Nested: Cocks of Stone

Disclaimer: (Sex scenes types. Warning - spoilers.) This story contains explicit gay sexual content including: mass simultaneous urination, piss drinking, a celebration, bestiality (anthropomorphic animals) horse, fox, badger, wolf (knotting), bear, and masters with their charges — rope, leather, collar, whip. All sexual activity is consensual between adult sentient beings. The Baestoricks are fully sapient humanoids with animal features. No underage content.

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The Grandiose Ordination and Spritification of Pisson (and its orgy).

We bedded down at the edge of a birch forest. The road was soft here, dark soil packed by carts and feet, and the birches leaned over it from both sides with their bark peeling in white curls. The sky had gone the colour of cooling iron.

Eight bodies. Cockper at my collar. Three days still to walk, maybe four.

Joren spread his cloak on the ground and sat on it and pulled me out of the nest with two fingers. Warm. His thumb ran the length of my spine. I stretched against it.

"How is the road?" he said.

"Long."

"Good. Long is what we need."

Garrick was already on his back with his arms behind his head and his eyes shut. Vesper crouched beside the fire he had started, feeding it birch twigs that caught fast and smelled sweet. Lirael stood at the road's edge with his robes catching the last of the light, the silver thread in the hem throwing it back.

Nessa had her bedroll down and was sitting cross-legged on it with her sword across her knees. Halvar beside her, upright, her shield propped against a birch trunk. Sprinkle perched on Nessa's shoulder. She was watching me.

"We should test it," Joren said. "The canopy. All eight."

Vesper looked up from his fire. "You think it will take them?"

"One way to know."

We stood. Garrick opened one eye and then closed it and then stood too. Lirael came back from the road's edge. Nessa rose without asking what we were doing because she had been listening.

The canopy was the garment-matrix. The thing that had saved us in the shard storm at the Stone realm exit. Petals from my bodysuit, leather from Garrick's cloak, Joren's silk, Vesper's edge-weave, Lirael's luminous thread. We had pushed them outward that night and the fabrics had woven into a shelter over us, a living roof that caught the crystal shards and held.

Joren put his hand on his bulge and stood still. I felt the silk shift against me. The intent moved through the garments. First the silk around my body. Then the leather at Garrick's shoulders. Then Vesper's edge-weave at his waist. Lirael's robes. My bodysuit.

The petals lifted from my skin. They drifted upward. The leather followed. Silk threads pulled from the air itself. They met above us and the canopy formed.

A roof of woven fabric. Translucent at the centre where my bodysuit caught the firelight. Dark at the edges where Garrick's leather held. It spread wide enough for eight. The wind hit it and the fabric hummed, low and even.

Nessa looked up. Her mouth opened. She did not speak.

Halvar put her hand on the edge of the canopy where it met the ground. She pressed it. It held.

"It is real," she said.

"Lie under it," Joren said. "See if you are warm."

They did. Nessa first, then Halvar. They lay on their bedrolls and the canopy curved over them and the air beneath it went still and warm. The birch smell mixed with the smell of the fabrics. Resin from my bodysuit. Joren's musk. The old mineral trace from the storm, faint now but still there.

Sprinkle flew from Nessa's shoulder and hovered under the canopy. She was small and bright and her face was sharp with concentration.

"It is the same one," I said. "The storm one."

She turned to me. Her eyes were wide. Green, like mine, but lighter.

"And now it is over me," she said.

The bond between us hummed. I had told her about the canopy through the bond during the storm. She had been in the Lesbian Realm then, far away, and I had sent her the image of the fabrics weaving and the shards breaking against them. She had sent back fear and then relief. Now the thing itself was over her head.

She drifted down and perched on the edge of my bodysuit where it met the canopy above. Her weight was nothing. She sat there and looked at the weave.

"It smells of you," she said. "And of the big one."

"The big one has a name."

"He smells big."

Joren's chest moved. A single breath through the nose that meant he was smiling without smiling. His hand found the bulge again, fingers against the root, and I felt the silk tighten around my legs.

Then Nessa stood up.

She stood under the centre of the canopy and studied the seams like a tracker reading ground. Her eyes moved along the joins. The patches of light.

"It held a storm," she said.

"It did," Joren said.

"So did my saddlebags," she said. "I don't ask them to cover my bed."

Halvar sat up. Her mouth was hard. She was watching Nessa.

"It is a roof," Vesper said. He had his notebook open on his knee. "Functional."

"It is the roof of a barn," Nessa said. "I have slept under silk that could throw light across a room."

"Noted," Vesper said. "The canopy lacks interior decoration."

"It has one colour."

"It has your leather," Vesper said to Garrick.

Garrick sat on the ground with his arms behind his head. "It keeps the rain off."

"From a clear sky," Nessa said.

The wind pressed the canopy and the fabric hummed. Joren's jaw worked once. He said nothing.

"The craftsmanship is good," Nessa said. "The taste is terrible."

"The storm did not ask for taste," Vesper said.

"The storm is gone."

She looked at Halvar. Halvar stood. The two women met in the middle of the canopy, under the translucent centre where my bodysuit let the firelight through. Sprinkle flew down and landed on Nessa's hand.

They joined hands.

The fabric of their clothes went soft. Not loose. Soft — the seams losing their stiffness, the weave opening like a hand unclenching. Nessa's jerkin lay flat against her skin. Halvar's tunic fell open at the throat. The cloth lifted from their bodies.

It rose.

It did not rise like the male canopy. The petals and leather and silk had moved with intent, weapons folding into position. This moved with breath. The panels unfolded and broadened as they climbed, pale cloth drinking the firelight, and the colour came up from the hems like dye rising through water. Green. Deep rose. A blue that held the last of the evening. The weave reached the male canopy and slid into it — over it, under it, through the seams where Garrick's leather met Vesper's edge-weave. It did not replace the roof. It dressed it.

The smell came with it. Thin. Fresh. Cut stems and clean linen and a trace of fountain water, mineral and alive. The whole canopy smelled like rain drying on flowers.

I felt Joren go still.

The male canopy had been a roof. This was a sky.

The petals of my bodysuit quickened where the new fabric touched them. The weave brightened along the threads. Not much. Enough that the firelight ran the length of the canopy like the last light of evening running along a field. The centre went soft and the light through it turned the colour of honey.

Then the lamps.

Where the canopy met the ground, the weave folded down. Four folds. Five. They drew out of the roof and gathered into cups of cloth that hung in the corners of our camp, and they glowed from within. Not flame. The light of fireflies. The cups breathed, bright and then softer, and the canopy above them lit in patches like a sky before the first stars.

The crew was completely silent.

Vesper's pen stopped. Garrick had been about to say something and his mouth stayed where it was. Joren's hand rested on the bulge, still, the silk warm under it. Under the new weave the ground looked like the floor of a garden in evening, every leaf of it holding light.

Cockper stirred at my collar. He pressed his copper body against my neck and the warmth pulsed once, steady. He did not go to the canopy. He stayed with me.

Halvar let go of Nessa's hand.

"Good night," she said.

The cloth settled. Then it folded again. All of it — every garment in the camp. Joren's silk. Garrick's leather. Vesper's edge-weave. Lirael's robes. My bodysuit. The weave drew down into sleep-clothes, loose and soft and light. The leaves on the rim of the nest curled into a border. The leather of Garrick's cloak turned into a garment covered in small pink flowers. Nessa's cloth settled into a green gown, plain and long. Halvar's was pale, a single line of embroidery at the collar. Sprinkle's dress went leaf-green at the hem.

Garrick looked down at his chest. He looked at us.

"You look like a flower market," I said.

"Mm," Garrick said.

Joren's dark silk drew into a long pale gown, the sleeves wide, the hem at his knees. He held out one arm and looked at it and did not say anything.

"You wear it well," Nessa said.

"I wear it," Joren said.

Vesper's gown was the colour of old roses. He looked at his sleeves, then at the canopy, then at the lamps.

"I think the gown does nothing for me," he said.

"It does nothing for anyone," Nessa said. "That is the point."

Lirael's robes settled into a soft shift, luminous, the fabric holding a pattern of pale gold flowers that moved when he moved. He looked down at himself. Then he looked at Nessa.

"Your people make these," he said.

"They do," Nessa said.

"The fashion," Lirael said, "is forceful."

Nessa's mouth moved. A small smile. "Decoration," she said. "Now it has a colour."

Sprinkle landed on Nessa's shoulder, her small dress a pale green leaf-cloth, and she was already asleep.

The wind pressed the canopy and the fabric hummed. Low and even. The fire crackled beneath it. The lamps breathed in the corners. Garrick lay back on the ground with his arms behind his head, pink flowers across his chest, asleep in a breath. Vesper was writing again, the ink dark on the page, his rose-coloured sleeves folded back. Lirael sat with his back straight and his palms on his knees and his eyes open, watching the canopy above him — the colours, the lamps, the soft light moving.

Nessa's hands were folded on her stomach. Halvar lay on her side with one arm under her head.

Joren lay back and I climbed into the nest. The silk closed over me. It had gone softer in the folding — the border of leaves at the rim, the new weave warm against my back. The bulge of his cock pressed against my back and I braced against the shaft and the perfume was thin over his musk and both of them were there together.

"Sleep," he said through the bond. "We walk tomorrow."

I curled and hugged his penis, rested my head against the top of his foreskin. The canopy breathed above us. I slept.

Three days later the country changed.

The birches thinned and the road widened and the soil went from dark to pale to almost white. Grass came up in patches, then in sheets, then everywhere. The colour of the grass was wrong for the season. Too green. Too thick. The air smelled of water and something else beneath it, herbal and clean, a smell I had caught once before at the threshold of the Elven realm when we had brought Pisson through.

Birds. I had not heard birds for weeks. Small ones in the branches, brown and quick, and larger ones high up, riding the wind. All male, every one. The males sang.

Vesper broke the quiet.

"The birds," he said. "They are all male. Do lesbians birth them as well?"

Nessa did not slow her pace. "Same way everything is born," she said. "In the Lesbian Realm. At the fountain."

"Can you elaborate?"

"Women wade into the water in front of the fountain, where the seed falls. They come apart in waves, over and over, until a child appears in their arms. They kiss it once and it is gone. Sent to wherever it belongs."

"Wherever it belongs."

