Chapter 9: The Accusation
The discovery came with the dawn shift of the pallid, fungal-light guards. A novice acolyte, sent to dust the sacred vitrines, stood frozen in the entrance to the Holy Reliquary, her silent scream echoing in the vaulted chamber before sound finally ripped its way out. The panic that followed was a cold, efficient thing. No alarms were rung. Instead, a silent tide of elite household guards, their armour coated in sound-deadening velvet-moss, flooded the guest wing.
The Damsels were roused not by shouts, but by the eerie press of a dozen blade tips at their throats and the chill of polished black obsidian binding their wrists. Wee Minnie, still groggy, mumbled about “ruffin’ a lassie’s lie-in” before a gauntleted hand clamped over her mouth. They were marched through the still-sleeping palace, past whispering nobles who peered from behind curtains with eyes like glittering beetles.
The Court of Lady Araksia was no longer a banquet hall of gilded seduction. It was a tribunal. The Matriarch sat upon her spider-silk throne, face a mask of composed fury. The courtiers lining the walls were silent, their earlier amusement replaced by a hungry, collective gaze. Foreigners were entertainment. Foreign thieves were sport.
“The Onyx Maiden of the Seventh Lament,” Araksia’s voice cut the silence like a scalpel. “Consecrated to the Goddess of Silent Tears. It has resided in its niche for eight centuries. It is gone.”
Brutehilde stood, a mountain in chains. “We didn’t take it.”
“You caused a spectacle of unprecedented vulgarity in my hall at the precise moment the corridors to the Reliquary were at their barest guard.” Araksia’s fingers tapped the arm of her throne. “Your… sister… was in a state of psychotic exuberance. Your pixie consorted with my city’s arachnids. Your warrior and your druidess were absent, presumably coupling. And you, Brutehilde of Knees a’Tremble, were the eye of that storm. A distraction, perfect and complete.”
The tension was a physical weight, pressing the air from the room. Polly strained against her bindings, the obsidian biting into her wrists. “So you’ve got no proof, just coincidence and prejudice. Typical fucking elf logic.”
A thin, pained sigh came from the side of the chamber. Lord Dravion stepped forward, his robes of faded grey seeming to weep shadows. “Please, my savage friend, do not make this worse with your admirable but misplaced ferocity.” He turned to Araksia and executed a flawless, tragic bow. “My Lady Matriarch. These are crude souls from the sun-blinded world. They understand force, and ale, and rough sport. The subtle beauty of the Onyx Maiden? It would be as a diamond to a mud-crab. They have no motive, only a tragic lack of grace.”
Araksia’s eyes narrowed. “You defend them, Dravion? You, who have written sonnets to the Maiden’s sorrow?”
“I defend the concept of justice, my Lady,” he said, placing a hand over his heart. “To condemn them for their nature is to punish a tornado for the chaos of its passing. They are a force, not a plot. Allow me, in the name of the poetic balance I hold dear, to act as their counsel. To… translate their rustic innocence into a form your noble court can comprehend.”
It was a masterful performance. The reluctant noble, upholding grace for even the graceless. Brutehilde stared at him, her mind working. They knew he was the thief. To protest his help now would seem like madness, the raving of guilty creatures. They were trapped in his narrative.
Lady Araksia studied Dravion, then the stolid, furious women before her. She did not want a diplomatic incident with whatever backwater kingdom they hailed from, but the theft was an outrage. The court demanded blood. “The evidence is circumstantial,” she conceded, her voice tight. “But it is heavy. My court’s patience is not. You will submit to a truth-probing. The Psychic Vivisection.”
A collective, pleased shudder ran through the assembled Dark Elves.
“We invoke the Right of Trial by Ordeal!” The voice was Tulip’s, clear and sharp, her green hair vibrant against the gloom. She had remained silent, thinking, tracing the threads of old law in her druidic memory.
A sudden, stunned silence fell.
Dravion’s mask of tragedy slipped for a microsecond, revealing pure, bewildered surprise. Then it was back, thicker than ever. “My dear, wild flower… the Ordeals are archaic. Brutal. Designed for… for political theater, not true justice.”
“Exactly,” Tulip said, her eyes on Araksia. “You suspect us of a crude, chaotic theft. An ordeal is a crude, chaotic test. Let the goddess decide, not a probe that will shred our minds. We claim the right, as accused under the Ancient Codex of Mahzipan, which your lineage still swears to uphold.”
