriggle free. She let out a frustrated snarl and snapped at the strands that held her, but they were uncannily strong.

"That's tight enough," said Tomasz. She recognised her old leader's voice. Efficient, decisive. A little strained?

"It's your fingers she'll have off if it's not," the first voice warned. Eiga, Zarel remembered, always a pessimist.

"We'll all do it," that was Clare, softly spoken but usually full of conviction. "We owe her that at least, for the betrayal."

Zarel could hear the sound of a jar being unscrewed. She snarled and snapped at the net again, making no headway.

"It's no betrayal. She'll be better off - just look at her." Stefan was the oldest of their admittedly very young cohort, at twenty five. "Do you think she even understands what we're saying?"

Zarel let out a thunderous growl, leaving no doubt that she absolutely understood. She wanted to speak, to curse them, to ask what they were doing. Her long muzzle wouldn't form recognisable words though.

"Zarel, listen-" Tomasz had moved to where she could see him, illuminated by the flickering lantern he was as square jawed and handsome as ever. He had an odd hungry expression about him though, a desperation. "She wants you to come over to her."

She was presumably the devil, Lael, who'd taken them. Zarel's nose twitched. There was a new scent in the air, something maddeningly familiar she was trying to place.

"But she can't just take you. Something about a deal." Someone handed Tomasz a jar and he dipped his gloved hand inside. His fingers came out shining with translucent oil. "So we have to encourage you. It's not going to be pleasant. I'm sorry."

He brought his glove closer to her face and she finally recognised the smell. Smoke and sulphur, spice and musk, inciting and arousing. The devil's smell. Concentrated corruption in a small glass jar. Why was her mouth watering suddenly?

Zarel howled and snapped frantically, ferociously, forcing Tomasz to withdraw his hand swiftly lest he lose some fingers. The smell was lodged in her nostrils already though.

"It's not so bad," Clare breathed, and she felt a slick glove brush over her shoulder. A moment later she felt her skin begin to warm with corrupting heat. "You can learn to live with it."

Zarel was aware of their arousal, much stronger now. Three women, two men, she could scent each of them individually. They had the Itch bad she could tell, far worse than her. Worse than anyone she'd met so far. They practically radiated it.

Someone seized one of her legs and started massaging the contaminating oil into the fur of her calf. Her skin prickled and burned with a tremendous aching that seemed to jump straight to her groin. She whimpered and groaned, twisting to try to break free.

"And we'll be together again, the six of us," Eiga encouraged, spreading slick corrupting fluid over her back. Zarel wished she could sink her own claws into the itching skin there and flay it away before the sensation spread. "She has big plans for us..."

With a great thrash, Zarel managed to roll over onto her back in a tangle of kicking limbs and flashing teeth. The perverted Seraph scattered momentarily, then closed in again.

"That's new..." Clare remarked, drizzling a trail of tainted goop over her furred dick from safely out of reach of Zarel's thrashing. She felt herself twitch and harden even further, weredick straining against the constricting net just as desperately as the rest of her.

"Must be from those beasts," Tomasz decided. He was taking advantage of her distraction to pat her head like he was trying to calm some upset pet, but she noticed he wasn't using the hand coated in oil. A small mercy.

"Lael will give us better," Karys, their fifth, was apparently a true believer. Zarel had always found the small woman weird. "Anything we want."

Zarel's whole body was on fire now, her mind somehow both fogged and racing. She itched and she ached, she burned and she trembled. Most of all she hurt. She desperately wanted to faint.

"I want my squad, first," Tomasz pronounced, "the six of us can face anything."

He was still stroking her head, thumb idly scratching her ears. It was very nice. A tiny piece of comfort amidst all the agony of want. She noticed his other hand was resting near her face, still slick with oil. She remembered the taste of the devil's fingers on her tongue, the pleasure as they touched her lips.

The rest of the squad's attentions were getting decidedly more frisky now that her angry resistance was weakening. Hands squeezed and stroked her breasts, leaving them tingling and smeared with oil. Others brushed her dick, still others her balls, and she could feel her own leaking desire mixing with the slime they left there. A gloved finger played over her ass, sparking a shiver of desire she normally associated with her feminine sex, absent in this monstrous form. She vividly remembered the devil's fingers slipping inside her though, the sinful taste of her own juices.