"Every realm. Every creature. Not children alone." Nessa glanced up through the branches. "Birds. Insects. Deer. Everything that lives anywhere begins there."

"Constantly?"

"Always. The fountain never stops. If you stood close enough you would see it. Sparks in the water where it falls. A halo of light around the top, where the mist catches it. Each spark is a life, going where it is needed."

Vesper walked a few steps without speaking.

"So the Lesbian Realm has been giving birth to the entire universe," he said. "The whole time. Every creature we have ever eaten, ridden, or stepped on."

"Yes."

"That makes it either the most important place in existence or the most overworked."

Nessa allowed herself a small smile. "It is why the cities stay small," she said. "Even Thorendale. The realm does not flood the world with life. It measures it out."

"Quality over quantity," Vesper said.

"Something like that."

Joren walked with his stride long and his shoulders loose. His hand hung at his side and swung with each step. Every fourth or fifth step his fingers brushed the bulge and moved on. I rode in the nest and felt the rhythm of him.

Then it came. A flash. Warm. A cut of skin. The smell of something herbal and alive and then nothing.

I went still.

"What," Joren said. Through the bond. Private.

"I keep feeling him. Pisson. Little flashes. A door opening and shutting."

Joren's stride did not change. His hand came to the bulge and rested there. I felt his palm through the silk, flat and warm against me.

"Since when."

"Since the threshold. It is stronger now."

He was quiet for a few steps. 

Then he spoke aloud. Lirael walked on his left, half a step behind. His sleeves were pale gold today, the cut high at the wrist, and his hands were bare and brown from the road.

"Spark is feeling Pisson," Joren said. "Has been for a while. It is picking up."

Lirael turned his head. His eyes were grey-green in the light. His mouth was a line.

"Show me when one happens," he said.

I waited. We walked. Vesper was ten paces behind, his notebook open, muttering to himself. Garrick beside him, silent, his bear-frame cutting the light. His eyes rested on the road ahead and on nothing.

Cockper ran along Joren's shoulder, copper legs quick on the fabric, his small body catching the sun.

Another flash. Harder this time. The smell of piss, warm and clean, and a face I knew but different. Ears longer than I remembered. Hair brighter. Then gone.

"Now," I said.

Joren's hand pressed the bulge. I felt his fingers tighten.

"He had one," Joren said to Lirael.

Lirael's hand came up and hovered near my position in the nest. He did not touch. He waited.

"It was stronger," I said. "I saw his face. He has changed."

"Of course he has changed," Lirael said. "He has been with the elders for months."

Sprinkle was on Nessa's shoulder, fifteen paces back. She caught my eye across the distance. She could feel through the bond that something was happening in me but she could not read the content. She tilted her head.

I sent her warmth. Nothing more. She settled.

The road stretched ahead. White soil. Green grass. The elven country pulling us in.

We stopped at midday. A flat stretch of ground beside the road where someone had built a low wall of pale stone, knee-high, good for sitting. Lirael sat on the wall. Joren leaned against it. Garrick sat on the ground with his legs out. Vesper sat on his pack.

Nessa broke the bread. Hard crust, pale inside, the flour coarse. The water was from a stream we had crossed that morning, cold and tasting of chalk. I chewed a crumb Joren tore for me and let it dissolve.

I remembered the last time we were in Thorendale. The night of the big celebration when Pisson was discovered at the plaza, when the light came and showed him to everyone. "When the light came at your elevation," Lirael said. He was looking at the bread in his hands. Not at me. His mouth was set and his eyes were narrow and his fingers were still. He had been turning something over for a long time. "What were you doing. At the exact moment."

"Drinking," I said. "A lot of men. The cum was running. I was full to my eyes."

"And then?"

"I pissed. Once. Just a little. I never piss. I caught it in my hands and I swallowed it back. I thought it was strange that I was leaking."

Lirael's eyes came to me. Grey-green and sharp. His fingers pressed into the bread and then released it.

"You swallowed something back," he said.

"Maybe his," I said. "We will never know."

Joren's hand was on the bulge. Still. His thumb moved once against the root. He was listening and he did not speak. His jaw was set and his breath was even and I could feel through the bond that he was holding the weight of what I had said without putting it down or picking it apart.

Lirael did not push. He tore a piece of bread and ate it. The conversation sat between us like a stone on the wall.

Vesper wrote something in his notebook. His mouth moved but no sound came.

The wind came across the grass and pressed the blades flat and then let them up. The sun was high and the light was white and the shadows of the wall ran short across the ground.

Then Garrick stood.

He was looking across the country. East. His hand came up and pointed.

"There," he said. "In the sky."

A figure. Flying. Winged. The shape was horse-like but wrong—too large, too fluid in the air. It moved with a rhythm that was not quite flight and not quite falling. The wings caught the light and threw it back in patches where the membrane had a nap to it.

"That is a Baestorick," Joren said.

I climbed to Joren's collar and sat there, my legs over the edge of his shirt, and squinted. The figure was still far. I could see the cast of the body that was broad and heavy, and the wings that moved with intention. The head was held high.

"Tell me," I said.

"A sentient creature," Joren said. "He can take human form or animal form."

Vesper looked up from his notebook.

"Of course they are," he said.

Cockper had gone still on my shoulder. His copper body was warm. He was watching the figure too. His small head turned and turned and his body hummed faintly, reading something at distance.

Nessa stood and shielded her eyes. Halvar was already standing.

"That flying horse," Halvar said. "Armed?"

"No weapons in this world," Joren said.

"Right." Halvar's hand dropped from her sword hilt. She had reached for it by instinct. "Right."

The Baestorick flew further over the fields, until he disappeared over the horizon.

Lirael watched him. His bread was forgotten in his hand.

"A flying beast," he said. "Can we have sex with them?"

"Sure," Joren said. "They are known to be quite horny."

I watched the figure grow smaller as he angled away across the field. My body hummed with something I could not name. Cockper pressed against my neck.

The road waited. The Elven realm was close. I could smell it in the grass.

Joren stood and brushed the dust from his thighs. His hand found the bulge on the way down. A ghost-touch. Two seconds. Then he offered me his finger and I stepped onto it and he lowered me back into the nest.

"Let us walk," he said.

We walked.

The Elven realm took us before we knew we had crossed.

The road did not change. The soil did not change. But the air thickened and went warm, the herbal smell doubled, and the birds above us went quiet all at once. Then they started again, louder, closer—the sound of birds that had been waiting.

Trees. Not birches any more. Old trees with bark the colour of dark honey, their canopies high and dense, letting the light through in shafts that moved when the wind moved the leaves. The shafts crossed and uncrossed. The ground beneath them was dappled gold and green.

"We are in," Joren said.

I felt it in the nest. The silk warmed. The air warmed. My body warmed. Cockper hummed at my collar, a sustained note, copper vibrating against my skin.

Elves appeared along the road. Three, then five, then eight. They came from the trees and from low stone buildings set back from the road, and they watched us pass. Tall. Pale-skinned, or brown-skinned, or somewhere between. Long ears, every one. Hair in colours I had not seen on men before. One had hair the colour of wet copper. Another had hair the colour of fresh moss. They wore plain tunics, belted, the fabric light.

They looked at Nessa. They looked at Halvar. They looked at Sprinkle on Nessa's shoulder. Curiosity. They had known women existed. They had seen them in pictures and in the old records. Their eyes moved to the women and then away and then back.

One of the elves, young, with moss-coloured hair and dark eyes, opened his mouth to speak. He closed it. He raised his hand instead. Nessa raised hers back.

The city opened ahead. Pale stone. Low walls and high towers, the towers narrow and capped with copper that had gone green. Streets of white stone. Water running in open channels along the edges of the streets, clear and quick. The smell of herbs everywhere, thick, as if the buildings themselves were growing.

We were taken to quarters. A long building with a courtyard at its centre, the courtyard paved in pale stone with a fountain at its heart. The fountain was small and low, and the water in it was still. Benches of pale stone ran along three walls. The fourth wall had an archway that led deeper into the building.

I did not know how many delegations had already arrived. The crew was housed apart from the others. Our rooms faced the courtyard. Garrick dropped his pack in the first room and did not come out. Vesper took the second, and I heard him open his notebook before his door was shut. Nessa, Halvar, and Sprinkle took the rooms at the far end.

Joren stood in the courtyard. He was looking at the fountain.

His hand was on his bulge. Resting. His thumb traced the shape of me through the silk, and I pressed back against it.

"He is here," I said. Through the bond. "I can feel him."

"I know," Joren said.

We waited.

Pisson came through the archway.

He had been waiting. I knew it through the bond now, through the half-line that had been building for months, the flashes that came and went. He had felt us arrive.

He stood in the archway, and the light from the courtyard caught him.

I had known he had changed. The flashes had shown me pieces. But the whole of him was different. The puppy face was still there underneath, the wide jaw and the bright eyes. But the elven body had taken it and shaped it into new proportions. His ears were long and pointed, the tips darker than the rest, almost brown. His hair had gone from blond to a gold that started at the roots and ended at the tips in something close to amber. His skin was silver-honey, smooth, but his hands were still rough. The nails were clean. The knuckles were not. A gardener's hands on an elven body. He was taller by a hand. His shoulders were wider and his waist narrower and his chest deeper, and the clothing he wore was pale linen, long, slit at the sides, belted with a cord of braided silver.

He saw Lirael.

He went still.

Lirael was standing at the courtyard's edge with his hands at his sides. His robes were pale gold. His hair was silver in the light. His face was open and his mouth was closed, and his eyes were on Pisson and on nothing else.

They walked toward each other. The courtyard was maybe thirty paces across. They covered it in silence. Joren stepped back. I stayed in the nest.

They met in the middle. Pisson's hands came up and took Lirael's hands and held them. Lirael's fingers closed around Pisson's. They stood there. Foreheads together. Eyes shut.

The courtyard was quiet. The fountain did not move. The water in it was still.

I could feel through the half-bond what Pisson was feeling. The heat in his chest. The shake in his hands. The breath that kept catching. And through the full bond, Joren's body beside mine, the tension in his shoulders as he watched, his jaw set, his hand had come to the bulge and stayed there, pressing me flat against the shaft, holding me still.

Pisson smiled.

He raised his hands. Lirael's body left the ground. Not flying. Drawn. Pulled upward by the piss in his body, pulled toward Pisson, who was calling the substance to him. Lirael rose smoothly, his robes fanning out, his feet leaving the stone, his body tilting forward until his crotch was at Pisson's face height.

