Seeds of Heroism - Chapter 41
Chapter 41 – content: >!monster girl, multiple castrations, biting, electricity!<
*[A guide to the world of Bythos!](https://imgur.com/a/poZLPkK)*
A heavy silence hung over Jim, Liriel and Aramis as they made their way through the ruins of the institute. More than once, Zenobia and Inacea exchanged awkward looks at the mood that had gripped their companions since they had left Philine behind. They dipped down into the dark, musty basement and surrounded by darkness and stone walls, the sorceress couldn’t hold her curiosity back any more.
“Will that girl be all right? You all seemed to know her.”
Aramis hummed. “She will be. Hopefully. She’s strong.”
Jim had a feeling the beau wasn't talking about her muscles. He dodged a cobweb. “Mind your step. There’s about an inch of water down there, it can hide some holes in the floor.”
“Mind telling us where you’re bringing us? This place is a little spooky,” Ina asked.
“I fought some slimes here for a quest. While exploring it, I found this strange hole in the wall. There’s this… cave, I guess. It’s pitch-black in there, I thought it might make for a good hiding spot. Let us wait this whole thing out.”
*And then what?* he asked himself. He failed to come up with an answer. *Find a way to overthrow a queen, I suppose. And get away with it, so me and Liri can… can…* He sighed and adjusted his groin. God, if only Liriel didn’t put his balls in this ring. It was bad enough that his dick was still straining against its cage, but the pain in his packed, constrained balls was more than just distracting. It seemed to travel deeper to the inside of his nuts while at the same time climbing up to his stomach. Did that mean his nuts were losing the battle? Could balls get stress fractures? The thought of his fatigued manhood collapsing in on itself made him sweat.
Zenobia frowned. “Hole in the wall? These are the ruins of the arcane laboratories, aren’t they? Maybe whatever you found is the reason why they are in ruins now.”
“No, I don’t think so. I saw some old notes about the experiments they were doing down here. It sounded a lot like what you and Harald were researching… and I think it’s what led to people abandoning this place.” Water swished around his ankles as he stepped into the hallway at the bottom of the steps. “I think that hole is something else. Maybe you’ll know what it is when we get there.”
“Hey, does anybody have a light?” Ina asked.
“Hold on,” Zenobia said and ruffled in her bag until she produced a strange little wooden ring with a flat disk on top, out of which a sturdy loop of wire poked. With a whisper from the sorceress, the loop began crackling and sputtering until it started to glow. “There.”
“Huh.” Jim scratched his cheek. “I didn’t think you could use your magic like that.”
Their new light source lit the way further into the bowels of the old installation. Jim noticed a few hallways and rooms he had missed on his first visit, but most of them seemed to end a few metres in, owing to a collapsed ceiling or rotted doors barring a scriptorium or empty storage room.
He found his way to the room he had found the colony of slime girls in. Nothing remained of the painful battle he’d had, no puddles of blue or green slime they had to step around. It was as if, without their core, they all dissolved into the water.
Jim walked on, about to point out that the hole was just a bit further ahead, when something gurgled off to the side.
“Oooh!” An ocean-blue slime girl waved a wet limb towards them in greeting. She seemed smaller than the ones Jim fought – well, struggled with – before.
“Aww, how cute,” Ina cooed.
Encouraged by the auf, the slime girl wiggled towards the group, flowing over and around herself, her face shifting from being on her head to her stomach or even her limbs.
She reached Zenobia, the sorceress casting a wary glance at the creature. The slime intently studied her, looking her over from head to toe when –
“Bwo!” With an audible wet pop, the slime girl’s front, her chest, Jim supposed, bulged out, letting excess goo flow back down. When she was finished, the slime girl reached two dripping appendages to her newly formed tits and happily bounced and jiggled them. She hadn’t held back, her newly acquired boobs rivalled Zenobia’s.
“Uh, did she just…” Zenobia began.
Ina and Liriel giggled. “I think you’re her role model!” the elf said between snorts.
Aramis approached the slime with a calm smile, sinking to one knee and holding out a hand towards her. “Hello there, cutie. Nice to meet you.”
Jim sucked in air through his teeth. “Aramis, trust me, you don’t want to do this.”
“What a charming little thing you are. Say, can you form your body in other ways as well?”
She tilted her head to the side. “Gwuwee?” she asked.
“Right, like form a hand, for example. Like this!” He pointed to Liriel’s hand and the slime girl’s eyes followed.
A vacant look settled on her face as she made little sputters. Her concentration focused on one of her limbs, her new breasts drifted across her body, carried away by ripples and waves flowing through her. When one tit had reached her shoulder, she shot up and proudly presented her new hand with a chirrup.
“Yes, that’s amazing! Well done!”
She bubbled cheerfully, then a movement behind Aramis caught her attention. It was Liriel. The elf mimicked throwing a punch behind the foxkin. With another burble, the slime girl mimicked her, cheerfully punching her hand forward – right into Aramis’ crotch.
He whooped and his eyes bulged out. Cradling his nuts, he dropped to the ground. “Why? They only just stopped hurting from the wringer,” he sputtered.
[“Yay, good job!” Liriel exclaimed and clapped. The slime gurgled her excitement, wobbling in joy.](https://imgur.com/a/pm9POuv) A few more times, she tried to slam her wet fist into Aramis’ balls.
“Uhm, shouldn’t we go? They’re probably still after us,” Zenobia reminded them.
“Right,” Liriel said, smiling. She shooed the slime girl away. “Go hide now, little one. Bad men are coming, OK?” The slime warbled, trying to imitate Liriel some more until she seemed to understand that playtime was over. As Zenobia helped Aramis up off the floor, she watched the slime pick up an old tea pot. Bit by bit, she forced herself inside the spout until she was inside, then picked up the lid and put it on top of herself. Jim shuddered, reminded of another spout a slime had forced itself inside of.
