Chapter 7: A Banquet of Misunderstandings
“How bloody hard can it be?” Brutehilde muttered.
The answer, as the slow hours of the next day dripped by like cold wax, was excruciating. Without Ulrika’s stern presence, the spacious guest apartments felt like a gilded cage. The oppressive, glittering silence of the city pressed in on them. Every distant footstep in the hall sparked tension. Dravion did not appear, but his absence became a presence in itself, a lurking, poetic menace.
“I’m gonna claw my own eyes out,” Polly announced to the room, sprawled on a chaise. Her fingers drummed a frantic rhythm on her sternum. “This ‘being furniture’ shite is mind-rotting.”
“Aye, it’s pure dead borin’,” Honeymuff agreed, zooming in a frantic figure-eight between hanging tapestries. “My wings are itchy. My cunt’s bored. Even the spiders look dull today!”
Tulip, kneeling by a rare potted fungal bloom, attempted a meditative state. Her golden skin seemed to dim with concentrated inactivity. “The mycelial network pulses with slow, profound knowledge,” she intoned. “We could attempt to attune…”
“Could we shag instead?” Polly interrupted, sitting up. Her eyes held a desperate, wicked gleam. “But not… proper shagging. Something stupid. A game.”
Tanna, polishing a greave with monastic focus, glanced up. “What manner of game?”
“A contest,” Polly said, the idea solidifying. “To pass the time. To blow off this fucking steam.” She stood, pacing. “We all have needs. We’re all wound tighter than a cocked crossbow. So we have a wank-off. A proper competition.”
Honeymuff shrieked with glee, landing on the chaise back. “I’m in! What are the rules?”
“Rules?” Tulip asked, a smile touching her lips, her druidic solemnity evaporating.
“Marks for style,” Polly said, ticking points off her fingers. “For speed. For the intensity of the finish. The whole spectacle.” She looked at Brutehilde, who was frowning into a mug of Minnie’s tea. “You and Minnie judge. Impartial like.”
Brutehilde snorted. “I’ll no’ be watchin’ such depraved foolishness.”
“Aye, ye will,” Wee Minnie chirped, wheeling her trolley. “It’ll be a laugh. I’ll make a scorecard.” She began to rummage for a scrap of parchment and a nub of charcoal with unsettling efficiency.
Brutehilde stared at her sister, then at the desperate, eager faces of the others. She sighed, a sound of immense tectonic resignation. “Fine. But if any o’ you gets yer fluids on my clogs, I’m usin’ yer innards for sausage casin’.”
The lounge area became an impromptu arena. Tanna pushed a low table aside. Polly dragged a plush rug into the center. Tulip whispered to the fungal bloom, which released a faint, sweet scent into the air.
Minnie sat primly on her trolley, a scrap on her lap. “Contestants! Polly, Tulip, Tanna, and the wee yin. Judges: Myself and Brutehilde. Three categories: Style, Speed, and… let’s call it ‘Earth-Shatterin’ Finale’. I’ll be takin’ notes.”
Polly stepped onto the rug first, her combat boots planted wide. “Right. I’ll set the fuckin’ standard.” She didn’t undress. She simply yanked her red plaid skirt up around her waist and tugged her black panties down to her thighs. The thatch of her pubic hair was a dark blonde tangle. Her cunt lips, still visibly sensitive from the wire wool, glistened faintly.
She spat into her palm, a coarse, deliberate sound. Then she looked directly at Brutehilde as she brought her wet fingers down, not to her clit, but to the darker, tighter pucker of her arsehole. The new obsidian bead gleamed. “Style, right?” she grunted.
She pressed two fingers hard against the piercing, circling the tender, jeweled flesh. A sharp gasp escaped her. Her other hand wormed between her legs, finding her clit with rough, immediate pressure. She didn’t tease. She fucked her own arse with her fingers, working around the bead, mimicking the brutal penetration she craved, while her other hand rubbed her clit in fast, punishing circles.