Araksia leaned back. A flicker of something—not relief, but a shift in advantage—crossed her face. A public ordeal was messy, but it was finale. It would satisfy the court’s bloodlust without her having to order an execution that might bring awkward repercussions. And if they failed… the spectacle would be memorable.
“The Codex is recognized,” she intoned. “The accused have invoked the Iudicium Absurdum. The Ordeal of the Poetic Cabbagery.”
Polly blinked. “The fucking what?”
Dravion closed his eyes as if in profound pain. “It is a trial from a more… whimsical age. The accused must select a champion to recite an original heroic epic of at least one hundred couplets, celebrating the virtues of the Dark Elf people, while standing in the Grand Arena. The recitation is assessed by a panel of blind poet-judges for meter, metaphor, and emotional resonance.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad,” Tanna whispered.
“While,” Dravion continued, his voice hollow, “the city’s defensive horticultural artillery bombards the arena with enchanted cabbages. The cabbages are not mundane. They are the Brassica Furoris—‘Rage-Cabbages’. Upon impact, they explode with a concussive force designed to induce temporary incontinence, violent flatulence, and profound philosophical confusion. To falter in the recitation, to be struck directly, or to… soil oneself… constitutes a failure. And guilt.”
The Damsels stared at him.
Wee Minnie, her sedation fully worn off, broke the silence. “So it’s a poetry slam… wi’ fartin’ bombs?”
“Essentially,” Dravion sighed.
Brutehilde’s mind raced. It was ridiculous, humiliating, potentially dangerous. But it was not a psychic vivisection. It was a chance. A stupid, undignified chance. “We accept the terms of the Ordeal,” she boomed.
“Then tomorrow, at the dimming of the fungal light, your fate will be decided in the Grand Arena,” Araksia declared, a ghost of her former predatory smile returning. “You may spend your time preparing your epic… and your constitutions. Court is adjourned.”
They were unbound and escorted back to their quarters, not as prisoners, but as condemned performers given a day’s reprieve. The moment the door shut, the dam broke.
“Fartin’ cabbages!” Minnie wheezed, laughing until she cried. “Oh, my poor bowel’s’ll never be the same!”
“He trapped us,” Polly spat, pacing again, a caged animal. “Dravion. He never thought we’d know about the old laws. He wanted us mentally gutted. Now we’ve just chosen public shitting instead.”
“It’s a better option,” Tulip insisted, though she looked pale. “We have a day. We need a poem. And a champion who can dodge.”
All eyes turned to Tanna. The knight blanched. “I… I know the ‘Ballad of the Silver Knight’. That’s seventy couplets. About riding and… and steadfastness.”
“Not elf virtues,” Brutehilde grunted. “Needs to be about them. Flowery, dark, tragic shite.”
A heavy despair settled over them. They were warriors, brawlers, a bartender, a pixie, a druid. Not poets.
The stress was a physical coil in the room. Polly’s gaze locked on Tanna, who was nervously practicing couplets by the window. The knight’s innocence, her desperate desire to be good, to be useful, was a stark contrast to the crude reality of their situation. That contrast ignited something hot and possessive in Polly’s gut—a need to mar that purity, to pull Tanna down into the muck with them, to own her completely in the face of possible humiliation and death.
“Stop,” Polly growled.
Tanna turned. “I need to practice the cadence—”
“You need to stop thinking,” Polly said, crossing the room. She didn’t kiss her. She grabbed the back of Tanna’s silver gorget and yanked her forward, their foreheads knocking together. “You’re tight as a bowstring. You’ll fucking seize up in that arena.” Her hands went to the latches of Tanna’s breastplate, fingers fumbling with the cool metal.
“Polly, not now, we have to—” Tanna’s protest was cut short as Polly got the first strap free and shoved the rigid plate aside, exposing the thin linen undershirt beneath.
“This is preparation,” Polly snarled. She ripped the linen, the fabric tearing with a savage sound. Tanna’s small, perfect breasts spilled out, the nipples already peaked in the chill air. Polly covered one with her mouth, biting and sucking hard, her tongue rough and demanding.
Tanna gasped, a shudder of resistance melting into a moan of submission. Her hands came up, not to push away, but to claw at Polly’s back. “Please…”
Polly shoved her backwards onto the large stone table where maps had been spread. Parchment scattered. She made quick, brutal work of Tanna’s remaining armour, greaves and vambraces clattering to the floor. She shoved the knight’s legs apart, her hands rough on the inside of Tanna’s thighs. Tanna wore simple, soft smallclothes. Polly hooked her fingers in the waistband and tore them down, exposing the neat, dark thatch of hair and the glistening pink flesh beneath.
