The Knight and the Acolyte
Book Eight: Labyrinth of Love
Chapter Five: Songbird’s Passion
By mypenname3000
Copyright 2016

Note: Thanks to B0b for beta reading this.

Warlock Faoril – The Golden Hunger sailing the Nimborgoth

Thunder rumbled in the distance. Lightning illuminated a squall on the dark horizon. Night had fallen and the Golden Hunger rocked, her sea anchor deployed, the crew singing songs on the mid deck, their brawny chests illuminated by several lanterns around the boat.

I watched them from the stern deck, leaning on a railing. A few glanced at me, giving me huge, possessive grins. I shifted, remembering the gangbang in the hold my first night on the ship. They were all eager for a repeat performance.

Laughter came from a group clustered around Castor, a Thlinian pirate, and the Halanian pirate named Abdwal. Based on the hand gestures and pantomime, it was an obscene conversation about fucking some woman at the same time.

Minx emerged from the hold. “Found them,” she said as she raced up the steep stairs to the stern deck. Almost all of our party was on deck save two. “They are coming.”

“Good,” Angela said, the knight’s expression grave in the shining ball of pink light Sophia had conjured to illuminate the stern deck. Somehow, the soft light made Angela’s blue eyes even harder.

She was committed to finding a way to overcome our latest obstacle—the Knights Deute and Priestesses of Slata hunting her down. Their tactics and magic were effective. All the knights were as skilled fighters as Angela, maybe even more skilled. They had more experience fighting monsters, and they were armed with the ritual magics of Slata protecting them and granting them a level of coordination not possible otherwise.

I played with the gold nipple ring in my hand. My body tingled while I held it, spreading a numbing fuzz through me, suppressing my magic. It felt just like I had after the alchemical weapon the gnome bounty hunter had used on us in the volcano.

Minx plopped herself onto Xera’s lap as the elf sat cross-legged on the corner of the stern deck. The impish halfling wiggled to get comfortable. She looked like a child on a mother’s lap thanks to her short stature and slim body, her head pillowed back on Xera’s naked, large breasts. The elf smiled, her ears twitching.

Chaun and Xandra emerged from below deck, Xandra’s pale face flushed, her blue hair disarrayed. She had a smile on her lips. I blinked. She hadn’t smiled much since her kidnapping into the Mirage Gardens and the realization that the efreet master had disguised himself as Chaun to fuck her. But now her petite frame clung to Chaun as they crossed to the deck. He let her go up first, his hands grabbing her ass, pushing her up while she giggled, her voice melodic like a bird’s.

“Well, I am sorry to keep you all waiting on us,” Chaun said. “We were having a very deep conversation.”

Xandra nodded, traces of cum staining her chin. More ran down her thighs from beneath her skirt.

“Oh, I can see that,” chortled Minx. “Chaun must have been talking very deep to make you smile like that.”

Xandra’s pale cheeks blushed.

Thrak popped his knuckles and pushed off the railing. “Well, let’s figure out how to beat those knights.”

“Yes,” Minx hissed. “Ooh, they made us all look like idiots. And those priestesses…”

“We know what they can do now,” Angela said. “Magic is out and force of arms as well. We need unconventional tactics.”

“Sleeping bombs,” Minx said. “I tried sticky bombs, but that knight blocked my attack with his shield and threw it at me at the same time. Had me all tangled up. I’ve never seen anything so…so…”

“Amazing,” Xera suggested.

“I didn’t want to say it,” Minx admitted, “but, yes. Amazing. He didn’t even look at me. No one has reflexes like that.”

“The Ritual of the Womb,” Sophia said. “Two knights and two priestesses united as spiritual siblings all reborn in Slata’s metaphorical womb.” She shuddered. “Sounds so icky.”

“Pregnancy and birth is part of womanhood,” Angela pointed out.

“The icky parts,” blanched Sophia. “The parts that require a man. Saphique was wise to distance herself from it and embrace femininity in its most pure form.”

Minx giggled.

“And that is what gave them preternatural reflexes,” I said. “The priestesses were spotting for the knights. What they saw, so did the knights, letting them react to instantly.”

“We need to blind them,” Chaun said. “Obscure their sight.”

“A smoke or fog?” Xandra suggested. She hunched her shoulders whenever anyone looked.

Chaun stroked her arm. “Can you do that with make smoke with your elementals?”

She nodded. “An air and water mixing together would work. Though if I had my earth totem, I could raise more dust, but…” She sighed and rubbed her hand. “So long as my elementals didn’t touch the knights, their antimagic protection wouldn’t matter.”

“Cut down visibility to say a few feet,” Thrak grunted. “We’ll be lost in it, too, but at least the knights might be vulnerable.”

“Could you do magic to negate any of the priestesses, Sophia?” Xera asked. “Is not dispelling and abjuration common in faith magic?”

“Yes,” Sophia said, shifting. “But, well…”

“She was a poor student and never paid attention in classes,” Angela said and gave the white-robed acolyte a smack on the ass.

