Author: Bulgroz the Third
Title: The Adjusters #39 - Charlie and the Convent of Oblivion (I)
Keywords: MF, mc
Posted: April 2, 2013
Edited: April 2, 2013




			  The Adjusters #39


	       Charlie and the Convent of Oblivion (I)



Story by J. Dumas. First appeared in Flights of Erotic Fantasy
Magazine, Vol. 13, Nos. 7-8.


				 (1)


It was year four hundred and seventeen of the Renascence Era,
forty-one years since the Great Darkness War, one year past the end of
the reign of King Altobar the First, the Hero of the War, Bringer of
Peace. It was the first year of the reign of Queen Helena, daughter of
King Altobar the First, a reign that was destined to be unlike that of
her wise and just father. For Queen Helena ruled through fear and
repression, levying crushing taxes and imposing exhausting yield
requirements on peasants.

Rumors most vile floated throughout the kingdom about the Queen;
rumors that she was but a puppet in the hands of the real master of
the land, her cruel and ambitious Prime Chancellor; rumors that she
shared her bed with the Chancellor and allowed him the most perverse
liberties with her young body; rumors that the Court of Queen Helena
was one of vanishing morals and depraved indulgences.

The Royal Guard of late King Altobar the First, the elite knight troop
in charge of protecting the late king's person, was held to be
traitorous, accused of having orchestrated his assassination in a
cowardly fashion during a Blood Sacrifice Ceremony. The Royal Guard
was outlawed, and its knights were hunted throughout the kingdom, by
orders of Queen Helena herself. They were to be executed when found.

The knights of the Royal Guard--thirty-one of the most valiant and
dedicated knights in the kingdom--were widely know, and there was
little possibility of hiding. More than a dozen had already been
captured and beheaded after having had their limbs cut off and fed to
dogs, the punishment prescribed by Queen Helena under advice from her
Prime Chancellor.

The remaining knights kept a low profile, seeking a lonely and
isolated existence in the deep woods or in the more desolate regions
of the land, unwilling to risk the lives of faithful friends or family
by asking for help. It was said that several knights of the Royal
Guard crossed the Impossible Range into the Forbidden Region whence
the Darkness came to start the Great War. It was also said that these
knights were as good as dead.

Lady Charlotte of Artagnia, Royal Guard to late King Altobar the
First, was not dead, and did not seek to cross into the Forbidden
Region. She had been poisoned by a magical philtre concocted by a Dark
Mage, a magical philtre that twisted her mind and turned her into a
slave to one of her former enemies. In the thrall of said philtre, she
had witnessed the assassination of the king and managed to escape,
seeking both to save her life and to search for Count Oliver of Athia,
her lover and a fellow knight of the Royal Guard.

Alas, Charlie, as she was known to her friends, was cursed. The
philtre she had ingested begat a magical form of blood fever, a rare
but dreaded affliction that prevented a woman from living a normal
productive life. An attack of blood fever was characterized by an
increase in body temperature accompanied by a corresponding increase
in irresistible lust. An afflicted woman, in the throes of an attack,
was unable to resist the call of her mating nature and surrendered to
her vilest desires in order to bed anyone, man or woman, until her
ravenous lust was satiated. It was said that bedding a woman in the
throes of blood fever was the most incredible sexual experience one
might experience in one's life.

Blood fever was a little understood illness in a world where illnesses
were rarely understood. It was incurable, and invariably led to
death. And Charlie suffered from a magical blood fever, practically
unknown to everyone but a small contingent of sorcerers who dabbled in
the Dark Arts, which included frequent almost constant attacks of
increasing strength and crippling madness. Magical blood fevers were
not deadly, unless one counted the victims killing themselves to ease
their suffering.

Charlie, escaping from the castle the late King Altobar the First held
court, suffered her first attack of blood fever as she rode through
the large expanse of the Northern Woods. The pangs of desire were easy
to ignore at first, no worse than the general horniness that would
sometimes fall upon her when she went without her lover Oliver's cock
snuggled up inside her for too long. But these pangs, soon grew worse,
her loins stirred and growled and her pussy clamored for attention, to
the point where the rubbing from the saddle threatened to bring her
off.

Giving in, Charlie dismounted and lay down in a shelter grove deep in
the Northern Woods. Increasingly unable to think due to the rising
heat from her pussy, Charlie shed her tunic and was violently fucking
herself with a smooth piece of wood she had unearthed when two loggers
came upon her on their way back to their village, pulling a cartful of
great oak timber behind them.

The two men, despite their surprise and their initial suspicion--for
it was not an unknown ruse for cutthroats to rely on pretty girls as
bait to lure horny victims into their traps--soon relented after
Charlie begged them in terms most arousing to ravage her however they
wanted, as hard as they wanted, for as long as they wanted.

It took nearly an hour before Charlie was satiated and the fire in her
pussy was doused. That the two men were prime specimen of maleness was
convenient, for they had taken her over and over in a multitude of
positions, fucking her mouth and her pussy and even her ass, indulging
their deepest and harshest fantasies with her body as they realized
that the beautiful woman upon which they had stumbled not only did not
mind such rough handling but practically beseeched them for
it. Charlie came whenever they did, whether they elected to spew their
seed deep inside her body or all over her tanned skin. It was, to the
two well hung but ultimately superstitious men, as if she was
possessed, and after gorging themselves of her body, they left her in
a large puddle of their combined juices, satisfied, her skin burning,
replete with cum and lust.

The adventure troubled Charlie, who had rarely known fear. Just as she
had when she was given the magical philtre that turned her into a
pleasure slave, she was losing control of her body. But there was
little she could do to counteract the blood fever attacks, and so she
got dressed and continued riding, grateful that the men had not taken
advantage of her derangement to steal her horse or her weapons.

Her luck in that regard did not hold for long. After four more attacks
of blood fever in the Northern Woods, during which she mated with any
man she managed to get her hands on, giving herself with a desperation
that for many was an aphrodisiac more powerful than her perfect body,
she came to alone in a glade, naked but for her ripped tunic, covered
with hardened cum, and her horse, sword, and daggers gone.