Overcome with the maddening sensations, Zarel reached out her tongue for the gloved digits lingering above her face, slick with Lael's corrupted gift...

Suddenly, the room resounded with a roar that shook the earth and displaced bits of masonry from the ceiling. The floor rang with the snick-snick of talons as a battle-scarred tawny furred werewolf forced its way in through the narrow doorway, followed a moment later by a second figure, snowy white and panting hard.

The hands on Zarel were gone, their owners jumping to their feet in surprise. Armour clanked and shrieked over stone as her captors tried to organise themselves.

"Weapons!" cried Tomasz, "Hold them off!"

Zarel could hear the panic in his voice and the alarm in the movements of the others. Steel was nearly useless against werewolves, as they'd discovered when they first met Marek's pack. They were backing away from her, clustered together, perhaps heading for a side exit.

One of their number wasn't panicking, though. Karys was laughing. A wild, almost manic laughter that was so incongruous that it seemed to give the two onrushing werewolves pause. They stopped just short of Zarel, growling menacingly.

"What's so damned funny?" someone demanded, she thought it was Stefan.

"We don't need weapons!" The tainted little fallen-Seraph sang. "She's already given us so much better..."

A glass jar spun across Zarel's field of view and shattering against the broad chest of the advancing Alva. Slimy tainted oil coated the werewolf's front, while drops spattered across her face and rained down on Zarel's prone form.

She heard a grunt from Tomasz. A commander seeing an opportunity, albeit a distasteful one.

"Do it."

The air was suddenly full of whirling bottles and shattering glass. Zarel whimpered as crystal shards and burning corrupting droplets rained down on her, heard the startled yelps of her rescuers as they were coated with the evil liquid. Her nostrils were assaulted by the stench of sulphur, spice and musk. Lael's gift.

"Now run like hell..."

---------------------------------------------

Aavi took a deep breath and swept the tattered drapes aside, revealing the canvas beneath. He'd been braced for some sort of trap, a magical assault, but nothing came. Beside him he felt Ardour stiffen.

"Are you ok?" he asked, even as he examined the picture.

It was an oil painting and in a surprisingly good state, colours bright and vivid like it could have been painted yesterday. It depicted a crowded and chaotic scene. A grand marble temple was playing host to a mob of figures - angry or panicked looking commoners remonstrating with white-robed clergy and novices. In the foreground a large red-faced man, shirtless and shiny with a fevered sweat, was trying to wrestle a medicine bag from the hands of a skinny male novice.

"Ardour?" he asked, wondering if the tiefling's exhaustion might have caught up to her.

A small brass plaque below the frame gave the work's title: Saint Syrenna hides the Staff of Cleansing during the fall of Scaevola's temple.

Aha! Well there were some words Aavi knew. Scaevola was the genderless god of healing, of course, one of the Triarchy worshipped at the Abbey. Saint Syrenna was one of the Abbey's legendary founders, a powerful cleric who protected the faithful from the terrors of the apocalypse. She was buried in the Abbey's graveyard, a revered and semi-mythical figure. The Staff of Cleansing on the other hand, he had never heard of. A holy artefact maybe? It certainly sounded useful for his quest...

"Ah! Ow!"

Beside him, Ardour was wincing and swaying, though her feet seemed locked to the floor. She twisted, elbows out and shoulders hunched, as if fighting for space in a crowd.

So there was a trap! Aavi's magic must have protected him, but his tiefling companion clearly wasn't so lucky. He was about to go to her aid when he caught something in the painting. Movement.

A white-robed figure was pushing her way through the crowd, rocked and buffeted by its frantic surging, but determinedly clinging onto a wooden stave. The Staff of Cleansing was a simple length of wood, planed smooth and straight, varnished and shiny. It had a soft sterile glow to it, which the frenzied mob seemed to recoil from as Syrenna made her way through their ranks.

Ardour gasped suddenly and when Aavi looked back to her she was squirming, trying to fend off unseen assailants. Her clothes, her hair, even her limbs were being tugged about by invisible hands, giving her the impression of a marionette jerking at the end of its strings. Aavi swatted at the air around her, but there was nothing to fight against. Ghosts, like she had said of her dream.