“You’re our fucking champion,” Polly said, her voice low and grating. “You need to be loose. You need to be filthy. You need to remember what you’re fighting for.” She dropped to her knees before the table, her face level with Tanna’s exposed cunt.
She didn’t tease. She speared her tongue deep inside in one brutal thrust, fucking Tanna with it. The knight cried out, her back arching off the cold stone. Polly ate her with a relentless, punishing rhythm, her nose buried against Tanna’s clit, her chin wet with the girl’s juices. She used her thumbs to spread Tanna wider, to open her up completely, lapping at her inner walls, sucking on her swollen lips.
“Tastes like duty,” Polly grunted against her flesh, "and obedience. Let’s ruin it.” She redoubled her efforts, her tongue a ruthless piston, circling Tanna’s clit with bruising pressure before plunging back inside her dripping hole. The sounds were obscene—wet, sloppy squelches, Polly’s ragged breaths, the scrape of Tanna’s nails on stone.
Tanna was coming apart, her hips bucking uncontrollably, her earlier tension erupting as raw, screaming need. “Polly, I’m—I can’t—!” Her words disintegrated into a guttural cry. Polly felt the muscles inside Tanna clench like a vice around her tongue, a rhythmic, pounding pulse. Then, with a final shattered scream, Tanna’s body convulsed.
A hot, sudden jet of liquid hit the back of Polly’s throat, not just the usual seep of climax but a forceful, salty gush. Polly swallowed instinctively, the fluid flooding her gullet, warm and abundant. She kept her mouth sealed tight, drinking it down as Tanna shuddered through the intense, squirting orgasm, her heels drumming against the table’s edge.
When the last tremors subsided, Polly pulled back, her chin glistening. She grinned, a wicked, satisfied slash of white in the gloom. “Fucking perfect. Now you’re properly watered.”
Tanna lay limp, panting, a wreck of silver and flushed skin. Polly stood, wiping her mouth, the taste of the knight’s surrender still on her lips. The frantic energy in the room had shifted, tempered by the raw physical release.
Brutehilde, who had watched the entire display with the pragmatic gaze of a strategist, grunted. “Good. She’s loose. Now her mind needs to be loose too. The poem.”
A heavy silence returned, but it was less desperate now. Honeymuff fluttered over, peering at Tanna’s spent form with professional interest. “Nice arc on that one, love.”
“The poem,” Brutehilde repeated, her massive arms crossed. “We need a hundred couplets of elf-flattering shite by tomorrow. None of us can do that.”
Minnie, rummaging in a pouch for a biscuit, paused. “That weepy bastard Dravion can. He’s been writin’ reams of the stuff. Flowery, tragic pish.”
Tulip’s eyes, still heavy-lidded from watching Polly and Tanna, sharpened. “He has. Pages of it. To Honeymuff. Some of it’s still here, scrunched up on the floor from when he was practicing his doomed-lover performance.”
They all looked at the corner of the room where, amidst rushes and dust, several balls of fine parchment lay discarded. Honeymuff zipped over, snatching them up. She smoothed one out on the table next to Tanna’s hip. “’Ode to a Pixie’s Pert Posterior’,” she read, then giggled. “He really liked my bum.”
“It’s a foundation,” Brutehilde said, a slow, grim idea forming. “We adapt it. Change the ‘pixie’ to ‘Dark Elf nobility’. Change the ‘posterior’ to… something else elf-noble. We use his own wretched verse as our shield.”
Polly, still riding the high of Tanna’s taste, barked a laugh. “Genius. And we’re not just copying. We’re improving it.” She leaned over the parchment, her finger stabbing a line. “See this? ‘Thy globes are like pale moons in twilight’s keep.’ Rubbish. We make it specific. We make it flattering to the one judge who matters.”
She looked around at them, her grin turning feral. “We work in at least three solid references to Araksia’s lovely ass. Curry her favour. Make the poem about her. Her grace, her power, her… majestic fucking hinterlands.”
Tanna propped herself up on her elbows, her voice hoarse. “Is that not… incredibly dangerous?”
“Everything here is,” Polly shot back. “But praising a tyrant’s backside? That’s a language they all understand. It’s politics. It’s survival. We take Dravion’s stolen words and we shove them right up his plan.”
A new, focused energy crackled in the room. The hopeless task became a act of sabotage. Brutehilde began dictating, her voice a low rumble. Tulip, with her ear for natural rhythm, tweaked the meter. Minnie suggested vocabulary that was “mair dramatic, like, ‘unkempt gloamin’ valley’ perhaps?”. Honeymuff flitted between them, transcribing with a tiny charred stick.