Down a steep stairway and through a half-collapsed room, they walked until they reached the breach in the wall. Rocks and splinters were strewn around it and beyond, nothing but darkness loomed.
“This is creepy…” Liriel said, her tension visible in her rigid ears.
“For once, I agree,” Aramis said.
“For once?!” She glared at the foxkin, first at his face, then at his crotch.
A slender hand protectively cupped his nuts, making him jump. Zenobia stared right back at the elf, as if to say, ‘*Don’t you dare!*’. Liriel put her arms together and harrumphed.
“Wow, it really is pitch black. It’s like the light just… stops, right at the edge.” Ina curiously poked the ground. She was right – the cone of light from Zenobia’s ring stopped right where the wall would have been before the breach, as if stopped by some invisible force.
Jim frowned. Now that he thought about it, the only way he knew to stop light like that would be massive amounts of gravity, like a black hole. He had already carelessly stepped inside, so he knew that that couldn’t be it, but the thought still gave him pause.
“Uhm, once you’re inside, you can kind of see the ground right beneath you, up until a step out. And I don’t know how it works, but I also remember seeing lights in the distance,” he said to distract himself. “I was wondering if you might know anything about it, if it’s some kind of magic phenomenon.”
This time, Zenobia frowned. “No, I’ve never heard of anything like this. I think light magic can produce something so radiant that the shadow it casts is equally harsh, sort of drowning out other light sources if you will, but this goes way beyond that.” She nervously pulled on her lip and started muttering to herself. “The only thing I can think of that would… but then it would need to…”
“Hey, did you hear that?” Liriel asked. “I think I heard footsteps behind us.”
“Dammit, are they even going to search down here?” Ina asked. “You said you already went inside?” When he nodded, she grabbed Liriel’s hand. “Let’s hold hands so we don’t lose each other. I think we should move at least a few metres away from the hole.”
Liriel snapped up Jim’s hand and they both sheepishly smiled. Zenobia was next, entwining her fingers with Jim’s, which Liriel copied as soon as she saw. Zenobia’s other hand was still wrapped around Aramis’ nuts. “What? I *still* haven’t had a chance to get our womanizer inside of me. I already know what you girls are thinking, I won’t let you play ‘guess whose foot is kicking your balls’ in there.”
While Inacea guffawed, Liriel looked like she had just been caught with her hand in the cookie jar. Aramis cleared his throat and said, “Thank you, mia dolce maga.” His voice was noticeably strained. Her grip on his nuts really was *secure*.
Ina breathed deeply, staring at the dark hole. With a whispered ‘*Alright, here we go*’, she stepped forward and the dark covered her like a blanket, as if she had just stepped into and through an umbral wall.
“Ah!”
“W-what?” Liriel asked, still holding her hand.
“… it really is dark in here.” The others let out a breath they didn’t notice they had been holding. “Come on through, it’s weird but it doesn’t hurt.”
“OK, but don’t let go of my hand,” the elf said and gingerly put a foot through the breach.
One by one, they entered the strange place beyond the wall, a cool blackness drowning out their vision as if someone had switched it off.
For a moment, they just stood, breathing. His own breaths seemed as loud as a bellows and beyond it, he could hear his companions inhale and exhale along with him. Then, with a start, he realized he could hear so much more, the fabric of his clothes rustling, the leather of his boots creaking against the stone. His heartbeat and that of his friends.
“Wow,” he said and winced. He thought he had spoken normally, but his voice dinned in his ears like a trumpet. More quietly, he said, “I don’t remember it feeling so intense.”
“Let me try to make some light, I want to see what happens,” Zenobia said. With a loud crackle, a faint glowing orb the size of a pinhead lit up at hip height, and slowly illuminated Zenobia’s hand as well as the shimmering full outline of Aramis’ balls.
“Well, now we know at least where to aim,” Ina joked.
“I wouldn’t recommend it, you would get shocked by my ring,” was Zenobia’s surly answer.
“I gotta say, you holding that there of all places is a bit unnerving,” Aramis said.
“Don’t worry, I’ll be careful. I wouldn’t want anything down there to get hurt!” They could see her readjust her grip on his nuts, so her ring finger parted his sack down the middle, one nut to either side of the live wire. “There, now it’s pointing away from you instead of to your side. Better?”
The fox hummed, which immediately turned to a growl when Liriel said, “I’m sure he’s used to it, that little wire seems about his size.”
While Liriel and Ina giggled, Zenobia gently massaged his nuts, trying to assuage him when she said, “Hey, don’t worry, I can heighten my senses so that I’ll be able to feel even the smallest dicks, alright?”
“What? No, I’m not…” He sighed. “Forget it.”
“The floor is so smooth, like it was polished,” Jim said, kneeling down. He winced when the movement made his balls shift. “Ah man…” He swallowed the pain. “And then there are those lights. I didn’t dare inspect them last time, what do you guys think they are?”
He could feel his companions’ attention shift away from the uniform black stone floor to looking around until they spotted the lights in the distance. They emitted a soft and warm glow, hanging somewhere up in the air. Without being able to see anything else, it was impossible to judge how far away they were.
“I think I can hear them,” Liriel suddenly said. “They’re talking about us…” Even without seeing the elf, he could feel her close her eyes and concentrate. The others held their breaths. “It doesn’t sound like they know we’re here, so they sweep the rooms. Oh my, that’s very rude!”
Not sure what she had heard, Jim squeezed her hand. “How about we put a little bit more distance between us and the hole? I doubt they will even find it, and if they do, they won’t want to search in here, but better safe than sorry, right?”
The others agreed and they walked further into the darkness. Jim tried to count his steps and stopped the others after fifty. “That should be far enough. Can you still hear them, Liri?”
“Nn, I think they’re giving up. Oh!” she said and giggled. “Eri just nailed one of them in the berries and fled.”