Cursing the gods that had deemed her deserving of such a fate, she
wandered into a nearby village, shivering from the cold, sick and
hungry. Her blood fever attacks were coming closer together, and were
getting stronger, much to the pleasure of the men that happened to
cross her path. Shivering, her cunt on fire and demanding male flesh,
Charlie crashed through the door of the Last Draught Inn.

What might have befallen poor Charlie had she not been found by the
good sisters of the Covenant of Whispered Inspiration?

The Covenant of Whispered Inspiration was a Theistic Order known
throughout the kingdom for their devotion to downtrodden and suffering
women, a growing population under the harsh reign of Queen Helena. The
sisters took the care of such women to be their sacred duty, dictated
by the One God that they worshipped.

And so it was that upon being found by Sister Dehlia of the Covenant
of Whispered Inspiration in a small room in the attic of the Last
Draught Inn, being rented out to any patron able to spare a piece of
silver for a half-hour of unbridled passion driven by the unnatural
lust of a full-blown magical blood fever, Lady Charlotte of Artagnia
was brought to the cloister of the Covenant of Whispered Inspiration.


				 (2)


Novice Sarah, back when she was still Sarah of Charnia, had decided to
join the Covenant of Whispered Inspiration after a long struggle with
her conscience. As the second daughter of her serf father, she was of
no use to the family as a bride for a wealthier family, which would
have brought the little family a few gold coins that might have proved
sufficient to keep them fed through the harsh winter that kept the
soil from producing more than the bare minimum that Lord Charnia, the
owner of the land, required of them.

One of Sarah's choices, if such they could be called, had been to join
the house of Lord Charnia as a servant, a prospect that said Lord had
relished as Sarah was beautiful, fair skinned and golden haired like
her mother was. The way Lord Charnia had looked at her that first time
he had visited their little farm had reminded Sarah of a falcon
tracking a field mouse before pouncing.

She knew, deep in her heart, that Lord Charnia would have turned her
into a pleasure girl for him and his familiars. That was what he had
done with her best friend, Fawn. Sarah remembered the night when Lord
Charnia came to claim Fawn, who had come into maturity as a beautiful
tall redhead with breasts that every girl in the burg envied and every
boy fancied. Sarah had stood by, helpless, powerless, able only watch
and cry as her friend was dragged away against her will by
soldiers. Her friend's family stood by her, their faces broken with
worry and with the knowledge that there was little they could do.

Sarah would later hear rumors of the horrors that had been inflicted
on poor Fawn in the Lord's household. For Fawn had become a pleasure
girl, and the pleasures that assuaged the Lord's lust were of the kind
to prevent Sarah from sleeping for nearly a fortnight upon hearing of
them.

She never saw Fawn again.

Sarah's only other choice, the one choice that Lord Charnia would
accept, however reluctantly, was to join a Theistic Order, to devote
her life and her body to the gods. The law of the land still forbade
the Lord of a domain to interfere with divine vocation, even under a
sovereign as corrupt as Queen Helena.

Once she had decided to go the vocational route, Sarah had been keenly
aware that Lord Charnia viewed her too tasty a treat to lose her to a
life of wasted abstinence. After all, stories of abduction were not
rare, especially when they involved virginal girls whose beauty and
worth far outweighed potential repercussions.

Sarah had tricked Lord Charnia by initially conveying to him by
writing that she was accepting the Lord's offer to join his seraglio,
much to the Lord's gleeful and lewd joy, before absconding in the
middle of the night to meet Sister Dehlia of the Covenant of Whispered
Inspiration.

The choice of which Theistic Order to join had been the easy one to
make. The sisters of the Covenant of Whispered Inspiration were known
for their pious life, their good works, and for their care of ill
women. That they worshipped a single god in contrast to most other
Orders was odd, and that they expressed their devotion and cultivated
their worship by never speaking louder than a whisper was odder still,
but the Covenant proscribed any manner of contact between sisters and
males, and such was exactly what Sarah wanted, even if she did not
know it at first. She still shivered whenever she thought back to the
stories she had heard about Lord Charnia, and the fate of Fawn.

And so it was that Novice Sarah, latest addition to the Covenant of
Whispered Inspiration, was being given her duties by Sister Margaret,
who greeted all new arrivals to the Covenant and introduced them to
their novitiate, their path to full sisterhood.

Sister Margaret was a tall and thin woman, of indeterminate age, whose
whispers had a lispy quality.

"As you were told, Novice Sarah," she whispered, "All novices are
expected at first to devote their time to our charge. After two years,
you will begin your instruction into the Covenant proper, and should
you be successful, you will subsequently join us as Sister Sarah."

Sarah nodded, knowing she was not to speak unless asked a direct
question.

Sister Margaret, her long white gown flowing, walked her into the wing
of the convent dedicated to the care of the ill. It was a large flat
structure, detached from the section of the cloister housing the
sisters and accommodating the day-to-day activities of the Covenant.

"The blood sinner are housed here," Sister Margaret whispered,
motioning to a large room filled with beds and partitioned with
hanging curtains. Blood sinners was how the Covenant referred to
victims of blood fever. They judged the affliction a chastisement from
their One God to sinners of the flesh, but still maintained that they
were worthy of care, if not of salvation. "In here, their needs are
seen to, and their urges are soothed. The novices that you see strive
to assuage their ills and pains."

Women of all kinds filled the beds, young and old, pretty and
ill-favored, frail and strong. They were all quiet, subdued, and Sarah
could not help but notice an almost vacant gleam in most eyes.

"Yes," Sister Margaret whispered, either because she saw the look on
Sarah's face, or because every novice asked the same question at that
point, "they have been given a draught to keep them calm and abate
their ardors. Have you ever seen the effects of blood fever?"

"No, Sister Margaret." Sarah had never seen the effects of blood
fever, but she had heard of them, from tales told around fires during
warm autumn months. Tales of women overtaken with vertigo, seizures,
unquenchable impulses. Tales of women driven to commit unspeakable
acts by impulses that seemed spurred by Demons. Tales of women dying
after their blood ran so hot that it boiled in their own veins. Fawn
had been an avid partaker of such tales.