In the painting, what had been a confrontation was now more of a riot. The frenzied mob were tearing at each other's clothes, at the hapless priests, at anything that came within reach. Many were naked, their clothes torn from them by their neighbours. Their eyes were wild, faces flushed, Aavi well knew the expression by now. The Itch was sweeping through them.

Even the clergy seemed to be affected, he saw. They weren't fighting the mob now but embracing them, swept up amongst their ranks. Everywhere there were people undressing and embracing, lips and bodies pressed together, passionate and violent. Saint Syrenna was the exception. She slipped through the crowd like a specter, unnoticed by any but the closest, and those that saw her withdrew from her, afraid of that glowing staff.

Ardour let out a hoarse moan and Aavi dragged his eyes from the painting and back to her. There was too much going on. He had to help Ardour, but he knew he had to watch the Saint's progress too. She was going to hide that magical artefact somewhere, he couldn't afford to miss it if he wanted to find the thing.

Somehow his tiefling friend was naked, her gear scattered on the ground around her. He could actually see the ripples in her flesh as spectral hands grabbed and stroked at it. He felt his cheeks start to burn as he watched her breasts squeezed and pinched. Her ash coloured tiefling skin had an inhuman shine to it, infernal, alluring. Her eyes were hooded, half-open and distant. Her gaze was locked on the magical canvas which had her in its thrall.

Aavi wavered. Every instinct said to destroy the painting before things got truly out of hand. But this was important, that was why she'd led him to it. That staff had to be key to his quest and this strange moving picture was the way to find it.

What had Ardour said before when they'd talked about the city's dangers? Protect her from the really bad things and she'd handle the rest? Did this count as something she'd handle? Could he make that choice for her?

Her next moan was more enthusiastic. She humped the air, grinding against something he couldn't see. He could see her cock though, dark and infernal, rising up and squashing slightly as she thrust up against some invisible stomach or thigh. Aavi swallowed nervously. He was in danger of being entranced by this sight rather than the painting if he didn't look away.

Saint Syrenna! He refocused quickly on that paragon of chastity and purpose, just as she broke free from the crowd's edge. She was walking purposefully toward a dais, on which sat a shining steel coffer. Was she going to lock the staff inside?

Ardour let out a grunt that could best be described as animal. Speaking of locked inside, he thought from her hip thrusting motions that she was now penetrating some phantasm. He could actually see the inky skin of her sex stretch and ripple as if gripped by unseen depths. Pre-cum welled up, lewdly squeezed out by the motions, and then dripped away to the ground. From the position of her arms, it seemed like she was carrying someone in a sort of standing fuck.

A buzz swept through the crowd in the painting. There were monsters in their midst. Actually they must have always been there, but somehow now they were revealed. Some were subtle - Aavi focused on a tall woman drawing back her hood to reveal yellow serpent eyes and a face that was half scales, unnoticed by the couple that were hungrily worshipping at her bare breasts. Others were far less so.

Now Aavi had seen one yuan-ti he could see them everywhere. The humanoid purebloods mingled amongst the crowd and incited their lusts, while the more overt of the snake creatures descended upon the most distracted, diverted, or simply too horny to care individuals. A great naga-like abomination, snake-like at the head but possessed of an athlete's broad muscular chest, slithered and constricted a powerful scaly tail around a skinny novice. Aavi watched with horror as the delusional youth lifted his chin and strained upwards to kiss the serpent monster, which bared its fangs and buried them in his shoulder instead. The boy's expression was one of wild rapture as corrupting venom burned through him.

Monsters. The legends said that monsters brought the Itch. Here they were overrunning a temple that was probably one of the last places holding out against the curse.

Ardour made a strange panting hiss and Aavi actually saw the puncture marks of ghostly fangs on her neck. She squirmed, clearly constricted, but her hips were still thrusting up, little staccato motions as she fucked some snake monster that held her tight.

Imaginary snake monster, he reminded himself. Imaginary venom. She'd be all right. Hopefully.

The glowing staff was gone. Saint Syrenna had locked it inside the steel coffer. He watched as she turned and hurled the key into the writhing mass of bodies. Inelegant, but a good way to lose it he supposed. She hefted the heavy coffer in both hands and staggered upright with it, carrying it... somewhere...