“Eri?”
“The slime girl!”
“You gave her a name?”
“Nn, we’re friends now,” the elf informed him. “Wait… I hear something else…”
It didn’t take long for all of them to hear it: the sound of lots of boots crashing onto stone, again and again, in perfect conformity. This wasn’t one man, these were many, and they marched with discipline.
Steadily, inexorably, they came closer.
“You are absolutely sure they’re in here?” a man’s voice asked.
“Chrchr, of course! Don’t you trust me?”
“I don’t, no. And if I find out you are playing me, my men will tie you down and go to town on you until you shit dicks and bleed cum. Now, where do we go from here?”
The female voice answering him didn’t even waver. “Just a bit further, down here and you will have found the spring.”
“Spring?” Jim whispered.
“Let’s go a bit further and then I’ll put out the light… it sounds like they know about this place,” Zenobia said.
Creeping deeper into the dark, Jim felt the smooth stone floor give way to something softer. Before Zenobia surrendered them to the gloom, he crouched down and inspected the ground. All over the black stone, little white tendrils crept. The further away from the breach in the wall they got, the thicker those tendrils became, overlaying each other, until the ground had gone from black stone to white fibrous lamellae.
Then the darkness swallowed them and they huddled together. At the hole, now a faint white gap, they could see spectres lurking. One by one, they stepped through the breach and melted into the dark.
With bated breath, they waited, not daring to move a muscle. Minutes passed, and Jim felt himself relax, when-
“EAT THIS!” With a shout, someone suddenly moved towards them. Jim instinctually let go of Liriel’s and Zenobia’s hands and dove to the side. Cold steel grazed him, biting into his thigh.
“Argh!” He scraped along the ground. “Quick, light!” he yelled and drew his sword. He flipped on his back and brought his sword over him, just in time to block another strike.
“Jim! Are you OK?” Liriel screamed.
“Zenobia, light! Now!”
A small spark of light erupted in the dark and steel clashed against steel again, ringing in his ear. The ripple sent through his weapon stung in his arm.
Around them stood three people wearing chainmail and tabards, grins stretching their faces like their erections stretched their pants.
“The royal knights of Calvino?!” Ina yelled in disbelief, but her companions were busy drawing their weapons.
Liriel threw herself forward, slashing at the knight before her. “Jim!” She tried to push past the man in front of her, to get to Jim. In her haste, she didn’t see his knee shoot up. It struck the pit of her stomach and she gasped, doubled over.
The knight chuckled. Behind him, the elf could see Jim struggle to block strike after strike. On the other side of the party, Aramis had drawn a puny dagger, dancing in and out of the much longer range of his opponent’s sword.
“Wh-what’s going on? What are the knights doing here?” Ina stammered.
“Pull yourself together, girl!” Zenobia shouted. “This isn’t the time for hysterics!” She held a dagger similar to Aramis’s out and breathed a strange hum.
The knight opposite Liriel slashed out and she barely rolled away, clutching her stomach. “Start moving, girl!” Zenobia spat at the auf and threw her dagger at Liriel’s opponent.
“Tch.” He regarded the weapon coolly, and with a flick of his wrist, smacked it out of the air. His cocky grin froze. “Argh!” He spasmed, losing control of his limbs as electricity coursed through his body. His sword dropped to the ground.
Liriel lunged at him, determined not to let the opportunity the sorceress created go to waste. Her sword slipped underneath his armpit, sinking deep into him. The elf fell on top of him, and instead of trying to yank her sword free, she climbed over him, grabbed the knight’s sword and ran. “Jim!”
“Ye-yes…” Ina muttered. She watched Liriel drive the knight on top of him back. He shakily stood up. Aramis, meanwhile, was fighting alone. Without even a weapon in hand, Zenobia ran towards the foxkin. *She looks so determined*, Inacea idly thought. *Are they not scared?*
Dazed, she flicked her wrist and stared at the dagger Zenobia had thrown. *I should probably bring this to her.*
A man’s scream tore her out of her daze. With eyes wide as her palms, she stared at another knight, no, this one was a Cillian guard that came running at her. The spear in his hands was poised to run her through.
Screaming, she fell back. Without thinking, her hand performed that all too familiar flick of the wrist. She closed her eyes and stabbed.
“HIYAAAARH!” The guard stumbled and crashed to the ground. Immediately he curled up, screaming and thrashing. Ina looked at her hands, at the two chicken egg-sized ovals she was holding. One had been cleanly sliced in two, the two halves visibly deflating as they leaked their contents onto her palm. The other testicle still had the dagger lodged in it. She curiously lifted the weapon and saw that the nut stuck to the dagger’s tip, like some perverse cork tip to blunt the weapon.
The auf registered what she had done and let the chopped ball drop as if it were a snake.
Looking around, she saw that Liriel and Jim had dispatched the knight on their side and ran to help Aramis and Zenobia. She groggily followed them.
Seconds later, the other knight fell, but around them steps rang out.
“Run! Towards those lights!” Jim called and they followed.
“Sorry!” Ina yelled at Zenobia. She showed her the dagger, the leaking nut still attached to it. “This is yours!”
The sorceress pulled a face. “Keep it!”
Out of the shadows, more knights emerged, their silhouettes suddenly revealed as they neared the cone of light around Zenobia.
Ina stopped and flicked her wrist, but stared at the men in terror. Fear had gripped her heart, but luckily, Zenobia was quick to help her out. She snatched the balls from her grasp with both hands.
“You guys need to learn a lesson about leaving a lady alone!” she yelled. Crackles emanated from her hands. Then, lightning struck the testicles she was holding. In her hands, the balls jumbled around, so she didn’t know which two nuts formed a pair straight away. The three in the centre of her palms got it the worst, blackening and charring as lightning annihilated them. The surrounding testicles got off lighter, instead frying to a perfectly cooked golden-brown.
