Chapter 20: The Guardian of the Way
The murmur of the river grew from a sigh to a roar, a deep, wet thunder that vibrated in their chests before they ever saw the water. The tunnel widened into a vast, natural cavern, its ceiling lost in a dripping, crystalline darkness. Before them, cutting a black, sinuous path through the stone, was the River of Echoes. It moved not with the cheerful babble of a stream, but with a slow, muscular purpose, its surface oily and reflective, capturing and distorting the scant light from Griv’s torch. The air was frigid and tasted of old stones and forgotten words.
“It’s wider than I anticipated,” Ulrika said, her voice flat.She peered at the far shore, a smudge of darkness maybe fifty feet away. “There is no bridge.”
“There,” Brutehilde grunted, pointing with a thick finger. Along their bank, half-submerged in the icy, whispering flow, were flat, grey stepping stones. They formed a rough, uneven line to the other side. Each stone was smooth, worn by millennia of water and footfalls, and each was inscribed with faint, glowing runes that pulsed with a sickly green light in time with the river’s drone.
“The Stepping Stones of Remembrance,” Ulrika nodded. "They respond to weight. Not just physical weight. The weight of memory. Step carefully. The wrong stone, or the wrong thought, and it will tip. The river… collects what falls.”
“Lovely,” Polly said, blowing smoke into the damp air. “So no thinking about that time I shit myself in the Goblin Market. Got it.”
“Think of nothing,” Ulrika instructed. "Or think of something bland. Minnie, your tea rituals. Grakthor, your lost north. Focus on that single, simple thing. The stones crave drama. Deny them.”
They began to cross, one by one, the party stretched into a fragile line over the hungry dark water. Brutehilde went first, her clogs finding purchase on the slick rock with surprising grace, her immense weight making the stone sink a fraction but hold firm. She focused on the grain of the wood in her soles, the specific squeak of her left clog. Minnie followed, her tea trolley’s wheels leaving faint, squealing tracks on the stone. She hummed a tuneless song about steeping times.
Polly stepped onto her first stone. Instantly, the runes flared. A chorus of whispers erupted from the water below—ragged, pleading voices, the echoes of a thousand private shames. …never loved her… stole the silver… wished he would die… Polly clenched her jaw, fixed her eyes on Tulip’s back ahead of her, and thought only of the precise tension in a garrotte wire. The stone steadied. Tanna went next, her armour silver against the black. As her boot touched the inscribed surface, the whispers changed, coalescing into a single, clear, girlish voice, sweet and terrifying. “ promise I’ll be good, Father. I promise I’ll be pure.” Tanna flinched, her foot slipping. The stone tilted. Ulrika, directly behind her, snapped, “Knight! The plug! Feel its shape! Nothing else!”
Tanna’s innocent eyes widened, then sharpened. She shifted her stance, and a soft, shameful blush heated her cheeks as she consciously clenched around the obsidian artifact buried in her arse. The physical reality of it, its unyielding presence, grounded her. The stone righted itself. "Thank you, Colonel,” she breathed.
Dravion crossed reciting his new epic under his breath, the forced meter and rhyme a barrier against the river’s psychic pull. Scoffer simply bellowed, “I AM A GOD!” with each step, the stone trembling but bearing his divine declaration. Griv thought of cheese, a very specific, pungent blue-vein. Honeymuff fluttered above the water, unaffected. “It sounds so sad down there,” she chirped. “All those lonely memories. Maybe they just need a good cuddle!”
They were more than halfway across when Ulrika, standing on a broad, central stone, paused. She looked back at Tanna, then at Polly and Tulip. The cold, the whispering, the palpable weight of enacted sin in the air—it had kindled a sharp, dark need in her. Control. To feel the flinch and surrender under her hands.
“Halt,” she commanded. The word cut through the river’s din. The party froze, balanced precariously on their individual stones. “The crossing is stable here. We require a moment of discipline.”
Polly’s eyes gleamed in the rune-light. She knew that tone. Tulip shuddered, a tremor of anticipation. Ulrika pointed to the flat, broad stone she occupied. It was large enough for several people. “Tanna. Polly. Tulip. Here. Now.”