"Before your first month is over, child, you shall have witnessed the
evils of blood fever. And you will understand the need for the
quieting draught. When some of our blood sinners are feeling well
enough, they can be taken in the inner courtyard, where they can play
and read and socialize if that is their intent. But the draught is
distributed whenever their temperature increases in the slightest. Ah,
High Novice Gertrude," Sister Margaret whispered as a portly woman
bearing the blue gown of the novitiate approached slowly.

"Sister Margaret," the new arrival whispered, bowing her head.

"This is Novice Sarah, the newest addition to our small congregation."

High Novice Gertrude nodded at Sarah, her face unreadable. Sarah
smiled and nodded back.

"High Novice Gertrude here is in charge of the blood sinners' ward,"
Sister Margaret continued. "She has been with us for..."

"A long time already, Sister Margaret," Gertrude replied, her voice
sounding harsh even under the cover of whispers. "But I do so enjoy
taking care of these poor miserable souls, and I see no hurry in
moving on."

"Beware that Devotion does not turn to Pride, High Novice Gertrude,"
Sister Margaret whispered back.

"May the One God preserve me from such a downfall," Gertrude whispered
back.

Sister Margaret nodded. "Novice Sarah, I leave you in the capable
hands of High Novice Gertrude. I will see you again in three months
time, when you shall keep me appraised of your progress. Good day, and
may we all whisper with the One God."

"May we all whisper with the One God, Sister Margaret," Sarah
whispered, bowing her head.

"May we all whisper with the One God," Gertrude added, bowing as well.

When Sister Margaret, after bowing to other novices along the way and
nodding to at least one blood sinner who stretched out an arm towards
her as if to claw her leg before two novices rushed to her side to
subdue her, Gertrude sighed and turned to Sarah, her whispers sounding
even harsher.

"Well, I guess it's a welcome, then, Novice Sarah."

"Thanks?" Sarah did not know how to read the older novice.

"Anything you want to know that the old cunt didn't say?"

Sarah was taken aback by Gertrude's language.

Gertrude merely laughed, softly, under her breath, a wheezing sound
that chilled Sarah's bones. "You should see your face. Yes, Sister
Margaret's an old cunt. All the sisters are old cunts. And they should
be--they ask us, what, to spend at least ten years in the novitiate,
before deigning to let one move on over to sisterhood? And treating us
as slaves in the interim? Pretty convenient, don't you think?"

"If you are so unhappy," Sarah whispered, "why are you staying here?"

"And do what? Go back home to work my bones off on the family farm,
tilling a ground that is too dry to even produce those roots that
forrest raccoons sneer at disdainfully and getting boned every night
by my stupid ass half-brothers? Head to the nearby burg and become a
pleasure girl so that a man can slobber over me all night while barely
paying enough for me to afford the rent of the small room where they
rob me of my last shreds of dignity?"

Sarah wanted to reply, but found herself without words. Aside from the
cynicism and the bitterness in Gertrude's voice, it was a reflexion
she had had herself, one that had led her to the Covenant as surely as
Gertrude's seemed to have. "It is an unfair world, this one," she
whispered.

Gertrude's sneer softened, and she wrapped her arm around Sarah's
shoulders. "That it is. And any fairness we seek must be bought at the
cost of blood. I like you, Sarah. I believe we shall become friends."

Sarah smiled uncertainly, as she was unsure that she wished for a
friend like Gertrude.

"Let me introduce you around," Gertrude whispered.

And she did, walking around the ward and introducing Sarah to the
other novices, who all seemed to treat Gertrude as the dean of this
section of the cloister.

Gertrude also introduced her to several of the blood sinners, taking
some time with each to describe in explicit detail the effect of their
blood fever. For every woman afflicted by a blood fever externalized
her symptoms differently, beyond the common and overpowering need for
sexual release.

One blood sinner in the middle of an attack would start screaming in
pain as if her insides were being turned to boiling stew. Another
blood sinner would start to shake uncontrollably in so violent a
fashion that she had bitten off her own tongue and had scratched off
one of her eyes. Another blood sinner would believe that everyone
around her was conspiring to hand her over to the Inquisitional Orders
and would scream and attack even as she was being taken by a man. Most
of the blood sinners on the ward were soothed by the quieting draught
that was prepared in the kitchens beneath the ward, and whose vaguely
acrid flavor permeated the air.

Sarah, affected by all she was learning, approached a corner of the
ward and indicated a sheet of linen hung from the ceiling and
curtailing this section of the ward from rest.

Gertrude hesitated, then seemed to come to a decision and pulled the
sheet, letting Sarah through.

There was a bed, like the other beds in which the blood sinners
lay. On the bed, sleeping deeply, was a beautiful woman, her body
relaxed underneath the white sheets drawn upon her. Even though she
was covered, Sarah could tell she was strong, and was probably a
warrior--she had seen them often enough when her older brother came
back to the farm with some of his fellow soldiers. Their aura was
unmistakable. This woman in the bed was such a warrior, if not more,
thought Sarah.

And close to the truth was Novice Sarah, for on the bed, knocked out
by a heavy dose of the quieting draught whose recipe the Covenant of
Whispered Inspiration guarded almost jealously, lay Lady Charlotte of
Artagnia, knight of the Royal Guard of the late King Altobar the
First.

"Beautiful, isn't she?" Gertrude whispered with her usual
harshness. She was looking at Sarah carefully.

Sarah nodded mechanically, her eyes on Charlie, who did not move a
muscle, lying on the bed as if on a memorial dais, as if her body
simply waited to be slipped onto a funeral pyre and sent back to the
One God.

"Is she...?" Sarah whispered.

"Dead?" Gertrude's harsh whisper was so close to Sarah's ear that the
young woman nearly jumped out of her skin. "No. She is sleeping. Our
little princess here has such a violent blood fever that she requires
a dose strong enough to completely knock her out." Gertrude was eyeing
Charlie's unmoving form on the bed, and Sarah let her own eyes stray
to the older novice, unable to interpret either the tone of voice or
the expression in her eyes. Was there malevolence in them? Was a
novice of the Covenant of Whispered Inspiration able to feel
malevolence toward a fellow human creature?