The elven attendants at the archway went still. One of them put his hand on the wall.

Pisson's hands found the front of Lirael's robes. The Lesbian Realm clothing had a seal, a mechanism that controlled flow, and Pisson's fingers found the opening and freed Lirael's cock through it. Long. Silver-tipped. Already hard. The head wet.

Pisson opened his mouth and drank.

The piss came in a steady stream. Lirael's face went tight, then loose. He held the seal himself, his hands gripping the edges of the opening in his robes, controlling the flow. He kept pissing. The stream was thick and golden and Pisson's throat moved with each swallow. His eyes were closed. His hands gripped Lirael's hips.

Lirael pissed into Pisson until Pisson choked.

His throat locked. His eyes snapped open. Piss ran from the corners of his mouth, down his chin, onto his linen tunic. His hands tightened on Lirael's hips. His body shook once.

Then Pisson pissed himself.

The wet spread from his crotch down both legs, dark on the pale linen. He did not let go of Lirael. He held him in the air and pissed himself and the piss ran down his thighs and onto the pale stone of the courtyard.

Pisson lowered Lirael to the ground. Lirael's feet found the stone. His robes were wet at the front. His cock was still out, still dripping.

They kissed.

Long. Deep. Pisson's new face against Lirael's old one. The taste of piss between them. Pisson's hands on Lirael's jaw. Lirael's hands on Pisson's waist.

They came apart.

"I cannot make people fly," Pisson said. His voice was deeper than I remembered. Steadier. The elven months had given him that. "I can only bring them to me. When they are coming with the piss."

Lirael's hands were still on Pisson's waist. He was looking at Pisson's face.

"How long have you been able to do this?" he said.

"A month. Maybe two. It is still new."

"Tell me everything. All of it. I want to know."

Joren was behind me. His body was warm and his breath was steady and his hand pressed flat on the bulge. I felt his heartbeat through the silk.

"Well," Joren said. Low. To the air.

"Well indeed," Vesper said. He was leaning against a column of the courtyard, his arms crossed, his notebook under one arm. 

Garrick had come out of his room. He stood in the doorway with his arms down and his eyes on Pisson and Lirael and he said nothing.

Nessa was at the far end of the courtyard. Sprinkle was on her shoulder. Halvar stood beside them. The three women watched. Sprinkle's eyes were bright.

Pisson and Lirael were still holding each other. The piss on the stone was cooling. The courtyard smelled of it, warm and herbal and clean. An elven attendant brought a cloth and set it on the bench without speaking and went back to the archway.

Pisson tucked Lirael's cock back through the seal with both hands. Careful.

Lirael let him.

Later that day the crew was in the guest quarters. A long room with low windows that let the courtyard light in. Cushions on the floor. The walls were pale stone hung with tapestries that showed trees and water and nothing else. The air smelled of herbs and clean linen.

Pisson stayed with us. He sat on a cushion near the window with his legs crossed and his back straight. The new posture. The elven body sitting the elven way.

I climbed from the nest to Joren's shoulder and asked him with a look.

"Go," Joren said. Aloud.

I jumped to the floor and grew. Five feet. The room adjusted around me. My bodysuit stretched, the petals fanning out and resettling. Cockper stayed at my collar, his copper body scaling with me, warm against my neck.

I walked to Pisson and sat on the cushion across from him.

His eyes found mine. Green meeting green. His were different now, the green shot through with amber at the edges. His lashes were longer. The bones of his face were sharper. But when he looked at me his mouth softened and the puppy was there, underneath everything.

"There were times I could feel you," I said. "Did you ever feel me."

"Something," he said. His hands were on his knees. The rough knuckles. The clean nails. "Outside my senses. But everything was changing in me. I could not be sure."

"Many times. Coming and going. I did not know why."

"I wondered if I had imagined it."

"You did not."

He looked at his hands. He turned them over, palms up, and looked at the calluses that the elven skin had not erased. Then he looked at me.

"No," he said. "I did not."

The room was quiet. Lirael was at the far end, talking with Vesper about something in low voices. Garrick sat near the door, his bulk filling the corner, his eyes half-closed. Nessa and Halvar had gone to their own quarters. Sprinkle had gone with them.

Joren was against the wall, six paces away. His legs stretched out. His hand on his thigh, near the bulge. He was watching us with his face calm and his eyes steady.

"Do you want more with him," I said. "With Lirael. Beyond what you have."

Pisson's breath changed. It slowed. His chest rose and held and then released.

"We dream together," he said. "A passenger, but inside the soul."

I looked at him. His eyes were wet. Not crying. Full.

I looked at Joren.

Through the bond, private: "That is the most beautiful thing I have heard."

Joren's thumb moved against the fabric of his trousers. Once. Slow.

"I know," he said. Through the bond. Back to me.

I turned to Pisson again. The light from the window caught the amber in his eyes and the gold in his hair and the silver-honey of his skin. He was twenty years old and he looked a thousand and he looked twenty all at once.

"Can you feel the bond now," I said. "Between us. Right now."

He was quiet. His hands pressed flat on his knees. His eyes closed. When they opened again they were wet at the edges.

"Yes," he said. "Steady. Not flashing. Just there."

The half-bond. Not half any more. Growing. The thread between us was thicker than it had been that morning on the road. I could feel his warmth through it. His heartbeat. The herbal smell of his elven body.

Lirael had stopped talking to Vesper. He was watching us from across the room. His grey-green eyes were still and his hands were folded in his lap. He did not come over.

Joren's hand came to the bulge and squeezed. I was at five feet across the room but I felt the ghost of it through the bond. The echo of his fingers against the silk where I usually lay.

Pisson looked toward Lirael.

"He knows," Pisson said. "He feels it too. From his side."

"Good," I said.

"He says there is a word for what we are but the elven tongue is not the place to look for it."

"Lirael would say that."

Pisson's mouth moved. A small smile. The puppy face breaking through the elven mask. Then the smile faded and the amber eyes went still again.

"Tomorrow they take us to the piss temple," he said. "I have things to tell you. All of you. Things I have learned."

"We will be there."

He reached out and touched my hand. His fingers were warm. The calluses pressed against my palm. Through the half-bond I felt his touch doubled, the physical and the thread at once, and my breath caught.

Joren shifted against the wall. His breath changed. He had felt it too, through me.

Pisson pulled his hand back. He looked at his palm where he had touched me.

"That was new," he said.

"Yes," I said.

The window light moved across the floor. The herbs in the air were thick. Lirael rose from his cushion and walked to Pisson and sat beside him and put his hand on Pisson's knee. Pisson leaned into him. Their bodies fit together.

I stood and walked back to Joren and shrank and climbed into the nest. The silk closed around me. Joren's hand came to the bulge and pressed once, firm, and held.

"Good," he said. Aloud. To the room or to me or to all of it.

Cockper hummed at my collar. The threads in me were live and warm. Joren's the biggest. Cockper steady. Sprinkle small and bright through Nessa, somewhere in the building. Pisson new and thickening.

I pressed my face against the shaft and breathed.

The piss temple was grandiose.

A circular chamber cut into the ground, the walls pale stone rising to waist height, the floor a series of concentric channels carved into the rock. Water ran in the channels, slow and clear, fed from a spring at the centre that rose through a column of white stone no taller than a man. The column was smooth and wet and the water slid down its sides in sheets and gathered in the first channel and flowed outward through each ring to the last, which drained through slots in the base of the wall.

The smell was water and stone and piss. Old piss. Layered into the stone over centuries, not rancid, mineral. The morning sun came straight down into the chamber and lit the water in the channels so it glowed.

Pisson stood beside the column with his hands on the stone. His linen tunic was fresh, pale, belted with the silver cord. His hair caught the light and the gold of it matched the water.

We stood along the wall. The crew and Nessa and Halvar and Sprinkle. Lirael beside Pisson, one step back.

"I was a guy from Thorendale," Pisson said. His voice carried in the chamber. The stone walls held it. "I pissed the bed at eighteen and they put me out. And now I have been taught by men who have lived a thousand years."

He looked at his hands on the column. The rough knuckles against the smooth stone.

"The things they showed me. The control. The carrying of what the substance is. They opened a door I did not know was there."

Vesper had his notebook out. He was writing already. His long fingers moved fast, the ink dark on the page.

Pisson told us. He spoke for a long time. How the elders had taken him in after the transformation and sat him in a chamber not unlike this one and made him hold his piss for hours at first, then release it in measured amounts, then move it without his body. How the first time he had moved a stream with his mind it had gone sideways and soaked an elder who had laughed and told him the elder tongue word for misdirection. How the control had built over weeks into something precise, something he could feel in his hands and in his chest at the same time.

He told us about the reverence. How the elves had always sensed that piss carried something beyond the body. They had built temples. They had kept the substance in crystal vessels and studied it under moonlight and sunlight and in the dark. They had records going back further than Pisson could count. Faith, he called it. They had the faith without the reason.

"And you brought them the reason," Lirael said.

"No," Pisson said. "Your crew brought it. The Stone realm. The signal. Piss is the inter-realm signal of biological life. The Stone people read it. The elves always knew the substance was sacred. Now they know why."

Joren leaned against the wall with his arms folded. His hand had been at his bulge when we arrived but now it was tucked under his arm. I felt the absence of it against me. His eyes were on Pisson and his jaw was loose and his shoulders were down.

"There are only two of them," Pisson said. He had moved on. The portal priests. "They travel in person to the realm they are inviting. They explain. They wait. They bring the guest back through. Two weeks, end to end."

"Two priests," Vesper said. "Two weeks. Every delegation."

"Every one."

"How many delegations."

Pisson counted on his fingers. "Baestoricks. Lesbian Realm. Thorendale. The magicians. One more they will not tell me about."

Vesper wrote it down. His mouth moved. He was doing arithmetic.

Garrick found a place where the wall was low enough to sit. He sat with his legs in the outermost channel, the water running over his boots, and he did not care. His eyes were on Pisson and his face was still and his hands were relaxed on his knees. Garrick at rest. Garrick trusting.

Sprinkle was on Nessa's shoulder, leaning forward, her eyes on the central column. The water fascinated her. I could feel it through our bond, the pull of the water, the sprite part of her that recognised the substance.

Pisson was still talking when the sound came from behind us.