Tanna obeyed instantly, leaping from her stone to land beside Ulrika. Polly and Tulip followed, their movements careful but quick. The others watched, stranded on their own rocks, unable to intervene even if they’d wanted to. “Knight, present yourself,” Ulrika ordered. Tanna turned, her back to the dark river, and bent forward, placing her gauntleted hands on the cold stone. The pose arched her spine and raised her armoured rear. Ulrika’s hands went to the intricate straps and buckles at the knight’s waist. With practised, brutal efficiency, she undid them, letting the lower half of the armour fall away with a clatter that was swallowed by the river’s roar. Tanna’s pale, perfect buttocks were exposed to the frigid air, the dark base of the plug nestled between them.
Ulrika produced a short, multi-tailed flogger from her belt. The falls were soft, supple leather. “You have done well. But well is not perfect. You faltered. This is a reminder of focus.” She drew her arm back and brought the flogger down in a swift, cracking arc. It landed across Tanna’s cheeks with a sound like a splitting muffled by flesh. Tanna gasped, her knuckles whitening on the stone. Thwack. Another stroke, lower, kissing the tops of her thighs. Tanna moaned, a low, wanting sound.
Polly watched, her breath quickening. She unzipped her vest, letting it hang open, and pulled Tulip against her. “Watch,” she muttered into the elf’s ear, her hand sliding into Tulip’s leggings, cupping her mound. “Watch and get wet for me.”
Ulrika continued, the blows falling in a slow, rhythmic pattern, painting delicate pink blooms across Tanna’s skin. Each impact made the knight jolt, and with each jolt, the plug shifted inside her. Tanna’s gasps turned to ragged pants. “Please… Colonel…”
“You wish for something, knight?” Ulrika’s voice was ice.
“The plug… it’s… moving… I can’t…”
“You will not come,” Ulrika commanded. “You will hold it. You will hold everything.” She dropped the flogger. Her own need was now a live wire. She looked at Polly. “Panzerfaust. You require a different discipline. The beast is distracted. Use her mouth.”
Polly didn’t need telling twice. She shoved Tulip towards Tanna’s bent form. “Lick her. Get her messy.” As Tulip, her green hair bright against Tanna’s silver, knelt and pressed her face between the knight’s throbbing cheeks, Polly turned to Ulrika. She tore open the front of the Dark Elf’s uniform trousers, finding her already wet, her cunt lips swollen and dark. There was no preamble. Polly spit on her fingers, rubbed it over Ulrika’s clit, and then drove two fingers deep inside her.
Ulrika’s head snapped back, a sharp hiss escaping her. She grabbed Polly’s mohawk, not to push away, but to anchor herself. “Harder. You fight like a gutter rat. Fuck like one.”
Polly twisted her fingers, scissoring them, her knuckles pounding against Ulrika’s pelvis. With her other hand, she pinched and rolled the Dark Elf’s clit, rough and urgent. “This what you wanted? This the discipline? You’re fucking dripping.”
Below them, Tulip’s tongue worked feverishly, lapping at Tanna’s pussy, then circling the base of the plug, then plunging back into her soaked slit. Tanna was shaking, her whole body taut. “I can’t… hold… I’m going to…”
“You are not,” Ulrika gasped, even as Polly’s relentless fingers pushed her towards her own edge. The sound of wet cunts being worked, of slick tongues, of slapping skin and strained breaths, became a counterpoint to the river’s mournful echo.
It was Scoffer, from his stone, who broke the tableau. “HA! The god approves! A sacrament upon the stones! ORGY!”
The shout seemed to vibrate the very rock. The runes on all the stones flashed violently. The river’s whisper rose to a shrieking wail. And from the far shore, something stirred in the darkness.
A shape uncoiled from the shadows. It was colossal, a tangle of pale, rope-like tentacles tipped with suckers the size of dinner plates. At its center was a bulbous, eyeless head, its surface webbed with thick, milky cataracts. A single, vertical maw lined with grinding, bony plates opened and let out a low, sonorous groan that shook the cavern. The air filled with the smell of salt and deep, cold brine. The Forgotten Sentinel. The final guardian.
It slithered forward, its tentacles feeling the air, blind but acutely sensitive to vibration, to sound, to emotion. “Shit,” Brutehilde spat from her stone. “We’ve woken it.”
