The Iron Cub

Circus Disclaimers:

Skip ahead if you'd like to avoid any mention of what's to come.

This chapter includes dubcon and noncon, as well as prolonged physical abuse and, in small quantities, blood and broken bones. There is very little pain, however.

Additionally, there are spiders - though they only visit briefly.

Circus Notes:

Perhaps it's bad fortune to share a chapter title with another author's masterpiece, but I couldn't think of anything more fitting, and I'll consider it an opportunity to recommend her work. For those of you who don't take exception to squick in your erotic mind control stories, be sure to check out Tabico'sYellow. It's truly something special.

I haven't much to say about this chapter other than I wanted an excuse to feature Demeter more prominently, and to flesh out the magic system, though only somewhat.

Your thoughts and constructive criticisms are always greatly appreciated, so please share, and I hope you enjoy this next chapter in the story!

***

The Iron Cub

Chapter Three

Yellow

"It's either lamb's felt or beeche," Aster said.

She held, in both hands, her encyclopedia, a colossal collection of pages as wide as she was, shoulder to shoulder. She'd opened it to the botany section, to a page filled with several intricate diagrams of flowerless plants, beside one of which rested a leaf she'd plucked from beside the trail.

"It can't be both," Demeter replied.

Aster hummed in thought, lifting the encyclopedia closer to her face to inspect the diagram more closely, then tilted the whole book to the side until it flipped to a new page she'd marked with her thumb - a page filled with just as many diagrams, beside one of which rested a second leaf she'd stolen from the same plant.

Tilting the book made Aster tilt too, threatening to send her tumbling from the uneven line of rocks bordering the trail, atop which she pranced, but a childhood spent in barn rafters and on rickety farm equipment had taught her balance, and not once did she fall as she flipped back and forth through the pages.

"Lamb's felt," she said.

"Beeche."

"Drat!" Aster flipped back to the earlier page. "I thought the veins on the underside would be spaced wider apart."

"On a mature leaf, yes." Demeter didn't turn, nor did she slow her pace, marching steadily along to the ruins in the near distance. "But the one you took came from a juvenile plant. Pinch it between your fingers. Notice how you can feel the warmth of your fingertips through the membrane. If it were lamb's felt, you wouldn't."

Aster heaved the encyclopedia into one arm so she could pick the leaf from its pages. She pinched it, felt the warmth, understood. Glad to understand, she stopped atop a bulbous rock and dug a pencil from her tunic.

its not lams felt if i can feel my fingers warmth throo the mem brain, she wrote beside the lamb's felt diagram.

Dumping the second leaf from between its pages, Aster tilted the encyclopedia closed and swung her pack off her shoulder. She forcefully stuffed the oversized book inside, past her clothes and rations, past the small collection of treasures she'd found and decided not to sell, then cinched the pack closed and threw it back over her shoulder. It was terribly heavy, but the hay bales she'd heaved and the dow-hogs she'd wrestled as a child were heavier.

She left her staff in the side pocket of her pack, where she'd stuffed it so she could handle the encyclopedia with two hands, like a tall, slender tree sprouting from the burlap. It wagged back and forth as she galloped down the trail towards Demeter.

***

The ruins approached quickly, and before long, they surrounded the wandering travelers.

Aster marveled at what once must have been. Luxuriant homes on every street, towering and opulent, some nearly as sprawling as the mansion Lady Liandra kept. Mining equipment and infrastructure, woven into the village like veins and arteries through a mighty beast. Inlays set for silver and gold, emeralds and perott.

Aster marveled at all that remained. The skeletons of grand houses, the disfigured shapes of tools and transport, the hollow inlays robbed of their treasure. The homes still inhabited were small, cobbled together, constructed of the remnants of larger ones. The only use old rail carts found was to be filled with dirt and made a plot, to grow the crops that the rocky soil couldn't.

Stale, they'd named it, after the last of the three great queens of the ancient east, she who'd brought silk to her land, and riches to her people. In Aster's encyclopedia, the long-ago queen was the only Stale remembered.

A quiet, strained voice stole Aster's attention.

"Pardon me, miss." It was an elderly woman with a crooked back and tired eyes, shuffling alongside Demeter as she spoke. "You and your companion are very well dressed. Very well dressed. Are you from the city?"

"No," Demeter said. When she said nothing more, the woman continued.

"We're very poor here. Very poor, very poor. We grow only enough to feed us through the winter, when nothing grows. No, nothing grows during the winter. Not even the potatoes.

"You wouldn't have any spare coin to offer, would you miss? Any at all? It would help us terribly, it would."

"No," Demeter said again, offering not so much as a glance as she marched along through the narrow street. The woman turned to Aster.

"You, young lady? You wouldn't have any spare coin, would you? Any at all?"

Aster nodded, smiling tenderly. "Demeter?"

"Your coin will do you better than it will anybody here," Demeter said. "Keep it."

