Origins: Pt. 01 - Satisfy & Truth

The light from the front window of the cluttered oddities shop dimmed as the shadow from the tower moved around the crater and drew long across the city. Acey turned the screw on the lamp at his elbow and the flame jumped higher. He revolved the dirty silver coin in his palm. Leaning forward across the shop counter, he brought his eye closer to both the coin and the lamp. Acey determined the silver piece was heavier than a coin its size should be. His stool creaked as he shuffled out a glass loupe from under his robes and held it against the rim of the tarnished currency.

There was a finely etched train of symbols that ringed the edge of the coin. On the face of the coin there was a naturalistic image of a cat's eye wide open and on the flip side of the coin, the feline's eye lay sealed. Using charcoal dust and a voided receipt, Acey rubbed out five reliefs of the symbols from the rim. After carefully placing the coin back on the counter along with the loupe, Acey squinted at the transfer of the tiny symbols on the scratch piece of paper in his hand.

He flipped the paper around in all directions and scratched his chin. The shape of the symbols were both angular and loopy at the same time. The lettering was a little like Goblini mixed with Throwa but flipped and twisted backwards.

Acey folded over the sleeves of his dusty blue robes and grunted as he shifted a massive volume off the stack of books teetering on the edge of the counter. Holding the paper in one hand, he flipped through the pages of the book. Acey had thumbed through the collection of magic alphabets hundreds of times and quickly turned to the section he was looking for somewhere about halfway in the book. He held the paper close to the page as he scanned down the different alphabets, Zerox, Haanaathaa, Organizm, Lickstix... nothing matched.

There was a wooden clatter and jangle of chains. Acey glanced up to see Gel flipping over the "open" sign on the front door to "closed." The young man pulled his hood up and over his straight auburn hair so only his light eyes caught the flame from Acey's lamp.

"Let's go," Gel said.

Acey placed the paper in the book and slammed it shut.

"What?" Acey said, "go where?"

"The Master had a delivery of fresh obsidian he had to drop off 'personally' to the Ink Cult," Gel said with a smirk, "it's been over four hours."

Acey laughed and rolled his eyes, pushing his stool out with a screech.

"Alright then, let's go fetch him before he spends everything," Acey said, taking one last look at the coin as he turned the lamp off and donned his hood.

The two of them wound through the crowded streets towards the north of the crater. The setting sun in the west crawled slowly up the rusting white tower in the center of the city, lighting the top portion up like the flame of a candle atop a dark candlestick. Acey squinted as he tried to discern what appeared to be a frayed golden-yellow flag streaming from a window high up along the curved gleaming surface of the tallest structure directly center the crater.

"Hello!" Gel said, stealing Acey's attention back into the dim light of the streets, "there's nothing up there for you, just the myths of sealed-in nobles."

"What would you do if you ever met one?" Acey asked, the golden flag still billowing in his mind's eye.

Gel side-stepped a metal cart carrying glittering chunks of unrefined ore; the metal wheels ground along shallow grooves worn into the pale brick of the streets. The man who pulled the cart strained with bright white teeth against cerulean skin. Sweat dripped from the edges of the dark goggles covering his eyes and slithered down his flesh in rivulets, creating clean lines in the soot that coated most of his bare chest. A fuzzy white creature like a cross between a cat and a ferret lay draped around his neck like a scarf. The pet yawned at Acey with squinting eyes and a curling, mauve tongue.

"I already have," Gel said, glancing back at Acey from beneath the hood of his robe.

Acey stepped aside, also giving the clattering cart some space and walked alongside Gel, "please don't tell me you are talking about Lady Myzz again." Acey said with a sarcastic chuckle.

"What!?" Gel said, "you heard her say it herself, she claims to be a noble straight from Origin. How can you explain the way she looks and her wealth?"

Acey laughed, "I already told you she was just being short with you. Surely you spotted the white horns budding from atop her head? No accounts of any interactions with nobles noted them having horns of any sort not to mention pink skin."

"So? I've heard their skin color varies actually," Gel said, smiling, "and maybe the horns are a disguise to throw us all off."

"Yeah sure," Acey said, "and this whole time I've been an undercover elf masquerading as a human so I could learn Master Ceylon's secrets about haunted tinderboxes."

"That would explain why you have such a strange dick," Gel said, "now I don't have to feel so bad about myself."