“It was always here,” Ulrika said, pushing Polly’s hand away and fastening her trousers with swift, sharp motions. “It bars the final passage. It does not see. It… listens.”
The beast groaned again, a sound of profound, ancient loneliness. One tentacle lashed out, slamming down onto an empty stepping stone, shattering it to gravel.
“It responds to theatre!” Griv squealed, cowering on his rock. “Like the stones! The legends say! It hungers for story! For drama!”
“We just gave it a porno,” Polly said, wiping her hand on her skirt. “It wants more.”
Brutehilde’s mind raced. They had no script, no props, no time. The beast’s tentacles were probing closer, its maw gnashing with a sound like grinding tombstones. Then she looked at her sister. At Dravion, clutching his notebook. At Scoffer, preening. At the rest, flushed and dishevelled from their crude performance.
“Fine,” Brutehilde said, her voice booming over the chaos. “We give it a play. Right now. Minn! You’re the heroine. A… a tea-maiden, seeking the perfect leaf.”
Minnie’s face lit up.“Och, I can do that!”
“Dravion! You’re the romantic lead. A poet.”
Dravion swept into a bow on his precarious stone. “At last! A fitting stage!”
“Scoffer! You’re the villain. A… a teapot tyrant.”
“I AM A GOD-TYRANT! MY KETTLE RUNS WITH BLOOD!” Scoffer roared, improvising brilliantly. “Just go! Minnie, start!”
The tentacle stopped its advance, hovering. The blind head tilted, listening.
Minnie planted her feet on her stone, facing the imaginary tyrant. “Ye great bulbous boil! Yer tea is weak! Yer leaves are stale! Yer very existence is a crime against the holy kettle!”
Scoffer responded by miming the steam from a giant pot. “MY FUMES WILL SCALD YOUR PRETTY FACE, WENCH!”
Dravion leapt to a stone between them, striking a pose. “Stay, cruel tyrant! For this maiden’s passion burns hotter than any of your pathetic brews! Her eyes are twin pools of… of… steeped chamomile! Her lips, the blush of a rosehip tisane!”
It was ludicrous. It was desperate. But they committed. Polly and Tulip became warbling handmaidens. Grakthor, coached by Brutehilde, played a loyal, simple-minded cow who provided the milk. Tanna, still half-exposed, became a warrior of the milk-jug, her sword-play (mimed with a broken torch handle) both heroic and absurdly erotic. Ulrika narrated in a stern, clear voice, framing the chaos as epic tragedy.
Honeymuff zipped through the air, sprinkling glowing pixie-dust (which was, in fact, just fungus spores she’d gathered) as a fairy of fertility, blessing the tea-maiden’s eventual union with the poet.
They threw their hearts into it. They shouted bad poetry. They mimed tea-drinking with profound solemnity. They duelled with imaginary sugar-tongs. Minnie wept real tears over a spilled (imaginary) caddy. Dravion proclaimed his love in iambic pentameter, swearing to write sonnets to her infusions for all eternity. The beast listened. Its tentacles grew still. The grinding of its plates slowed. A deep, rumbling sigh, different from its groans, echoed through the cavern. From the milky, sightless orbs, thick, viscous tears began to well, tracing glistening paths down its leathery hide. It was moved. Profoundly, utterly moved by the terrible, heartfelt, chaotic performance.
With a final, shuddering sob that made the river splash, the beast began to withdraw. It coiled its tentacles back, sliding away from the shore, clearing the mouth of a final, downward-sloping tunnel from which a fresh, salty breeze now flowed freely. The passage was open. “Go! Now!” Brutehilde yelled.
They didn’t need telling twice. They scrambled from their stones, slipping and splashing, charging for the new tunnel. The beast wept behind them, lost in the beauty of the dreadful play.
The tunnel climbed steeply, the sound of the river fading, replaced by the howl of wind and the cry of distant gulls. The stone changed from deep cavern rock to rough, sea-worn granite. Light appeared ahead—not the green glow of fungus, but the grey, diffuse light of an overcast sky.
They burst out, stumbling onto a narrow, rocky ledge high above a churning, iron-grey sea. The wind, sharp and clean and tasting of salt and freedom, whipped their hair and clothes. Below, waves crashed against jagged black teeth of rock, sending up plumes of white spray. The sky was vast, an endless expanse of cloud.