"Who is she?" Sarah whispered.

"Nobody knows. She was found in an inn two days' travel from here, a
plaything for the lust of men, her blood fever forcing her to give
herself away to whomever expressed even the tiniest desire towards her
body, driven to exhaust herself in the arts of love with no regard for
her own dignity or her own well-being."

Sarah's eyes widened and she looked back at the beautiful woman on the
bed, whose face was soft and calm and at odds with the harsh words of
High Novice Gertrude. Images came unbidden to Sarah's mind, of the
warrior in front of her naked, giving herself away like the most
shameless of pleasure girls, to men, to women, to anybody.

Sarah felt herself grow warm with the wicked stirrings down in her
loins that she had learned to recognize long ago and squash
mercilessly. She closed her eyes. Sarah felt her lap grown moist with
impure longings, and she had to press her thighs together to keep her
juices from leaking out, a movement that merely increased the
delectable pressure on her hungry cleft.

"You like her, don't you?" Gertrude's whisper was even closer against
her ear now, and Sarah kept her eyes closed, willing the flush that
she was feeling taking over her face to subdue.

When she finally opened her eyes, Gertrude was staring at her with a
look that Sarah could only describe as calculating, as if she was
weighing Sarah's soul against the wickedness of the world. What
Gertrude concluded Sarah could not tell from the smile that formed on
the high novice's lips.

"Let us find you a duty, Novice Sarah," was all Gertrude said as she
pulled the sheet on Charlie's bed and took Sarah's elbow.


				 (3)


It was two months into her novitiate in the Covenant of Whispered
Inspiration that Sarah began to pay attention to the stranger aspects
of life on the blood sinners' ward. In those two months, she had
learned the ins and outs of life on the ward. She was more attuned to
patterns and rhythms less apparent to untrained eyes.

The first aspect was that the novices were for all intents and
purposes given extremely wide latitude in their behavior towards the
blood sinners. Supervision amounted to a single sister holding office
in a small room adjoining the main hall. Said supervision varied
widely given which of the rotating roster of sisters was in
charge. Sister Myrna, for instance, patrolled the ward as if she were
a sergeant on soldiering duties and kept a close eye on every
novice. Sister Agnes, on the other hand, wasted no time to lock
herself in her office and never came out until the first evening
prayers.

The second aspect of life on the ward that Sarah discerned was that
High Novice Gertrude was essentially in charge, except when Sister
Myrna was on duty. Anything out of the ordinary was reported to
Gertrude, anything requiring confirmation was confirmed by Gertrude,
anything requiring authorization was authorized by Gertrude. Once in a
while, she would convey a question or a request to the Sister in
charge, but in general she would take full responsibility. She clearly
relished her power over the other novices in the ward. Sarah was
beginning to understand why Gertrude seemed to have no real drive to
complete her novitiate and move on to become a full-fledged sister of
the Covenant of Whispered Inspiration.

Gertrude also took it up herself to care for the blood sinner that
Sarah had taken to calling her Fallen Warrior, the brunette that had
so captivated her. For Gertrude watched over Charlie like a wild
sand-dweller over her eggs, preventing any novice from caring for her,
going so far as personally administering the quieting draught that
ensured that Charlie remained in her dreamless sleep.

On those rare occasions where Gertrude was not on the ward when Sarah
was, Sarah would sneak a peek through the drawn sheet, watching her
Fallen Warrior, who looked powerful even in her slumber, her face
restful. Sarah dreamt--impossible thoughts and impossible acts stirred
her loins stir in disturbing and pleasant ways. Sarah was not
unknowing of the facts of love, having witnessed animals under her
family's care rut and mate and having heard tales from Fawn of what
happened between man and wife, and of course, having heard of the
tales of depravity of the pleasure girls at the court of Lord
Charnia. But none of it explained or assuaged the desires that burned
in Sarah's breast as she ran her eyes over the supine form of Charlie,
the Fallen Warrior.

For Sarah's fantasies were taking a disturbing turn. Sarah had
discovered, as all novices discovered upon spending a few months in
the blood sinners' ward, that the quieting draught given to said blood
sinners to quench the blood fever that forever threatened to overpower
their senses left them in an accommodating and suggestible frame of
mind. They could be easily swayed, easily convinced of even things
they would have normally rejected. This side effect of the quieting
draught was helpful in managing the ward, but preventing abuses of
such power was one reason why a sister was chosen to supervise the
novices.

While Sarah, like most novices, did her best not to take advantage of
the blood sinners' plight, she also keenly aware that were Charlie to
wake up under the effect of the quieting draught, she would be in an
accommodating and influenceable spirit. Such a thought was enough to
make Sarah's sex grown warm and wet, a feeling she distrusted but
could not help herself enjoy. She knew her urges were carnal and
immoral, but her womanly juices still flowed like the Northern River
when the mountain snows receded.

Sarah suspected that Gertrude was keeping an eye on her, watching her,
assessing her. Despite her best attempts at keeping a low profile, and
restricting the times she peeked behind the sheet to look at Charlie,
Sarah knew that Gertrude's sycophants, those younger novices in the
thrall of the older craftier woman, reported her every action to
Gertrude.

The rising tension broke one hot and humid summer day when Gertrude
stopped by Sarah's side as she was dressing the fresh wounds on one of
the blood sinners, a middle-aged woman whose blood fever led her to
lacerate her own hands with her teeth in the throes of unquenchable
passion.

"This is your lucky day, Sarah," Gertrude whispered, looking at the
blood sinner's hands, their ripped skin exposing tendons and nerves.

"How so?"

"You'll see. Meet me in the fire room downstairs tonight, an hour
after the midnight prayers."

Before Sarah could ask further questions, Gertrude left, an
undecipherable smile on her face.

That night, after the last prayer before the sisters of the Covenant
adjourned for the night's rest, Sarah found the ward darkened and
nearly empty, save for three novices keeping an eye on the blood
sinners that remained awake. Sister Agnes was the supervising sister,
and as was her habit she was locked off in her office, with nary a
sound emerging from behind the heavy door.