Her breathing grew ragged within seconds. “See?” she gritted out, her hips jerking. “No… fucking… poetry. Just… need.” Her movements were mechanical, efficient, and viciously direct. Her back arched, a strangled cry was torn from her throat, and her body went rigid. A thin, clear fluid seeped from her cunt as she convulsed, her knees buckling slightly before she caught herself.
She pulled her fingers free, panting. “Speed. Done.”
Minnie chewed her charcoal nub. “Aye, quick as a lightning strike. Style were… direct. Seven out o’ ten for sheer boldness. Finale seemed powerful, but short. Six.”
Brutehilde just shook her head, her arms crossed.
Tulip flowed forward next, her movements a serene contrast. She slowly untied her simple dress, letting it pool at her feet. Her naked body was a map of spring: golden skin, hints of green at her joints like new shoots, her hair a vibrant emerald cascade. She lay back on the rug, knees bent and falling open, offering herself to the room’s air.
She began not with her hands, but with a whisper. Small, vibrant yellow flowers sprouted from the rug’s fibers around her hips, their petals brushing her thighs. A thin, questing vine grew up from between her legs, its tip soft and seeking. It found her cleft, and Tulip sighed as it began to trace her folds with a delicate, inhuman precision.
“Connection,” Tulip breathed, her eyes half-closed. “Not just friction.” The vine dipped inside her, a gentle invasion, as her own fingertips came up to circle her nipples, pinching and rolling them until they were hard, pebbled peaks. The dual sensation—the internal caress of the plant, the sharp pleasure on her breasts—made her moan. Her hips undulated in a slow, ancient rhythm.
The vine pulsed in time with her heartbeat, coiling deeper. Tulip’s breath hitched. Her back lifted off the rug, her mouth open in a silent ‘O’. A shudder wracked her, then another, longer, drawn-out series of tremors that made the flowers at her hips tremble. A slow, honey-thick release trickled from her, and the vine retreated, glistening.
The flowers wilted gently.
“Och, that was bonnie,” Minnie whispered, scribbling. “Style: ten. Speed: slower than continental drift. Four. Finale: a slow, deep quake. Eight.”
Tanna stood, her silver armour already half-unbuckled. She let it fall with resonant clangs, standing tall in just her thin linen undershirt. She didn’t speak. She turned, bent over, and gripped her ankles, presenting her pale, perfect arse to the judges. The magical butt plug, usually hidden, was not in place.
“Recall the parameters of the contest, knight,” Brutehilde said, her voice gruff.
“I am,” Tanna said, her voice muffled. Her right hand reached back, fingers sliding through the damp linen of her shirt to find her cunt. Her left hand rose, and she brought her own forearm to her mouth. She bit down, hard, on her own flesh.
As the sharp pain registered, her right hand became a blur. Two fingers stabbed into her cunt, fucking herself with a harsh, militaristic cadence. The slap of wet skin against linen filled the room. She bit deeper, a growl escaping her. Her climax hit like a trebuchet stone—sudden, devastating, and total. Her body snapped taut, a raw, guttural shout bursting past her bitten arm. She shuddered violently, copious wetness soaking through the linen and dripping down her inner thighs.
She stood, panting, teeth marks stark on her arm. Her expression was one of pure, uncomplicated release.
“Well,” Minnie breathed. “Speed: nine. Style: unorthodox, but effective. Eight. Finale: apocalyptic. Nine.”
All eyes turned to Honeymuff, who had been vibrating with impatience. “My turn! But I need a… a stage!”
She zipped over to the low table where a bowl of obsidian fruit rested. She pushed a grape-sized fruit to the edge. “This’ll do.” She stood on the fruit, wings buzzing for balance. With theatrical flair, she turned her back to the judges, bent over, and spread her tiny, perfect arse cheeks. “Style! Behold the target!”
From a pouch no bigger than a lentil, she produced a minuscule, polished bone wand. She reached back, positioned the tip against her pixie pucker, and slid it inside with a pleased little sigh. “Ach, that’s the stuff.” Then, still bent over, she used her other hand to frantically rub her clit.