Needless to say, the knights weren’t a threat any more. Still, Zenobia turned to Ina with fury in her eyes. “I said, don’t stop moving!” She grabbed her hand and pulled her forward. “Just keep stealing their spunk tanks, I’ll handle the rest!”
Ina could only nod as she was dragged forward, towards the lights.
The orange glints grew as they neared, but rose up higher and higher as well. This time, she heard the group of men that attacked them. Three guards led by one of the royal knights burst forth from the dark, swinging their weapons.
Mechanically, Ina took away their testicles and handed them to Zenobia, dropping two in the process. She hoped they didn’t belong to the same guy. The sorceress’s slender hand managed to hold four of the slimy white things. One particularly big pair remained in Ina’s own hands. Zenobia prepared to roast another set of nuts, but if Ina was holding one guy’s pair in her hands, or she had dropped one of its siblings, the sorceress wouldn’t be able to stop the knights.
With a slight whine, she popped one of the nuts into her mouth. She slapped hand against hand as if applauding with the remaining gonad trapped between them, a thunderclap that hopefully hurt as the rubbery ball was compressed between her palms. Simultaneously, she bit down on the nut in her mouth. She tried her best to ignore how the oval burst between her teeth like overripe fruit, bursting with pulpy juice that coated her tongue. She chewed the gristly remains twice more, then spat out the testicle detritus and as much nutbutter as she could hope to.
Ina felt nauseous, and unfortunately, she couldn’t stop some of her saliva mixed with pulped gonad from sliding down her throat. She burped and was convinced that she would never be able to eat eggs again.
Two more groups the auf and the sorceress dispatched like that, along with some timely help from Jim, Liriel and Aramis.
As they got closer, Ina started to be able to make out shapes in the sparse glow. Before them were trees, seemingly, their trunks wider even the biggest trees she had ever seen before. How could they grow down here?
But as they reached and ran past the first trees, she realized they weren’t trees at all. Their trunks were a sky-blue colour and devoid of the grooves and cracks of bark. Looking up, she saw the lights were clusters of luminous orange orbs hanging like dew drops from the mushroom caps. The caps themselves were made up of a knot of tubes. It was as if their stalks were crowned by an octopus that had its tentacles in a tangle as it grabbed the orange spheres. [Ina estimated a single cap was wide enough to cover her Faerie’s inn back in Smâhspera.](https://imgur.com/a/HEyfRs1)
Breathing hard, the party stopped and turned. With their backs to a particularly big mushroom stalk, they stood in a circle, ready to defend against more attackers.
They were all out of breath, but Zenobia and Ina particularly so.
“At least… we can see… here,” Jim said between breaths.
“Zenobia, Inacea, stay behind us,” Aramis said. He took off the bow that was hanging from a strap on his back and let it drop to the ground, then drew his dagger. “We’ll defend you.”
Zenobia nodded, but Ina pulled him back and stepped forward. She took his dagger off of him. “No, you stay in the back, shoot your bow. I’ll handle any that get close.”
The foxkin’s eyes flicked to her sooty hand, and from there to Ina’s messy face, off-white mush still dribbling from the corners of her mouth. “Alright then… don’t go crazy, you hear?” He took up his bow again and quickly strung it. Fishing an arrow out of his quiver, he stepped onto a mushroom’s root to give himself some elevation.
The darkness was noisy with rattling chainmail, the sounds of boots slamming the ground and the shouts of men.
---
“Oooh, it hurts! It hurts so much!” lord Kasper sobbed. He was on the wet ground, holding his groin and crying like a little girl. At least in Yohanna’s opinion.
“Come on, Kasper, it can’t hurt *that* bad.”
“It does! The pain is so bad!”
She scoffed. “Come on, it was a little slime! Their arms are basically water. It’s not like your tiny nuts just got flattened by a hard kneecap or anything.” He didn’t answer, crying and sobbing instead. “Wait, don’t tell me you’re not just a regular virgin but a ballbusting virgin as well?”
He stifled his cries a little but refused to answer. “Hah, that’s amazing! How come you never had your little ballsies smashed? Did mummy never bend you over her knee and give your nuggets some slaps for not eating your veggies?” she laughed.
“She passed away when I was still a babe in arms, you know that!”
Steps sloshed along the wet floor and Yohanna turned to the newcomer. “I have to say, this was a fabulous idea you’ve had, sir William. To think this dumbass would actually come back to Hôdoburg. And we owe this victory to that informant you mentioned?”
The man with the greasy black hair nodded. “A scoundrel, but she has her uses. I will dispatch of her once we are done here.”
Yohanna hummed. “I thought you would be telling me something like ‘don’t count your chickens before they hatch’ or something. ‘We will only be victorious once we have them by the balls’,” she said in a mock baritone voice.
He scowled. “No, we have them right where we need to. My men are tiring them out as we speak. By the time the rest of the involved parties have gathered, we will be ready to seize them.”
“The rest…? The only ones who should know about this are little Kasper here and me,” the noble lady said.
“I suppose one of those parties would be me,” another man said as he descended the steps into the room at a measured pace.
“Harald the dickless!” Yohanna said gleefully. “Lovely to see you here. Well, I suppose you would know about Jim, but shouldn’t you be caring for the princess Cecilia?”
“Oh, I am merely here as an observer,” Harald said, ignoring the rude nickname she gave him. “I do have a personal interest in a companion of this Jim. I thought it rude to not be present when it all comes to an end. No, I was invited here by someone else. Someone who should soon join us.”
