The nameless tower had been raised up out of the earth eons ago; its various subtle disproportions attested to the prehuman nature of its sorcerers creator. For centuries it had been home to Yyrshal, a witch both powerful and cunning, and its heavy carved stone door groaned open to admit her after a long absence.

Yyrshal was lately returned from decadent, crowded Oema, with a long-sought-after prize in her hard leather traveling-pack. Oema, where entire districts slumbered under the influence of bonfires of intoxicating herbs. Oema, where weird things stalked the starless night. Oema, whose militant archivists were no match for Yyrshal’s flashing knife.

Yyrshal threw off her garish yellow traveling cloak, letting it fall in the corner of the foyer, which was cluttered with racks and shelves piled with books. Silently, she descended the stone steps as the tower’s stone door closed behind her in response to her will.

At the lowest level of the tower, far beneath the surface of the land, there lay a still pool, placid and clear, fed and warmed by a natural current still deeper within the earth. Yyrshal doffed the rest of the traveling gear that gave her the appearance of a tasteless and money-less Maiflish noble and carefully set her pack atop the pile of garments.

Next she stepped over to the long stone table that occupied the entire northern wall of the chamber. Its surface was an incomprehensible clutter of jars. Selecting several, she cast pinches of herbs into the still pool, darkening it. She smeared her body with cold unguents. She uncorked a small phial and downed its contents. Finally she stepped into the pool and floated there for a while, feeling the substances do their familiar work, revivifying and restoring her.

Yyrshal liked to feel young and powerful, and she liked to be beautiful. True, she valued these qualities for the assistance they provided her in her work, but she also simply enjoyed having them. She also relished using and practicing these arts, hard-won from study and bargaining, and was proud of her abilities.

At length she emerged from the pool. The weariness of the road had been completely dispelled and the enchantments preserving her beauty and youth had been renewed. She retrieved her pack from the heap of cast-off, muddy gladrags and ascended the staircase to the tower’s upper levels.

The very pinnacle of the tower was a parapet, open to the sky, its floor inset with a massive, reproducibility diagram in a metal that gave off an alien sheen. Heavy eye brackets held chains of the same strange metal, attached to around a dozen manacles.

Yyrshal’s destination was the floor just below. Here was her study and her throne room, where she had decided she would entertain whatever foolhardy visitor should try to intrude upon her privacy, if any ever would. Her throne was a wide couch. She lay upon it and retrieved her prize from her pack: A slim ivory scroll-case. Inside it, the last writings of the accursed sorcerer Aphaw of Five Dogs.

Yyrshal smiled as she unrolled the scroll. Soon, she would have the art of calling vile Vahk, a duke of Hell. She would waste no time in learning this technique, for she had a boon to ask of him. She read Aphaw’s cribbed, rheumatic hand, at length finding the passage she sought:

Vahk, the Resounding Strike, a duke of Hell. His word of summoning is thus: ⇈⇆↻↻↱↨⇶⇴⇵⇱⥠⥠⥫⥫⧭⥺⥺⃕͒⬲⬳⃗⬽. Vahk is learned in the arts of metal-smithing and enchanting. He is the court armourer of kHaas, the Whispering Strangulation, Prince of Famine.

The passage continued, explaining the technique and material necessary to call Vahk. It closed with an enigmatic statement, intended, Yyrshal thought, as a warning:

Vahk is a pervert of uncommon vileness.

She wound up the scroll, mentally composing a list of the material she had to carry up once the stars came right for Vahk’s summoning.

xxxxx

Yyrshal desired nothing as much as power. It had been thus for as long as she could remember; this is not to say it had been thus for her entire existence. Her natural span should have ended centuries ago. Parents, siblings, a spouse, even children if she had had any–these had long since turned to dust. Certainly a priority had been learning the secret of extending life, but she did not know if she had once pursued this as an end in itself or a means toward her final goal.

There had been a time, now dimly remembered, when she had sought and won temporal power, commanding armies to conquer by force, but this sort of power grows tedious with the decades. She had built a network of influence to conquer by subtler means, but this sort of power grows tedious with the centuries.

Now she sought true power. Pure power. Control over life itself.

xxxxx

Weeks passed, and the chill of autumn drew the life from the vegetation surrounding Yyrshal’s stronghold. One day, Yyrshal awoke and mounted the stairs to the parapet, emerging into a cloudless night. Her eyes found Moer’s Star where it had just crossed to the center of the Vaara’s Web constellation, and she smiled with approval. She put her torch to each of five massive braziers, and soon a fire roared in each, pouring forth perfumed smoke and a terrible heat.

Over the course of the next two hours she sang the verses of a maddening song while she cast strange liquors onto the chased stone of the parapet. Finally, about an hour before dawn would break, her song crescendoed into an inhuman shriek.

⇈⇆↻↻↱↨⇶⇴⇵⇱⥠⥠⥫⥫⧭⥺⥺⃕͒⬲⬳⃗⬽! Vahk! I have business with thee! Listen to my words and be thou compelled! Vahk!

