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You had needed a guide just to get to this small, ramshackle establishment the goblins deigned to call a “camp”. This wasn't a camp: it was a bastardized shelter, a hallowed jackline in the ocean of unrelenting darkness - one you're all too overjoyed to see when the torch's flame begins to waver in the inky black.
The sound of lyre calls with sweeping serenity in the false darkness of the Cursed Shadowlands. A blanket of black caresses the landscape, shrouding everything in a veil of night. A serenade of strings sings sweetly, like a siren. The harmony winds its way through the overgrowth, slithering delicately past trees and bowing beneath brush. It's a song that calls out to whatever lays in the obsidian shadows before you, announcing your presence. The darkness welcomes you with a mother's longing embrace, begging you to take a step forward, if only so that she may hug you one final time. The lyre calls to the darkness just as the darkness calls to you: with a melancholic and weeping hunger.
Thank the gods that you do not listen.
Something breaks in the distance, cracking beneath a heavy, unyielding weight - a monstrous weight. A single white light glitters between the decaying branches.
“He's here,” chuckles a goblin to your left, tossing a bone off into the tall grass. “Go get it!” He giggles manically as a worg skitters off, melting in the darkness. A sharp whine signals the animal's imminent demise. Gritting your teeth, you hiss as the sound of breaking bones and torn flesh leaps into the air, muddying the silence. The worg yelps one final time as the hands of death cruelly greet it.
No mercy is housed in this place.
Your blood quickens, your heart beating at an unrelenting pace. There's an absence that is suddenly profoundly evident as your mind races. Your eyes dart to the broken brush, waiting with palpable impatience yet your silent greeting hangs in the muted air: dulled and thick, choking on your fear, suffocating on your need to know what that light in the darkness still hides.
Out from the unknown steps a man, handsome in face and fair in complexion. His alabaster hair is a tangled mess of malformed curls and bedraggled waves. His smile? Twisted and hollow even by the cool white light of his moon lantern. From the distance, he's a striking individual if not egregiously tall, you think to yourself. High cheekbones and the chiseled face of a drow, cut like stone, somber and immovable. His armor? Immaculate but perhaps impractical. Yet, as he moves, the brush beneath him bows and breaks, snapping like carrion-bones, long dessicated by creatures most foul.
Because, the man is no man at all, you think to yourself as your lower jaw drops in a slow descent.
As the light bathes across the man in a radiant angelic glow, you realize that what you are staring at is neither man, nor monster.
He is both and he is neither.
“Drider.” You whisper, eyes wide with surprise. You feel your blood run cold as your eyes crawl up the side of his face: a multitude of eyes blink before settling on you and your lyre.
“Yes, I hear it calling to us, Your Majesty.” The drider breathes, clutching his lantern between both of his hands. His approach slows to a clambering crawl, undead and vacant of life eternal.
From below him, you can see that his armor is not, in fact, armor but a spider's carapace ornately arranged to look like drow's armor. The drider's top half is all drow, strikingly handsome - in another life, he was likely exquisitely handsome even by drow standards - while the bottom half is a massive spider. Pedipalps ticc in a familiar twitch that is reminiscent of a fracturing mind. Tarsi and claws pad against the detritus beneath him, eager to move, to wrench life from unworthy swathes. The drider holds the lantern, light washing across the stitched camp.
“In the Absolute's name, you have been charged with-... with guiding this, uh, True Soul to Moonrise Towers.” The orc bows its head as the drider regards you with curiosity. His many eyes seem to look right through you as you stand there, attempting to conjure up any semblance of bravery. As if sweetly, the drider smiles, revealing sharpened teeth. But, there is no love behind those blackened eyes for his love is reserved for his revered goddess: his Absolute.
“New flesh for my queen, but-...” The drider looks down upon you as if you are suddenly a delicious meal and he has become starved. “What is your name?” His voice is almost hollow as if your name is little more than scientific words bred from your looks - you are the specimen and he is the scientist.
The orc clears his throat, his eyes averting themselves as the drider bends himself down, cocks his head, and eyes you thoroughly. “They who are but a servant to my majesty. They who are regarded with her favor,” croons the drider, his voice thick, layered with an other-wordly tone that soothes the lilting nervousness that was beginning to fester within your bones.
“Best introduce yourself, True Soul.” The orc whispers, looking anywhere and everywhere but at the drider. His feet shuffle mindlessly, hands bound behind his back as if in loyal salutations to the spider. His breath is quick, panicked, and fleeting. You can hear it long before you turn your head to gaze back at him. What was his name again? Kansif, you are reminded.