Sarah walked down the damp set of stairs that ran alongside the
eastern wall of the ward and that led to the kitchens underneath the
ward. These kitchens prepared special meals for the blood
sinners--since common wisdom held that spices and other hot condiments
should be withheld from blood fever victims lest their symptoms flare
out--and also prepared the quieting draught, the recipe of which was a
closely guarded secret of the Covenant. Even the novices in the
kitchen were not told of the main ingredient of this most powerful
concoction, a sister every week delivering a pouch containing a
powdered flour concocted elsewhere in the cloister. The novices
diluted the flour in a herbal broth and cooked it carefully for
several hours, sending bowls of the mixture upstairs, at suitable
doses, twice a day.

Next to the kitchens was the fire room, where a large fire whose heat
served to not only feed the kitchens but also to warm the entire ward
during the long winter nights burned. On this already warm night, the
heat in the fire room was oppressive, and Sarah was drenched in sweat.

Sarah looked around and saw no one, and for a moment wondered whether
she had counted the minutes incorrectly since the midnight
prayers. When she felt a hand on her shoulder, she let out a yelp of
surprise. She turned to find Gertrude behind her. The older novice put
a finger on her lips.

Gertrude led Sarah to the wall on the left side of the hearth and
reached down to press an indistinguishable rock. A click rang out, and
to Sarah's astonishment, a pan of the wall pivoted, revealing a
passageway. Gertrude gestured for Sarah to follow her inside.

They walked down the slanting passageway for what seemed to Sarah like
an interminable time, so dazzled she was by the strange surroundings,
the flickering light of the torch, and the waves of heat coming from
behind her.

The passageway led to a door that Gertrude opened. On the other side,
a large room, carved out of reddish rocks, was filled with
people. Sarah blinked in the light of the several torches that were
hanging on the walls. There was a pleasant smell in the
air--incense?--and laughter and conversation was abundant.

She watched many of the novices mingling about, holding pitchers of
colored liquids with strong scents. Sarah was shocked to see men in
the room, all of them well dressed--they were not of the nobility, but
of the lower bourgeoisie, merchants and investors, as she could tell
as soon as she concentrated on the conversations around her. Their
presence made Sarah uncomfortable, and she had to fight the reflex to
cover herself up.

The men were not only talking to the novices, but they were also
talking to some of the blood sinners. When she walked through the ward
earlier, she had not noticed that so many of the beds had been
empty. Those blood sinners were dressed in loose fitting short robes
cut so as to expose tantalizing flesh, so much so that Sarah blushed
for them. And she could not help but notice that those blood sinners
were also the prettiest ones. They seemed to be walking around,
touching the men, flirting with them, smiling at them. All of them
moved with a slow, almost tentative gait, as if they were walking on a
cloud, as if the air around them was an oil through which they swam;
all of them with a cloudy expression in their eyes that betrayed a
small dose of quieting draught.

Sarah watched with fascination, and in silence. One of the blood
sinners, a petite young woman with long fair hair and a voluptuous
body that the white robe she wore could not conceal, pressed herself
against a man that must have been at least twice as large as she was
who leaned down to roughly kiss her neck and make her giggle in a slow
languorous way. One of the novices approached the couple and, after
exchanging a few words with the man, gently guided them to one of
several doors on one side of the large room. The novice bid the couple
enter, closing the door behind them and standing in front of it as if
to guard it.

Sarah was getting an inkling of what was happening. She sneaked a
glance at Gertrude, who stood next to her, and was not surprise to see
the older novice watching her carefully.

"You understand?" was all Gertrude said. Her voice, now that she was
not whispering, sounded rough.

"I think so. The quieting draught. It makes them..."

"Malleable. Very malleable. You noticed."

Sarah nodded, her eyes going back to the room, then to the door
through which the blood sinner had disappeared with the man. She
shivered upon imagining what was going on behind the door.

Gertrude read the frown that marred Sarah's face correctly. "And you
disapprove." She bore a little smile.

Sarah clenched her teeth, and did not reply. This was no better than
what she had heard of the household of Lord Charnia, and in many ways
worse. There might not have been any of the physical abuse and torture
and dismemberment of the sort that she had heard Lord Charnia liked to
inflict, but here the abuse was mental, and perpetrated on women who
could not even acquiesce to the requests made of them. To Sarah, this
was slavery, of the most servile and revolting kind.

Before she could verbalize any of that, before she even realized that
she was willing to go find the sisters and reveal what she had just
learned, Gertrude chuckled. "You're such a moral stanchion, Sarah. But
I know how to make you bend. Come. They must be finished by now."

Gertrude grabbed Sarah's elbow with a firm grip and pulled her to the
side, towards a small door guarded by a tall novice that Sarah had
seen before but rarely whispered to. The novice glanced at Gertrude.

"Are they done?" asked Gertrude.

"Just now. He should be out shortly."

As if on cue, the door opened, and a large powerful man emerged,
fastening his breeches. He lifted his head and grinned at
Gertrude. "Gertie! I must have missed you before, when I arrived." He
turned his head and noticed Sarah standing near, and his eyes traveled
down her body and back up.

"Well, well," he said. "What have we here?" He had a thick Southern
Realms accent. He took a step towards Sarah, whose eyes went
wide. "This is one pretty little thing you brought with you. Where do
you find these girls, Gertie?" His eyes trailed down Sarah's body once
more. "Can you get me some time with this one next time? She's
positively delectable!"

Sarah felt her face heat up, whether in embarrassment or in anger she
would have been hard pressed to elaborate. The man was eyeing her
hungrily, openly, the way Lord Charnia used to do.

"Down, boy," grinned Gertrude, and the man laughed in response. "Our
Sarah here is a new novice, and not available for your lechery."

"A shame that," replied the man, who bowed his head towards
Sarah. "Should you ever reevaluate your desire to join Orders, my
dear, I dearly hope you shall find it in your heart to send for me,
Signore Pasquale di Viroli."

