Chapter 6: Letter
Then they went back indoors, slamming the doors behind them. The main room felt suddenly quiet and close after the performative chaos of the balcony. Honeymuff flopped onto the table, a tiny, panting wreck, her wings stuck together with various fluids. “Och, my arse feels like a hog’s head that’s been stretched for sausage,” she groaned, though she wore a triumphant grin. “Did ye see him run?”
“We heard him vomit,” Tulip said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. She could still taste Polly’s sweat. “It was a resonant, theatrical retch. I’d call that a success.”
“It’s not enough,” Polly growled, hobbling slightly as the sharp ache from her new piercing made itself known again. She leaned against the wall, breathing hard. “He’s obsessed. Seeing that might’ve horrified him, but it might’ve just… fascinated him more. Fucked-up poets are like that.” She pushed off the wall, a grim determination settling on her face. “We need to scorch the earth. We follow the display with a letter. Words he can’t twist into some tragic romance. Words that’ll quench his desires for good.”
Brutehilde, who had been quietly sharpening a dagger on a whetstone, looked up. “What kind of words?”
“The belittling kind,” Polly said, her eyes cold. “We don’t just reject him. We mock him. We make him feel small, stupid, and pathetic. We attack the tragedy, the poetry, the very core of his pathetic self-image.”
Tanna, washing the oil from her hands in a basin, nodded slowly. “A direct assault on his person. Not his actions, but his essence. It is a knight’s strategy: break the enemy’s spirit.”
“Exactly,” Polly said. “Tulip, you’re good with words. Honeymuff, you’re the one he’s obsessed with. We’ll dictate, you’ll sign it. Or make your mark.”
An hour later, they had a draft. It was brutal.
‘Lord Dravion,’ it began, bypassing any title of respect. ‘Your attentions are a creeping mould. Your gifts are junk. Your poetry is the diarrheal spew of a bankrupt mind. Your tragic pose is as transparent as cheap glass. You are a penniless cliché, a bad smell in a fancy hall. The pixie finds you ridiculous. Your longing is a yawn. Do not contact us again. Your very signature is an offence.’
They sent it via a different, disgusted-looking goblin servant, paying her with a scrap of silk to ensure delivery.
For two days, there was silence. A blessed, deep silence. They rested, tended to their various aches, and drank Minnie’s tea. The throbbing in Polly’s new piercing subsided to a dull, interesting heat. Honeymuff’s wings unstuck. Tulip and Tanna spent long hours in their shared pallet, exploring each other with a slow, tender focus that was the polar opposite of the balcony’s violent spectacle.
On the third afternoon, with Ulrika still absent on her duties, that silence shattered.
A procession arrived at their door. Not a single goblin, but four pale, severe-looking Dark Elf attendants in grey livery. They bore a large, ornate chest of black wood inlaid with mother-of-pearl that formed weeping willow trees. Their leader, a gaunt elf with hollow cheeks, spoke in a monotone. “A delivery for the pixie, Honeymuff. From Lord Dravion, in response to her most gracious and soul-revealing missive.”
They placed the chest in the centre of the room with a soft thud and left without another word.
“Oh, bollocks,” Polly muttered.
Honeymuff hovered warily near the lid. “It’s no’ gonna be another tiny prick, is it?”
“Open it,” Brutehilde commanded, her hand on the hilt of her rolling pin.
Tanna lifted the lid. Inside, on a bed of black velvet, lay a single, enormous scroll. It was tied with a silver ribbon. Next to it was a small velvet pouch. Tulip picked up the scroll. It was heavy. She untied the ribbon, and it unfurled, cascading over the edge of the chest and onto the floor in a river of parchment.
“Gods above,” Tanna breathed.
The poem was forty pages long. The script was meticulous, feverish. It spoke of ‘the fiery crucible of scorn’, ‘the blessed lightning of honest contempt’, and ‘the invigorating frost of true hatred’. It wove Honeymuff’s insults into a complex tapestry of martyrdom and destined, painful love. The final lines were clear: ‘Your rejection was the final test, my cruel angel. Your words, so sharp, have sheared away all doubt. I accept your rough proposal. I will make you my bride.’
