v2 CHAPTER FORTY-NINE: (18+) In which the basement of memory plays host to carnal communion and chilly reflection
Note: the image below is not just black, but might be hard to see in strong light / light background
Una tumbled downward into shadows, landing with a thump on something soft and yielding. Is this the slope of the pit I was standing above? She only had a moment to think, and then she was sliding, the surface beneath her growing slick and steep.
Una tried to grab at the ground, but her hands slipped on the strange material as momentum carried her downward. She felt a sharp pain at her shoulders, and her coat was yanked away, leaving her bare.
Now she slid faster, her speed increasing; the sound of the surrounding air changed, and Una realized she now moved through some sort of tunnel. Only darkness surrounded her. Her unclothed body was now coated in whatever slippery stuff lined the surface she moved across; something like oil, fragrant with the scents of sandalwood and jasmine. She tried again to grasp her surroundings, but the tunnel was too slick, and her hands ran frictionlessly along the surface. She yelled in frustration, but no echo answered her cries.
Una felt her velocity increase, and her descent turned vertical; she dropped through open air and landed on something soft. Wherever she was, it was still black as a sealed cistern. Una felt her way forward with hands and feet. The floor was spongy beneath her but felt like fabric. With surprise, she realized she was crawling over mounded pillows and rugs.
Somewhere ahead of her, a noise like a faint sigh made her stop. She tilted her head and listened, and it came again, a soft murmur of pleasure. Una crept forward towards the source of the sound, still on hands and knees to ensure she didn’t lose her balance in the disorienting darkness.
“Hello?” Her voice came out as a breathy whisper, any echoes muffled by the plush fabric around her. No response sounded in the darkness.
The cushions and plush surfaces continued on and on, and now she heard more sounds. A grunt of exertion. A gasp of ecstasy. The rustle of fabric and skin rubbing against skin. She moved slowly and silently towards the noises of passion. Her hand touched something soft and warm: someone’s thigh, moving rhythmically as the owner writhed in enjoyment. Una felt a thrill run through her at the contact.
She heard a low voice groan with satisfaction, and another voice cry out in delight, this one higher pitched. The sounds of a kiss, of skin slapping against skin, and wet noises of slippery contact, reached her ears. Una crawled closer, drawn to the heat and the scent of sex. The smell of perfume and musk filled the air, entering her lungs as she breathed hard.
What was happening here? Many voices and smells mingled; in the darkness amidst cushions and blankets, it was impossible to tell how many people were engaged in carnal activity, or how they had arranged themselves. The only certainty was that she was far from alone in this place of pleasure.
None of the participants spoke. Una moved forward again, in a different direction, and found two pairs of legs in front of her—one set slim and delicate, the other furred and muscular beneath them. The smaller pair of legs moved up and down, rocking against their partner in mid -intercourse.
A hand met Una’s fingers at her side, and she felt herself drawn closer to another person. “Oh!” Una gasped, startled. “Hello?” Instead of a spoken reply, the stranger brought Una’s hand to a warm mound of flesh, which the succubus recognized instantly as a breast: small and pert, with nipples already stiffening.
She flinched momentarily when she felt hands exploring her own form, running over her hips, caressing her breasts, squeezing her ass—more than two hands, she realized, possibly more than four.
In front of her, Una’s unseen partner pressed a pair of lips against Una’s mouth; she responded in kind, kissing back, feeling her own nipples grow hard in excitement. The woman she embraced was petite, with long hair falling down past the small of her back. Giving in to instinct, Una wrapped her hands around her mysterious paramour, pulling her close and grinding her hips against the stranger. She felt her own arousal growing and knew she must be moistening with need.
Larger hands grasped Una’s hips from behind, and another body, larger and more solidly built, pressed itself against hers. The stranger’s erection, already hard and erect, prodded her plump backside, and she pushed backwards, seeking contact with this new partner.
Her lover in front of her broke the kiss, and Una felt a tongue lick a path down her chest and belly to reach her pussy, lapping at the moisture between her folds. Una’s head fell forward with a moan, and she felt fingers reach between her buttocks and tease the opening of her anus, lubricated by the oil still coating her body.
Now she smelled and sensed something else in front of her: another pussy, dripping with juices and begging to be tasted. Una strained to explore this new prospect with her mouth and felt the stranger shudder as her tongue made its way inside. Her hips bucked as one lover tongued her clit and another probed her asshole. More hands were caressing her feet, and when she felt someone stroking her horns, Una cried out in pleasure. Her partners responded with sighs and moans of joy, and a susurrus of pleasure rose around her.
What the fuck, she thought between gasps. This is a crazy dream… but it’s better than fighting monsters. Could this be where Yael’s memories of—
Rational thought vanished as the cock at her rear slid into her, filling her with delicious pressure and friction. The mouth on her cunt kept licking, even as Una struggled to concentrate on pleasuring the other woman. She rocked her hips, taking as much of her current lover as possible, and heard a satisfied sigh in the darkness. Una’s fingers curled into the latest woman’s muscular thighs, and the stranger’s hands gripped Una’s head, holding it in place and urging her onward.