Steps. Three sets. One firm and heavy. Two lighter, closer together.

An elven attendant appeared at the entrance to the chamber. He was young, dark-haired, his ears long and pale at the tips. He stepped aside.

Behind him came two men.

They were not elves. They were human. Old. One was built broad across the shoulders and thick through the arms, the skin of his hands cracked and darkened from years of work outdoors. His hair was grey at the temples and brown everywhere else, cut short and practical. His eyes were brown and deep-set under heavy brows. He wore a plain shirt, untucked, and trousers of heavy cloth and boots with road dust on them. The road builder.

The other was thinner. Wiry. His hands were dark at the nails and around the cuticles, earth stained, and his fingers were long and careful. His hair was all grey, fine, pushed back from his forehead. His eyes were the same brown as the other man's but lighter, warmer. He wore a shirt of faded green, patched at the elbows, and trousers that had been washed many times. The gardener.

Pisson's fathers.

Pisson saw them and his body broke.

His composure went. His hands came off the column. His mouth opened. His eyes filled. He made a sound I had not heard from him before. Small. High. The sound of a boy, not a priest.

"Da," he said.

He went to them. Two steps, three. His arms went around the road builder first because the road builder was closer and then the gardener came in from the side and put his arms around both of them. Three bodies in the entrance of the piss temple.

"Da," Pisson said again.

"My boy," the road builder said. His voice was rough. Low.

"Look at him," the gardener said. He was looking at Pisson's face, what he could see of it, and his own face was open and amazed. His earth-stained fingers touched Pisson's ear, the long point of it, and traced it down to the tip. "Look at him."

"I did not know they were coming," Pisson said. His voice was muffled in the road builder's shirt.

The road builder held him tighter.

The gardener looked over Pisson's shoulder at the rest of us. His eyes found Lirael first, then Joren, then me on Joren's collar. He looked at each face and he nodded. A small nod. He did not know who we were but he knew we were the ones who had been with his son.

I was in the nest. Small. I could feel Joren's heartbeat through the silk. It was steady and slow and his jaw was set and his eyes were wet at the edges. He did not blink.

Lirael had gone still. His hands were at his sides. His face was composed, but his mouth was pressed tight and the muscles of his jaw were working.

Vesper had stopped writing. His notebook was open on his knee. His pen was still. He was watching the three men in the doorway with his mouth closed and his eyes bright.

Garrick looked at the water in the channel.

The fathers held Pisson for a long time. Then they let go. The road builder kept one hand on Pisson's shoulder. The gardener kept one hand on his arm. They were shy. Polite. They looked around the temple and they looked at the crew and they looked at each other and they looked at their son.

"This is where you are," the road builder said. He looked at the column. The channels. The water. "This is where you work."

"Yes," Pisson said.

"It is clean," the gardener said.

"It is."

The gardener looked at the road builder. The road builder looked at the gardener. They held hands. The road builder's cracked fingers wrapped around the gardener's earth-stained ones.

Pisson's face was wet. He wiped it with the back of his hand.

"Come," he said. "Sit. There are people I want you to meet."

That afternoon Joren asked one of the elder elves about the tower. Could he reach the Servant from here? Was there a way?

The elder, a tall man with hair like old silver and eyes so pale they were almost white, looked at Joren for a long moment. Then he nodded.

"The piss-crystal chamber," the elder said. "Follow me."

An attendant took us. The same young dark-haired elf who had brought the fathers. He led Joren through a corridor of pale stone, the walls smooth, the ceiling low, lit by crystals set into the rock at intervals. The crystals were amber in colour. They gave off a warm, steady light.

The chamber was at the end of the corridor. Small. A single seat of pale stone under a crystal the size of a man's torso. The crystal hung from the ceiling by threads I could not see, or grew from the ceiling, I could not tell. It was the colour of frozen piss. Amber and gold and clear at the edges. The light from it filled the room and the walls shone.

"Sit beneath the stone," the attendant said. "Think of the one you want. The stone does the rest."

He stepped back to the threshold and stood there with his hands at his sides.

"Stay with me," Joren said through the bond.

"Always," I said.

He sat. The seat was low and his knees came up and he put his hands on them. His back was straight. His head was under the crystal and the light from it ran down his face and his chest and the bulge of his trousers. I felt the light. It was warm. It hummed at a frequency I had felt before, in the Stone realm, when the crystals there had carried the voice of the deep.

Joren closed his eyes. He thought.

The Servant's voice came. It was not a sound in the room. It was a sound in Joren's body. I heard it through the bond. Dry. Slow. Resonant. The voice of something very old that had been patient for a very long time. The air in the chamber did not move. The crystal above us brightened one shade.

I felt Joren's body respond. His shoulders drew back. His hands pressed into his knees. His breath slowed to something deep and measured.

"We have helped the Stone world," Joren said. His voice was quiet. The chamber held it. "We know about the severance. We know there is something you forgot. Vesper felt it in the amber pulse — something incomplete about you."

A pause. The crystal's hum shifted a half-tone lower.

"Yes," the Servant said.

"And you still do not know what."

"I still do not know." Another pause. Longer. The voice was careful with the words it chose. "You are level with me now. That is something. It changes what comes next."

Joren was quiet. His thumb moved against his knee. I could feel him working through what to say and what to hold back. The bond carried the weight of it, dense and warm.

"We brought back what the Stone people told us," Joren said. "The piss carries the signal. The signal carries biological life. The young man you knew from the plaza is the one who holds it."

"Pisson," the Servant said. The name carried weight in his voice.

"He is being ordained tomorrow. Every realm has sent someone."

"I know. I have felt them arrive. Each crossing registers in the tower."

Joren's jaw tightened. He looked at the crystal above him.

"I sat with you by the fire," Joren said. "The night before we left. You told me something I have carried since."

The Servant was quiet for a long time. The crystal hummed.

"I remember the fire," the Servant said.

"You said you were afraid."

"I was."

"Are you still?"

Another pause. I felt Joren's heart rate change through the bond. Faster. Then steady again.

"Yes," the Servant said. "But the nature of the fear has changed. Before, I was afraid of what I had forgotten. Now I am afraid of what you will find when you look for it."

He did not answer it.

"We also sensed something different while in the stone realm.  As minerals, we could not embody life itself, only the elements of it.  There was also a sign and a smell that didn't belong to the stone realm.  We will enquirea about it after Pisson's ordination."

"I will be here if you need anything," the Servant said. "I am always here."

The crystal dimmed. The voice faded. The hum went to silence. The chamber was just a chamber again, stone and light and a man sitting in a chair.

Joren opened his eyes. He breathed.

His hand found the bulge. Pressed. Held. I felt his fingers against me through the silk and I pressed back.

"Let us go," he said.

The attendant led us back through the corridor. The amber crystals in the walls still glowed. The stone was warm under Joren's feet and I could feel it through his body.

We came out into the courtyard. The crew was there. Lirael on the bench with Pisson beside him, Pisson's head on his shoulder. Vesper cross-legged on the ground with his notebook. Garrick standing at the fountain, running his hand through the water. Nessa and Halvar at the far wall, talking in low voices. Sprinkle on the bench beside Lirael, her legs swinging.

They looked at Joren when he came through the archway.

"What happened?" Vesper said.

Joren stood in the courtyard. The late-afternoon light caught him from the side. His face was set. His body was steady. His hand was at his side.

"We have everyone here," he said. "Every realm has sent someone. After the celebrations, we should sit down. All of us. See what people can add. There are things none of us has put together yet."

Lirael looked at Pisson. Pisson looked at Lirael. Something passed between them.

"Agreed," Vesper said. "Council it."

"Council it," Lirael said.

Garrick turned from the fountain. Water ran from his fingers. He nodded once.

Pisson raised his head from Lirael's shoulder.

"The day after the ordination," Pisson said. "Give the delegations one day to rest. Then bring them together."

Joren looked at him.

"Good," Joren said.

The courtyard light turned gold. The fountain murmured. Cockper was on the edge of the fountain, his copper body dark against the pale stone, his small legs dangling in the water.

I was in the nest. The crystal's hum was still in my bones. The Servant's voice was still in the bond, an echo, fading.

Joren's hand came to the bulge. He held me through the silk.

Tomorrow was the ordination.

The ordination ground was open to the sky. A wide circle of pale stone, the floor smooth, the edges marked by low walls where people sat and stood. Trees rose behind the walls, old ones, their canopy high enough that morning light came through in wide shafts. The light was gold and the stone floor caught it and held it. The air was warm and smelled of herbs and bodies and the faint mineral trace of piss that soaked everything in the Elven realm.

We walked in formal dress. I walked at full size, Cockper at my collar. The cloth had done the formal turn before any of us had asked.

Holta had told us about it. The clothes were woven in the Lesbian Realm. They carried the realm with them. When an occasion needed a shape, the cloth made it. It had made a canopy over us. Now it stood on my shoulders and behind my head and the weight of it sat like a crown.

I looked at myself first.

The bodysuit had fixed itself in human size, cut formal. Sperm swirls covered it, silver-white on deep blue, curling in loops that shifted as I moved. The shoulders were padded, wide and squared. The collar rose high behind my head, a fan of fabric standing tall. The petals had folded into the shoulder seams, and the swirl pattern matched Joren's. I looked over at him.

The cloth had not been gentle. It had been thorough. And it had dressed Joren in a scent.

His silk had gone dark and sharp, the collar closed, the cut precise. Then the embroidery. Large penises traced in silver thread, curving across his chest in elegant shapes. Swirls of sperm followed, tiny spirals around the cuffs. Some of the swirls were identical to the ones on my bodysuit — the same loop, the same curl at the tip. The cloth had drawn the two of us as one pattern.

Then the smell came off him. Cock. Clean and warm, the deep perfume of skin after release. Not rank. Not heavy. Thin as air at the road's edge, thick against his chest. I inhaled without deciding to. Everyone inhaled. Nessa's head came up. Halvar's did. Garrick stood still and breathed him.

The road smelled of him, and I wanted to climb him right there.

Joren looked at his chest. His jaw worked once.

"They have dressed us," he said.

"They have," I said.

Garrick turned. I saw the whole of him.

The leather had gone formal and dark. The design had one purpose. Two small anuses marked each shoulder — one pair on the left, one pair on the right, embroidered in copper thread, neat and small. A nod to Vesper written on the seam. But the shoulders were decoration.