They stood there, panting, clutching each other, soaked in river damp, sweat, and other fluids, blinking in the unaccustomed light. Behind them, deep within the cliff, they heard a deep, final rumble as the Forgotten Sentinel’s lair, its purpose fulfilled, collapsed into eternal silence.
Brutehilde leaned on her knees, her clogs planted on the real, sun-bleached stone. She inhaled the sea air like it was the first decent breath she’d taken in weeks. “Right,” she said, straightening up, her plaits swinging. “Now. Where the fuck are we?”
Ulrika shielded her amethyst eyes, scanning the coastline. A grim, familiar smile touched her lips. She pointed north, along the relentless cliffs. “There. That way lies the coastal village of Dunkel. A week’s hard march. We are… almost back in civlisation. From the village, we can charter a ship to take us south to the docks of the Capital.”
"Can we no' just hop o'er yon hills, hen, an' scoot hame?" asked Minnie.
"I'm afraid not," said Ulrika. The mountains are impassable on this side, Durka's strong seaward defence. But from the Capital, we can reconvene with Lord Falroch and obtain an escort to cross the passes on the inland slopes."
Aroused by her paramour's name, Brutehilde licked her lips and said, "Aye, maybe we should head there first, take full stock and get help to head home."
The journey wasn’t over. But the underworld was behind them. Ahead lay the sea, the sky, and the daunting march to a village that promised, for some at least, a voyage to take them homewards.
Ahead lay the sea, the sky, and the daunting march to a village that promised, for some at least, a voyage to take them homewards. The kobold’s scaled nose twitched, his forked tongue darting out. “The path is clear now. Surface world. My contract was for the deep tunnels, yes? Not for... sky.” He shifted from foot to foot, clutching his remaining cheese wedge to his chest like a talisman.
“He’s got a point,” Brutehilde conceded, the wind pulling at her plaits. “He agreed to guide us through the underworld, not along its fucking coastline.”
Polly crouched down, eye-level with Griv. “So. Payment.” She pulled off her right combat boot, then her filthy, holed sock. The foot was pale, the nails dark with grime. She dug her thumb into the crevice of her little toe, scraping out a thick, grey-green glob of accumulated residue. She held it up, pinched between thumb and forefinger. Then she hooked a finger into her own ear, rooting around before extracting a dollop of waxy, yellowish-brown sludge. She rolled the two substances together on her palm, kneading them with a practiced, disgustingly meticulous pressure. The resulting pea-sized ball was a dun-colored, pungent little nugget. “Here. A particularly stinky cheesy treat. Artisanal. Aged in the sock of a warrior. The ear-wax adds a top note of... intellectual musk.”
Griv’s eyes widened. He leaned in, sniffing deeply. A shudder of pure delight ran through him. “Oh... oh, that’s complex. Athletic. Philosophically pungent!” He accepted the offering with reverent claws, wrapping it in a scrap of silk from the tunnels. “A fair trade! The legends of surface-dweller toe-jam are true! Good fortune!” With a final, wobbly bow, he scuttled back towards the cliff face, vanishing into a fissure too small for any of them to follow. They were alone with the sky.
Exhaustion hit them then, a physical wave that buckled knees. The adrenaline of the river, the play, the escape, bled away, leaving their muscles liquid and their minds hollow. “We camp here,” Brutehilde declared, her own voice gravelly with fatigue. “Not another step.”
They made a poor camp on the windy ledge, sheltered only by a slight overhang. Minnie’s trolley squeaked as she arranged her kit, but even her cheer was dimmed. “I’ve nae the heart for a proper brew,” she sighed, handing out cold, tough journey-biscuits instead. They ate in silence, listening to the gulls scream, each lost in private thoughts of beds, baths, and the absence of tentacles.
Dravion, however, seemed energized by the open air. He sat apart on a smooth rock, his notebook open, the sea breeze flipping the pages. He stared at Honeymuff with a tragic intensity as she fluttered near a cluster of sea-thrift. He dipped his quill and began to write, his voice a sonorous murmur against the wind.
“I shall call it… ‘Sweet Chocolate Button’,” he announced to no one in particular. He cleared his throat.
“O, minuscule aperture! Darker than the Deepest Velvet!