"And how was your evening, Signore Pasquale?" asked Gertrude, amused
at Sarah's embarrassment.

"Delightful as always, Gertie. Your girl drained me raw." His smile
was so wide it threatened to tear his face in two.

"I imagine she did."

"I need to absent myself for the next fortnight, much to my
displeasure, but I trust I shall be able to come and visit my bella
ragazza upon my return?"

"Of course, Signore. She will be here, waiting for you, hungry for
more, as usual."

The man groaned, and shook his head. "If it weren't for a fear of my
heart giving way, I would go back inside and take her once again..."
He looked genuinely dispirited that he could not.

Gertrude laughed good-naturedly, and took the man by the elbow, like
she had done Sarah earlier, but more gently. "She will be here waiting
for you, Signore Pasquale. She is not going anywhere."

"You should know, Gertie, that I'm very much thinking of purchasing
her from you. I'm sure I can put together an attractive offer."

Gertrude laughed again, more nervously this time. "Signore Pasquale,
surely you jest."

"Never when discussing love."

"Let me think of it, will you?"

"Thank you." He pulled a clanging pouch from his belt, and handed it
to Gertrude. "I shall be in touch upon my return."

"Happy huntings, Signore."

When the man had disappeared down the long room, Gertrude turned back
to Sarah, hefting the pouch before opening it. She pulled out a
handful of gold coins glittering in the flickering lights.

Sarah gave Gertrude with a dark glance. "This is despicable," she
whispered.

Gertrude smiled once more. "No need to whisper, Sarah. And no need to
be so judgmental either. Come with me, I want to show you something."

She grabbed Sarah's elbow, and brought her to the door from which Di
Viroli had emerged a few minutes earlier. She opened it, and invited
Sarah to enter. Following her, Gertrude closed the door behind them.

Inside, there was a single small torch slipped into a ring on the wall
lightly illuminating a room that had been carved directly into the
rock. Near the door lay a water spigot with a large bucket and a few
towels. A large fur rug gave the floor a soft feel underneath Sarah's
sandals. But Sarah barely noticed, for her attention was drawn to a
moaning figure twisting and turning on the bed in the corner of the
room.

When Sarah's eyes adjusted to the lesser illumination in the small
room, she saw Charlie on the bed, writhing in a way that Sarah could
only describe as delightful, gloriously naked, her perfect body oiled
and reflecting the shimmering light of the wall torch.

As Sarah watched, transfixed, Charlie moaned and flailed on the bed,
her hands roaming over her body, grasping her large round breasts,
diving between her legs, between her thighs, pressing and squeezing
and rubbing, as grunts and moans and yelps escaped her lips.

Sarah almost jumped out of her skin when Gertrude touched her arm.

"You can have her," Gertrude said, in the voice that the Dark
Trickster might use to tempt men and women into selling their
souls. "She's special, you know. No quieting draught for her
tonight. No need for her to be malleable, or agreeable. Just pure
blood fever, with no effects except unquenchable lust. What do you
say? You can have her."

Gertrude's statement struck her like a lightning bolt. You can have
her. The disconcerting fire that had been burning between Sarah's legs
since she had realized what the blood sinners were forced to do down
here had blossomed into a raging inferno that threatened to obliterate
her very being.

You can have her.

The gentle push on her lower back that Gertrude gave her would
probably have been unnecessary. There was no reasonable way that Sarah
could resist the urges that were slowly but assuredly overcoming
her. Something she had dimly discerned just beneath the surface of her
identity was emerging to the light, and the full extent of that
realization would have certainly dazzled her were it not for the
spectacle of Charlie abusing her own body right there in front of
Sarah on a cheap cot in a damp cave deep beneath the world.

Sarah took two steps towards Charlie, not knowing what she would do
once she reached the tall brunette, only knowing it would be
fantastic. On getting nearer, Sarah noticed that her initial sense
that her Fallen Warrior was simply caressing herself, albeit
violently, was incorrect. Charlie was in fact thrusting something in
and out of her pussy, a large dark polished bulbous shaft clearly
shaped to reproduce a male organ, as Sarah noted with fascination. The
shaft was much larger than she believed male organs had a right to be.

Charlie did not seem to mind the size, as she thrust the shaft in and
out of her pussy, oblivious to the world, her mind caught in the
whirlwind that was her blood fever. Sarah had seen sinners in the
throes of a blood fever, but nothing quite like what she was seeing
then. Charlie's body, her mind, her soul, sought to assuage a craving
that had no chance of getting quenched, but she did not--could
not--prevent herself from seeking that satisfaction, however futile,
however hopeless, the way a man shivering from consumption and longing
to catch his breath cannot avoid coughing to clear his lungs.

Gertrude watched Charlie on the bed trying to satisfy herself, her
gorgeous body racked with spasms, her skin flushed, her large breasts
quivering, her legs spread, the evidence of Signore di Viroli's use of
her body evident to Gertrude's practiced eye, from the bruises lining
the brunette's inner thighs to the bite marks on her breast, from her
swollen lips to the streaks of semen marring one side of her face and
her hair.

Gertrude also watched Sarah, whose eyes were glued to the brunette on
the bed, her mouth slightly open, sweat dripping down her
brow. Gertrude smiled, congratulating herself at having confirmed her
intuition and found a crack through which to corrupt the fair-haired
novice. For Gertrude had a gift, that of finding weaknesses in the
moral armor of people, and she derived from it a pleasure that rivaled
the pleasure her clients sucked out of the sinners they bedded in
these blood gatherings she organized four times per lunar cycle.

When Gertrude saw Sarah lick her lips and saw her hands
twitch--whether to caress herself or to reach over and touch the
squirming woman on the bed--she stepped up to Charlie, grabbed the
ebony shaft, and pulled it out of her.

Charlie groaned and cried out and her opened and sought
Gertrude. "Please..." Her voice was scratchy, tired, drowned
out. "Please," she moaned again, her hands reaching for the phallus
that Gertrude kept away from her.

"So thirsty..." Charlie growled, her eyes unfocused.

"My friend Sarah here," Gertrude smiled, nodding towards Sarah, "can
feed you, dear. Like your last visitor. She is sweet and tasty."