But she wasn’t done. She began to sing, a shocking, loud, off-key rendition of a tavern ditty. “A dwarf walked into a brothel, his purse was full of gold!” she belted, fucking herself with the bone wand in time to the tune. Her tiny wings hummed. “He said ‘I want the roughest ride that ever has been sold!’”
Her singing rose to a screeching crescendo. Her body went stiff as a twig. The bone wand pulsed. A droplet of pixie-come, sparkling like dew, shot out and hit a fungal stem on the wall with a tiny ping. She collapsed forward over the fruit, giggling hysterically.
The room was utterly silent for three full seconds.
Minnie recovered first. “Style:… unique. Ten. Speed: middlin’. Five. Finale:… projectile. Also a ten. For audacity.”
Brutehilde stared, her face a monumental landscape of disbelief. “The lot of ye are completely, irredeemably, round the twist.” A strange, choked sound escaped her. It was, against all odds, a laugh. It was short, sharp, and quickly suppressed. “Right. Minnie, tally the bloody scores. I need air that isn’t thick with… that.”
As Brutehilde stomped towards the balcony, a sharp knock echoed at the main door.
All levity vanished. The knock was not timid. It was authoritative, triple-tapped, and cold.
Tanna was dressed and armed in six silent seconds. Polly yanked her knickers up. Tulip pulled on her robe. Honeymuff hid behind the fruit bowl.
Polly opened the door. A different Dark Elf stood there, clad in the livery of the Palace Guard. His expression was impassive.
“Lady Araksia,” he announced without preamble, “requests the honour of your company at a state banquet tomorrow evening. All of you. To celebrate the new fungal season.” He offered a black envelope sealed with silvery wax. “Your attendance is… strongly encouraged.”
He left the envelope in Polly’s numb hand and departed.
Polly closed the door, leaning against it. She looked at the envelope, then at the others in their state of disarray. The scorecard lay forgotten on Minnie’s lap.
“Stones,” Tulip whispered, the word hanging in the perfumed, sex-heavy air.
“Furniture,” Tanna echoed, her voice flat.
“It's an official invitation to a state occasion,” Polly said, crushing the envelope in her fist. “The game just changed.”
“Thank all the heavens for that,” said Brutehilde with a sigh of relief. “I don't think I could have stood being cooped up in here for another six with you lot jilling yourselves off! The smell alone would wake the dead.”
The silence that followed Brutehilde’s question was answer enough. Being stones, as they quickly discovered, was an agony of inaction. The next day passed with a crawling tension. Every scratch at the door, every footstep in the hall, made them freeze. No more gifts came, no poems, no goblin messengers. This, somehow, was worse. It felt like the calm before a storm they couldn’t see.
“He’s plannin’ somethin’,” Honeymuff muttered, perched on the rim of a teacup. “A quiet bastard is a schemin’ bastard.”
They left behind six bundles of fabric, each shimmering with a subtle, iridescent grey. The spider silk was finer than anything they had ever touched, cool and strong as steel cable yet soft as a sigh. Reluctantly, they dressed. The garments were tailored with an unnerving, intimate knowledge of their forms. Brutehilde’s milkmaid dress was replicated in the glorious fabric, the bodice straining magnificently over her chest. Polly and Tanna found themselves in sleek, dark tunics and close-fitting trousers that moved like a second skin. Tulip’s draping gown seemed woven from living moss and shadow, changing hue as she moved. For Honeymuff, a minuscule, sparkling shift.
“We look like the fancy side of a brothel,” Polly grumbled, adjusting the collar that felt both restrictive and obscenely luxurious. “And believe me, I've seen a few – owned some of 'em.”
“Aye, but we’re stones,” Brutehilde reminded her, hefting the weight of a silk-clad plait. “Polite, ignorin’ stones. Just eat the food, drink the drink, and say nowt.”
The Hall of Weeping Crystal was a cavern of terrifying beauty. Stalactites hung from the ceiling like frozen tears, each one glowing with a soft internal light. The long table was obsidian, set with plates of polished bone and cutlery of sharpened chitin. Lady Araksia presided at the head, a smile playing on her lips as they were shown to their seats. Lord Dravion was notable by his absence.