The man behind Una was fucking her asshole now, slowly and steadily, and her hips responded in kind, moving back and forth to meet his thrusts. She moaned, her face pressed against the stranger’s pussy, and felt unknown hands move to her breasts, teasing her erect nipples.
Una’s orgasm was building, and she wanted to come, but she didn’t want to lose her grip on the stranger’s clitoris, or the cock inside her; she had to finish the woman in front of her. Her efforts intensified, and she heard her partner cry out in delight as Una flicked her tongue across her clit, faster and faster. The woman in front of her came with a loud shout of joy, grinding her hips against Una, rocking her erratically against the lover behind, whose strokes became more urgent and intense.
The cock pounded harder and faster, balls slapping her ass, and she pushed back, meeting him eagerly. A small, hungry mouth beneath her kept up its own efforts, constantly lashing at her clit. Hands on her nipples pinched and twisted, and Una groaned. Her orgasm was so, so close, just out of reach…
A hand smacked her on her right ass cheek, and the shock of the blow was enough to send her tumbling over the edge. The succubus shuddered as waves of pleasure coursed through her, and she felt the cock in her rear twitch. A hot stream of cum shot into her depths, accompanied by a low moan from her partner. Una’s climax intensified, and her whole body shook. She felt her tail twitch and grow, sprouting from her spine with a wet squelch and an aftershock of ecstasy.
The person behind her pulled his cock out of her with a sigh of contentment and rolled away back, leaving her ass gaping and leaking semen. Una slumped forward, exhausted, and her face fell into soft, yielding flesh: the lush bosom of yet another partner. The succubus nuzzled into it happily, and a pair of hands stroked her hair.
A hand found her tail and ran along its slick, sensitive surface; the touch was electrifying, like the first stroke of a lover’s tongue. She moaned and felt a pair of lips kiss her tail’s tapered tip before sucking it into their mouth.
Una shuddered with renewed lust, and her hands reached out to explore the body beneath her. The breasts she rested upon were soft and ample, and she squeezed them gently while she felt her way downwards, encountering soft curves of flesh that gave beneath her fingers, then wide hips. Her hands traveled lower, and she found a thick bush of hair, and jutting out of it, a hard shaft: a cock! She wrapped her hand around the member, feeling its heat against her palm. It twitched, and her mystery lover gasped, writhing beneath her.
Someone else had her tail, and that lover had a mouth full of Una’s demonic appendage. As Una’s tongue kissed the cock in front of her, she felt her tail slide deeper into a throat that vibrated with a muffled moan. More unseen hands had her other end; they positioned her legs and guided her hips down onto a yet another cock, waiting below to slip into her slick pussy.
Una grunted in wordless pleasure as she impaled herself on the latest dick. Another hand found her clit, and the fingers rubbed and pinched it as she began riding the cock. Her tail slid in and out of a warm, tight throat, and Una licked up and down the soft, feminine girl-dick in front of her, her rhythms synchronizing. A thrust of her tail, the bounce of her hips, the motion of her neck. The anonymous lover’s hand moved faster, rubbing her clitoris in circles.
She became a hungry machine, devouring and being devoured, her body responding to the sensual demands of her partners, her mind a haze of lust. Hands on her ass squeezed, and a tongue lapped at her anus, adding to the pleasure. She rode one cock with wild abandon, and her tongue worked the shaft in front of her in a blur. Whoever had her tail was grinding their body against its entire length, embracing it like a snake charmer and rubbing it between the lips of another pulsating, slippery vulva.
Una’s hands were busy too, encircling the base of the cock she serviced, reaching lower to find her lover’s testicles, but discovering yet another surprise instead: the folds of a wet and eager pussy below the cock. She plunged her middle two fingers into that entrance as she sucked the shaft, and hips bucked against her hand and mouth.
When she slammed herself down onto the member below her, Una’s second orgasm hit with a force of a hurricane wind: a sudden, overwhelming gust that blew all rational thought from her brain. Her body shook, and she lost control, her muscles spasming and twitching, her tail curling inside one lover’s mouth, her cunt clamping down hard on another.
The person in front of her gasped and came as well, spraying cum across Una’s face. The succubus licked the hot liquid from her cheeks and lips, savoring the taste, and the flavor triggered her climax to redouble in intensity. She felt her horns elongate, stretching the skin of her forehead as they arced over her hair.
The succubus’ tail spasmed and rippled, and whoever had been sucking it cried out in delight as Una’s orgasmic aftershocks sent squirming motions through them. Una’s hips jerked, still fucking herself on her partner below, who also shuddered and moaned as he released inside of her. The stranger in front of her, still shaking and gasping, collapsed forward, and Una’s face was enveloped by the woman’s breasts, her nipples still hard against her cheeks.