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*I wasn’t happy with just adding the illustration at the end of the chapter, now it’s linked at the relevant spot in the chapter. That necessitated putting the map at the top of the chapter to avoid potential spoilers. Let me know if you prefer illustrations at the end or something different entirely!*
*Also, surprise double chapter! Got some time off work and managed to write more than usual. Just in time, too, since this whole situation will take multiple chapters.*
*[A guide to the world of Bythos!](https://imgur.com/a/poZLPkK)*
A heavy silence hung over Jim, Liriel and Aramis as they made their way through the ruins of the institute. More than once, Zenobia and Inacea exchanged awkward looks at the mood that had gripped their companions since they had left Philine behind. They dipped down into the dark, musty basement and surrounded by darkness and stone walls, the sorceress couldn’t hold her curiosity back any more.
“Will that girl be all right? You all seemed to know her.”
Aramis hummed. “She will be. Hopefully. She’s strong.”
Jim had a feeling the beau wasn't talking about her muscles. He dodged a cobweb. “Mind your step. There’s about an inch of water down there, it can hide some holes in the floor.”
“Mind telling us where you’re bringing us? This place is a little spooky,” Ina asked.
“I fought some slimes here for a quest. While exploring it, I found this strange hole in the wall. There’s this… cave, I guess. It’s pitch-black in there, I thought it might make for a good hiding spot. Let us wait this whole thing out.”
*And then what?* he asked himself. He failed to come up with an answer. *Find a way to overthrow a queen, I suppose. And get away with it, so me and Liri can… can…* He sighed and adjusted his groin. God, if only Liriel didn’t put his balls in this ring. It was bad enough that his dick was still straining against its cage, but the pain in his packed, constrained balls was more than just distracting. It seemed to travel deeper to the inside of his nuts while at the same time climbing up to his stomach. Did that mean his nuts were losing the battle? Could balls get stress fractures? The thought of his fatigued manhood collapsing in on itself made him sweat.
Zenobia frowned. “Hole in the wall? These are the ruins of the arcane laboratories, aren’t they? Maybe whatever you found is the reason why they are in ruins now.”
“No, I don’t think so. I saw some old notes about the experiments they were doing down here. It sounded a lot like what you and Harald were researching… and I think it’s what led to people abandoning this place.” Water swished around his ankles as he stepped into the hallway at the bottom of the steps. “I think that hole is something else. Maybe you’ll know what it is when we get there.”
“Hey, does anybody have a light?” Ina asked.
“Hold on,” Zenobia said and ruffled in her bag until she produced a strange little wooden ring with a flat disk on top, out of which a sturdy loop of wire poked. With a whisper from the sorceress, the loop began crackling and sputtering until it started to glow. “There.”
“Huh.” Jim scratched his cheek. “I didn’t think you could use your magic like that.”
Their new light source lit the way further into the bowels of the old installation. Jim noticed a few hallways and rooms he had missed on his first visit, but most of them seemed to end a few metres in, owing to a collapsed ceiling or rotted doors barring a scriptorium or empty storage room.
He found his way to the room he had found the colony of slime girls in. Nothing remained of the painful battle he’d had, no puddles of blue or green slime they had to step around. It was as if, without their core, they all dissolved into the water.
Jim walked on, about to point out that the hole was just a bit further ahead, when something gurgled off to the side.
“Oooh!” An ocean-blue slime girl waved a wet limb towards them in greeting. She seemed smaller than the ones Jim fought – well, struggled with – before.
“Aww, how cute,” Ina cooed.
Encouraged by the auf, the slime girl wiggled towards the group, flowing over and around herself, her face shifting from being on her head to her stomach or even her limbs.
She reached Zenobia, the sorceress casting a wary glance at the creature. The slime intently studied her, looking her over from head to toe when –
“Bwo!” With an audible wet pop, the slime girl’s front, her chest, Jim supposed, bulged out, letting excess goo flow back down. When she was finished, the slime girl reached two dripping appendages to her newly formed tits and happily bounced and jiggled them. She hadn’t held back, her newly acquired boobs rivalled Zenobia’s.
“Uh, did she just…” Zenobia began.
Ina and Liriel giggled. “I think you’re her role model!” the elf said between snorts.
Aramis approached the slime with a calm smile, sinking to one knee and holding out a hand towards her. “Hello there, cutie. Nice to meet you.”
Jim sucked in air through his teeth. “Aramis, trust me, you don’t want to do this.”
“What a charming little thing you are. Say, can you form your body in other ways as well?”
She tilted her head to the side. “Gwuwee?” she asked.
“Right, like form a hand, for example. Like this!” He pointed to Liriel’s hand and the slime girl’s eyes followed.
A vacant look settled on her face as she made little sputters. Her concentration focused on one of her limbs, her new breasts drifted across her body, carried away by ripples and waves flowing through her. When one tit had reached her shoulder, she shot up and proudly presented her new hand with a chirrup.
“Yes, that’s amazing! Well done!”
She bubbled cheerfully, then a movement behind Aramis caught her attention. It was Liriel. The elf mimicked throwing a punch behind the foxkin. With another burble, the slime girl mimicked her, cheerfully punching her hand forward – right into Aramis’ crotch.
He whooped and his eyes bulged out. Cradling his nuts, he dropped to the ground. “Why? They only just stopped hurting from the wringer,” he sputtered.
[“Yay, good job!” Liriel exclaimed and clapped. The slime gurgled her excitement, wobbling in joy.](https://imgur.com/a/pm9POuv) A few more times, she tried to slam her wet fist into Aramis’ balls.
“Uhm, shouldn’t we go? They’re probably still after us,” Zenobia reminded them.
“Right,” Liriel said, smiling. She shooed the slime girl away. “Go hide now, little one. Bad men are coming, OK?” The slime warbled, trying to imitate Liriel some more until she seemed to understand that playtime was over. As Zenobia helped Aramis up off the floor, she watched the slime pick up an old tea pot. Bit by bit, she forced herself inside the spout until she was inside, then picked up the lid and put it on top of herself. Jim shuddered, reminded of another spout a slime had forced itself inside of.