All the attention was on his bulge.

The leather at his waist had gone taut. The embroidery ran down the placket in a line of silver studs, and the cloth of the trousers had been cut to hold the shape of him, generous, precise, presenting it like something on display. The bulge was the centre of the garment. Every eye went there and did not leave. The rest of the leather framed it. Nothing else on the whole cloak competed with it.

Garrick looked down. The lines still pointed.

"It is a signpost," I said.

"Mm," he said. He pulled the cloak closed. The lines still pointed.

Vesper laughed. One short laugh. Then he went quiet.

I looked over. His tunic was edge-weave, formal, the cut sitting lean at the waist. The embossed pattern covered the fabric. Prostates. Rounded, small, pressed into the weave row on row, unmistakable once you knew the shape. The weave shimmered at the seams, stopped, held, and resumed.

"Your shirt is edging," I said.

"It is," Vesper said. "I have walked the whole morning with a garment that cannot commit."

But he was not looking at the seams. He turned his wrist and the light ran down the line of the tunic. He turned it back. He had spent his life bragging about the things he wore and the things he did in them, and he had nothing to say about this one.

The weave shimmered, held, resumed.

"It does it on purpose," he said. His voice had gone quiet.

He was the most beautiful any of us had ever seen him. The prostates glinted at the waist. The cut held him like a tomb held a king. His hand came up and pressed flat against his chest and he stood there, stunned by his own cloth.

Lirael stepped forward. The morning took him.

His robes were pale gold, luminous, cut high at the collar and straight at the shoulders. The priest's shape. The theme ran through the fabric. Golden streams of embroidery curved down the sleeves, arcs of light falling toward the hem. Drops scattered at the cuffs. Piss rendered like a stained window. And the beads — piss-crystal beads strung down the seams, along the collar, the cuffs, the hem. Amber and gold and clear at the edges, the colour of the crystal in the chamber below the temple. They caught the morning in turns and threw it back.

He stood in the light and it ran down him and he did not adjust a single fold.

"Formal dress," he said. "The realm has opinions."

"It does," Joren said.

We stood in the middle of the road in garments a king would have envied and a court would have laughed at. We were the Eternal Rods of Thorendale. The cloth knew it. The embroidery shimmered when any of us moved.

Nessa walked beside us in her emerald gown, holding its shape. Halvar wore pale formal cloth, one line of embroidery at the collar. Sprinkle flew up from Nessa's shoulder and hovered over us, taking in the costumes.

"You look like you are going to a wedding," she said.

"We are," I said.

Joren touched my shoulder. His embroidery caught the light.

"We wear it because it is us," he said. "Walk like you know it."

I straightened. The padded shoulders squared. The collar stood behind my head.

I walked.

We came through the entrance and the ground was full.

Bodies the crew had not expected. Bodies they had not seen for a long time.

Queen Milianne was on a raised section to the left, among other dignitaries. She wore a coat of deep green, long, open at the front, the fabric catching the light. Her silver hair was pulled back from her face and her eyes were dark and still. Holta beside her. The consort. Taller than Milianne, plain-faced, strong-handed, her hair dark and cut short. There was another woman we didn't know. Well dressed, but in simpler clothing. Holta saw the crew first. She lifted her hand. Milianne turned her head. Her mouth moved. A small smile.

Sprinkle was on Nessa's shoulder. Nessa stood at the edge of the raised section in her emerald gown. Halvar beside her, upright, her shield at her back.

Tommy. I saw him before Joren did. He was standing with Halsten and Doran in a group near the right wall. Halsten and Doran had grown beards. They wore their best clothes, awkward in them, the collars too tight, the sleeves too stiff. Tommy saw us and his face opened and he raised both hands and then put them down and then raised one again.

Beside each of them stood another man.

All three wore the same suit. Dark red, cut close, a thin border of scarlet at the collar and cuffs. They stood with their hands folded in front of them, patient, watchful, a stillness that commands authority.

Tommy sat on the ground at his man's feet. Rope wound over his shoulders and across his chest, down between his legs, around the base of his cock and up again, knot after careful knot, down to the last one. He wore nothing beneath it. His man sat above him in a low chair, one hand resting loose in Tommy's hair, not gripping, just resting there.

Halsten stood in leather from neck to toes. Black, thin, tight. Gloves to match. Bare feet inside the leather. Only his face showed, jaw set, eyes forward.

Doran wore nothing but a collar. Spikes turned outward. A ring of iron held it shut at the back. He stood straight, hands at his sides. The spikes caught the light when he breathed.

None of the three men touched their charges while we watched. Tommy caught my eye from the ground and grinned like a kid.

Joren's hand found the bulge. He watched them a moment longer than the others.

"Good for them," he said through the bond. Low.

The four conduits stood behind them. Mossen the dwarf, squat, his ironwork hands at his sides, his beard braided with copper wire. Tariq the scribe beside him, tall and thin, his dark eyes moving, ink stains on his fingers even now. Holm the carter, broad-shouldered, his face weathered and his hands scarred from rope and wood. Eben the baker, round and smiling, and yes, flour on his sleeve. They wore their working clothes, cleaned and pressed.

The five senior magicians stood together in a block. They wore robes of different colours: deep blue, dark red, pale silver, forest green, and one in black. Each robe had a different cut and each magician had a different build, but they stood as one group, unified, their hands folded or at their sides. The eldest was tall, white-haired, lean. The youngest was broad, dark-skinned, his robes tight across his shoulders.

The four reformed brothers were beside the magicians. The eldest had cut his hair short and his eyes were clear. The one Tommy had called the filthy one was clean, his skin scrubbed, his hands still. The loose one stood straight. The youngest had filled out across the chest. They looked at the magicians and the magicians looked at them and something passed between the two groups that the rest of us were not part of.

The Baestoricks were at one side. Five figures. I saw them close for the first time.

The horse man was the largest. Broad through the chest, thick-limbed, with powerful haunches and shoulders that rolled with each step. His face was long and noble, with wide dark eyes and a strong jaw. He wore a leather vest, open, and heavy trousers.

The fox man was small. Quick. His body was narrow and alert, with fine red-gold fur visible on his arms and the back of his hands. His face was sharp and clever, with bright amber eyes and pointed ears. He stood beside the badger man, hip against hip.

The bear man was heavy. Slow. Built across the shoulders and through the belly, his hair dark and coarse, his eyes small and deep-set. Massive frame, thick arms, broad hands. He wore a heavy coat of dark cloth and his hands hung loose at his sides.

The wolf man was lean. Alert. His face was narrow, his eyes bright yellow, and his hair was grey-black and stood up from his head. Predator build, quick movements, always tracking. He wore a close-fitting shirt of grey fabric.

The badger man was compact. His movements were quick and low to the ground. Badger-built through the chest and arms, strong jaw and claws that showed at his fingertips. His hair was dark brown and coarse and his eyes were black and steady. He wore a long coat of brown hide. The fox man's hand was in his.

Near the back wall, close to where the trees started, I saw three men I did not expect.

They wore gowns. Bright fabric, badly draped in places, the seams visible where the stitching had gone wrong and been fixed and gone wrong again. One wore blue. One wore a deep rose. The third wore a pale yellow that did not sit well against his skin. They had jewellery on, rings too big for their fingers, necklaces layered three and four deep. Their hair had been curled and pinned and some of the pins showed. Powder sat unevenly on their cheeks.

They stood close together. Chins up. Shoulders back. Proud of themselves. The gowns did not matter to them.

I knew the one in blue. The sketchbook man, from Tommy's inn. His gown was the most elaborate of the three, an extra layer at the hem, a bow at the waist he had clearly copied from memory. He caught me looking and did not look away. He smiled instead.

Joren's chest moved. A short laugh, held in the throat.

Then an elven bell sounded. Three notes. Pure and high and held. The reunion broke off. Bodies moved to their places. The ground went quiet.

The King of Elvens walked to the centre of the ground.

He was old. His hair was white and long and it moved when he moved. His face was carved from the same stone as the walls. Deep lines at the eyes and the mouth. His ears were long and thin and the tips caught the light. He wore a robe of pale grey, plain, the fabric heavy, belted with a rope of braided silver. He carried nothing in his hands.

He spoke.

"We are gathered to recognise what has come to us," the elder said. His voice was even and it carried to every edge of the ground without effort. "A man born in Thorendale. Raised by a road builder and a gardener. Elevated at the plaza in the year past. Transformed at the threshold of this realm. Trained by the elders of this city."

The crowd was still. The Baestoricks were still. The magicians were still. Tommy was still, which was the most remarkable.

"Tonight he is recognised in the office he has been growing into," the elder said. "The elves have always sensed that the substance is sacred. We have kept it in our temples and studied it in our records. We know what we have always known."

He paused.

"And now the crew of the Rods has brought back what the Stone realm showed them. That piss is the inter-realm signal of biological life. That the Stone people have read this signal since the beginning. That what the elves held in faith, the Stone people held in fact."

Another pause. The ground held its breath.

"The two halves of the truth are joined tonight."

The fathers were there. Close. Near the front, at the edge of the stone floor. The road builder stood straight. The gardener stood beside him. They held hands.

Pisson stepped forward.

He wore the same pale linen tunic, belted with the silver cord, but over it he had a length of pale blue fabric across his shoulders, draping to his waist. His gold hair was loose. His amber-green eyes were calm.

"What I am about to do," Pisson said, "you will feel in your body. Do not be afraid. I will dry you after."

A ripple went through the crowd. Some of the conduits looked at each other. Eben smiled. Tariq's hand went to his pen.

Then it happened.

Every one in the ground pissed at once.

I felt it through Joren. The release. Not his doing. Not his choice. The muscles in his bladder let go and the warmth came and the silk of the nest went wet against me. I also felt the urge to piss. Three drops. I swallowed them back. I was held in the warm flood of Joren's piss soaking through the fabric and over my body. His hand came to the bulge and pressed, instinct, and the press pushed me deeper into the wet.

Across the ground, the same thing was happening to every male body. The conduits. The magicians. The reformed brothers. The Baestoricks. Tommy and Halsten and Doran. The elder elves. Garrick. Vesper. Lirael. Every one.

The piss stayed warm. No cold. No chill. The clothing did not go cold and heavy. The warmth held. Pisson held it warm by will.