And Polly, her hand resting possessively on Tanna’s bare thigh, oversaw the operation, her mind already in the arena—a storm of poetry, cabbages, and a very specific, calculated form of ass-kissing.
The night was a forge of frantic scraping, barked revisions, and stifled, nervous laughter. They sculpted Dravion’s fawning doggerel into something weaponized, twisting his generic lust into targeted sycophancy. Every other stanza now contained a reference to “the regal curve,” “the obsidian throne of your majesty,” or “the dusky, commanding hemispheres that guide a realm.” Brutehilde insisted on the word “commanding.” “Makes it sound strategic, not just greedy,” she’d grunted. By the time the fungal-light began its slow, sickly brightening, they had their epic. It was a monstrous, flattering thing, and Tanna had committed it to memory, her lips moving silently, constantly, as she traced the lines with a finger.
An hour before the trial, the anxiety was a metallic taste in every mouth. Tanna stood rigid by the window, reciting under her breath, her body trembling with a fine, constant vibration. Polly watched her, seeing the fear threatening to lock the knight’s joints solid. Words hadn’t worked the night before; only raw physicality had broken the dam. It needed to happen again. Now.
“You’re still tight,” Polly stated, crossing the room. She didn’t ask. She grabbed Tanna’s arm and spun her away from the view of the gathering crowd below.
“Polly, there’s no time, I need to—” Tanna’s protest was cut off as Polly shoved her face-first against the cold stone wall.
“You need to be empty. You need to be nothing but a mouth for the poem and legs for dodging.” Polly’s voice was low, a gritty whisper in Tanna’s ear as her hands yanked the knight’s loose trousers down around her knees. The air was cool on Tanna’s exposed skin. Polly didn’t bother with preliminaries. She spit roughly onto her fingers, then pushed two of them straight into Tanna’s ass, past the tight ring of muscle, alongside the smooth, cold metal of the magical plug still seated within her.
Tanna cried out, a sharp sound of shock and sudden, overwhelming intrusion. Her hands flattened against the stone. “Fuck! Polly, that’s—!”
“That’s your reminder,” Polly hissed, fucking her fingers in and out of Tanna’s ass with hard, shallow strokes, the wet noise obscene. “You’re not a pristine knight in here. You’re our weapon. You’re fucking filthy.” She curled her fingers, rubbing against the base of the plug, stimulating it from within. A corresponding jolt of savage energy buzzed through Tanna’s nerves, the plug’s magic mingling with the brutal intrusion.
Polly used her other hand to reach around and claw at the front of Tanna’s trousers, shoving the fabric aside to find her cunt already wet from fear and this rough attention. She drove three fingers into her pussy this time, fucking both of Tanna’s holes in a discordant, punishing rhythm. “This is what you’re fighting for. This right here. This crude, fucking real thing.” She scissored her fingers inside Tanna’s cunt, stretching her, as her ass-fingers worked the plug deeper.
Tanna’s body seized, then melted. A guttural moan was torn from her throat as she pushed back against Polly’s hands, needing more, the conflict and fear transforming into a blinding wave of degenerate need. Her climax hit her like a cave-in, violent and total, her muscles clamping around Polly’s invading fingers as a strangled shout echoed off the walls. She pulsed around them, juices slicking Polly’s hand, her body going limp against the stone.
Polly pulled her fingers free, shiny with Tanna’s fluids. She brought them to Tanna’s mouth. “Suck them clean. Then get dressed.”
Tanna, dazed and obedient, did as she was told, her tongue lapping at her own taste from Polly’s skin. Her eyes were clear now, the trembling gone, replaced by a deep, buzzing calm. She pulled her trousers up, fastened them. Her movements were economical, focused.
The summons came. They were led not to a courtroom, but to the edge of the Grand Arena—a vast, bowl-shaped pit of black sand and etched obsidian. Hundreds of Dark Elves filled the tiered seats, their murmurs a low, hungry hum. At the highest podium, Lady Araksia sat enthroned, a picture of detached authority. To her side, Dravion looked appropriately grave.
A robed official with a voice like grinding slate read the charges and the terms of the Ordeal. When he finished, Tanna was called forward. She had stripped to a minimal loincloth and breast bindings of dark linen, her lithe form pale against the gloom. The pages of their poem, carefully stitched into a single scroll, were placed between her teeth. She bit down on the parchment. A complex harness was attached to her back, and she was unceremoniously lowered by winch into the center of the pit.