Where? It was getting hard to pick out any landmarks in the huge temple now that it was just a writhing mass of bodies.

Everywhere humans and yuan-ti were locked together, a rippling sinuous carpet of flesh and scales. Tails and limbs tangled, locked, constricted. Fangs sank into bodies again and again, but the venom only enflamed, bringing its victims to further corruption and ecstasy. Human hearts and nerves surely could not hold up for long to the toxins and the crushing squeezing of that sordid mating ball. Aavi had a feeling that only monsters would be emerging from it.

Syrenna was running now and for good reason. He saw her flee down a side tunnel which sloped steeply downward, pursued by a pair of sneering purebloods. It probably led to an underground infirmary, if Scaevola's temple in the picture was anything like the one he knew at the Abbey. Soon she was out of sight.

He did his best to commit the passageway to memory. If they could find the temple, and they could, he decided, then he could find that coffer in the depths beneath it.

Ardour was emitting a series of breathy yelps that had him concerned. She was swaying on her tiptoes, perhaps locked in the sinuous grasp of one of the illusion's monsters. Her breathing was shallow and rapid, chest struggling to expand as if fighting against a crushing weight. Despite it all her cock was steely hard and starting to turn a little pink from the endless ghostly friction.

Aavi had what he needed from the painting. It was time to end this before she got hurt. He reached for the tattered drapes and pulled them closed.

The spell didn't end. Ardour still hung there, trapped and molested by magic.

Startled from her reverie, her eyes flickered to his.

"Aavi-" she wheezed, "help..."

He was trying! "Hang on, I'll destroy it!"

He yanked the curtains open again and prized at the painting's frame, but it was like it was glued to the wall. It wouldn't come free despite his frenzied pulling.

"Aaavii~" Ardour's voice was alarmed, suddenly much higher than usual. "There are snakes!"

He could only imagine. There was a painting full of them, resisting all his efforts to tear it down. He yanked her dagger from its sheath at her waist and jammed it into the canvas, intending to slash it to ribbons. Instead the point rebounded off something that felt more like wood than cloth, the paint barely chipping.

"Please," she begged, "it's too much! They're on me! One's... nooo..."

Aavi watched her eyes widen and dreaded to think where that particular illusory snake was headed. His own panic was starting to rise as he looked between the tiefling and the trapped picture, desperately seeking some solution.

His eyes fell on the red leatherbound book lying on the floor beside Ardour, dropped when the action began. The Tome of Carnal Power was doubtless as magical as the painting, it had been in her dream and it was the first thing she'd picked up in this bizarre secret room. This was a sex-focused trap, perhaps the book had a counterspell?

Ardour's eyes were huge as he skidded to his knees in front of her, in the shadow of her straining and tortured cock.

"I have an idea," he babbled, by way of explanation, "the book..."

"H-hurry..." the tiefling gasped. From down here he could see that she was being penetrated too, the sight sent a confusing thrill through him.

Aavi seized the book and got to reading, right where he was. There was no index, he saw immediately, nothing as helpful as a contents list. He frantically flipped pages of tight, neat text and shockingly graphic illustrations. There was no time to take anything in.

Ardour shrieked. He glanced up just in time to see the taut smooth skin of her sack depress in two needle-like punctures. A snake bite. Her testicles began to swell, a cruel dark purple corruption spreading across the tender grey flesh. Raindrops of pre-cum spattered across Aavi's shirt and landed in his hair.

"Aaaavi!" she howled again, pleading.

A heavy droplet of her silvery pre- slapped down on the bare skin of his hand. It was hot, hotter than something that came out of a person should be. He dropped the book as he felt it start to tingle and burn on his skin. His uncorrupted skin.

The book took two more heavy droplets as he fumbled with his sleeve to wipe the burning fluid from his flesh, trying to ignore the excited shivers it was sending through him. More pre-cum rained down around her feet. By the time he got back to the tome he was fearing it would be ruined, but it wasn't.

It was glowing.

---------------------------------------------

Zarel was practically bathing in slick corrupted oil. It ran in heavy, heady rivulets down her prone form. The tainted infernal juices lit her skin aflame wherever they touched and seemed to sing to her own Itch, making her heart pound and her trapped cock strain against the confines of the heavy rope net. She needed to escape. She needed to fuck.