A crinkled, beckoning star, a secret furled!
Upon whose piquant rim my verse doth settle,
And dreams of tasting what’s within, a world!
A snug, forbidden gateway, tightly puckered,
Where fairies exit from their pixie-romps!
A sacred, fragrant knot, so sweetly suckered,
A temptation that my lonely spirit stomps!
O, button! How I long to… to… behold thee!
From afar! Across a chasm vast and moral!
To know that all my words shall never fold thee
In conversation direct, or actions floral!
A poet’s doom! To sing the unseen, small abyss!
And never know its… musky… euphonious kiss!”
He finished, wiping a genuine tear from his eye. Honeymuff, having heard only the cadence and her name, buzzed over and blew him a kiss. Dravion swooned, clutching his chest as if struck.
Tulip stretched, her green hair vibrant against the grey rock, her golden skin drinking the diffuse light. She breathed deeply, the salt air filling her lungs. “Real sky,” she whispered, a smile breaking through her weariness. She caught Polly’s eye, a different, softer need in her gaze than the desperate clutch in the silk tunnels. She nodded toward a narrow path that wound down toward a more secluded, grassy shelf just out of sight of the camp.
Polly stubbed out her cigarillo. “Gonna take a piss,” she announced to the group, and followed Tulip.
The shelf was small, carpeted in tough sea grass and sheltered from the worst of the wind by a curl of rock. The sound of the waves was a constant, soothing rush here. Polly said nothing, simply pulled Tulip into her arms and kissed her. It was not hungry or angry, but deep and searching, a reclamation of something peaceful. Tulip melted against her, her fingers threading into the short spikes of Polly’s mohawk.
They sank to the grass, their movements slow, undoing buckles and laces with deliberate care, not tearing. Polly pushed Tulip’s tunic up, exposing her stomach, and laid her head there, listening, before kissing a trail up to her breasts. She took a nipple into her mouth, sucking gently, laving it with her tongue until Tulip arched with a soft cry. Polly’s hand slid down, into the warmth between Tulip’s thighs, finding her already wet, but this time she didn’t plunge. She stroked, slowly, tracing the outer lips, circling the clit with a feather-light touch that made Tulip whimper.
“Polly… please.”
“I’ve got you,” Polly murmured, her usual rasp softened. She shifted, lowering her head between Tulip’s legs. Her tongue was flat and broad, a slow, worshipful lick from perineum to clit. She settled into a rhythm, licking and suckling, her hands holding Tulip’s hips down against the grass. Tulip’s breaths came in hitched gasps, her fingers tangled in the sea grass. Polly fucked her with her tongue, deep, then shallow, then focused on the hard, throbbing bud of her clit, sucking it gently between her lips. The build was slow, vast, an oceanic swell. Tulip’s moans were lost in the wind and waves. When she came, it washed through her in silent, trembling waves, her body bowing, her cunt pulsing against Polly’s mouth. Polly stayed with her, gentling her through it, licking softly until Tulip shuddered and went boneless.
They lay entwined for a long while, sharing the taste of Tulip on Polly’s lips in slow kisses. Dressed slowly, silently. The peace was a tangible thing.
As they climbed back up the path to the ledge, a rhythmic, slapping sound and familiar, theatrical cries reached them. Peering over a tussock of grass, they saw Scruffulus and Elophelia behind a wind-stunted bush. He had her bent over, her elaborate skirts around her waist, her pale arse cheeks already red from his enthusiastic smacks. He was driving into her from behind, his own robe pulled up and long-johns around his ankles, his pimpled bottom swaying.
“Yes! Ravish me, you cad!” Elophelia wailed, clutching at the bush. “The scandal! The brutish, magnificent scandal of it all!”
“I am a beast! A rampaging beast of passion!” Scruffulus grunted, his thrusts clumsy and vigorous. “Oh, the impropriety!”
Polly and Tulip exchanged a look. A smirk tugged at Polly’s mouth. They straightened up and walked loudly back into camp, announcing their return with a kicked stone.
“All clear,” Polly announced, her arm around Tulip’s waist. “No monsters. Just the sound of the sea. And some... enthusiastic wildlife.”
From behind the bush, the slapping and crying-out ceased for a moment, followed by frantic, guilty whispering. Then, inevitably, it started again.