They both laughed and kept walking until the pale brick crossed into red brick and they found themselves in the northern half of the crater. Steam billowed, curled, and drifted out of grates in the streets and alleys, puffing white sheets of humid rainbows across the different colored lamps and glowing windows along the streets of rusty colored architecture.

Acey wiped a trickle of sweat from his forehead underneath his hood with his sleeve and sighed, "it's so hot over here, I can't stand it."

"I like it," Gel said.

"Yeah, you like everything alien," Acey said, sidestepping a female elf pushing a carriage loaded with yellow bread, "you're one of those types."

They crossed the street diagonally, cut through a procession of giant gray humanoids carrying sledgehammers, and continued along a curving side street that slithered past a group of teeth gambling goblinis tossing amber dice against a wall. Gel and Acey followed the road and penetrated deeper into the heart of the red brick buildings. At the end of the street, which went on for a quarter mile or so, they saw the colored lights of the street lamps turn into the ethereal stars socketed into walls that marked the entrance to the burrow of their destination.

"So what was that coin you were researching before we left?" Gel asked.

"Oh, I don't know," Acey said, dodging a toothless and cursing goblini scurrying under his legs, "a client used it to pay for a Class C item."

"And you let him?" Gel said, glancing over his shoulder at Acey.

"I wasn't going to at first," Acey shrugged, thinking back on the coin, "but the weight of it was so unusual..." he made a weighing motion with his right hand.

"Ah, I see," Gel said, "did you find anything out about it?"

Acey sighed, "no, I didn't recognize the script."

"But that's your specialty," Gel said, "you can practically recognize every alphabet in that book."

Acey sighed again and glanced up into the young night sky, the white moon was waning and the red moon was waxing to almost full, "I know..."

"Well, I'm sure Master will know once we rescue him from his appetites," Gel said.

Acey chuckled, "I'm sure he won't see it as 'rescuing' at all."

They entered the pulsing softness of the white star lights and heard soft clapping coming from a narrow alley on their left.

"Ah, sounds like we're here already," Gel said.

Acey halted as he caught a strange shadow moving behind a sheet of steam down the alley that was barely three feet wide. The rhythm of the clapping echoed and intertwined with a high-pitched grunting squeal. A faint breeze drifted into the alley; the column of steam dispersed like a shroud of silk blowing in the wind, revealing the pale form of a female elf folded and propped up between two red walls of the flanking buildings. Her velvety baby blue cloak lay open, divulging her nudity to the lover that hoisted her up against the wall with strong arms and hands that clutched her ass cheeks. The steam left a pearlescent sheen across her skin and shone like smooth snow under the ethereal light of the elf district. Her lover, a giant grimacing man with skin like basalt, stood between the elf's creamy thighs and plugged her, sluicing little chirping grunts from her lolling head with each jilted crank of his waist. The man was like a solid wall of gray stone driving a mallet into the soft form of the elf. With each deliberate clap of his abs heaving into her, the elf bounced against the wall, her breasts twirled, her hands clasped tighter closed around the back of her lover's neck, her shimmering cloak rippled, and the tips of her long ears flapped. The elf whore held on tight; her glossy lips perfect and open as her large eyes gazed into her lover's. She fluttered her cotton-candy lashes; a cascade throbbed through the big wall of a man. He shuddered while his boulders of a buttocks clenched and jittered atop thighs that strained like taught ropes being snapped. His gray fingers clutched deeper into the pale flesh of the elf's ass cheeks. The elf pushed her waist down into the man, wrapping her legs against the back of his thighs as he came. Acey spotted a tendril of yellow semen drip down the elf's ass crack and splatter onto the wet stone of the alleyway. A gushing breath of steam erupted from a grate and curtained the view again.

"Poor guy must be a rookie," Gel whispered next to Acey, "he didn't even make it through the door. She probably made him think he was disgorging himself inside the hot cleft of some sentient boulder or vein of Chaos Ore or something. Who knows what those pelpers are into."

Acey turned away from the alley and they continued walking, "I hate this district."

"It's because you're a romantic," Gel said, "that's what happens when you spend all day reading books. The grime of reality starts to disturb you."

"And you're not a romantic?" Acey snorted, "do you not romanticize these aliens that you love so much? Romanticize even their grime you just mentioned?"