The meal was a series of bizarre, exquisite dishes: blind cave fish in a peppery sauce, mushroom pâté on crispy lichen, mulled wine that smelled of damp earth and cloves. They ate in near silence, the only sounds the clink of chitin on bone and the low murmur of Dark Elf conversation.
As the last plates were cleared, Lady Araksia clapped her hands together. “And now, a diversion! A game to stir the blood and the wit.” Her eyes gleamed. “A riddle contest. But with a… thematic consistency.”
A servant brought a stack of parchment slips and charcoal sticks to each guest. “The riddles will be called. You will write your answer silently. The most clever and correct wins a prize from my personal reliquary.” A murmur of appreciation went around the table. The Holy Reliquary was legend.
The first riddle was called by a courtier with a booming voice. “I am a cave that weeps a salty sea, yet fishermen dream of casting lines in me.”
Polly scowled at her parchment. Tulip, smiling, quickly wrote something. Tanna looked baffled. Brutehilde wrote ‘MOUTH’ in large, blocky letters. Honeymuff, who had been given a sliver of charcoal, giggled and scribbled.
“Answers, please,” Araksia said.
The courtier collected the slips. “The correct answer is ‘The Cunt’.”
A few polite laughs. Brutehilde sulked at having guessed incorrectly.
The next riddle came. “A pair of fleshy mounds, where milk and pleasure both are found.”
Honeymuff snorted, her tiny shoulders shaking. She scrawled her answer.
“The answer is ‘Tits’,” the courtier announced. “Or ‘Breasts’.”
The game continued, each riddle a progressively cruder euphemism. “A stiff soldier who digs his own grave.” “The pink parchment where love’s signature is engraved.” “The hairy oracle that speaks in drips.” The answers were all the same: cock, arsehole, cunt again. The Dark Elves played with straight-faced, academic precision.
Honeymuff, however, was struggling. The wine, the tension, the sheer absurdity of it all was too much. On the fifth riddle, “A wrinkled purse that holds the family jewels,” she lost her composure.
“BALLSACK!” she shrieked, her high-pitched voice cutting through the murmured discussions.
A frozen silence fell. All eyes turned to the pixie, who was now clutching her sides, laughing. “It’s a wrinkly purse! For his jewels! It’s perfect!”
Lady Araksia’s smile did not falter, but it hardened at the edges. “The answers are to be written, small one. Not proclaimed.”
“Sorry, Yer Ladyship!” Honeymuff chirped, not sounding sorry at all.
Two riddles later, the courtier intoned, “The back door, the unblinking eye, the tight star that makes a grown man cry.”
Honeymuff slammed her tiny hand on the table. “ARSEHOLE!” she yelled, triumphant.
This time, a few gasps.
“Child,” Lady Araksia said, her voice a warning silk.
“But it’s right!” Honeymuff insisted, buzzing into the air. “It’s a back door! It’s a star! He cries when you—"
“Honeymuff,” Tulip hissed, grabbing for her. The pixie zipped out of reach.
The final riddle was given. “The bearded clam, the juicy peach, the hairy gate that teachers preach.”
It was too much. The combination of ‘teachers preach’ sent Honeymuff into a spiralling fit of giggles. She zoomed in a drunken circle above the table, pointing a tiny finger at the stony-faced nobles. “It’s a FANNY! A GASH! A MINGE! A TWAT! A HAIRY GOB!” Each vulgarity exploded in the crystalline hall like a small, profane firework. “A SLIT! A CUNNY! A PUSSY! THAT’S THE ANSWER, IT’S A FUCKING PUSSY!”
The silence that followed was absolute, profound, and colder than the deep stone beneath them. Lady Araksia set her goblet down with a precise click. Every Dark Elf stared, their expressions unreadable.
Brutehilde closed her eyes. So much for being stones.