No lightning ripped across the sky. No thunder pealed. But in an instant, she saw him bound in her magic circle: Vahk! The resounding strike!

Yyrshal regarded the god, and his form did not displease her. Indeed Vahk’s true form was a maddening thing, and Aphaw had written that when Vahk took to the plane of mortals he often appeared as a leaden monstrosity thousands of feet high weeping molten metal out of welts and sores. But here was Vahk, in the form of a human man, solidly built, bald-headed, his features like those of a man of the Gow Islands; but his skin was strange, smooth in the manner of an iron slab, non-reflective but having an almost imperceptible radiance. The heat of his body made the cold air shimmer.

Yyrshal inspected her magic circle, and was glad to see that it held: The god’s body welled with an unspeakable potential and his animal eyes regarded her with a hungry contempt.

Vahk spoke, and his voice was the clanging of hammers on hot bronze.

you have called me to the plane of the World and for that I thank you. but you have brought me here bound. thus I know that you wish something of me. so ask your boon.

Yyrshal made her voice cold and haughty. “O Vahk, Resounding Strike! I know that you own the Thundering Anvil that the hero of Ometho used to make the Dozen Needles. This is what I ask of you.”

a toy. I remember it. Likewise I remember how it brought doom to Ometho and ruin to its hero. Here Vahk seemed to allow himself a wistful smile. Gladly would I give you this gift, but it is not in my possession. My brother Velhag cheated me of it at the dawn of the age. I will give it you, but you must obtain it for your own, and I will not promise you can meet that task.

“Can you tell me how I might come by it?”

this I can. I will tell you where it is and how it is guarded, and I will give you leave to carry it thence, if its wrongful custodians would suffer it to be taken.

“And your price?”

not a price, not exactly. you must understand that it has been long since I have walked upon the face of the World, and it has been much longer since I tasted a mortal cunt. Vahk smirked. give me this, and the Thundering Anvil shall be yours.

Yyrshal pondered Vahk’s offer and regarded his form, powerful and nude. She had seen how his thick cock had stirred as he made his overture. She imagined this god’s mouth on hers, and on her pussy, and that cock filling her.

And she imagined the Thundering Anvil and her plans for it. How she would use it to forge the artifact that would bring untold energies to her beck and call.

She shivered a little when she met the foul god’s gaze and said, “we have a bargain.”

good. now release me from these fetters. it is not fitting that a god should be bound when fucking a mortal slut.

“You’ll not trick me so easily, demon. I like this form of yours well enough, and I’ll see to it that you keep it.”

Vahk grinned, his face feral. it’s very well to distrust the gods, but it’s less well to fulfill your end of a bargain stingily. I’ll gladly have you in this shape, but if you require further assurances, I’ll fuck you in your magic circle, and leave this one foot chained with your sorcery.

Wordlessly, Yyrshal signaled her assent by doffing her thin robe and stepping forward into the circle. Vahk watched as she loosed four of his five fetters one by one, letting the chains clatter uselessly to the floor. First the one at his throat, then each arm, and finally she knelt and freed his right foot. She could now smell his body. It had the odor of smoldering charcoal, pure and astringent. As she straightened up and rose back to her feet, she saw his cock was now fully erect and thick.

Once she had straightened up to her full height, she met his gaze, alien and animalistic, as he looked down at her for a moment before he seized her and pulled her to him.

She felt his hot flesh like iron. One hand was in her hair, at the back of her head, and he leaned forward to kiss her. His lips, too, were smooth like worked metal but somehow soft. He pushed his tongue against her lips and she parted them slightly to admit him. His kiss and his embrace were rough, an invasion animated by a will too inhuman to be called cruel; there was also an artifice in it, a refined skill that made her breath catch.

She felt herself getting wet, and dizzy, and thick-headed with lust, so much that she barely realized he was lowering her to the floor until her back and ass felt the chill of the flagstones. She vaguely realized she would be overwhelmed with shivering if it weren’t for the strange forge heat of Vahk’s body. He kept kissing her, lying directly at her side, his right hand still holding her hair firm while his left groped her breasts before moving further down her supine body, lightly, still carrying the immanent force of the hand of a god. He passed over her mound, brushing past her pubic hair, gripping her left thigh and sliding it a little farther from her right.

Then he broke off the kiss and regarded her a moment, judging her, measuring her, appraising her, then licking her throat, her collarbone, and sucking her left nipple in between his radiant teeth. This elicited Yyrshal’s involuntary gasp.

Vahk’s hand moved up and found her cunt. His palm was hot, and he rubbed her with his usual alien intensity. She felt that she might already start humping her hips against his hand, but after a few moments he dipped a finger between her labia and found her dripping wet. So he withdrew his hand.

Slightly frustrated she opened her eyes, which she had not realized were closed, and watched him lick her wetness off of his fingers.

so wet so quickly, sorcerer. but so rarefied. the flavor of so many unholy elixirs. yours is a cunt I shall truly enjoy.

Yyrshal had no time to process these strange words–an insult? A compliment? A threat?–before Vahk had moved down her body and pressed his face between her legs, his mouth over her cunt, his hot tongue on her clit, lapping. She moaned.