Down a steep stairway and through a half-collapsed room, they walked until they reached the breach in the wall. Rocks and splinters were strewn around it and beyond, nothing but darkness loomed.
“This is creepy…” Liriel said, her tension visible in her rigid ears.
“For once, I agree,” Aramis said.
“For once?!” She glared at the foxkin, first at his face, then at his crotch.
A slender hand protectively cupped his nuts, making him jump. Zenobia stared right back at the elf, as if to say, ‘*Don’t you dare!*’. Liriel put her arms together and harrumphed.
“Wow, it really is pitch black. It’s like the light just… stops, right at the edge.” Ina curiously poked the ground. She was right – the cone of light from Zenobia’s ring stopped right where the wall would have been before the breach, as if stopped by some invisible force.
Jim frowned. Now that he thought about it, the only way he knew to stop light like that would be massive amounts of gravity, like a black hole. He had already carelessly stepped inside, so he knew that that couldn’t be it, but the thought still gave him pause.
“Uhm, once you’re inside, you can kind of see the ground right beneath you, up until a step out. And I don’t know how it works, but I also remember seeing lights in the distance,” he said to distract himself. “I was wondering if you might know anything about it, if it’s some kind of magic phenomenon.”
This time, Zenobia frowned. “No, I’ve never heard of anything like this. I think light magic can produce something so radiant that the shadow it casts is equally harsh, sort of drowning out other light sources if you will, but this goes way beyond that.” She nervously pulled on her lip and started muttering to herself. “The only thing I can think of that would… but then it would need to…”
“Hey, did you hear that?” Liriel asked. “I think I heard footsteps behind us.”
“Dammit, are they even going to search down here?” Ina asked. “You said you already went inside?” When he nodded, she grabbed Liriel’s hand. “Let’s hold hands so we don’t lose each other. I think we should move at least a few metres away from the hole.”
Liriel snapped up Jim’s hand and they both sheepishly smiled. Zenobia was next, entwining her fingers with Jim’s, which Liriel copied as soon as she saw. Zenobia’s other hand was still wrapped around Aramis’ nuts. “What? I *still* haven’t had a chance to get our womanizer inside of me. I already know what you girls are thinking, I won’t let you play ‘guess whose foot is kicking your balls’ in there.”
While Inacea guffawed, Liriel looked like she had just been caught with her hand in the cookie jar. Aramis cleared his throat and said, “Thank you, mia dolce maga.” His voice was noticeably strained. Her grip on his nuts really was *secure*.
Ina breathed deeply, staring at the dark hole. With a whispered ‘*Alright, here we go*’, she stepped forward and the dark covered her like a blanket, as if she had just stepped into and through an umbral wall.
“Ah!”
“W-what?” Liriel asked, still holding her hand.
“… it really is dark in here.” The others let out a breath they didn’t notice they had been holding. “Come on through, it’s weird but it doesn’t hurt.”
“OK, but don’t let go of my hand,” the elf said and gingerly put a foot through the breach.
One by one, they entered the strange place beyond the wall, a cool blackness drowning out their vision as if someone had switched it off.
For a moment, they just stood, breathing. His own breaths seemed as loud as a bellows and beyond it, he could hear his companions inhale and exhale along with him. Then, with a start, he realized he could hear so much more, the fabric of his clothes rustling, the leather of his boots creaking against the stone. His heartbeat and that of his friends.
“Wow,” he said and winced. He thought he had spoken normally, but his voice dinned in his ears like a trumpet. More quietly, he said, “I don’t remember it feeling so intense.”
“Let me try to make some light, I want to see what happens,” Zenobia said. With a loud crackle, a faint glowing orb the size of a pinhead lit up at hip height, and slowly illuminated Zenobia’s hand as well as the shimmering full outline of Aramis’ balls.
“Well, now we know at least where to aim,” Ina joked.
“I wouldn’t recommend it, you would get shocked by my ring,” was Zenobia’s surly answer.
“I gotta say, you holding that there of all places is a bit unnerving,” Aramis said.
“Don’t worry, I’ll be careful. I wouldn’t want anything down there to get hurt!” They could see her readjust her grip on his nuts, so her ring finger parted his sack down the middle, one nut to either side of the live wire. “There, now it’s pointing away from you instead of to your side. Better?”
The fox hummed, which immediately turned to a growl when Liriel said, “I’m sure he’s used to it, that little wire seems about his size.”
While Liriel and Ina giggled, Zenobia gently massaged his nuts, trying to assuage him when she said, “Hey, don’t worry, I can heighten my senses so that I’ll be able to feel even the smallest dicks, alright?”
“What? No, I’m not…” He sighed. “Forget it.”
“The floor is so smooth, like it was polished,” Jim said, kneeling down. He winced when the movement made his balls shift. “Ah man…” He swallowed the pain. “And then there are those lights. I didn’t dare inspect them last time, what do you guys think they are?”
He could feel his companions’ attention shift away from the uniform black stone floor to looking around until they spotted the lights in the distance. They emitted a soft and warm glow, hanging somewhere up in the air. Without being able to see anything else, it was impossible to judge how far away they were.
“I think I can hear them,” Liriel suddenly said. “They’re talking about us…” Even without seeing the elf, he could feel her close her eyes and concentrate. The others held their breaths. “It doesn’t sound like they know we’re here, so they sweep the rooms. Oh my, that’s very rude!”
Not sure what she had heard, Jim squeezed her hand. “How about we put a little bit more distance between us and the hole? I doubt they will even find it, and if they do, they won’t want to search in here, but better safe than sorry, right?”
The others agreed and they walked further into the darkness. Jim tried to count his steps and stopped the others after fifty. “That should be far enough. Can you still hear them, Liri?”
“Nn, I think they’re giving up. Oh!” she said and giggled. “Eri just nailed one of them in the berries and fled.”
“Eri?”
“The slime girl!”