Honeymuff’s tiny face went from confusion to dawning, horrific understanding. “He… he thinks I asked him to marry me?”
Tulip dropped the poem as if it were a venomous snake. “He’s interpreted your utter contempt as a form of courtship. A ‘challenge to be worthy’.”
Polly picked up the velvet pouch and upended it. A ring fell into her palm. It was a delicate silver thing, sized for a pixie’s finger, set with a chip of obsidian. “He’s serious.”
A profound, weary disgust settled over the room. Their graphic display, their vicious letter—it had all been fuel for his deranged fantasy.
“What do we do now?” Tanna asked, her voice quiet. “We cannot kill a noble in his own city. Ulrika said…”
“I know what she said,” Polly snapped, clenching the ring in her fist. The metal bit into her palm. She stared at the river of insane poetry on the floor. A cold, reckless fury settled in her gut. She was tired of being sore, tired of being chased, tired of this glittering, oppressive city. She needed to feel something else.
She turned and walked to the pallet she shared with Tulip. She lay down on her stomach, presenting her back to the room. “Tulip,” she said, her voice flat. “The whip. Now.”
Tulip hesitated. “Polly…”
“I need it,” Polly interrupted, burying her face in the rough blanket. “I need to feel something that isn’t this fucking frustration. I need to not think about psychotic elves and wire-wool and my own fucking raw cunt. Hurt me. Make it simple.”
Tulip exchanged a look with Tanna, who gave a slight, sad nod. The druidess retrieved the short, cruel whip Ulrika had gifted her. She stood beside the pallet, the braided leather hanging limply from her hand. “How many?”
“Until I stop thinking,” Polly mumbled into the fabric.
The first lash was a line of pure, clarifying fire across her shoulders. Polly gasped, her fingers clawing at the blanket. The pain was a clean slice, erasing the dull, complex humiliations. The second landed lower, a twin stripe that made her back arch. A sharp cry was punched from her lungs.
Tanna watched, her blue eyes dark. She saw the tension in Polly’s body, the need for obliteration. She moved quietly. She unlaced her own breeches, then took hold of Polly’s panties, pushing them down past her hips and raising her skirt. Polly’s arse was exposed, the new obsidian bead at the top of her cleft gleaming against her pale skin. Tanna retrieved the smooth, polished stone butt plug from her own pack, the one that amplified her battle-rage. She coated it thickly with oil from a vial.
As Tulip brought the whip down a third time, the crack echoing in the stone room, Tanna pressed the cold, rounded tip against Polly’s other hole.
Polly flinched at the new sensation, a low groan mixing with the aftermath of the whip’s sting. “Yes,” she hissed, pushing back against Tanna’s hand.
Tanna worked the plug in slowly, a relentless, stretching pressure. The thickest part of the toy forced Polly’s ring to open, a burning, full ache that drowned out everything else. Polly’s knuckles were white, her body trembling. As the plug seated fully, a deep, radiating heat bloomed inside her, a false warmth that spread through her pelvis and up her spine.
Tulip’s next stroke landed across Polly’s thighs. Polly screamed, a raw, ragged sound. The pain from the whip and the deep, intrusive fullness from the plug merged into a single, overwhelming current. Her thoughts shattered. The poetry, Dravion, the city, her own soreness—all of it was blotted out by sheer, overwhelming sensation.
Tanna leaned over her, her silky hair curtaining Polly’s face. She kissed Polly’s neck, her teeth grazing the skin. “Gone?” she whispered.
“Gone,” Polly gasped, tears of relief streaking through the grit on her face.
Tulip dropped the whip. She knelt beside the pallet, her golden hands gentle on Polly’s heated skin. She kissed the welts, her tongue soft and cool. She moved down, her lips trailing over the curve of Polly’s ass, avoiding the plug, until she found Polly’s swollen, neglected cunt.