“Tav. A follower of the Absolute.” You proclaim with utter certainty, shifting where you stand. You've fought so many, taken lives from faces you cannot recall yet, the drider remains the most horrifying thing you've seen to date.
“Tav, they say. They who wander into your darkness, my majesty, and render unto you their flesh.” The drider's words feel as though they are coming from all around you, whispering into your ears before falling like decaying leaves to the Shadowland's desecrated floors. “I am Kar'niss.” He growls though there is a lack of aggression within his words. It is as if he cannot help the lingering gravel in his voice as he speaks - as though his voice has been as morphed as he has.
Karniss's welcoming hand signals the way to you, coaxing you forward beneath the safety of his lamp. “I shall guide you with my majesty's radiance, her favor, her gift.” The drider turns ever so slowly, lumbering into the darkness. The orc and goblins dare not follow. There place remains here, within the safety of their numbers.
But you, True Soul? Have a destiny to fulfill.
Taking a deep breath, you nod and march your way forward, absent of the company beyond that of the drider's fracturing mind and cracking soul. Whether the madness broke him or the rituals, it is not known to you. But, a soft tangle of web brushes against the tendrils of your authoritative mind - Kar'niss knows you are touched by his revered goddess and seeks the company of a likened creature whether in silence or otherwise.
Through the darkness you seem to wander with the drider. His heavy carapaced body cracks the detritus beneath him, snapping twigs, crunching leaves, and breaking long-lost something-rathers, the likes of which you cannot make out in the inky blackness. The deeper you travel, the colder it gets and the closer you find yourself veering towards the spider. Fear does not tempt you so much as curiosity does. Inquisition finds itself in the threshold of your mind, wondering ‘What must it be like to be just like him? A drider?’ You wonder if he even recalls his home within the Underdark, his militaristic training, or the rituals that malformed him into this.
You swallow hard.
Can he feel your mind reaching out to him beneath the untreaded waters of his breaking sanity?
The walk is quiet save for the sounds of brush beneath your combined feet. There is an alluring sound of hushing that bellows into a cascading wind, fleeting your hair and Kar'niss's.
Something stirs in the silence as the drider notices you staring at him with intrigue.
“Your inquisition is palpable, True Soul.” Kar'niss opines, his eyes darting every which way as if following the inaudible sounds of shadow creatures that speak to him on the wind. “Is your curiosity blossomed by my form or by the connection I have with my majesty?”
“You're a drider.” You reply coolly, as if it weren't the most obvious statement in the world.
“That I am. Does that concern you, True Soul?” Kar'niss holds the lantern up a little higher, eyes still flitting at the world around him.
There's an unspoken desire to reach out and touch Kar'niss carapace as it shines in the light of the Moon Lantern. Impulsivity quickens your pulse and, before you know it, your hand glides along the knuckle of a leg, intrigued by Lolth's bastard. Kar'niss twitches, confused by your touch.
Your eyes skate along the leg, spindly and warped by magic. “Concerned? No. But, I've never met a drider before. You hear about them from time-to-time, but no one ever thinks that they'll be on the receiving end of drider's image. Not long enough to talk about it.” You hum, amused by the very idea. “Many others regard driders with horror, often referring to them as ‘abominations’.”
The drider cocks his head, clutching his lantern close to his chest, fingers tapping against the stick. A blank look glasses his eyes but his own inquiring gaze grows wide and wild as your words touch something primal deep within him. “Do you regard me as an ‘abomination’, True Soul? Do you find me…” Kar'niss pauses for a moment as he considers his wording carefully. Should he mirror your language? Should he conjure a new word? “Do you find me horrifying?” His words are inquisitive, wondering. Behind the muddy waters of his words you can hear the curiosity: Do I scare you?
“No.” You answer poignantly, pointedly quietly and daringly stoic.
Kar'niss offers you a rolling laugh, something inhuman, silken and rich. It's deep and wicked. That layered sound to his voice returns with a darkened pitch: sultry, vampiric, predatory. “What do you find me to be, True Soul?”
You've stopped walking and you can't remember when it happened.
The ivory-haired creature regards you with a hungry look in his eyes. As he bends down, clearing the space between the pair of you, he holds the lantern up, radiating a glow that feels as fathomless as the darkness that surrounds you. Kar'niss's many eyes flit between yours if to memorize the lines and planes of your face, committing them to whatever is left of his breaking mind. His lips part in a cruel smile, sharpened teeth glittering like twinkling stars in the radiant light of the Moon Lantern.
Thickly, you swallow. “I find you preternaturally beautiful.” You admit.