Sarah's eyes grew wide again. "Wait..." She was not ready for this.

Gertrude pulled a vial from beneath her robe, and in a swift movement
uncorked it and tossed its content towards Sarah, splashing the front
of Sarah's robe and her face with the sticky liquid.

"What are you--" Sarah did not have time to finish, for Charlie, who
had smelled the mixture of semen and water with which Gertrude had
just splashed Sarah, reacted to the presence of male seed in
uncontrollable fashion. All thoughts of begging for the ebony shaft
were forgotten as she jumped off the bed in a movement full of grace
that betrayed her physical prowess, and she rushed to Sarah, her naked
body glittering in the torchlight.

Sarah never noticed Gertrude grinning to herself and leaving the room,
as Charlie embraced her and pressed her body against hers and licked
Sarah's chin and mouth before leading the fair-haired novice into her
first kiss with a woman.

Charlie kissed Sarah with all the passion her blood fever mustered,
her lips biting the fair-haired novice, her hands running down the
novice's tunic, sending shivers into Sarah's quickly overloading
nervous system.

Sarah barely resisted when Charlie unfastened her tunic and pulled it
down to her waist, and she moaned in unexpected lust as she felt the
damp air of the room lick the tip of her nipples.

Her moans turned to groans when Charlie abandoned her lips to latch on
to her breasts, hefting them in her strong hands and kissing and
licking and biting one and then the other.

Sarah had touched herself before, it went without saying, since that
first night during her early womanhood years when she discovered that
pinching her nipples would send a spasm of pleasure between her legs,
pleasure that only increased when she ran her fingers through the
rapidly dampening folds of her pussy. But Charlie worshipping her
breasts and bathing them with her lips went beyond anything Sarah had
ever felt before.

Sarah arched her back to give Charlie better access, clutching the
hair of the brunette crouching before her, her hips moving of their
own accord, gyrating in a futile attempt to find some flesh against
which to press themselves.

When Charlie released Sarah's breasts and straightened only to attack
Sarah's mouth anew, lips pressing hard against lips, tongue wrestling
to conquer tongue, teeth biting and drawing blood, Sarah surrendered
to all of those feelings that were battering against her resolve, and
sank into the embrace of her Fallen Warrior and for the first time in
her short life gave herself to another, opening her soul and her body.

Charlie, as a trained warrior, as a knight having subdued and
destroyed many an enemy in her years serving King Altobar, knew at
once that her prey had rolled onto her figurative back and was
exposing her vulnerable belly in a show of submission. And despite the
fog induced by the magical blood fever, despite the curse that
compelled her to seek unachievable sexual release, her training took
over and her dominating nature took over and her kiss became more
aggressive, her hands on the novice's nubile body became more
insistent.

Charlie pulled Sarah to herself in an irresistible grip, and ground
her thigh between the fair-haired girl's legs, causing Sarah to moan
in her mouth. Meanwhile, Charlie's other hand was grasping Sarah's
ass, kneading the soft flesh through the coarse underthings that had
remained her last item of clothing.

Quite suddenly, Charlie stopped and let Sarah go, and the novice stood
stunned for a few seconds, unable to comprehend the messages from her
body or her mind.

Charlie pushed Sarah onto the bed, and in the same smooth movement
ripped Sarah's underthings and threw them away. Before Sarah could
react Charlie was lying on top of her.

Charlie growled as she straddled Sarah and leaned down, her breasts
pressing into Sarah's, one leg between Sarah's and pressing in her
burning pussy, and she kissed Sarah again, hungrily, rocking her body
back and forth, sending shivers running through Sarah's body every
time nipples rubbed against nipples, every time thigh pressed into
pussy.

That love could feel so good had never once crossed Sarah's mind, and
she was making up for lost time, sinking deeper into the sensations
flooding into her. She racked her nails over the brunette's back, and
arched her back to increase contact.

"You little cunt," Charlie growled as she let go of Sarah's mouth. She
wrapped her mouth around one of Sarah's nipples and sucked hard, and
Sarah yelped in shock and pleasure. Sarah had barely enough time to
grasp Charlie' hair and clutch it tight before Charlie trailed hard
kisses and toothy nips down Sarah's soft stomach.

When Charlie slipped her head between Sarah's legs and put her hands
on her thighs to push them roughly apart, Sarah let out a whimper but
did not resist.

Charlie pressed Sarah's legs back, forcing the novice's knees up to
her heaving breasts, exposing Sarah's crotch like it never had been
before, opening her up like she had never been opened. Sarah felt her
skin flush with heat, felt her nipples tighten, felt her juices gush
out of her wide open pussy.

If Sarah had thought that Charlie's sucking on her nipples had been
the paroxysm of sensual pleasures, the wave of raging fire that
blasted through every single nerve of her body when Charlie ran her
tongue up the whole length of Sarah's dripping slit, parting the
engorged lips and teasing the inviting hole that lay beyond, was not
unlike a mountain adventurer discovering upon reaching a high peak
that it is but the first step in a range of ever higher colossuses
dominating the sky. Sarah screamed and clutched at Charlie's head
again, pressing the knight's face harder against her crotch.

"I'm going to drink you up, you little cunt," Charlie growled, after
running her tongue up and down Sarah's pussy, her eyes crazed with
lust, her mouth and chin wet with Sarah's juices. "I'm going to suck
you dry till you can't walk anymore."

Sarah had no words with which to respond, and Charlie pressed hard
against Sarah's thighs to keep the novice's legs up and apart and out
of the way before licking Sarah's wide open pussy with a vengeance,
sucking hard on the aroused clitoris, driving her tongue deep into
Sarah's pussy, intent on feeding on every drop of moisture she could
find, sucking selfishly and assiduously, driving poor Sarah insane
with continuous pleasure.

Sarah orgasmed for the first time in her life, explosively, loudly,
when Charlie went from digging her tongue deep insider her to sucking
on her clitoris while thrusting two fingers in the novice's hungry
pussy.