Queen Milianne and her women were in the crowd with everyone else. All five women pissed where they stood — Milianne's stream dark and heavy, Holta's lighter, the others between. Sprinkle on Nessa's shoulder went rigid for a moment, then a tiny stream appeared beneath her, no bigger than a thread. Milianne's mouth was open. Holta was watching Pisson with her head tilted, piss running down her legs, her arms still folded despite everything.

Someone laughed. One of the reformed brothers. Then another. Then Eben the baker, his round belly shaking. Then the laughter ran through the crowd and the fear went with it.

Tariq was writing. His hand moved fast. Ink on piss-wet pages.

Then Cockper moved.

He had been at my collar. He pulled himself free. His copper body crawled up Joren's chest and onto his shoulder and then he jumped.

He did not jump to the ground. He jumped to the centre.

He stood there. Small. Copper. His body caught the light.

Then his body changed.

The copper shifted. It opened. It became a door.

Obsidian came first. Black. Faceted. The angles of it catching the light and eating it. The mineral flowed out of Cockper's body and stood beside him and took shape. A figure. Tall. Black glass. Joren's entity from the Stone realm.

Ice came second. Pale blue-white. A haze formed in the air around it where the cold met the warm morning. The figure took shape beside Obsidian. Lirael's entity.

Labradorite came third. Stable and solid and beautiful. The surface caught the light and split it into blue and green and gold. The figure stood beside Ice. Garrick's entity. I saw Garrick's face across the ground. His mouth was open. His hands were fists.

Uranium came fourth. Dense. Small. Heavy. The hum of it came before the figure did. Vesper felt it. I saw him go still. Then the figure came through Cockper's body and stood. Vesper's entity.

Helium came fifth. Almost not there. A shimmer. The colour of nothing with a faint light inside it. My entity. I felt it from the nest. A pull in my chest. A recognition.

Gold came last.

Gold came slow. Golden-bodied. Generous in shape. He flowed out of Cockper and stood at the centre of the five and his light was warm and steady. His voice, when he spoke, was deeper than the others, deeper than the chamber could hold.

"We have come through the small one," Gold said. "He is the door between our place and yours. We know now there is a substance that links us. We know now the one who carries that substance is standing in front of us."

The ground was silent. The crowd did not move. The magicians had gone white. The Baestoricks were still, their eyes wide.

Gold turned to Pisson.

"Pisson of Thorendale," Gold said. "Pisson of the Elven realm. You are the link between my realm and the living."

Gold turned again. His golden body caught the morning light and threw it.

"We thank you all for what you did in the deep place," Gold said.

Lirael came forward. He walked past the Stone figures to the centre. In his hands he carried the piss-crystal tooth. It was elongated, carved, the colour of frozen amber-water, the same amber as the crystal in the chamber below.

"This is given by the Stone people through me to him," Lirael said. He spoke to the assembly. His formal register. His priest voice. "It is the same connection the rest of us carry through our rings. It carries him into our bond."

Lirael held the tooth toward Pisson's mouth. Pisson opened his lips. Lirael placed the tooth on his tongue.

Pisson's mouth closed. The tooth dissolved immediately, flowing like liquid amber down his throat. His hand came to his jaw. His eyes closed. When he opened his mouth again, one of his teeth had changed — amber-crystal now, the same frozen amber-water colour, gleaming wet in the morning light.

Pisson's hand came up and touched his jaw where the new tooth sat. His fingers pressed against the spot. His eyes closed. We could all hear him through the stone bond.

The Stone people stayed. They stood in the morning light and the crowd looked at them and the silence held. Then they moved. They dissolved. They flowed back through Cockper the way they had come, mineral streaming back into the copper body. Obsidian first, then Ice, then Labradorite, then Uranium, then Helium, then Gold last, his golden form lingering a moment before it poured itself back into the small copper shape.

Cockper waddled back to me. His copper body was warm. Warmer than before. He climbed Joren's trouser leg and chest and curled at my collar and his small body pressed against my neck and the warmth pulsed once and held.

The King turned toward the raised section.

"Queen Milianne," the elder said. "Consort Holta. And the third among you. Come forward. The Lesbian Realm has a place in this recognition."

Milianne came down first, her green coat catching the light with each step. Holta followed, a half pace behind, her scarred hands loose at her sides. The third woman came last. She held herself smaller than the other two, her hands clasped in front of a plain grey dress, her eyes on the ground until she reached the stone floor.

Milianne stopped in front of Pisson. She studied him for a long moment, the warmth in her smile held back, softer than I had seen it before.

"I have heard your name from Sprinkle," she said. "I did not expect to like the sound of it as much as I do, hearing it from your own mouth."

"Your Majesty," Pisson said. He bowed his head.

"None of that today," Milianne said. Her voice dropped, warm and amused. "Today you get something better than a title."

She stepped aside.

"When word reached us of what you had become," Milianne said, "we opened the fountain records. Every birth in the realm is written down. The day. The hour. The child. The mother who held it. Every one of them is a boy sent out into the world the moment the kiss lands. We do not usually go looking backward. There was never a reason to." She looked at Pisson. "There is now."

Holta stepped forward. She did not waste words.

"We found her," Holta said. "Josephine. Works the soap house."

The third woman lifted her eyes.

"You have seen our clothing," Holta said. "Reads intent. Still gets dirty. Still needs washing." She looked at the crowd, not just at Pisson. "We make the soap from piss. Collect it in tanks under the palace. Render it down. Josephine has stood over those tanks since she was a girl. Longest serving woman in the house."

A few of the conduits exchanged a look. Tariq's pen had stopped.

"Her first birth came at nineteen," Holta said. "First time in the fountain water. She took the child the way every woman does. Went to give the kiss." A pause, not for effect. Just the next part mattered. "She pissed herself doing it. Mid-kiss. No warning. Never happened before. Never happened since, not once, in all the records we keep. We did not think much of it at the time. A strange thing. Nothing more."

"Until now," Milianne said.

Josephine had not moved. Her hands were still clasped. Her eyes had not left Pisson's face.

"The timing matches," Milianne said. "The year. The season. Everything we could check, we checked. We are certain."

Pisson did not speak. His mouth had come open and nothing came out of it.

Josephine opened her arms.

He went to her. Not fast, not slow, just straight across the stone floor and into them. She was smaller than him now, her grey dress plain against the linen and gold thread of his tunic, and she held him the way a mother holds a child, hard and complete and without thinking about how it looked.

She drew back enough to see his face. She raised a hand to signal what she wanted and he lowered his head for her.

She kissed his forehead.

I felt it through the ground before I understood what it was. Warmth, spreading out from the two of them in a slow ring. It moved through the crowd and touched every one of us. Then it pulled back into the two people at the centre and was gone.

Josephine was overwhelmed. And so was Pisson.  His eyes were shut, his hands in the back of her dress.

Nobody spoke for a long moment. Even Joren's hand went still on the bulge.

"There it is," Holta said, quiet, mostly to herself.

Milianne let them hold each other a while longer before she spoke again.

"There is one more thing," she said.

She lifted her hand and one of her women came forward from the raised section, carrying a folded bundle wrapped in pale cloth. Milianne took it herself and held it out to Pisson.

"Every one of your crew wears something made in our house," she said. "Silk that answers Joren. Edge-weave that answers Vesper. Robes that answer Lirael. We could not give you less. But you are not like the others. You hold dominion over the substance itself, not just a body that produces it. So we did not make you clothing that reacts to your intent." She pushed the bundle into his hands. "We made clothing that reacts to your piss. To what it is doing, everywhere, at any moment. To what you feel. To what is offered to you and what you offer back."

Pisson took the bundle. His fingers found the edge of the cloth.

"It will not sit still," Milianne said. "It was not built to. It will move with you. Abstract one day, geometric the next, flowers if that is what the moment calls for, a picture plain enough to read if that is what is needed. It has no fixed pattern because you have no fixed shape. That is the gift."

The moment the cloth left the wrapping, it moved.

It rose off Pisson's hands and unfolded itself in the air, pale gold thread and pale blue and a deep amber that caught the morning light the same way his new tooth did. It settled over him without his hands doing anything to guide it, the plain linen tunic gone in a breath, replaced by something regal and simple at once, robes cut close at the shoulder and open at the chest, a belt of woven gold and amber sitting low on his hips. Along every seam, thin lines of liquid gold moved, curling into small shapes and uncurling again, a spiral, a leaf, a single drop, gone before I could name the next one.

Pisson looked down at himself. He laughed, short and surprised.

"Every ordination in every realm gets a moment like this," Josephine said, wiping her face with the back of her hand, smiling now. "Yours just happens to be prettier than most."

Joren's breath went out slow through his nose. "Fits him," he said through the bond.

I agreed. I did not say it. It was now my time to act.  Time for the spritification.

I walked at full size towards Pisson. Cockper stayed at my collar.

Lirael came beside me. Joren stepped behind me. His hand found my hip. His palm flat against my side. I leaned back against his chest.

The crew formed an inner ring around us. Vesper on my left, Garrick on my right, Nessa and Halvar and Sprinkle behind. Pisson stood facing me.

The delegations formed an outer ring. The crowd a wall of bodies around the ceremony.

I put my hands on Pisson's shoulders. His linen was warm under my palms. His body was steady.

Lirael chanted.

The words were elven. Old. The syllables were long and the vowels were open and the consonants clicked against the roof of his mouth. "Av'ereth saluin, keth pisson, av'ereth me'luir." The chant was not a melody. It was a rhythm. Lirael's voice carried it without strain.

I felt the transfer begin. The thread between Pisson and me, the half-bond that had been growing, went taut. Then it opened.

Pisson lit.

The glow came from his skin. Gold. Warm. It spread from his chest outward, through his arms, through his hands where they hung at his sides, up through his neck and his face. His eyes opened and they were all gold for a moment. Then the glow faded. His eyes went back to amber-green. His skin went back to silver-honey.

The robes moved with him.

The gold thread at the seams ran faster, tracing the same path the glow had taken. Chest first, then out along both arms, then up the collar to his throat. The shapes came quick and small, too quick to name before the next one replaced it. Then the thread slowed and settled into one image at his chest. A single open hand.

He was changed.

Lirael and Pisson looked at each other. Pisson started to walk towards him. Then he dissolved toward Lirael. There was no body for a moment. Pisson's form went to light and the light went into Lirael and Lirael's body went still. His face changed. His eyes changed. Pisson was inside, looking out through Lirael's eyes. Lirael's mouth moved and it was Pisson's expression on Lirael's face.