The pounding footsteps of retreating Seraph were receding. Her packmates hadn't pursued, distracted by their own dousing with good quantities of Lael's gift. She could hear two sets of harsh animal breathing. She could smell their arousal, beneath the harsh pungence of the oil.

Someone let out a whine, uncharacteristic for a werewolf, then a rapid urgent bark. Two sets of strong claws dragged her netted body out of the foul puddle, then worked to free her. Zarel was able to assist as the net got looser, all three of them pulling and tearing individual strands until they finally broke. She staggered clumsily to her feet.

Alva's tawny brown fur was matted and slick, particularly on her hands and arms where it looked like she'd blocked the flying glass jars aimed at her. She was emitting a constant low growl, muzzle lolling open as if she was too hot. Zarel could see a shimmering rope of her own aroused juices dangling between her legs.

Salis had taken a worse hit. The winter wolf's front was doused with the evil stuff, which still dripped from her. Her snow white length was erect and straining. Strangely she seemed the calmest of all of them though. Focused.

Zarel's rescuers faced her. She wanted them. She knew they wanted her. The Itch was firmly in the driving seat as she started toward them, arms outstretched.

Salis let out another urgent bark and sprang away, racing for the exit. From Alva's surprised huff, Zarel thought the dwarf was as irked as her by this turn of events. They both gave chase.

The druid wasn't going far, it turned out. Salis threw herself into a gritty sand dune piled up against the church's wall and began scrubbing frantically at her sodden fur. She snarled and threw a clawful of dirt at them as they approached. The message was clear: get clean first.

Zarel exchanged looks with Alva. She didn't have time to scrub off the tingling, burning oil. She needed to fuck now. The corrupting juices weren't that bad, were they? In fact, each wave of burning was accompanied by a distinct flutter of pleasure. She could deal with it after her rut was sated.

With an amused and resigned snort, the tawny werewolf seized her arm and threw her bodily into the sand dune.

What followed was part dust bath, part wrestling match. They were both instantly covered in gritty, dusty sand that mingled with the corrupted slime on their bodies to briefly form the city's most evil mud. Zarel was a bundle of agitated limbs, trying to pin Alva and climb on top of her while the other werewolf wiped them down with more dust and tried to scour as much of the oil as she could. Thrashing tails sent great plumes of sand and grit through the air.

Finally Zarel found purchase, capturing an arm and using her superior strength to roll the one-eyed werewolf onto her front. She used all of her considerable weight to pin Alva there, panting hotly in her ear as she humped impatiently against her rear.

With an impatient growl of her own, Alva shifted and got her knees under her, raising her hips until she was presenting herself. Zarel's amateur sawing motions found purchase against her sodden sex and she surged inside, sparing no thought for gentleness. The tawny werewolf's pussy was a slick velvet furnace and she speared it deeply, ramming herself home.

Alva was making that continuous low growl again. Zarel found herself copying it, so that they harmonised as their bodies crashed together. This was good. The werewolf was so slick, she didn't have to battle for every inch like she had when she had conquered Ardour, but Alva's muscles clung to her and were powerful enough to arrest her progress at every flutter.

Salis was scrubbing at her back, taking advantage of her distraction to scrape away more of the corruption coating her. She pictured those claws digging into her back for a different reason and found she liked the thought. The white werewolf would get her turn in a minute.

Alva snapped at one of her forearms, refocusing her attention on her current partner. Zarel snarled and snapped back at one her ragged ears, drawing an excited shudder from the werewolf. She was starting to understand how the pack fucked now - finesse was near impossible with their claws and bulk, fury and passion were the name of the game. That suited her just fine, she had a lot of frustration to get out.

Zarel pummeled the one-eyed werewolf with everything she had, feeling Alva's legs tremble and weaken. The gripping muscles of her sex fluttered wildly around Zarel's cock, making her feel huge and powerful. Making her feel good. She felt her climax approaching, her knot starting to swell.

Alva's legs gave out and she collapsed, body quaking as she came hard in a grunting huff. Zarel felt the eruption of hot juices that sprayed her balls, felt tired and shaking muscles give up their resistance and let her surge even deeper inside. She howled as she rammed herself home, knot and all, and emptied herself into her packmate.