“You gave her a name?”
“Nn, we’re friends now,” the elf informed him. “Wait… I hear something else…”
It didn’t take long for all of them to hear it: the sound of lots of boots crashing onto stone, again and again, in perfect conformity. This wasn’t one man, these were many, and they marched with discipline.
Steadily, inexorably, they came closer.
“You are absolutely sure they’re in here?” a man’s voice asked.
“Chrchr, of course! Don’t you trust me?”
“I don’t, no. And if I find out you are playing me, my men will tie you down and go to town on you until you shit dicks and bleed cum. Now, where do we go from here?”
The female voice answering him didn’t even waver. “Just a bit further, down here and you will have found the spring.”
“Spring?” Jim whispered.
“Let’s go a bit further and then I’ll put out the light… it sounds like they know about this place,” Zenobia said.
Creeping deeper into the dark, Jim felt the smooth stone floor give way to something softer. Before Zenobia surrendered them to the gloom, he crouched down and inspected the ground. All over the black stone, little white tendrils crept. The further away from the breach in the wall they got, the thicker those tendrils became, overlaying each other, until the ground had gone from black stone to white fibrous lamellae.
Then the darkness swallowed them and they huddled together. At the hole, now a faint white gap, they could see spectres lurking. One by one, they stepped through the breach and melted into the dark.
With bated breath, they waited, not daring to move a muscle. Minutes passed, and Jim felt himself relax, when-
“EAT THIS!” With a shout, someone suddenly moved towards them. Jim instinctually let go of Liriel’s and Zenobia’s hands and dove to the side. Cold steel grazed him, biting into his thigh.
“Argh!” He scraped along the ground. “Quick, light!” he yelled and drew his sword. He flipped on his back and brought his sword over him, just in time to block another strike.
“Jim! Are you OK?” Liriel screamed.
“Zenobia, light! Now!”
A small spark of light erupted in the dark and steel clashed against steel again, ringing in his ear. The ripple sent through his weapon stung in his arm.
Around them stood three people wearing chainmail and tabards, grins stretching their faces like their erections stretched their pants.
“The royal knights of Calvino?!” Ina yelled in disbelief, but her companions were busy drawing their weapons.
Liriel threw herself forward, slashing at the knight before her. “Jim!” She tried to push past the man in front of her, to get to Jim. In her haste, she didn’t see his knee shoot up. It struck the pit of her stomach and she gasped, doubled over.
The knight chuckled. Behind him, the elf could see Jim struggle to block strike after strike. On the other side of the party, Aramis had drawn a puny dagger, dancing in and out of the much longer range of his opponent’s sword.
“Wh-what’s going on? What are the knights doing here?” Ina stammered.
“Pull yourself together, girl!” Zenobia shouted. “This isn’t the time for hysterics!” She held a dagger similar to Aramis’s out and breathed a strange hum.
The knight opposite Liriel slashed out and she barely rolled away, clutching her stomach. “Start moving, girl!” Zenobia spat at the auf and threw her dagger at Liriel’s opponent.
“Tch.” He regarded the weapon coolly, and with a flick of his wrist, smacked it out of the air. His cocky grin froze. “Argh!” He spasmed, losing control of his limbs as electricity coursed through his body. His sword dropped to the ground.
Liriel lunged at him, determined not to let the opportunity the sorceress created go to waste. Her sword slipped underneath his armpit, sinking deep into him. The elf fell on top of him, and instead of trying to yank her sword free, she climbed over him, grabbed the knight’s sword and ran. “Jim!”
“Ye-yes…” Ina muttered. She watched Liriel drive the knight on top of him back. He shakily stood up. Aramis, meanwhile, was fighting alone. Without even a weapon in hand, Zenobia ran towards the foxkin. *She looks so determined*, Inacea idly thought. *Are they not scared?*
Dazed, she flicked her wrist and stared at the dagger Zenobia had thrown. *I should probably bring this to her.*
A man’s scream tore her out of her daze. With eyes wide as her palms, she stared at another knight, no, this one was a Cillian guard that came running at her. The spear in his hands was poised to run her through.
Screaming, she fell back. Without thinking, her hand performed that all too familiar flick of the wrist. She closed her eyes and stabbed.
“HIYAAAARH!” The guard stumbled and crashed to the ground. Immediately he curled up, screaming and thrashing. Ina looked at her hands, at the two chicken egg-sized ovals she was holding. One had been cleanly sliced in two, the two halves visibly deflating as they leaked their contents onto her palm. The other testicle still had the dagger lodged in it. She curiously lifted the weapon and saw that the nut stuck to the dagger’s tip, like some perverse cork tip to blunt the weapon.
The auf registered what she had done and let the chopped ball drop as if it were a snake.
Looking around, she saw that Liriel and Jim had dispatched the knight on their side and ran to help Aramis and Zenobia. She groggily followed them.
Seconds later, the other knight fell, but around them steps rang out.
“Run! Towards those lights!” Jim called and they followed.
“Sorry!” Ina yelled at Zenobia. She showed her the dagger, the leaking nut still attached to it. “This is yours!”
The sorceress pulled a face. “Keep it!”
Out of the shadows, more knights emerged, their silhouettes suddenly revealed as they neared the cone of light around Zenobia.
Ina stopped and flicked her wrist, but stared at the men in terror. Fear had gripped her heart, but luckily, Zenobia was quick to help her out. She snatched the balls from her grasp with both hands.
“You guys need to learn a lesson about leaving a lady alone!” she yelled. Crackles emanated from her hands. Then, lightning struck the testicles she was holding. In her hands, the balls jumbled around, so she didn’t know which two nuts formed a pair straight away. The three in the centre of her palms got it the worst, blackening and charring as lightning annihilated them. The surrounding testicles got off lighter, instead frying to a perfectly cooked golden-brown.