She was dimly aware that one of his hands now held both of her wrists together. His licking was insistent, meticulous, again the product of an alien will shaped by the artifice of an alien mind. Again she started to buck her hips against his face. Again he stopped. She panted momentarily until she felt his grip tighten on her wrists and the nails, talons actually, of his other hand dig into the flesh of her ass.

you’ll hold still, or I’ll see to it you hold still forever in a lower hell. I’ll lick your mortal cunt until I feel our pact’s fulfilled and until then you’ll behave yourself.

Yyrshal’s flushed face reddened deeper, now with rage and not a little humiliation. She had brought this god to heel and now it presumed to direct her. So she raised up her leg and brought her heel down, hard, into Vahk’s back. The response was swift. Yyrshal found herself suddenly lying prone, and Vahk behind her. With his hands he repositioned her, so that her knees, spread wide, supported her ass, now low in the air as she prostrated herself away from him.

The waves of pleasure began to subside momentarily as he explored and teased, licking and nibbling her labia, the flesh of her thighs, her buttocks. She gave a faint disappointed sigh. Then in an instant his tongue found her asshole. She shuddered and started to rub herself, noting the near chill of her hand in comparison to his tongue’s heat. He held her hips in position with his iron grip, and as much as she wanted to shift her position, get his tongue where she needed it to be, she could not. This realization brought another wave of frustration that faded into the waves of pleasure now washing over her from her cunt and her asshole, coloring and enhancing them.

Repeatedly the demon brought Yyrshal to the brink of orgasm. His insistent tongue would then subtly deviate from its pattern, leaving her frustrated and desperately frigging herself to build past the plateau. From time to time he would break away entirely; Yyrshal felt his alien eyes regarding her exposed flesh at these moments and she was certain he had calculated these moments to remind her of how openly and lewdly she exhibited herself.

Vahk balanced Yyrshal expertly at the edge of an explosion of pleasure for an infinity, and when she felt as though finally a wave would break over her and she could come, he stopped abruptly. Her mortal body emitted a roar of frustrated lust.

“Demon! You tire so readily?”

I have had my fill of your dripping cunt, witch. I will grant you your demanded boon: The treasure you seek is in the custody of the Circle of Nine, devotees of my brother Velhag, and it cannot be loosed from the place it is secured unless you sacrifice something you are unwilling to surrender. Now our pact is complete. Dismiss me and call upon me no more.

Still splayed on the stone parapet, she turned her head to look back over her shoulder and met the demon’s sardonic gaze. “You remain in my th-thrall, f-foul one.” Her imperious tone broke, overcome as she was with frustrated need. “Fuck me.”

Vahk widened his eyes. An unconvincing show of innocence, and an unnerving one given his subtly inhuman visage. The witch seeks a new favor? What have you left to trade

Yyrshal shifted her position. Now she was facing the god, resting on an elbow, her legs still spread wide, one hand drawing urgent circles on her pubic mound. Her expression was as illegible as Vahk’s, in its way. “Fame?” She let her gaze fall to his cock where it stood between his legs, obscene and thick.

What do you offer?

“I’ll bear your mark for a year and a day.”

Vahk nodded, and positioned himself over Yyrshal. Their eyes locked, he teased the head of his cock over her labia. One hand pinning her wrists over her head, with the other he slipped himself inside of her. She gasped and broke his gaze as her eyes rolled back in her head.

Then he started to slide his cock slowly in and out of her wet cunt. She found her breathing matching his systematic thrusts. This close, she could smell his body more acutely. The odor of charcoal and molten metal, something sharper and astringent. His gaze was alien. She tried to meet it, but as he continued to fuck her, she found her eyes involuntarily closing, her back involuntarily arching, her hips involuntarily grinding. His cock’s hardness and heat, its forged texture, rapidly returned her to the near-orgasmic height she had achieved at his cruel lapping tongue. She wrapped her legs around him while he rammed his thick member into her wet cunt.

Her breathing was becoming ragged. The light of the smoking braziers caught the sheen of sweat covering her nude body, creating a contrast with Vahk, whose body seemed to consume light and give off its own subtle glow.

Inevitably, she built towards a powerful climax. She could feel the wave of pleasure about to crest. Panting, moaning, half-mad with need, she mustered the presence of mind to direct the demon:

“Don’t stop. Don’t stop. There. Keep fucking me. There. Now. Oh, now. Now!”

And she let the orgasm flood over her. The waves of pleasure overwhelmed and washed out the sharp pain of Vahk’s teeth biting deeply into her shoulder. And at almost the same moment, she felt his hot come flooding into her pussy, filling her, as his body tensed on top of hers, still fucking, still driving her further, until finally she fell back, exhausted, panting, disheveled. Only then did he stop and disengage, rising almost immediately to his feet, to look down at her where she lay.

And with a gesture she dismissed him. He dissolved into the air, and his last remaining fetter clattered on the stone parapet. She smiled. Few demons were as unsubtle as this one. Nevertheless, a pleasant diversion.

THE END OF CHAPTER ONE