Her legs and arms shook, muscles flexing and weakening in time with the great waves of pleasure that rolled out from her core in time with each pulsing spurt of her seed. She sagged down against Alva, gasping and panting, revelling in the sensation.

The mind fog didn't lift. It felt amazing, grinding the remnants of her orgasm out against the spent woman's unresisting back, but the relief and clarity she was expecting did not arrive. Strength and drive came flooding back to her in an instant. The Itch demanded more.

With a snarl Zarel yanked herself free, swollen bestial knot slipping from Alva's overflowing sex with a sordid slurping noise. A river of frothy white spend ran out after it, its bitter tang cutting through the lingering odour of corruption. That was her smell she'd put on her packmate. Good. She turned on Salis.

The white werewolf was lingering behind her. More presentable now she was mostly cleaned of filth. More controlled. Still hard though. Zarel could see in her eyes that she wanted this just as badly as her less restrained sisters.

By mutual instinct they sprang at each other, wrestling again for dominance. Salis was fresh while Zarel was winded from her prior exertions. But the human wanted it more. She was no-one's bottom, not any more.

They fought for perhaps a minute, pressed together in a battle of locked limbs and straining muscles. Zarel took every opportunity to grind her length against Salis's own, against her stomach, her thigh, anything she could reach really. She smeared her slickness - a combination of Alva's juices and her own seed - across the eladrin woman's fur. A heady cloud of musk and pheromones, her own she realised, encompassed them.

Salis yielded slowly, a deliberate and drawn-out cessation of her resistance until finally Zarel had her arms around her, crushing her to her chest. Icy blue eyes, wise and proud but also now wide and needy, gazed at her provocatively. Zarel wanted to kiss her, an anatomical impossibility. She settled for pushing their foreheads close, invading every inch of the white werewolf's space.

Then it was time. She lowered Salis to the ground on her back, settling atop her. There could be no preparation, but she was still slick enough from her last coupling that she could make it work. She pressed herself against Salis's entrance.

The snowy white werewolf's ass resisted her, but not for too long. Her pointed tip made penetration easy enough and she got to watch Salis's eyes widen, then start to glaze as she pressed home more and more of her widening length.

Zarel wasn't as rough as she had been with Alva. It was partly due to the nature of their joining, but there was something else. Salis had a delicate sort of air, not frail exactly, but brittle. She saw it in the way Alva treated her sometimes too, coming to her rescue early and often in their skirmishing the last few nights. So Zarel paced herself, unyielding but not unkind.

She felt divine. A vice-like tightness that Zarel could feel herself spreading and stretching, claiming. Salis's reactions were more pronounced, less bestial. Her shudders and twitches were frequent and telling. Her breathy pants and yelps were recognisable sounds of pleasure. She was painting Zarel's belly with sticky pre-cum in moments. The eladrin felt like a conquest, a beta.

It did things for Zarel. She'd wrestled Alva for dominance, both buoyed up by the corrupting oil, and won through strength alone. When she'd fucked Ardour the overmatched tiefling hadn't had too much choice in proceedings. But Salis was submitting to her deliberately. Salis desired her. Salis was her bitch.

Salis was cumming like a bitch, she realised a moment later as she felt a much larger pool of warmth start to spread between their bodies. Good girl. She deserved a reward.

She didn't give her the knot - the elf was delicate after all. Instead she roared her appreciation to the sinking moon and buried all she could inside, letting the swell of her bulging knot just start to spread the elf's entrance, letting her feel it. Her second load of the night felt no smaller than the first as another huge climax swept over her, bringing great waves of pleasure but still no relief, no respite. The Itch was still calling.

She had been thinking too hard for too long. Werewolf brains were not meant for concentration or consideration, they were made for running and hunting and mating. Especially for mating. She could feel instinct taking over, conscious thought retreating beneath bestial desire and the seemingly unquenchable demands of her corrupted flesh. With a growl, she reached for her packmates again...

Sunrise found them in a heap on the sandy ground, a pale human, a ruddy dwarf and an icy blue elf with not a scrap of clothing between them.