Cum covered Una’s chin and chest and loins, and she breathed in the scents of sweat, sex, and perfume, her body still shuddering with pleasure. She felt a hand grasp her own and squeeze, and she returned the gesture without hesitation. Her other arm coiled around the waist of the woman in front of her, who held Una tightly. More unseen hands caressed her back, her legs, and her hair. She rolled off the body beneath her and lay there in the dark, sated and spent, the last vestiges of her climax fading.
“Hani-yuo-toa,” she said into the darkness, sliding her hand down her belly to fondle her pussy, sticky with semen and her own fluids. She felt the cock inside her soften, withdraw, and leave her gaping, leaking cum.
“Hani-yuo-toa,” chorused a multitude of voices in unison, low and high, some strangely familiar and others entirely unknown. “Pleasure for our mistress, Lady Una.” The darkness resounded with the words of her lovers, and the sound of the phrase echoed in Una’s ears. Her tail swished contentedly, and she closed her eyes, drifting off to sleep with her limbs entwined with those of her faceless lovers.
The whisper of a cool breeze woke Una. She opened her eyes, but all remained black. Am I blind? The thought alarmed her for a moment before memory returned, and she sensed the bodies all around her, their breathing steady in the rhythm of rest.
Una felt her heartbeat rise in time with her awakened breathing, and a tingle ran down her body from the top of her head to her feet. She lifted her head and saw a faint light in the near distance: a blue-white glow emanating from the floor.
The succubus sat up. Her body felt sore, her thighs and back aching, and her pussy raw and swollen with pleasure. She reached for her forehead, and felt the tips of her horns, now several inches long, extending back from her temples. Flexing her feet, she could tell that they had once again fused into hooves, and she felt her sharp nails digging into the fabric of a rug. She stretched and felt the weight of a body draped across her lap. The stranger shifted and sighed in her sleep, and Una felt her breath on her thigh as she stirred.
“Hello?” she whispered, but once again received no response.
Una crawled slowly and carefully, trying not to disturb the slumber of her partners. So many bodies, she thought. All sleeping peacefully after a marathon fuck-fest. All part of my subconscious journey, I guess… but thank you, even if you are figments of my imagination.
She felt her way across the sea of soft, warm flesh, navigating enough limbs and buttocks and heads of hair to make her feel as though she were crawling through a jungle of bodies. At last, she emerged onto a carpeted area free of her lovers, and saw that the light emanated from a depression in the floor, shining up through an opening.
Una stood slowly, stretching and flexing her arms and legs. Aches and pains aside, she felt good. Better than good—she felt powerful, infused by a new vitality. Her tail lashed behind her, and her horns felt heavy on her skull, but she welcomed the changes. The succubus walked slowly to the source of the glow, feeling the floor beneath her hooves.
She stood on the rim of a circular hole in the floor, about eight feet across. Once more, she peered down to the next layer of this mental realm, and once more saw a featureless tunnel. This time, however, a pale light illuminated the emptiness, and from that emptiness an icy wind blew up her legs and chilled her sex.
Una stepped to the lip of the opening, peering down at a steeper angle, and realized the light was the moon, full and silver, shining upwards from an impossible sky below her. She shivered in the wind, her bare skin prickling with gooseflesh, and decided.
Just keep going forward; that’s what Yael said. I guess in my inner world, forward means… down. Una stepped off the edge and fell for a fourth time—but on purpose. She spread her hands and arms, and the wind rushed past her as she dropped, the moon growing larger and brighter below her.
Una emerged into the open air and fell for a moment into the moonlit sky before a disorienting lurch hit her gut and equilibrium: suddenly she was plummeting upwards, and gravity had reversed. She looked back and saw the ground rushing away beneath her; then her momentum slowed, and she hung weightless for a moment before the pull of the earth asserted its hold on her body once more.
Una fell back in the direction she’d arrived from, but now she thrummed with power. She curled her arms tight, then let her wings extend from her shoulders. She felt them unfurl, the muscles that flexed her feathery span rippling beneath her skin. The moonlight shone through the feathers, illuminating their black edges, and the wind caught in her plumage and propelled her upward.
The succubus pumped her wings, rising higher, beating them faster, and she gazed down across a vast, icy plain dotted with outcroppings of rock. Her hair whipped back from her face, and the wind whistled past her, but she somehow no longer felt cold. Her skin, as scarlet-hued as she’d expected, prickled with the sensation of chill, but she felt exhilarated, alive, and powerful. Una laughed aloud, a joyful shout into the night, and flew.