Sophia’s cheeks pinked. “Yes. Plus, magic isn’t really taught until you’re a full priestess. And I’m only an acolyte. Saphique gave me magic early to help us on the quest. I guess she knew it would be difficult.”

“So you couldn’t negate their ritual,” sighed Chaun. “That would make this easier. I could affect them with my music. Instead of giving us courage and steadfast hearts like I did in Hargone, I could inflict fear or confusion upon them.”

“Your music is still magic, Chaun,” I said. “A very subtle and special magic, but your songs wouldn’t be any more effective than my magic or Xandra’s elementals.”

“No, their warding was powerful,” Xandra said.

“A full ritual,” sighed Sophia. “Six priestesses working in concert. It would fail, eventually. But how much magic would you have to pour into their warding to defeat it?”

“Probably a lot,” I said and tossed the golden nipple ring to Sophia.

She caught it out of instinct. The moment her hand closed about it, the pink light she conjured snuffed out. Sophia gasped and shivered. “What is this?”

“An alloy of gold forged with a rare metal called chromium,” I answered. “It negates magic.”

Sophia tossed it back. The moment it lost contact with her hand, her pink light sprang back into existence, gently bobbing before her.

“Like the gnome bounty hunter’s antimagic bomb,” Minx said. “I’ve heard of them, but they’re supposed to be very rare, the ingredients hard to find.”

“There is a source in the Queendom of Naith where the nipple ring is from,” I said. “Apparently, the rakshasa royal family keeps it as a closely guarded secret to protect their queens and princesses.”

“And how did you get one?” Sophia asked.

“It’s Captain Thyrna’s,” Thrak answered. “She surrendered it to me for the demonstration.”

“Really?” A grin spread on Sophia’s face. “Is that what you two were doing for the last hour? Convincing her to surrender to you.”

Thrak nodded his head and a flush shot through me. Thyrna was a good pussycat now.

“One nipple ring isn’t enough,” Thrak said. “The moment they drop it, their magic comes back. We need what the bounty hunter had.”

“Negating magic would be interesting,” Angela said. “But it also negates our magic users, removing them from the fight.”

“But it would allow us to fight effectively against the knights,” Thrak said.

“Still, six on two…” Angela shook her head. “Even without magic, they would overwhelm us. No, we need to separate and isolate them. Alchemical bombs and dust cloud sounds like our best options to deal with the knights.”

“The bombs could be used on the priestesses,” Sophia said. “Those Slata whores were hiding in the wings spotting and working rituals. Just hitting them could cut down our enemies. Without magic, they are as useless as me in a fight.”

“You’re not useless,” Angela said, stroking the acolyte. “You took the Doge hostage.”

“And she can enchant weapons,” Xera added. “Her blessed blades gave us advantages against Fireeyes’s zombies. Perhaps they would be as effective against armor.”

Sophia shook her head. “It would only matter if they had magical protections on them. I didn’t notice any warding spells beyond the magical negation.”

“We should arrive in Grahata ahead of them. Captain Thyrna promises us a fast crossing. But I expect they won’t be too far behind us. They will ambush again. And there is only one place they know we’ll be.”

“They’re going to hit us coming out of the labyrinth,” Chaun sighed, running a hand through his silvery hair. “When we will be weakened from facing the minotaur.”

“Which is another problem entirely,” I said. “The Labyrinth. The entrance is on a mechanical clock. It opens for a six hour period in the night, three hours before midnight and three hours after. The rest of the time, the entrance is closed. It is a confusing maze. No one ever returns and the Minotaur never escapes. It might even shift around once we’re inside.”

“Elementals cannot get lost,” Xandra said.

“Neither do I,” Minx said. “Cernere commissioned the labyrinth. But I’m a better thief.”

“Than the Goddess of Crime?” Sophia asked, raising a brown eyebrow.

Minx nodded, her metallic-red hair glinting.

“And then we just have to face Gewin’s son,” Minx chortled. “A warrior that’s never lost a battle. A demigod.”

“A unique demigod and not a race,” I sighed. “Those always prove challenging.”

“And he doesn’t possess Las’s blood,” added Chaun. “No lust to use against him like the erinyes.”

“Is it at all strange that I am more worried about the knights than the Minotaur?” Sophia asked. “They beat us handily. I didn’t like that.”

“They are the enemy we know,” Thrak said. “The Minotaur is a distant fear, more legend than reality. A beast no living soul has seen except the women sacrificed to feed his bestial hungers every decade. To live and die in the labyrinth as his bride.”

Sophia scowled “At least we will put an end to that.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Minx

A giddy thrill danced through me. We had a plan to deal with those Las-damned knights and their cunty priestesses. They had made me so horny today. I was still horny after Xera was kind enough to lick me to several orgasms in our cabin before our meeting.

I squirmed on her lap, loving the feel of her large, pillowy breasts against the side of my head. I craned my head back, staring at her chin, her green hair falling about her face. I licked my lips, wiggling more.

“Someone’s still horny,” Xera said, looking down at me. Her four-leafed clover glittered tucked behind her ear.

“Want to use the ointment?” I asked her.

Before Xera could answer, though the grin sliding across her face already told me what she would say, Xandra stepped before us.