Needless to say, the knights weren’t a threat any more. Still, Zenobia turned to Ina with fury in her eyes. “I said, don’t stop moving!” She grabbed her hand and pulled her forward. “Just keep stealing their spunk tanks, I’ll handle the rest!”
Ina could only nod as she was dragged forward, towards the lights.
The orange glints grew as they neared, but rose up higher and higher as well. This time, she heard the group of men that attacked them. Three guards led by one of the royal knights burst forth from the dark, swinging their weapons.
Mechanically, Ina took away their testicles and handed them to Zenobia, dropping two in the process. She hoped they didn’t belong to the same guy. The sorceress’s slender hand managed to hold four of the slimy white things. One particularly big pair remained in Ina’s own hands. Zenobia prepared to roast another set of nuts, but if Ina was holding one guy’s pair in her hands, or she had dropped one of its siblings, the sorceress wouldn’t be able to stop the knights.
With a slight whine, she popped one of the nuts into her mouth. She slapped hand against hand as if applauding with the remaining gonad trapped between them, a thunderclap that hopefully hurt as the rubbery ball was compressed between her palms. Simultaneously, she bit down on the nut in her mouth. She tried her best to ignore how the oval burst between her teeth like overripe fruit, bursting with pulpy juice that coated her tongue. She chewed the gristly remains twice more, then spat out the testicle detritus and as much nutbutter as she could hope to.
Ina felt nauseous, and unfortunately, she couldn’t stop some of her saliva mixed with pulped gonad from sliding down her throat. She burped and was convinced that she would never be able to eat eggs again.
Two more groups the auf and the sorceress dispatched like that, along with some timely help from Jim, Liriel and Aramis.
As they got closer, Ina started to be able to make out shapes in the sparse glow. Before them were trees, seemingly, their trunks wider even the biggest trees she had ever seen before. How could they grow down here?
But as they reached and ran past the first trees, she realized they weren’t trees at all. Their trunks were a sky-blue colour and devoid of the grooves and cracks of bark. Looking up, she saw the lights were clusters of luminous orange orbs hanging like dew drops from the mushroom caps. The caps themselves were made up of a knot of tubes. It was as if their stalks were crowned by an octopus that had its tentacles in a tangle as it grabbed the orange spheres. [Ina estimated a single cap was wide enough to cover her Faerie’s inn back in Smâhspera.](https://imgur.com/a/HEyfRs1)
Breathing hard, the party stopped and turned. With their backs to a particularly big mushroom stalk, they stood in a circle, ready to defend against more attackers.
They were all out of breath, but Zenobia and Ina particularly so.
“At least… we can see… here,” Jim said between breaths.
“Zenobia, Inacea, stay behind us,” Aramis said. He took off the bow that was hanging from a strap on his back and let it drop to the ground, then drew his dagger. “We’ll defend you.”
Zenobia nodded, but Ina pulled him back and stepped forward. She took his dagger off of him. “No, you stay in the back, shoot your bow. I’ll handle any that get close.”
The foxkin’s eyes flicked to her sooty hand, and from there to Ina’s messy face, off-white mush still dribbling from the corners of her mouth. “Alright then… don’t go crazy, you hear?” He took up his bow again and quickly strung it. Fishing an arrow out of his quiver, he stepped onto a mushroom’s root to give himself some elevation.
The darkness was noisy with rattling chainmail, the sounds of boots slamming the ground and the shouts of men.
---
“Oooh, it hurts! It hurts so much!” lord Kasper sobbed. He was on the wet ground, holding his groin and crying like a little girl. At least in Yohanna’s opinion.
“Come on, Kasper, it can’t hurt *that* bad.”
“It does! The pain is so bad!”
She scoffed. “Come on, it was a little slime! Their arms are basically water. It’s not like your tiny nuts just got flattened by a hard kneecap or anything.” He didn’t answer, crying and sobbing instead. “Wait, don’t tell me you’re not just a regular virgin but a ballbusting virgin as well?”
He stifled his cries a little but refused to answer. “Hah, that’s amazing! How come you never had your little ballsies smashed? Did mummy never bend you over her knee and give your nuggets some slaps for not eating your veggies?” she laughed.
“She passed away when I was still a babe in arms, you know that!”
Steps sloshed along the wet floor and Yohanna turned to the newcomer. “I have to say, this was a fabulous idea you’ve had, sir William. To think this dumbass would actually come back to Hôdoburg. And we owe this victory to that informant you mentioned?”
The man with the greasy black hair nodded. “A scoundrel, but she has her uses. I will dispatch of her once we are done here.”
Yohanna hummed. “I thought you would be telling me something like ‘don’t count your chickens before they hatch’ or something. ‘We will only be victorious once we have them by the balls’,” she said in a mock baritone voice.
He scowled. “No, we have them right where we need to. My men are tiring them out as we speak. By the time the rest of the involved parties have gathered, we will be ready to seize them.”
“The rest…? The only ones who should know about this are little Kasper here and me,” the noble lady said.
“I suppose one of those parties would be me,” another man said as he descended the steps into the room at a measured pace.
“Harald the dickless!” Yohanna said gleefully. “Lovely to see you here. Well, I suppose you would know about Jim, but shouldn’t you be caring for the princess Cecilia?”
“Oh, I am merely here as an observer,” Harald said, ignoring the rude nickname she gave him. “I do have a personal interest in a companion of this Jim. I thought it rude to not be present when it all comes to an end. No, I was invited here by someone else. Someone who should soon join us.”
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*I wasn’t happy with just adding the illustration at the end of the chapter, now it’s linked at the relevant spot in the chapter. That necessitated putting the map at the top of the chapter to avoid potential spoilers. Let me know if you prefer illustrations at the end or something different entirely!*
*Also, surprise double chapter! Got some time off work and managed to write more than usual. Just in time, too, since this whole situation will take multiple chapters.*