They held. Two breaths. Three.

Then they came apart. Pisson's body reformed beside Lirael. Pisson's chest heaved once.

"I saw what you see," Pisson said.

Then Lirael went into Pisson. Lirael's form went to light and Pisson's body took it in and Pisson's face changed. His eyes went grey-green. His mouth went still and composed. Lirael inside, looking out.

They held. Then apart. Lirael reformed. His robes settled around him.

"I felt what you feel," Lirael said.

The crowd was silent. The magicians had their mouths open. The reformed brothers were holding each other's arms. Tommy was gripping his master's legs.

"I have you now," Pisson said.

"You have me," Lirael said.

Pisson shrank. He went to thumb-size in front of the crowd. Small and golden-haired and green-eyed and elven, his beautiful clothing shrinking with him. He stood on the stone floor and the crowd leaned in. Then he grew back. Five feet. Six. His full height. The tooth caught the light at his chest.

I went back to Joren. I shrank. I climbed into the nest. The silk closed over me. The threads in me were live. Five of them now. Joren the biggest. Cockper steady. Sprinkle small and bright, Garrick sturdy and honest, Pisson whole.

The King returned to the centre. He called the fathers forward.

The road builder came first. His stride was long, his shoulders set, his boots loud on the stone. The gardener came a step behind, lighter, earth-stained hands at his sides.

They stood on either side of Pisson. The road builder on his left. The gardener on his right. Pisson's hands found theirs.

"We name him Pissondel," the elder said. "Full elf. Of this realm. Of every elven life to come."

The crowd held.

Pisson lifted his hands. The fathers' hands dropped. His palms went up, his fingers spread, his shoulders drew back.

Then the sound started.

A clink. Small, metallic, from somewhere at the far edge of the ground. Then another, then ten more, then too many to count, all of them at once, rising into a low continuous ring like a hundred small bells struck together.

The low walls at the edge of the ground began to move.

Metal came up out of the stone. Gold first, threads of it pushing up between the paving like new grass, then thickening, branching, climbing. Silver joined it, then copper, then a dark iron that caught no light at all, then metals I had no name for, pale and rose-coloured and one that shifted between three colours depending on how I turned my head. They rose together, weaving as they went, gems catching in the lattice as it climbed, small at first and then larger, deep red and green and a blue so pale it was almost white.

The crowd looked up. Nobody moved. Nobody spoke.

The lattice kept rising, arching inward from every edge of the ground, meeting itself high overhead in a dome too wide and too tall for anything I had seen men build. It did not close. At the centre, where the arcs met, a wide circle stayed open to the sky, the pale morning blue showing through, clouds moving slow across the gap.

Ornament grew across the whole of it as it settled. Faces I did not recognise. Vines that were not vines. Circles inside circles. The whole structure caught the morning light and threw it back down onto the crowd in moving patches of gold and copper and rose.

Gold's voice came once more, from everywhere and nowhere, filling the space under the dome without needing a mouth to carry it.

"For the one who binds the substance," Gold said. "A roof from the ones who remember every root, gifted freely, asking nothing back."

The ringing stopped. The metal went still, holding its shape, the dome complete and open-eyed above us.

Pisson raised his arms.

The piss of everyone present rose off them.

From every body. From inside clothing where it had been held warm. The piss came out and up. It left the fabric and the skin and moved through the air. I felt it leave Joren's body. The warm wet that had soaked the nest lifted, drew upward through the silk, and was gone. I felt it go.

The arcs formed. Streams of piss in the air, golden in the morning light, moving in swirling paths. They curved and crossed, the shapes ornamental. Curls, tight and repeating, and straight lines between them. At moments the arcs looked almost written, characters of a language I did not know, forming and re-forming.

The smell filled the ground. Warm. Clean. Mineral. The smell of the piss temple but larger, open to the sky.

All the arcs converged on Pisson and his fathers.

The piss came down onto Pisson from every direction. His hands stayed up. His clothing soaked in a breath. His hair went dark with it. His face was wet, his eyes open, his mouth a line. The fathers were caught in the splash. The road builder flinched and then stood fast. The gardener closed his eyes, raised his chin, and let it come.

"We name him High Priest of the Piss," the elder said. His voice carried through the falling arcs. "Of every realm. Of every man, every woman, every creature, and every realm-bound thing that lives by the substance he holds."

The piss stopped. The arcs dissolved. The air cleared. Pisson stood soaked and dripping, hands still raised, his fathers wet beside him.

The ground held silent for one breath.

Then the noise came from everywhere. The conduits. The magicians. The lesbians. The reformed brothers. The Baestoricks, their voices deep and mixed with animal harmonics. Tommy, louder than anyone. Halsten clapping. Doran shouting something I could not hear.

The road builder looked at the gardener. The gardener looked at the road builder.

"That's our boy," the road builder said.

"That's our boy," the gardener said.

Pisson's hands came down. He put his arms around his fathers and pulled them in. The three of them stood in the centre of the ground, wet, held, the noise of every realm around them.

After the rite they showed us to the celebration quarters.

A wing of the main building, long and warm, the rooms opening onto a covered terrace that looked over a garden. Torches on the walls. The light from them was orange and moved with the evening wind. The smell of food came from inside. Bread and roasted meat and something sweet and herbal.

Queen Milianne and her women were offered their own apartments, deeper in the building. They were invited to join the others if they wished but left it to them to see what worked best. I glimpsed the door as we passed. Pale wood, carved with trees. Sprinkle waved from Nessa's shoulder as they went through.

The crew was nearby. Pisson with us now. Lirael beside Pisson, their hands touching whenever they stopped moving.

The celebration began.

Before the food was served, Joren moved through the quarters.

He found Tommy first, then the magicians, then the Baestoricks at their table. The same words each time: "After tomorrow. After you have rested. We should sit together. All the delegations. There are things to discuss."

Each group nodded. The magicians exchanged glances. The horse man tilted his head and spoke for the Baestoricks: "We will be there."

Queen Milianne he found last, near the carved door. "Your Majesty," he said. "If you and your women wish to join us after tomorrow. A council. All realms represented."

She looked at him for a long moment. "Of course," she said.

Joren returned to our table. His thumb pressed once against the bulge and I felt the satisfaction through the silk.

"Done," he said through the bond. "Now we eat."

Just behind us, the three men in gowns came closer.

Up near, the seams showed worse. A hem coming loose at the ankle. A necklace so heavy it had pulled the collar of the rose gown askew. None of it slowed them down.

Nessa saw them before they reached the table. She rose.

"You came," she said, and her voice had the same warmth it had carried at Tommy's inn. She took the sketchbook man's hands in both of hers. "I remember you. The drawings."

He went red to the ears. "You remember."

"Of course I remember." She looked at the gown properly now, the loose hem, the heavy necklace, the crooked bow at the waist, and nothing in her face was unkind about it. "You made this yourself?"

"All three of us did. For each other." He glanced at his friends. "It is not right. I know it is not right. We have never had silk like yours to work with, or anyone to show us how the pleats should fall."

"It is beautiful," Nessa said, and meant it plainly enough that he had no room to doubt her. "The colour suits you."

Milianne, behind them, pressed her mouth thin behind her cup to hide a small laugh. One of her women turned her face away and let a breath out through her nose. Nessa did not look toward them. She kept her eyes on the man in front of her.

"May I ask you something," he said. "Something real."

"Ask."

"We sew. The three of us, since we were boys. There was never much reason for it here, not gowns, not anything with a shape like yours. Then I saw you on that stage and I have not stopped thinking about it since." His hands tightened around hers. "I want to learn properly. An apprenticeship, if your realm would take us. We would work for it. We are not asking to be given anything."

The other two stepped up beside him, hands clasped, watching Nessa's face the way men watch weather.

Nessa held his hands a moment longer before she let them go. Then she crossed to where Holta stood at Milianne's shoulder and spoke low, her hand resting once on Holta's arm as she talked.

Holta listened with her arms at her sides, her face doing nothing. Then she looked at Milianne.

Something passed between them, and Milianne's mouth came open in the smile she had been holding back the whole time, warm now instead of amused.

Holta turned to the three men.

"Of course you are welcome," she said. Her voice carried a warmth it rarely carried.

The man in blue's hands came up to his mouth.

"Come back with us when we go," Holta said. "Learn from the best hands in any realm. Sew until your fingers bleed if that is what it takes." She looked at each of them in turn, and her voice gentled further. "One thing you should know first. There are no men in our realm. None. You would be the only three."

The man in yellow found his voice. "We don't mind."

"We'd like that very much," said the third.

The sketchbook man had not moved. His eyes were wet and he was not hiding it.

Nessa put a hand on his shoulder. "You will make many dresses," she said. "Better than this one. I will make sure of it myself."

He put his own hand over hers, just for a moment, and then stepped back with his friends, and the three of them stood there in their crooked gowns looking like men who had just been handed the rest of their lives.

The food came. Platters of it. Bread and cheese and roasted root vegetables and meat carved from a bone and a jug of something dark and warm that tasted of spice. Joren ate with one hand. The other was at his side, fingers resting on the bulge, slow circles through the fabric. I pressed against the shaft and ate the crumb he fed me through the opening of the nest.

Then the Baestoricks moved in. On us.

The horse man came first. He was the largest, broad through the chest, thick-limbed, leather vest hanging open over heavy muscle. His cock swung heavy and half-hard between his legs, thick as Joren's forearm even soft, the head blunt and flared, already leaking a clear string of precum that dripped to the stone. He turned without a word, bent forward, and presented his arse. Joren stood, freed his own thick cock, and drove in. The horse man’s hole stretched wide around the invasion, the tight ring flaring as Joren’s fat cockhead popped past it with a wet squelch. The horse man grunted deep, low, the sound rumbling in his chest as Joren buried every inch to the balls. I felt every thrust through the bond — the drag of Joren’s veiny shaft against hot, gripping heat, the heavy slap of his balls against the horse man’s taint, the way the big ring clenched and fluttered around the root. Joren fucked him hard, hips snapping, the wet slap of flesh loud in the torchlight.