“Do you hear them, your majesty? Preternaturally.” Kar'niss pauses his outloud thinking, mulling the word over in his mouth as if he could taste the thicket of fear that grows within you. “Beautiful.” The word is oozed out from between his lips, ready to drip onto the floor in thickened tendrils. “The True Soul finds me beautiful.” Kar'niss can't recall the last time anyone found him to be beautiful. Perhaps long ago, before he was ever Lolth's sworn? Memories of cowering creatures flood into Kar'niss mind – he recalls the faces of his ferried guests and how they feared him, his righteousness, his unwavering loyalty to his benevolent goddess.
“And you, dear True Soul, pale only to the Goddess herself.” A quiet flirtatiousness laces his words, leashed only by his insanity. He's close, so very close to you now – just a hair's breath away from your face, lips parted in that cruel, hungry smile. Your heart rabbits in your chest, thumping with unnatural heaviness. Swallowing thickly, you take a step back, finding you are caught between the drider and heavy, immovable boulder. A sweltering furnace heat pools between your legs, sparking a devious need in the pit of your stomach. Shame burns your cheeks with life-giving blood. Kar'niss is horrifying. By every definition, he is an abomination: Lolth's chosen are not, by their very nature, stable-minded, kind, or even beautiful.
But, Kar'niss is terrifyingly beautiful. If
You do not fear the multitude of eyes whose pupils flower into pitch black stones. You do not fear the carapaced legs that could pin you, stab you, irreversibly maim you. Nor do you fear the threat of strangling hands, a spider's gullet, or a kiss imbued with poison. You embrace the fear, whole-heartedly, innervated by Kar'niss’s seeming willingness to have you.
It takes only a moment before your lips find the cool blush of Kar'niss's. Your jaw rolls to take another kiss, then another and another. And, Kar'niss reciprocates. His lips greet yours with equal hungered fervor. He tastes of a cool misty morning littered with the smell of decaying earth; of a battering stream that rains onto the pool of rocks below. It's a surprising taste when juxtaposed by the image of him. You expected the taste of death on Kar'niss, of rot and decaying flesh.
A hand snakes around the side of your head to cradle your neck against the flurry of need that Kar'niss is suddenly invigorated with.
A quick stab into the softened earth and the Moon Lantern is deposited, its halo throwing shadows against sharpened features and soft curvatures.
With two hands free, the drider grabs the sides of your face with impressive force, locking you into his hold. He pushes you further against the rock, pinning you down without any brutality. It's less of a suggestion and more of an unspoken beg: Won't you please stay with me? his actions seem to say. An arm snakes across Kar'niss back as you find the courage within you, your hand dancing across the plates and flesh of his chest. Smooth armor gives away to softened skin marred by battles now long forgotten by the drider. Atop his skin, you feel it: the thumping of a heart that he hasn't yet lost to the madness of his zealotry. It beats – fast, uncompelled by his devotion to his goddess. She's been cast aside in favor of another's worship (even if temporary).
Your free hand skates up the planes of Kar'niss form before resting upon his cheek. It's a tender, forgiving touch that the drider flinches at, unused to feeling anything as sensational as your sweet caress. He gasps without realizing it. For a moment, your hand retreats before you pull away to gaze up at the drider's face, it’s softened, pliable, wanting. It's the permission you need to tangle your hand within his spindly locks and pull him closer to you in another starved kiss. Between your breathless lips, Kar'niss groans. Your touch is electrifying to a creature who remembers little of passion and want.
The two pedipalps at his front tease at your clothes, seeking the warmth of your skin and permission to breach propriety. A hand slips between the pair of your bodies to loosen ties, unbuckle belts, and allow your armor to drop to the earth beneath you. The elven armor you wear still hides decency behind thin fabric even as you kick off your boots and pants. Your clothes and armor are, for the most part, abandoned to allow for Kar'niss to devour your shapely form. All that's left for Kar'niss is the semi-thick fabric of your dress. No armor. No weapons. No boots, charms, or bulky burlap sack shields him from feeling your textiled curves. This time, his hand drops to caress a breast, fondling with a rough, unpracticed touch. You breathe into the aether above you, head rolling back as you feel his fingers pad at your skin. The pedipalps are rough against your skin, grinding against your own scars and raking to find the part of your legs.
“I won't be gentle.” Kar'niss warns, his voice rough and low. His words are thick with desire, cooling to the touch of your heating skin.