Charlie gave Sarah no respite, and Sarah kept coming as Charlie
alternated between tonguing her and thrusting two and then three
fingers inside her. Sarah's finger where intertwined with the knight's
dark locks, and her hips kept pushing up to press her crotch into
Charlie's face.

Sarah was drenched in sweat and mumbling incoherently when Charlie,
her eyes wild from the unchecked blood fever and frenzied by by the
taste and feel of Sarah's body squirming in pleasure against hers,
reached over to the small table by the bed and picked up the ebony
shaft that Gertrude had left there.

Charlie leaned into the back of Sarah's thighs, pressing on her legs
and forcing the novice's knees to dig into her breasts, the strain on
Sarah mingling with the raging blaze coursing through her
body. Charlie drove the hard shaft deep into Sarah's pussy in one
swift stroke as effective as a killing blow.

Sarah exploded, coming again with a scream that must have been heard
by everyone in the caves where Gertrude held her blood gatherings.

Sarah's orgasms were like rolling thunder, and she clutched at Charlie
when the brunette released her legs and slid on top of the novice,
straddling one of her thighs, thrusting the ebony shaft in and out
with a punishing rhythm. Sarah did not know whether she felt pain or
pleasure any longer; her pussy was on fire, and her mind was barely
coherent.

Charlie sucked and bit on one of Sarah's reddened nipples before
facing the fair-haired girl.

"You like this, you little cunt? You like being fucked like the hungry
bitch you are?" Charlie sneered, and without giving Sarah an
opportunity to answer, not that Sarah could have conjured up an answer
in her state, kissed her roughly, never letting up the abuse on
Sarah's pussy.

"Look at you," Charlie continue, her hand pushing the ebony shaft in
and out faster and harder. "You're drooling like a pleasure girl about
to service an entire soldiers' platoon. And that cunt of yours is
gripping this cock for dear life, begging it to fuck you harder, to
fuck you blind, to fuck you dumb. Come for me, you stupid little
cunt!"

Charlie had no control over her actions or her words, no sense of
anything she was saying. A sage conversant in the ways of the mind
would have wisely asserted that the abuse Charlie was directing
towards Sarah was abuse she was directing at herself, aware but unable
to disregard her own vile and immoral needs, however magically induced
they might have been.

Sarah did not know any of this, and did not care. Because at that
point Charlie pulled out the ebony shaft completely out of her pussy
only to ram it in to the hilt with her considerable strength, sending
the tip banging into the depth of Sarah's womb, eliciting the biggest
orgasm yet from the poor novice who wailed as spasms of pleasure
rippled through her exhausted body.

As Sarah came down from her wild high, Charlie, her eyes still mad
with lust, in a fast series of motions that betrayed once more her
physical prowess, pulled the hard shaft from the depths of the
fair-haired novice and straddled one of the girl's legs.

Sarah leaned back with heavy-lidded eyes, barely able to move, her
limbs sprawled about the bed, her breasts heaving. Even through her
post-orgasmic haze, she shivered as she felt the press of Charlie's
body against hers, the caress of the brunette's hair on her stomach,
the brush of Charlie's breath on her sensitive nipples. Almost
reflexively, she pushed her thigh upwards against Charlie's crotch,
and a renewed wave of lust hit her when she realized that Charlie was
just as wet as she herself had been and still was.

Charlie started rubbing her pussy against Sarah's thigh, trying to
scratch the itch that had been growing since she first licked up the
young novice, in the thrall of her blood fever, unable to resist the
dictates of her body, of her pussy, a slave to her magical curse. All
Charlie could do was press her hungry pussy against Sarah's thigh and
rub up and down. She brought the ebony shaft covered with Sarah's
honeyed juices to her mouth, and she slipped it between her lips,
tasting the womanly nectar from a male shaft, sucking and savoring the
flavor, memories of all the other men and women she had so serviced
jumbling in her mind, from the laborers on the road during her escape
from the castle of late King Altobar to the large Southern Realms man
who had just visited her and had used her roughly and fucked her mouth
like a cunt and come all over her and all inside her and made her come
so hard she saw stars.

Charlie sucked on the ebony shaft and rubbed her pussy against Sarah's
thigh, her eyes closed, dreaming of rigid cocks fucking her over and
over again in every orifice she had available, some hard, some soft,
some fast, some slow, spurting their seed all over her body, her face,
her tits, deep in her mouth or deep in her cunt or deep in her ass,
cum submerging her, drowning her, obliterating her.

Charlie came, her thighs clenching in a vise grip that would the next
day leave a mark on Sarah's inner thigh, her hands unwittingly pushing
the shaft into her throat, gagging her and choking her. She collapsed
onto Sarah, who was herself just coming out of her haze, and watched
in rapt fascination and a burgeoning arousal her Fallen Warrior bring
herself off with her body. Sarah enlaced the shivering knight and held
her, feeling the warmth and the strength of her body.

As Charlie kept shivering, moaning softly, Sarah held her tighter, and
caressed the brunette's back with gentle hands. As the shivers grew
strong, Sarah worried that she had done something wrong, that she had
angered the One God.

When Sarah looked up from the bed, she saw that Gertrude was standing
by the bed, watching silently. Startled, Sarah scrambled to pick up
her novice's robe and get dressed.

Gertrude was paying no attention to the frazzled novice. She
was carrying a bowl filled with what Sarah recognized as the quieting
draught, and sat down on the bed next to Charlie to feed her the
draught. Charlie drank it without resisting, as if she were a lamb
suckling at her mother's teat.

The draught seemed to have an almost immediate effect, and Charlie
relaxed visibly after a few swallows. Soon, she would be asleep, Sarah
knew.

"Fun, isn't she?" said Gertrude, watching Sarah with a smile on her
face that Sarah could only describe as mocking.

Sarah blushed but said nothing in response. Sarah looked from her to
Charlie, and what she saw startled her even more than Gertrude's
appearance a moment before. Without a word, the novice left the room,
shaken.

For Charlie's eyes had locked on Sarah's, and for an instant those
eyes were full of a frightening lucidity, and Charlie's lips mouthed
words that would haunt the remainder of Sarah's night. Help me.