"I would say fair enough," Gel smiled, "if that were true. But I'm not romanticizing, it's the reality. An elf's grime is like a delicacy. We're lucky they sell it for so cheap here in the pit, you know."

"Cheap?" Acey said, "I thought elves were the most expensive of the bunch?"

"I mean..." Gel smeared his words, "an elf is so sublime, to be able to pay any price to experience any part of them, grime or not, is cheap in my book."

Acey rolled his eyes and grunted, irritated that Gel had lured him in with such an obvious trap.

Gel laughed and patted Acey on the shoulder, "one of these days you're going to have to choose one of these 'aliens' if you wish to reproduce, our kind is one of rarest here in the pit and I haven't seen a single human female my entire life. So, you should start testing the waters soon."

"Maybe I won't reproduce," Acey said, "to bring another soul to live out its life in the bottom of this crater? what's the point of that?"

Gel shrugged, "we'll see about tha--"

Gel crashed into someone that had sprinted out of a wide alleyway. He fell to the ground on top of them. Acey halted and pulled his hood down by habit.

His friend found himself straddling a petite statue of marble curves wrapped in color-shifting silk. The large eyes of the elfin beauty were slick and wide open like a doe's. Acey caught Gel's stunned reflection wavering across the dark surface of the elf's pupils that expanded to the size of a silver quarter. The elf maiden's eyelids drooped hazily halfway and her eyelashes scooped out a fluttering chunk of Gel's mind.

Acey covered his eyes with a hand and grabbed Gel by the back of his robe just near the neck and tugged him to his feet. Gel lurched backwards and nearly fell as Acey helped him up.

"Snap out of it," Acey said, "you were just talking about how that pelper in the alley back there was a rookie."

Gel blinked and shook his head, "right, right, see this is why I brought you along." They turned towards the fallen elf.

"I'm sorry ma'am, I didn't see you coming," Gel said, stretching out a hand towards the sprawled elf across the blushing stone sidewalk, "are you injured?" He kept his eyes on her lips, careful not to make eye contact again.

"Only my pride remains injured, I'm afraid," she said, extending her slender arm like a young shoot of ghost pine.

Gel swallowed as he took her hand and helped her to her feet, all the while careful not to look in her eyes.

"Are you two headed inside then?" She asked.

"Yes," Acey said.

The elf woman produced a small box the size of her hand and opened the lid to reveal a grid of nine glowing gelatinous cubes each the size of a pinky nail. There were shades of pinks, indigo, and vermilion.

"Can I interest you in some S, G, or Ds for your chosen ladies then?" She asked in a fine voice that was half breathy whisper.

"No, thanks," Gel said, "we are just here to pick up our master and bring him back home, we don't have the means to afford such luxuries tonight."

"Ah, pity," she said, licking the tip of her index finger, plucking out a vermilion cube by tapping her fingertip on the top, and extended it towards Gel, "here then, on the house for when you can come back for yourself, young noble."

Gel took it from her hesitantly and as he did so, the elf leaned forward and whispered into his ear before closing the box with a snap. She licked Gel's ear and waved at him before drifting back down the alley from where she came.

Gel smiled and pocketed the small cube.

"What did she say?" Acey asked as they continued down the street and arrived at the front door of their destination.

"Oh, just her name, that's all," Gel said, "and that the Drool she gave me was her favorite of the three."

"So some self-promotion then," Acey said.

"Did you hear her call me a noble too?" Gel said, "I think she likes me."

"I'm sure they flatter all their client's egos by calling them nobles." Acey said.

"I thought you were a romantic?" Gel said, "why are you trying to ruin the fantasy for me?"

Acey laughed, "you're the one that declared I was a romantic."

They walked up the steps and before they could knock, it slipped ajar and the ebbing moonlight from inside could be seen barely lighting the darkness. They stepped inside and the door clicked closed behind them.

"Welcome to the House of Shifting Screens young nobles, here for your master are you?" A voice drifted into their ears from behind.

The shifting spiderweb of silver light from the glowing crystals entranced Acey and he only nodded his head.

"He's in his favorite suite like always, I'll take you there," the hostess elf glided in front of them and bowed her head ever so slightly before turning and guiding them into a dark hall. The train of her flowing robe of deep purple trimmed in gold leaf rippled smoothly across the carpeted floor.