Tulip’s mouth was an antidote to the violence. Her tongue was slow, worshipful, lavishing attention on Polly’s outer lips, soothing the memory of the wire wool. She didn’t seek to bring Polly to a sharp peak, but to drown her in a different kind of oblivion. She licked and suckled with a druid’s patience, as if tending a wounded animal.
Polly sank into the bedding, a series of broken, soft sounds leaving her lips. The intense, sharp pain receded, replaced by a heavy, throbbing warmth. The plug inside her felt like a core of molten stone, anchoring her. Tulip’s tongue was a gentle tide, washing away the last fragments of coherent thought.
Honeymuff watched from the table, her own drama momentarily forgotten. She saw the way Tanna’s hand rested possessively on Polly’s hip, the way Tulip’s green hair pooled on the pallet. She saw Brutehilde turn away, a faint, grudging respect in her eyes for the raw catharsis she was witnessing. Wee Minnie simply poured another cup of tea, the soft click of the cup on the saucer the only other sound in the room.
It was in this hushed, spent atmosphere that the door burst open.
Ulrika stood in the doorway, her travelling cloak dusty. Her piercing eyes took in the scene: the unfurled poem sea on the floor, Polly half-naked and marked, Tulip between her legs, Tanna standing guard. A flicker of fatigue and then profound annoyance crossed her sharp features.
“I am gone for three days,” she stated, her voice dangerously calm. She stepped over the parchment. “I secure passage, supplies, and a route through the lower fungal forests. I return to find you’ve inspired an epic,” she kicked a page, “and apparently held an orgy to celebrate it... without me!”
Tulip lifted her head, her lips glistening. “It’s not what it looks like.”
“It never is.” Ulrika’s gaze fell on the obsidian bead in Polly’s arse. She raised an eyebrow. “I see Lady Araksia’s mark has taken. I trust it was… memorable.”
Polly just grunted, unable to form words.
Ulrika sighed, the sound like wind through dry bones. She pointed at the poem. “Explain this. Quickly.”
Between them, with Honeymuff chiming in with frantic pixie profanity, they told her of the balcony performance and the letter.
Ulrika listened, her expression growing grimmer with each word. When they finished, she pinched the bridge of her nose. “You sent a letter of explicit, personal insult to a Dark Elf noble of a Great House, however penniless he may be.”
“To quench his desires!” Honeymuff piped up.
“You poured oil on a obsession smothered in martyrdom,” Ulrika corrected, her voice icy. “You have, in his eyes, officially begun a courtship via hostile exchange. This,” she gestured to the sprawling poem, “is his formal acceptance. The ring is the betrothal gift. By our laws, a public rejection now would be a grievous insult requiring formal satisfaction.”
The warm, hazy aftermath in the room evaporated. A cold dread settled in its place.
“What does that mean?” Brutehilde asked, her voice low.
“It means,” Ulrika said, picking up the final page of the poem, her eyes scanning the feverish script, “that unless you wish to fight a duel to the death in the Arena of Whispered Regrets, Honeymuff is now, technically, engaged.”
Ulrika set her satchel down with a heavy thud. “I have just come from the Council. There have been developments.” She unpinned her cloak, her movements precise. “Lady Araksia is sending me on a week’s mission back to the surface, through a stable tunnel, to discover the true extent of the volcanic eruption. Jeremas will accompany me to take measurements.”
A week. The word hung in the air, heavy and inconvenient.
“What are we supposed to do, then?” Polly asked, pulling her knickers up with a wince. “Just sit here for seven days with that tragic bastard lurking?”
“Yes,” Ulrika said, her tone leaving no room for argument. “But you will do it correctly. The best thing you can do until I return is simply, politely, ignore Lord Dravion. Give him no reaction, good or bad. He is a parasite that thrives on drama. You must starve him. Without a performance, he will hopefully become bored and turn his attention elsewhere.”