Her flight took her above a frozen river of ice, and she saw where it led: two colossal figures towered over the plain, their outlines silhouetted in the moonlight. Beyond those forms lay a cliff face extending upwards into sheer mountains; the statues seemed to guard a narrow canyon carved by the rush of the river’s water in some warmer time.
As she approached, the dark, towering forms gained detail and features, and she recognized the sculpted faces on the figures, despite their immense size. One was feminine, clad in only a simple tunic, her face framed by a waterfall of curls and two spiraling horns. She held one arm up, as if to shield herself from some invisible blow, and in her outstretched hand she held a familiar sword with a curved blade. The statue’s legs ended in hooves, and a long tail curved behind her, coiling over one shoulder.
Yael, Una thought. Long ago, perhaps? Whatever sculptor had captured the ancient demoness’s face had done so in a moment of defiance. Yael scowled up into the heavens, her eyes blazing at some unknown enemy, and the lines in her expression spoke of pain and fear, but also determination.
Una beat her wings and circled the statue, admiring the precise lines of muscle and the curve of her massive stone breasts. She landed on Yael’s shoulder and stared across at the other figure, a robed man with a nearly trimmed beard.
Father Michael Belmont, of course. My other half, my past self. Captured in hundreds of feet of stone, even the unassuming form of the kindly priest seemed formidable, his angular jaw firm beneath his beard. His hands clasped together in prayer, with an enormous carven rosary dangling from one wrist. His eyes, like Yael’s, gazed upwards, but rather than an expression of challenge, Michael’s gaze showed a kind of contemplative regret. Even from across the divide, Una could see the detailed carvings of worry lines; she knew from intimate experience that those stemmed from the priest’s doubts and inner turmoil.
Well, it’s all terribly grand and symbolic, Una thought. But what am I supposed to do here? I could just
fly past them, maybe explore upriver. Yael and Michael, though… they’re the two halves of myself. They must be significant.She took off again and circled the gap between the figures, flying lower to look into their faces. She saw no sign of life in their stone forms. But as she swooped towards the still surface of the river, she saw a glint of light: the moon’s glow reflected. Una wheeled in her descent and spied the source of the reflection. The center was silvered glass, facing away from the statues of Michael and Yael.
Una landed on the frost-rimed earth before the stone arch with a crunch of hoof against snow and ice. Her breath fogged the air, and she wrapped her wings around herself before allowing the great, feathered expanse to melt into her back, dissipating to nothing.
Looking up, she noted with a wry smirk that the two statues perfectly framed the arch. Either a magnificent feat of architecture in a natural landscape, or a metaphor-addled subconscious mind at work. Of course, I know which is more likely.
The structure was sizable, but Una realized as she moved close enough to study the texture of stone that her own body had grown. She was at least ten feet tall now, though her proportions remained relatively similar. Her height made little difference in this strange place, with so few points of reference; the statues were hundreds of feet high, the stone archway easily twice as tall as she, and the mountains far beyond dwarfed everything in sight.
Una approached the mirrored surface filling the arch and regarded her new, imposing form. She was herself, but as if imagined by an artist painting scenes from a dream. Una saw a slender, naked woman with skin the color of dark cherries, standing atop cloven hooves with a pair of glossy, ridged horns curving over her brow.
She ran her hands over the smooth curves of her hips, tracing the outline of her navel. Every arc of her body, from the fullness of her breasts to the swell of her ass, seemed more precisely defined and pronounced, as though sculpted with loving attention to detail.
Her hair had changed as well, the shoulder-length bob grown out to fall in glossy cascades of varied length around her shoulders and back, framing the delicate bones of her cheeks and the graceful line of her neck. Her tail twined over one shoulder, its tip coiled around her biceps. Una smiled at her reflection in the mirror, her eyes glowing like molten gold.
A thrum of recognition ran through her. This is me, she realized. Not as she appeared to others—not the form of Micki, born of the conflict between Michael and Yael’s desires, nor the body built by Jay’s nanobots from memories and imagined lives. This is me, as I would create myself. Not a succubus, or a half-demon, or even the ordinary woman I hoped to be—but something else. I am not merely the fusion or the reconciliation of the two beings who became me. I am my own creation, and mine alone. I choose who I will be and how I will live… and I have become a—”
Something moved behind her, dark against the snow. The reflection caught the corner of her eye, and Una whirled in place to face it. She scanned the barren ground but saw no sign of movement or disturbance.
Una frowned. “I’m not going to get ambushed by some monster, am I?” she said aloud, her voice echoing off the statues behind her. “That’s so trite.” She shivered.
She turned back to face herself in the mirror, and saw only herself and the frozen terrain, with the two statues looking far above. Then a shape emerged from behind a snowdrift: misshapen, gray head, an ape-like body the color of granite, and enormous claws and fangs. A gargoyle, approaching slowly. Una’s eyes widened.
“You have got to be kidding me,” she said. Her hands balled up into fists. Sure, she thought, one more fight.