"The Lady Est still talks about you Master Gel," she said, glancing over her shoulder at Gel with a smile, "it's been so long since you've seen her, a year, three months, and seven days, she says it's been. That must seem like an eternity for your kind, I'm sure."

Acey furrowed his brow, these elfin whores gave him the creeps. They remembered and shared everything exactly and perfectly about their clients, or as Acey saw it, their prey.

"I'm afraid that night I spent with her was only a special gift from Master Ceylon for my coming of age day," Gel said, "I would have visited her every day since if I could afford it."

"Understandable, though regrettable," the elf mistress of the house said, "I can see she's just bathing now, if you wanted to stop in and talk with her at least, I'm sure she'll be overwhelmed with joy. Ah, yes, she's giving me the signals now that she would very much like to enjoy you, enjoy your company I mean."

Acey turned to his friend and watched him struggle in profile.

"No, I'm afraid that would be all too tempting for me," Gel hesitated, gesturing with this hands in front of him, "I'm only human after all."

"That's what she said she likes most about you, if I remember correctly," the elf said, "well, second most."

She smiled slyly and turned to face forward again.

Acey rolled his eyes.

"And what did Master Ceylon give to you on your coming of age day, Master Acey? If you don't mind me prying, of course." She asked.

Acey stretched his shoulders, he did mind her asking; he knew she would remember it and somehow use it against him if she could.

"A book," Acey said.

"Ahh, how charming," she said, turning her head sharply and smiling at him, "and what kind of book would that be, exactly?"

Acey kept quiet and glared at the elf hostess. The sudden turn of her head towards him caught him off guard and he found himself sucked inside her massive orbs. The pupils in the center of her lavender eyes expanded and Acey felt her mind climb inside of him like a cat slipping through a window.

A memory of Acey paging through the book of ancient collars, thorny trinkets, and intricate chains flashed vividly across his mind and smeared across the eyes of the elf. She raised a black eyebrow.

"It was a book on demon antiques," Gel said, "he's a real scholar in that field, this one." Gel nudged him.

"I see that," she said, breaking her gaze away from Acey.

Acey wiped his face off with his sleeve; he hated elves. They always made him feel inferior somehow like there was no notion of respecting one's privacy between them.

The hostess led them past many soundproof doors made of mothwood that were screened further with a silk scroll lit by a singular moon crystal gripped by a black iron setting above the door. The light spilled from the gems like rainbow-tinged water, pooling across the hall in waterfalls of silvery opal luminescence.

The hostess stopped and flashed a look at Acey. Acey quickly adverted his gaze from her face.

"This is the room," she said, sliding the sleeve of her robe up to reveal her hand. She pushed the screen aside and cracked the door open a sliver. Red light from the room cut a stripe of crimson across her face from the gap and she smiled, "come here, Master Acey."

Acey stepped forward and whispered, "what's the old coot up to now?"

The hostess smiled and drew him in with her so he could peer through the gap in the door.

Acey's eyes widened as the room unfolded before him. There was a nude elf with long dark hair wearing a chained collar and kneeling in the center of the empty room. A fire burned behind all three ruby glass walls. The red light played tricks on the cones and rods in Acey's eyes and all he could see were the dark spots of the elf whore. Her body shook, the chain links rattled between her breasts, her dark nipples wobbled, her eyes batted, her tongue curled out between her lips, and her black fingernails swept down her thighs, gripping the flesh of her long legs as she waited impatiently in the room by herself. The light from the narrow gap in the door made the back of her eyes shine a bright olive color like some nocturnal animal.

"She wants to be owned," the hostess whispered in Acey's ear, the smell of elf wine and sweetmeats enticed his nose. She continued, her breath tickling the hairs in Acey's ear, "it's all she thinks about, you could own her for a night... own her forever." The hostess' hand stealthily slipped into Acey's robe and gripped his balls. The elf in the room jerked her gaze upwards and caught Acey's. Her mouth fell open and she raised the chain connected to the collar, offering it to Acey. The hostess gripped him tighter and Acey felt his manhood stiffening in his tights. Acey swallowed and stared at the chain being offered to him. The hostess' other hand slipped into his robe and cradled the coin purse hanging from his belt; she lifted it in tune with his sack and whispered, "looks like you've been saving up, why not spend both tonight?" She gave each a squeeze. The elf in the room extended the chain out towards him, crawling on the floor.