“We just gave him a hell of a performance,” Tanna said quietly, her cheeks flushing.
“A performance of repulsion, which is still a reaction,” Ulrika countered. She stepped closer, her piercing eyes scanning each of them. “From this moment, you are stones. You are furniture. You see nothing he does, hear nothing he says. It will be maddening. It is your only defense.”
She began unbuckling the stiff leather cuirass of her uniform. “However, I depart at first bell. And I will be gone for a week.” The cuirass fell to the floor with a solid thump. She wore only a thin, grey undershirt beneath. “I have had a very trying day of bureaucratic nonsense. I require release.”
Her gaze swept over them, possessive and hungry. “Therefore, I insist I join your little ‘orgy’ before I go. Consider it my travel stipend.” She looked at Polly. “I want to see that new piercing. I want to taste the knight’s famous discipline. I want to see if the pixie’s stamina is as legendary as her appetite.” She finally looked at Brutehilde. “And you, mighty one, will watch. You will learn the benefits of tension properly managed.”
Brutehilde opened her mouth to protest, but Ulrika’s voice cracked like a whip. “Sit. Down.”
The sheer command in it made Brutehilde blink. With a grunt, she settled onto a sturdy bench, her clogs scraping the stone.
Ulrika’s attention returned to Polly. “You. On the bed. Now.” It wasn’t a request.
Polly felt a familiar, electric thrill cut through her fatigue. She obeyed, stretching out on the rough blankets, the obsidian bead in her arsehole a cold, hard point of contact. Ulrika stalked over, her fingers making quick work of Polly’s recently replaced panties, yanking them down to her knees. She roughly pushed Polly’s thighs apart.
“Hmm,” Ulrika murmured, examining the red, swollen flesh of Polly’s cunt, the wire-wool abrasions still angry. “Messy. Good.” She didn’t touch her there. Instead, she traced a finger around the new piercing, circling the obsidian bead nestled against Polly’s pucker. Polly hissed, the sensitive, violated muscle clenching involuntarily. It still hadn't recovered from Tanna's butt plug play.
“Tanna,” Ulrika said, not looking away. “Bring me the oil. And kneel there.” She pointed to the floor beside the bed.
Tanna moved swiftly, fetching the bottle of sweet oil from Dravion’s unwanted gift. She knelt, her back straight, her clear blue eyes fixed ahead. Ulrika took the bottle, poured a generous amount onto her fingers, and let it drip onto Polly’s pierced hole. The cool liquid made Polly jump.
“Watch,” Ulrika commanded Tanna. She then pressed a slick finger firmly against the bead and pushed. Not inside, but against it, applying pressure directly to the wounded flesh around the foreign object. A sharp, bright pain lanced through Polly, making her back arch. “See how she reacts?” Ulrika said, her voice a clinical purr. “The pain is a direct line. It focuses everything.”
She increased the pressure, working the bead in a tiny, cruel circle. Polly gasped, her hands fisting in the blanket. The pain was intense, but underneath it, a deep, throbbing heat began to spread through her pelvis. Her cunt, sore as it was, grew damp.
“Now you,” Ulrika said to Tanna. “Taste her. But only there. Lick the oil. Lick around the jewel. Be thorough.”
Tanna leaned forward, her silky black hair falling like a curtain. Her tongue, soft and warm, touched Polly’s perineum. She lapped at the spilled oil, then, with obedient precision, began to circle the piercing. Her tongue was gentle, a shocking contrast to Ulrika’s relentless finger. The combination was devastating: the hard, painful pressure above, and the soft, wet, cleansing heat below.
“Fuck… fuck…” Polly chanted, her hips twitching, caught between the need to escape the pain and drive herself onto Tanna’s tongue.
Ulrika watched, her other hand unbuttoning her own trousers. “Honeymuff,” she said. “I require your services. My cunt is neglected. Fix it.”