The fox man dropped to his knees in front of Vesper. Small, quick, narrow body, alert golden eyes. His muzzle opened and Vesper’s cock disappeared down his throat in one smooth swallow, the fox man’s throat bulging visibly. Vesper groaned, head tipping back. Garrick, still deep in Vesper’s arse, hugged the prostate harder and sent a filthy wave of mental love-talk that made Vesper’s knees buckle. "Fuck — choke on it," Vesper rasped, gripping the fox man’s ears and face-fucking him with long, wet strokes.

The badger man grabbed Garrick the moment the small sprite slipped out of Vesper and grew. Heavy, slow, broad shoulders and thick belly, dark coarse hair, small deep-set eyes. Before Garrick could react the badger man pinned him hard against the stone, lifted one of the sprite’s legs high, and shoved his own thick cock straight into Garrick’s ass with a deep grunt. The badger’s dick was massive — blunt, heavy, wrist-thick, the head wide and flared like a blunt club, the shaft ridged with thick veins and covered at the base with coarse dark hair. His balls were huge and low-hanging, heavy and swinging, covered in the same coarse fur, already slick with sweat. Garrick let out a huge deep scream, completely taken by surprise — he hadn’t realized what was happening until the badger’s fat cockhead had already forced his tight ring open and buried to the root inside him, stretching his ass obscenely wide around the thick invasion. But as the badger man started humping faster, heavy and relentless, his low-hanging balls slapping loudly against Garrick’s ass, Garrick’s own cock went straight up hard. To release the tension he started stroking himself fast. His face no longer showed pain. An animal growl tore out of the badger man as he started filling Garrick with his cum. The load came for a very long time, an incredible amount of thick, hot cum that kept pumping deep inside and seeped out of Garrick’s stretched ass in heavy white ropes around the thick shaft. I jumped forward first, mouth open, sucking greedily on Garrick’s cock as he stroked himself, swallowing every spurt of his cum the moment it shot out. Then I darted behind him again, tongue out, catching the thick white overflow leaking from his ruined hole as the badger kept pumping. The badger man’s cum tasted different — richer, earthier, with a deep wild musk that coated my tongue and made me moan.

The wolf man had Lirael standing pressed against the low terrace rail. He was lean and alert, narrow face sharp with a long muzzle, bright yellow eyes glowing with hunger, coarse grey fur covering a tight, wiry torso that flexed and rippled with every thrust. His cock was long and tapered, deep red and glistening, the base already swelling into a thick, bulbous knot the size of a fist.

"Do you know what a knot is?" the wolf man growled low against Lirael’s ear, voice rough with lust.

Lirael gasped, voice breaking. "What do you mean?"

The wolf man gave a wicked smile, sharp teeth flashing. "Let me show you."

He slammed forward harder. The thick knot swelled even bigger, stretching Lirael’s hole impossibly wide. Lirael cried out sharply, eyes flying wide. "Oh! What is this—fuck—my hole—your knot—ahh, it’s getting bigger—stretching me open—gods, I feel it locking inside me!"

While he fucked Lirael with powerful, short thrusts, Pisson suddenly tilted his dick and aimed at Lirael's head. He let loose a thick, warm jet of piss that splashed directly onto Lirael’s silver hair and ran down his face and chest. Lirael moaned louder, clearly enjoying the hot stream, tilting his head back and opening his mouth to catch more.

The wolf man’s orgasm hit hard. His knot pulsed violently inside Lirael, swelling even thicker as he pumped rope after thick rope of hot cum deep into the elf’s guts. The pressure was so intense that some of the cum forced its way back out around the locked knot in heavy white spurts. I moved in quickly at full human size, dropping to my knees in front of Lirael and taking his throbbing cock deep into my mouth just as he started to come. I sucked hard, swallowing every powerful rope so nothing could be lost, my tongue working the underside while Lirael trembled and moaned. Then I slid under his legs to lick the cum seeping out of Lirael's arse, still locked with the wolf's knot inside.

The five reformed brothers formed their own tight incestuous party on the far side of the terrace. The eldest had the youngest bent over a bench, pounding him with brutal rhythm, thick cock stretching the youngest’s hole wide open, balls slapping loudly. The kisser was moving from one to the other, driving them mad. At some point I saw the magicians join them. They seemed to be immune to the curse. The brothers jumped on them like hungry animals.

Mossen the dwarf turned and offered himself before anyone told him to. He braced on all fours in the shallow trough at the terrace edge, beard already wet, grinning up over his shoulder. The road builder took the invitation. Broad-shouldered, powerful, his thick human cock forced into the dwarf's tight hole in one long shove that put a visible bulge in Mossen's belly by the third thrust. Mossen cursed and laughed at the same time, gripping the stone lip of the trough, pushing back onto every slam.

"That's it," Mossen said, wrecked and pleased with it. "Split me. Come on."

The road builder gave him no mercy. He fucked him hard and fast, heavy balls slapping against the dwarf's taint, then pulled out and hauled Mossen up by the beard for his mouth. Mossen took him ass-to-mouth without flinching, throat working around the girth, until the road builder came down his throat and across his beard in thick ropes. Mossen swallowed what he could and wore the rest, grinning through it.

Eben the baker stood apart from the rest of it, still, patient, his soft belly straining the front of his damp trousers where a thick wet patch had already spread. The gardener knelt in front of him and did not undress him. His earth-stained fingers traced the outline of Eben's cock and balls through the fabric, slow, pressing, working the shape of him without ever freeing it. Eben's breath went short and stayed short. He did not thrust into the hand. He let it happen.

The gardener bent lower and found Eben's bare feet instead, pulling off his shoes, taking one foot in both hands. He mouthed the arch, sucked each toe in turn, his tongue slow and thorough, while his other hand kept working Eben's soaked bulge against his own belly. Eben's eyes never left the gardener's mouth on his feet. He came like that, still fully clothed, his release soaking through to darken the trouser front further, a small broken sound catching in his throat as it happened.

Tariq had his notebook taken gently from his hands by a stranger, who set it aside and turned the scribe face down over the bench himself.

"Stay," the stranger said. He slid into Tariq first, unhurried, and held there. "Good."

Holm the carter came up behind, his broad shoulders blocking the torchlight, and forced his way in beside the stranger's cock, stretching Tariq's thin frame wide around the two of them at once. Tariq made a single high sound and then went quiet, obedient, his hands flat on the bench, taking direction.

"Left," the stranger said against his ear. "Slower. Keep going." Tariq adjusted his hips exactly as told each time. The stranger and Holm moved together inside him, unhurried at first, then less so, until both of them came deep and stayed buried while the loads mixed and Tariq breathed through it, still, obedient, done.

Tommy's master rose from his low chair.

He crossed to where the bear man sat, heavy and slow, his thick fur-covered belly rising and falling, his blunt cock already dripping between his legs. He put a hand on the back of Tommy's rope harness and walked him over, still bound, the knots still tight across his chest and groin, and pressed him down onto the bear man's lap. Tommy ground the rope-covered length of himself against the coarse fur, moaning at the friction the ropes gave him nowhere to escape.

Halsten's master brought him next, still sealed head to foot in his tight black leather, only his face bare. He knelt at the bear man's side and opened his mouth around the blunt cockhead through nothing but instruction, his master's hand light on the back of his leather-clad neck, guiding the depth. Halsten took it, gloved hands braced on his own thighs, throat stretching around the girth.

Doran's master came last, a loose grip on the ring at the back of the spiked collar, and turned Doran's bare body toward the bear man's mouth. The bear man's head changed, fur giving way to something wider and more animal, his jaw stretching open into a true bear's maw. Doran's master pushed Doran's head forward until it sat fully inside, the collar catching torchlight with every small movement. As the bear man drew pleasure from all three of them at once, Doran's master began to whip him, back and buttocks, one stroke after another. Each stroke pulled a small scream out of Doran, the sound echoing inside the bear man's jaw before it reached the air.

The bear man growled low, the sound rolling through all three of them at once. Tommy was forced down to lick at the bear man's balls and ass while Halsten deep-throated him as far as he physically could. The three masters began to chant orders to their slaves, low and overlapping. The bear man was lost in it, half out of his mind with pleasure. As he came close, Tommy's master pushed his head forward until his nose was buried deep against the bear man's hole. The bear man's release hit a moment later. He shot into Halsten's mouth in a long hot stream, the first spurt choking him for a second before he swallowed and kept swallowing. At the same instant his jaw clenched shut, just enough to cut off the blood at Doran's neck, and the whip kept striking through it, the pressure and the sting together finally pushing Doran over the edge.

As the bear man finally let go, Tommy's master pulled him up by the rope and walked him over to Halsten, still on his knees, mouth wet and spent.

"Suck him," he said. "Finish him."

Tommy dropped his head into Halsten's lap and did not stop until Halsten came down his throat.

I couldn't see Cockper anymore. He was close to Sprinkle. He had left to join the lesbians having their own fun.

I sent a question down the bond to Sprinkle. Where did he go?

Being a dildo, she said. Both ends. The queen on one side, Holta on the other. He is very happy about it.

And what about you?

Pisson's mother, Sprinkle said. Thirty seconds, maybe less. I have her clit under my tongue and she is already shaking.

I let the bond go quiet after that. Some things I did not need pictures for.

The terrace smelled of heavy animal musk, thick buttery cum, warm golden piss, sweat, and spiced drink. Bodies slapped and squelched. I looked over and saw Joren on his hands and knees, back arched, pushing his arse as high as he could. The horse man stood behind him, thick-limbed and broad, leather vest still open, and drove his enormous cock into Joren with slow, powerful strokes. The flared head stretched Joren’s hole obscenely wide, the ring pulled thin and shining, gripping the thick shaft as the horse man pushed deeper. I felt it all through the bond — Joren’s rush of raw strength holding his position, the burn and stretch of that massive cock filling him completely, the heavy slap of the horse man’s low balls against Joren’s taint with every thrust. Joren grunted low, muscles locked, taking every inch while the horse man fucked him harder, hips snapping, the wet sound loud and filthy.

I kept jumping from one to the other, each time I could see or hear someone come. I fed as much as I could, enjoying this scene of sex, celebrating the ordination of Pisson.

Bodies collapsed together in one massive, sticky, laughing pile. Joren sat down heavily, legs spread, hand still resting on his dick. I curled and hugged his softening cock, licking his cum-drenched skin.

“Great day,” Joren murmured through the bond.

I pressed a slow kiss to the cockhead.

“And you still have that nice cock smell,” I said.

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