Lady Araksia stood. “The… enthusiasm of our surface guests is… noted.” Her gaze pinned Honeymuff, who suddenly sobered and dropped to the table, hiding behind a bone goblet. “The game is concluded. The prize is forfeit. Kindly serve the dessert.”
Chapter 6 (Continued)
The week began with a strained, silent tension. They took Ulrika’s command as law. When a single black rose, thorny and dripping with some viscous scent, arrived at dawn the next day, Honeymuff did not shriek. She pointed at it, and Brutehilde incinerated it in the hearth without a word. When a somber melody played by unseen musicians echoed from the courtyard at twilight, Tulip simply hummed a different tune while grinding herbs. When a portrait of a weeping elf, suspiciously resembling Dravion, was delivered, Tanna used it to block a draft under the door.
They became shadows in the guest wing, speaking in murmurs, avoiding the balconies. The inaction grated. Polly’s restlessness manifested in endless, silent push-ups on the stone floor, the muscles in her back rippling beneath the fading welts. Tanna polished her armour until it gleamed like a cold mirror. Honeymuff took to obsessively cleaning her wings with a drop of water, buzzing with pent-up energy.
On the third evening of this voluntary imprisonment, a different summons came. It was not from Dravion. A severe-faced steward in the livery of House Mahzipan presented a formal, wax-sealed invitation to a banquet in the Hall of Glittering Webs. “Lady Araksia wishes to celebrate the imminent departure of her valued surface allies,” the steward intoned. “Your presence is commanded.”
Brutehilde looked at the heavy parchment. “Commanded, is it? Not requested?”
“One does not request,” the steward replied, his voice flat. “One attends.”
It was a trap, and they all knew it. A public event was a stage, and Dravion would undoubtedly be there. But to refuse a command from the Matriarch was unthinkable. “Stones,” Polly muttered, lacing her combat boots tight. “Fucking furniture.”
The Hall of Glittering Webs was a cavernous nightmare of beauty. Bioluminescent fungi glowed in sconces, casting a blue-green light. The walls and vaulted ceiling were sheathed in layers of genuine spider silk, each strand thicker than a rope, woven into patterns that shimmered and seemed to move if stared at too long. Long tables of polished basalt groaned under platters of strange, fragrant food: smoked cave fish, roasted giant grubs glazed in something sweet, piles of iridescent fungi.
They were seated at a lower table, a clear message about their status. Dravion, they saw, was seated far closer to the high table where Lady Araksia presided. He was dressed in funereal black velvet, a lace handkerchief clutched in his pale hand. He did not look at them once. He stared mournfully at his plate, the very picture of tragic, misunderstood nobility.
“He’s better at this than we are,” Tulip whispered, picking at a grub.
The feast dragged. Course after bizarre course was presented. Polite, chilling conversation buzzed around them. Dark Elf nobles cast curious, dismissive glances their way. The air grew warm with the scent of exotic spices and damp stone. Honeymuff, seated between a salt cellar and a goblet, fidgeted, her wings twitching.
Finally, the dessert was served.
Attendants carried out a large, central platter and placed it with reverence before Lady Araksia. Upon it was a delicate sculpture of pale, tiny mushrooms, each no bigger than a thumbnail, arranged in a spiraling pattern. They were swimming in a sauce so dark it was almost black, flecked with iridescence. The pureed spider sauce emitted a scent both sweet and deeply, primally savory.
Smaller portions were distributed to the high table, then to the lower nobles. A modest bowl of the mushrooms and sauce was placed in the center of their own table. The smell was overwhelming, rich and slightly metallic.
“Och, that looks lovely,” Wee Minnie chirped, her cheerfulness a defiant beacon in the gloom. She’d been quietly enjoying the food, her tea trolley parked discreetly behind her chair. Before anyone could process her words, she reached across with her fork, speared one of the tiny, glistening mushrooms from the communal bowl, and popped it into her mouth.
She chewed thoughtfully. “A bit earthy, but nice.” She swallowed.
For a moment, nothing happened. Minnie smiled, reaching for her teacup.
Then her eyes changed.