Zarel was on her back with Alva's heavy form lying on top of her, shoulders digging into her breasts. Salis was on top of Alva, her slight weight adding only a little more discomfort. Their legs were intertwined in a way that let Zarel grind her slick feminine sex against the back of the dwarf's thigh, while Salis rubbed against the front of her other. Zarel had a vague sense that they had been pressed together inside Alva not too long ago.

They were slick with sweat and their juices, filthy with dirt, but the corrupting oil was all gone at last. She could still feel her skin buzzing, her mind slow and languid, thoughts surely more lecherous than they had been. She was in a worse state than she had been before the ambush, but she wasn't about to go and throw herself at the feet of that damned succubus like her treacherous captors had planned. Her packmates had saved her.

"I reckon tha's probably enough now," panted Alva, "sheesh..."

It took them some awkward squirming to disentangle limbs and painfully peel sticky flesh free, but eventually they were separated. They huddled in the sand, gathering themselves.

"That was... worrisome." Salis was withdrawing into her shell again, Zarel could see. She wasn't the gregarious type, despite their hours-long romp. "The devil wants you for something else. You have enemies now..."

"We have enemies, she means..." Alva was sanguine as ever, at least. "This is war. The chief will agree."

"You don't have to..." Zarel began, "those were Seraph. They were going for me."

"Aye, well they'll be goin' through me and Salis," the dwarf proclaimed. Salis nodded. Their body language brooked no argument.

That was that, then.

---------------------------------------------

The Tome of Carnal Power was rising up into the air before Aavi's eyes, glowing bright enough that it outshone the dim light from their single lantern.

Ardour's desperate thrashing flicked several more strands of glistening pre-cum over it as he watched. Somehow, rather than ruining the delicate pages the shiny liquid seemed to sink into the book, which glowed brighter with every droplet.

Pages turned rapidly, caught up in a sudden howling gust that had the lantern flame flickering and dancing madly. Aavi caught glimpses of schematics for strange and doubtless wonderful devices, sketches of beautiful and monstrous creatures, recipes for debauched potions. The spells were at the back, pages of formulae racing past too fast for him to read, until finally one stuck. The pages stopped turning, the book floated down almost delicately into his hand.

Aavi barely skimmed the spell before he started to cast. Ardour's breathing had almost completely stopped now, save for some strained shudders. Her body was hanging rigid, suspended as if weightless. A continuous river of pre- oozed from her, linking her straining cock to the floor.

He was a paladin, so he had no right to expect to just be able to cast a spell from the page like this. Even wizards needed time to study an unfamiliar formula and translate it into their own script. But the book was helping. It was guiding, translating, directing. It was throwing its knowledge at him as fast as he could absorb it.

Aavi spoke the words and made the gestures. He felt the power rise within him, a powerful magic that would dispel the trap. He gathered and directed it, even as the book directed him. As the magic began to crescendo he set the book down and cupped his hands, interrupting that shining oily drizzle of Ardour's life force from her tortured hardness, letting it form into a glistening pool in his hands. It glowed brightly and then vanished, consumed by the spell.

With a creaking groan like rotting wood the painting sagged from the wall and crashed down to the ground, the magical trap releasing its grip.

Ardour wobbled and then pitched forward. Aavi scrambled to catch her and the tiefling fell across him, gasping for breath.

She was naked and she was burning hot. She was panting almost hysterically and he could feel her tears smear on his shoulder, oddly cool compared with the fever heat of her cheek. Aavi supported her as best he could from his awkward kneeling crouch, patting her back, her head, trying to soothe her.

She smelled like sweat and sex and she clung to him like a drowning woman. Aavi could feel her heart racing through her breast, his own pounding away in his ears to match. The room seemed very dark now the glowing brightness of magic had drained away, lit only by the dim flickering lantern at his back.

Ardour was slowly getting her breath back, drawing proper deep lungfuls of air as her shaking subsided. Aavi's mind was a racing whirl of worries. Was she ok? Should he have tried to save her immediately, the picture's secrets be damned? Could she feel his embarrassing hardness squashed against her hip?

She gently pushed his shoulder and he drew back, opening up enough space that he could meet her eyes. Her glowing red eyes were like lava in the dark room, fiery and alien, unreadable to the human. Aavi opened his mouth to speak, to apologise, to explain all he'd learned, that her dream had been right and her brush with death had been worth it. But the words caught and he couldn't find them.

Instead, she kissed him.