The sand was cool and loose under her bare feet. She stood, facing Araksia’s podium, the scroll in her mouth, her hands empty at her sides. She gave a single, sharp nod.
A gong sounded.
From apertures around the rim of the pit, the massive, woven arms of horticultural catapults tensed and released. The first cabbage, a green, mottled orb the size of a human head, whistled through the air. Tanna sidestepped, the vegetable exploding against the sand where she’d stood with a wet THWUMP that released a small, noxious-looking green cloud.
She began to speak, the words muffled but clear around the scroll. “Hark, to the spire where shadows weave their keep, / And wisdom lies in depths both dark and deep…”
Another cabbage. She ducked, it sailed over her, detonating against the wall. The blind poet-judges, seated in a sunken box, inclined their heads, listening intently.
Tanna found the rhythm. She wove the recitation around the incoming missiles, her body a study in efficient motion. A cabbage burst at her heel, the concussive force vibrating up her leg. She didn’t stumble. She raised her voice, projecting the next couplet toward the throne. “Behold the seat of power, firm and vast, / A testament to legends meant to last…”
It was a preposterous dance. She rolled away from a double volley, came up spitting sand, and continued without missing a syllable. “No mere geography of flesh and bone, / But the foundation of the Dark Elf throne…” She pivoted, a cabbage grazing her shoulder and exploding mid-air, showering her with pungent, damp leaves. She spat out a shred of vegetation and plowed on, her eyes locked on Araksia.
The Matriarch had begun the ordeal with an expression of cold amusement. As Tanna continued, as the specifically tailored praise of her most regal physical attribute was shouted between explosions of pulpy vegetable matter, that amusement deepened. Then it transformed. A faint, pleased flush touched her high cheekbones. She shifted subtly on her throne.
By the fortieth couplet, as Tanna roared lines about “the glorious, unyielding southern rise,” Araksia’s legs had shifted slightly apart. A dark, spreading stain of dampness appeared on the fine silk between her thighs. Her breath hitched, just once. Her hand, which had been resting on the arm of the throne, drifted slowly, almost casually, to her lap.
Tanna, sweating and coated in a fine mist of cabbage debris, saw it. She poured every ounce of borrowed passion into the next stanzas, directly addressing the “Arch of Triumph,” the “Dual Peaks of Judgment.” Araksia’s fingers began to move, a subtle, circular rubbing through the fabric of her gown. Her lips parted. Her gaze, once detached, was now glassy and fixed on Tanna’s straining form.
Dravion, watching beside her, saw the stain. He saw her hand move. His own carefully constructed mask of tragic concern began to fissure, revealing a core of pure, icy horror. This wasn’t supposed to happen. The brutes were supposed to fail, to be humiliated, to be found guilty. They were weaponizing his own stolen poetics.
The final cabbages were launched in a frenzied salvo. Tanna dove, twisted, and scrambled through the black sand as detonations bracketed her. She came to her knees, the scroll still clenched in her teeth, and shouted the final couplet to the echoing arena, her voice raw and triumphant. “…and so we praise, with heart and ragged breath, / The strength that defies even mortal death!”
Silence.
The last of the cabbage shrapnel pattered onto the sand. The blind judges conferred in whispers. Tanna knelt, chest heaving, strands of hair plastered to her face with sweat and cabbage juice.
High on her throne, Lady Araksia slowly removed her hand from her gown. She brought her fingertips to her nose, inhaled deeply, and let out a long, shivering sigh of utter satisfaction. A smile of predatory bliss touched her lips. The entire court had seen it. She did not care.
After a moment that stretched like tar, the head judge stood. “The recitation is judged… complete. Meter, acceptable. Metaphor,” he paused, a faint, confused frown on his blind face, “…unconventionally focused, yet passionate. The champion was not struck. The Ordeal is… satisfied.”
A murmur rippled through the crowd, tinged with disappointment and a new, wary respect.
Araksia rose. Her voice, when it came, was thick and languid. “The court has witnessed. The Ordeal is complete. The guilt… or innocence… of the accused is not thereby proven.” Her eyes, heavy-lidded and sated, swept over the Damsels. “It merely proves their… fortitude. The Court will retire to consider the totality of evidence. A verdict will be delivered at first light tomorrow.”
She turned and left, the damp patch on her gown clearly visible, leaving a stunned and whispering court behind. Dravion stared after her, then at the women being pulled up from the pit, his plan crumbling into absurd, cabbage-scented ruin. The reprieve was only for a night. But it was a night they had stolen back.