They dilated, the pupils swallowing the blue irises into pits of utter blackness. Her smile froze, then slid from her face like mud. Her plump hands gripped the edge of the table, knuckles bleaching white.
“Minnie?” Brutehilde said, her voice low.
Wee Minnie did not hear her. The world had just been ripped inside out. The shimmering webs on the ceiling pulsed like diseased lungs. The faces around her stretched and melted, eyes dripping down cheeks like runny eggs. Lady Araksia, at the high table, became a gigantic, multi-limbed spider mother, her mandibles clicking a rhythm that matched the frantic, screaming beat of Minnie’s heart. The sweet, savory scent of the sauce curdled in her nostrils into the stench of open graves and burning hair.
“Naw,” she breathed, a tiny, desperate sound. “Naw, naw, naw…”
“Sister?” Brutehilde’s hand touched her arm.
The touch was like a brand of frost. Minnie screamed. A raw, ululating shriek of absolute terror that silenced the hall. She recoiled, her chair toppling backward with a crash. She scrambled to her feet, her eyes wide pools of black horror, staring at Brutehilde. “Away! Giant! Flesh-grinder! Yer teeth are saws!” she bellowed in her broad Scots, backing away.
Pandemonium erupted.
Minnie grabbed her tea trolley, not as a comfort, but as a weapon. She shoved it forward, sending it squeaking and clattering wildly into the aisle, scattering cutlery and shocking nearby elves. “They’re in the walls! The wee weepin’ faces!” she screeched, pointing a trembling finger at the intricate web patterns.
She turned and saw the attendants. To her, they were skeletal wraiths with flesh-stripping claws. With a roar of pure terror, she picked up a nearby tureen of steaming grub broth and hurled it. It sailed in a greasy arc, missing its target but drenching a group of startled nobles in hot, chunky liquid. Shouts of outrage joined the chaos.
“Restrain her!” Lady Araksia’s voice cut through the din, sharp with cold fury.
Two guards moved in. To Minnie, they were insectoid demons, their spears glistening stingers. She fought with the shocking, panicked strength of the insane. She caught one guard in the stomach with a headbutt that sounded like a dropped melon. She grabbed a handful of the silken table runner and yanked, sending a cascade of fine porcelain and half-eaten food crashing to the floor.
“Get her! Now!” Brutehilde roared, surging from her seat, but the press of scrambling, shocked bodies blocked her.
Polly was already moving, ducking under an elf’s arm. Tanna was a step behind, her knight’s instincts overriding the command to be stone. Honeymuff zipped into the air, shrieking curses.
Minnie, spotting Tanna’s approach, saw a silver-armored horror with a pit for a face. She snatched a heavy silver candelabra, swinging it in a wild, humming arc. “Back, spectre! Back tae the cold hells!”
Tanna ducked the swing, coming up inside Minnie’s guard. She wrapped her arms around the huge, trembling woman in a firm but careful hold. “Minnie, it’s Tanna! It’s a dream! A bad dream!”
“Lies! It burns! It’s all burnin’!” Minnie sobbed, struggling, her eyes seeing only fire on the walls.
It took Brutehilde and Polly together to help Tanna subdue her, pinning her thrashing limbs. Minnie’s screams dissolved into wet, heaving whimpers, her face a mask of snot and tears, her mind utterly lost in the terrifying psychic landscape of the sacred mushroom.
The great hall was a wreck of spilled food, overturned chairs, and stunned, dripping nobility. All eyes were on them. The command to be invisible, to be stone, was now ash.
At the high table, Lady Araksia stood, her expression unreadable. Beside her, Lord Dravion slowly dabbed his lips with his lace handkerchief. A slow, profound smile was spreading across his face, a smile of pure, undiluted delight. He had not caused this beautiful, chaotic rupture. But they had. And in the economy of tragedy he traded in, their scandal was a currency more valuable than gold.
He finally looked directly at Honeymuff, his eyes gleaming with possessiveness and triumph. The stones had moved. The furniture had broken the house. His narrative was, once again, perfectly on track.