The pixie, recovered and buzzing with renewed energy, zipped over. “Aye, Colonel!” She dove into the open front of Ulrika’s trousers, finding the neat, grey slit of her sex with unerring accuracy. The tiny, frantic sounds of the pixie’s enthusiastic licking filled the room.
Ulrika’s breath hitched, her clinical demeanor fracturing for a second. She kept working the bead against Polly’s flesh, her own hips making small, involuntary thrusts against Honeymuff’s face. “Tulip,” she managed, her voice tighter now. “The knight’s arse is too pristine. Remedy that. Use your fingers. Make her ready for me.”
Tulip needed no further encouragement. She moved behind Tanna, who was still diligently tonguing Polly’s piercing. Tulip pushed Tanna’s pants down, exposing her bare arse. She spat into her hand, then pressed two fingers firmly against the knight’s tight entrance. Tanna moaned, the vibration against Polly’s flesh making Polly cry out.
“You’re all so beautifully responsive,” Ulrika gasped, her own movements becoming less controlled as Honeymuff worked her over. She removed her finger from Polly’s piercing. “Enough preparation. Tanna, up. On your knees on the bed, over Polly.”
Tanna rose, her face flushed, her lips glistening. She climbed onto the bed, straddling Polly’s face, lowering her dripping cunt onto Polly’s mouth. Then she bent forward, presenting her arse to Ulrika, who was now fastening a strap-on. It was slender, elegant, and gloriously hard.
Ulrika coated herself with the remaining oil. She positioned the head against Tanna’s hole, which Tulip’s fingers had just opened. “You will take it all, knight,” Ulrika breathed. “And you, Polly, will make her come while she’s being fucked. Or I will stop.”
With that, she thrust forward, sinking into Tanna in one smooth, brutal motion. Tanna screamed, a raw, unfiltered sound of penetration, her body bowing. Polly, underneath, opened her mouth and devoured Tanna’s clit, sucking the hard nub deep, lashing it with her tongue to muffle the knight’s cries.
The room dissolved into a symphony of wet, slapping flesh, choked moans, and Honeymuff’s muffled, enthusiastic buzzing. Ulrika fucked Tanna with punishing, rhythmic drives, each thrust pushing Tanna’s face harder into Polly’s cunt. Tulip watched, her own hand working furiously between her legs, her green hair sticking to her golden skin.
Brutehilde watched from the bench, her knuckles white as she gripped the edge. A low, restless heat built in her own belly, a foreign and unsettling feeling. She tried to memorise a few good moves to impress Falroch with when they finally got back to civilisation.
Ulrika’s pace became frantic, animal. She gripped Tanna’s hips hard enough to bruise, pounding into her, her own climax clearly nearing. “Now, Polly! Make her come! Now!”
Polly redoubled her efforts, her tongue a relentless piston. Tanna’s body began to shudder, a cascade of violent tremors. Her internal muscles clamped down on Ulrika’s strap-on cock as her orgasm ripped through her, a silent, breathless convulsion. The intense clenching was the final trigger for Ulrika, who threw her head back with a guttural shout, driving in to the hilt as she pulsed inside the knight as Honeymuff's work on her clit produced its overwhelming result.
For a moment, the only sound was ragged breathing. Then Ulrika slowly pulled out. She stepped back, unbuckling the strap-on, fastening her trousers with steady hands, as if she had just completed a report. Tanna collapsed sideways, trembling.
Ulrika retrieved her satchel and cuirass. She looked at them, a sprawled, sweaty tangle of exhaustion and satisfaction. “Remember,” she said, her voice crisp and authoritative once more. “You are stones. You are furniture. For one week.”
She turned and left, the door closing with a soft, definitive click. The silence she left behind was dense, filled only with the smell of sex and the echo of her command.
Honeymuff finally crawled out of her sexual stupor, wiping her face. “Well,” she squeaked. “That was a proper send-off.”
Brutehilde stood, her wooden clogs echoing on the stone. She walked to the window, staring out at the gloomy city. “A week of being stones,” she muttered. “How bloody hard can it be?”