“I didn't expet you to be.” You gasp as the pedipalps shove against the space between your legs, parting them roughly. For a moment, you're bow-legged. But, the moment quickly passes as two of Kar’niss’s frontmost legs slip around your knees. His hands and pedipalps brace you as you lean against the rock. Up, Kar’niss drags you towards the meat of the rock. The drider stands at his full height, unbowed. There's no need to fall to your level anymore. Not when he's more than capable of picking you up from the ground and pinning you to the boulder with ease. You feel the floor leave your feet, legs braced open by the drider's limbs and arms. You're not bared to him – not yet.
Kar'niss chuckles darkly as a hand that was once caressing your cheek seeks the ever-burning heat between your legs. He sweeps the front of your dress aside, bringing to light the glistening neediness you were hiding from him. His tongue clicks against the front of his teeth as he examines your weeping cunt. Arousal is smeared along the inside of your thighs. “Is this how you feel about me, True Soul?” Another dark chuckle breaks the panting silence as Kar'niss gazes down at you, eyes flitting between face and bared cunt. “Is this you showing me that you want me?”
“Yes.” You whimper. Arousal and hunger heats your cheeks at him calling you out like this. “Yes, this is how I feel about you.” You affirm once more as an armored finger skates across your dress, your skin, then lingers in your heat. He doesn't touch you – not yet.
For a breath, Kar'niss pauses, eyes inquisitively watching you. His cock grows from its armored sheath, something dark, inhuman, and unnatural. It's exactly where you'd expect it to be: in the valley between where his hips meet the rest of him. You eye his cock wildly, eager to reach out and touch it with your bare hands. But, Kar'niss gives you a warning growl and you dare not move. The pedipalps restrain your sides while his frontmost legs pin into the rock beneath your ass. You’re not restrained but you're given a resting place to seat yourself as you watch his cock grow with curiosity and unmovable hunger.
Kar'niss's cock is long with a thickened middle that swells with blood before tapering at the base. As the drider's pride continues to grow, you realize that he's a lot bigger than you would have initially taken him for. For a moment, you wonder if it's even possible for him to fit. Reality settles in: no, he won't fit. Not all the way.
The length of Kar'niss cock is marbled black and white while the base is armored black. The head is bulbous, oozing something you can only assume is precum. A bead blooms on the slick darkened head of his cock before it serpentine's down the barrel. He won't fit. Not to the hilt. He's too long. Too thick. For a a moment, you panic. Kar'niss warned you that he would not be gentle. But, your fear only races in your blood sending a fresh wave of desire to the apex of your legs.
“It won't fit.” You gulp, carding a hand through your hair.
“I'll fit as much as I can,” replies Kar'niss in a low growl. “You're a True Soul, after all. You can handle anything.” His playful words stab at you, leaving you embarrassed for even having said anything. There’s a sarcasm that drips from his final word, bathing his voice in a lush greed.
Kar’niss cradles your cheek, his cruel, twisted smile returning as he kisses you once again. It's not loving, only necessary. Without another word, the head of his cock meets your entrance, bathing his head in hunger. “It won't fit.” You whimper.
“Hush, True Soul.” He growls once more, rolling his hips upwards.
Pain flares from between your legs as you feel the head of his cock breach your lips. Kar'niss groans as he pulls his hips back. His patience begins to wear thin. You breathe a sigh of relief before another roll of his hips forward coaxes the head of his cock into your aching cunt. He’s a lot thicker than you took him for and you cry out at the pleasurable pain that radiates from between your legs. His head glides in an out, opening you up. Your back arches off the rock as pleasure screams electric through you, setting you ablaze. Another roll of Kar'niss hips and his head slips into you with ease. Inch by impatient inch, Kar'niss fucks into you, coaxing another inch that feels like a mile until he reaches the swollen middle of his cock.
You moan out his name, letting the darkness swallow the dragged out sounds that writhe from your throat.
The drider grins as a thumbpad presses against the bud of your clit, letting it circle in a slow, purposeful motion. A string of curses drips from your slackened mouth as pleasure surges through you once again. His cock fucks into you, opening up the tight maw of your cunt. Over and over, his hips begin to piston with a growing eagerness: he will fit into you and you cannot stop him from trying.
“Ready, True Soul?” Kar'niss asks, darkly.
“No.” You respond though your answer is bathed in starving need.
Kar'niss's finger rolls your clit again in a circulation motion as he breathes an airy chuckle, “Too bad.” His hips belt upwards as the top of his swollen middle greets your lips. You cry out his name, tangling your fingers in his hair. Faster, Kar'niss teases your clit as his hips rock with growing abandon. Your cunt throbs as you pant, tears forming in the corner of your eyes. The pain is inevitable but the pleasure of being filled and stretched becomes overwhelmingly blissful. You mewl, “More.” And Kar'niss pauses, incredulous, but pleased, at your command. His hips roll back though he aches from his waiting. Then, he presses forward, shoving the remainder of the swell of his knot into you. It's not passionate or kind. Kar'niss doesn't apologize as you writhe atop his cock. He can feel you quivering around him, shaking like a prey caught in his web. Your cunt chokes him, sending rippling pleasure up his spine. You howl as he nearly bottoms out inside of you, the tip of him practically kissing your cervix. You've taken as much of him as you can and the drider knows this. His grin never falters.
Kar'niss works his hips, sawing up and into you, forcing you open around him. The knot and the swell of his head peek out from beneath you as you watch him fuck you with a dazed expression. Your half-lidded eyes wander the length of him before greeting his face. There's a pain look on your tightened face but your body betrays you as Kar'niss pushes back into you, fitting you around him like a tailored glove. Another string of curses breaks the silence of the Cursed Shdaowlands.
You weren't ready then, but you are now.
The drider's hips piston into you with reckless abandon. His swells tease your insides, edging you ever closer to an earth-shattering bliss. The sounds that escape you are feral, animalistic – the base of who you are. Kar'niss's hands grip at your hips, leaving you free to tease your clit with the same unyielding need to cum. Over and over, her fucks into you, eyes watching the changes in your face: your passionate need, your overwhelmed cracking, your mind fracturing at the feel of him. He says nothing as he launches his cock into you, driving into you with hungered purpose. Your moans are almost deafening in the silence of the Shadowlands.
The sound of your skin against his is a complimentary symphony that cradles your pleasured notes. Each slap of skin on skin is punctuated by a Kar'niss driving hips and cock. You're completely open for him now, easy to fuck into, easy to claim.
Kar'niss breathing quickens just as yours does. Your fingers circle your clit, begging for release. Your body, having reached its limits, cries out for release. You're close: you can feel it. Kar'niss’s cock filling you, fucking you, stretching you to your limits. You want more, beg for more as Kar'niss takes you, mind and body. “Harder!” You command, your fingers latching into his hair and pulling his face back to meet your gaze.
He doesn't have to be told twice. With rough, battering hips, Kar'niss fucks you harder still: unforgiving and exquisitely brutal. “Fuck!” A single cry signals the onslaught of your bliss. An orgasm rushes through you, crashing into you at breakneck speed. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” You scream as your body locks. Kar'niss doesn't stop, his swells striking your nerves at a lethal pace.
Your orgasm is as brutal as Kar'niss pistoning hips.
And, he doesn't stop when your body goes limp atop his hold.
When you whimper and try to push away, his cock suddenly too much in your blissed out state, he barks a single answer, “No.” His eyes lock onto you, pinning you in place like his legs. “My turn.” It's a hateful tone, spiteful in its execution.
Kar'niss’s pace rushes, driving into you as if he means to break you. His swells become too much as they brush into you with blinding speed and unharbored violence. “Kar'niss!” You beg. You don't know when the tears begin to roll down your cheeks. A hand cups over your mouth to silence your pleading. Kar'niss looks at you with unfettered anger and unleashed cruelty: pure evil. His hips roll harder, faster. You're stuck, your bliss long having left you. Your cunt throbs in pain though pleasure begins to couple it once more – another encroaching orgasm lingers on the horizon.
“Will you cum for me again, True Soul?” Kar'niss laughs as he feels you tighten around him once more.
“Yes.” You breathe your shame as he cackles. Your abused cunt takes him over and over again.
Your willingness brings him to his knees.
With a barking cry that nearly cracks his voice, Kar'niss spills into you. Hot, thick ropes launch into your bruised sex with blistering heat, painting your insides in a milky silver. Your second orgasm follows quickly, choking Kar'niss cock. Stars brighten your vision as darkness threatens to take you. The drider pants, quickly pulling out from you and spilling his seed to the ground in silver ribbons. You can feel him rolling down your legs in a thinning ooze. Kar'niss marbled cock slowly retreats back to its armored sheath. The only evidence of your tryst on him is a patch of your mixed needs painting his black carapace.
When he finally releases you back to the ground, you're nearly unable to stand on your shaking legs: a fawn finding its feet for the first time. You pant, head still swimming the lightning bay of stars that gather in your vision.
Kar'niss doesn't wait for you. With an entirely neutral look, he gathers his lantern from the earth and smirks. He watches gleefully as cum drips from between your legs, darkening the soil beneath you.
“To Moonrise Towers, True Soul.”