The woman's shuffling was slowing, and her breath was becoming labored.

"Demeter, I'd like to help. Please, stop."

Demeter stopped, turned. She didn't look at the woman, only Aster, and the slight heaviness in her eyelids betrayed her disapproval.

"How much belongs to you?" she asked.

"Nineteen copper." Aster smiled proudly.

"Considering the half you owe me?"

Aster's smile dropped, as did her shoulders and her eyes. "No," she grumbled.

"Nine and a half, then," Demeter said. "How much would you like?"

"All of it, please."

Demeter didn't sigh, or groan, or roll her eyes; she simply loosened her pack straps and swung it off her shoulder, then dug shoulder deep into the biggest pocket.

Exactly ten small copper coins were in her hand when it emerged, the first nine of which she gave to Aster while the tenth she held in an open palm. Aster flinched when it split in half, then smiled broadly.

"Whoa."

She took the half she liked more, the half with the stalk of grain printed on it instead of the half with the boar's head, and turned around. The woman she knew had been joined by two she didn't, both younger than the first, one with light brown hair and the other with pale red. The brown-haired one and the first were bickering, but they stopped when Aster spoke.

"Here you are," she said with a smile, depositing two coins in each pair of outstretched hands. "I'm sorry I can't give you more. I'll need these last few for food."

"Please, darling," said the red-haired one. "There's no need to apologize." Her voice was strained, belonging to a much older woman. "You're very kind."

"Yes, very kind," said the first. She was glaring at the brown-haired one, but turned to Aster to smile. "Very kind, very kind."

"Thank you," the brown-haired one said.

Aster nodded. "I pray the moon treats you all very well."

The women thanked Aster again, echoing one another as she started along the dirt road, though she could hear the first and the brown-haired one bickering again before she was out of earshot.

"Thank you," Aster said, after she'd caught Demeter. The older, wiser mage had continued along the road while Aster divvied her earnings.

"It's not my copper to spend," Demeter said. "Though I trust you won't ask me to buy you any meals after whatever you have left is gone."

"Nope!" Aster shook her head, as proud now as she'd been when she'd thought all nineteen copper belonged to her. "I'll get by just fine with my dates and crackers."

***

Stale was a brief village, wider than it was long, and the travelers had arrived at the foot of the Glint Mountains before the sun had moved. As it dipped slowly behind the horizon, it painted the clouds a brilliant gold and the sky a luscious pink.

"You're certain you want to come?"

"Yes!" Aster whined, dropping her shoulders in exhaustion, tired of repeating herself. "I want to see what you see."

"Where will you stay?"

"Close behind you."

"What will you do?"

"Nothing."

"What does nothing mean?"

"It means nothing!" Aster was shifting her weight from one foot to the other and kicking sullenly at the rocky dirt. She looked at a tall, wiry cloud in the distance instead of at Demeter. "No magic, no screaming, no helping. Nothing."

Demeter was halfway through a word when an unfamiliar voice interrupted.

"Pardon me, young ladies." It was a white-haired man, thin and short, made thinner and shorter by the baggy clothes he wore. Aster admired his beard, long enough to tickle his belly. His voice sounded like a frog's. "I do hope you don't intend to venture into those caves."

"We do," Demeter said. She'd unslung her pack again, and her focus was on the nearby mouth of a cave as she dug into the pouch. "It will be cold inside," she said to Aster. "I'd recommend an overcoat."

"No, no, no," the man said, stepping closer and waving his hands. "You girls must be from far away. These caves are haunted. They'll kill anyone slow-headed enough to go inside. You two would be better off going west, to shallower mountains, though I don't know if a pair of young ladies like you should be exploring caves at all."

Demeter ignored him as she slung her pack back over her shoulder. Aster, still digging through her own in search of her jacket, gave him a polite smile.

"It's okay, sir. We're mages. We know how to take care of ourselves."

The man exhaled a deep breath, rubbing at his bushy eyebrows and oversized nose.

"No, you girls aren't listening. The things in there are bigger and stronger than you are. Men -strongmen - don't come back from those caves. How about you two come back into town for the night? I have spare beds, and my wife can feed you some potato mash. I'd certainly appreciate the company of two young beauties."

Aster, now fitting her arm into the sleeve of her jacket, gave another smile - grateful, this time.

"Sir-"

"We're aware of the risks and are equipped to handle them," Demeter said. "Your concern is appreciated, but your persistence is not. You can leave us, now."

The man looked like he'd been hit. "Now you listen here-"

"No, thank you." Demeter started up the mountain, towards a farther cave mouth than the one she'd been inspecting.

The man shook his head and scoffed, muttering under his breath, then turned to Aster.

"I'm sorry," she said. Her smile was apologetic, now. "Thank you for checking on us."

The man muttered again, waving Aster off, and turned away, though not before he'd looked her up and down one last time.

***

Just as Demeter had said, the cave was cold. Frigid, in fact, and pitch black. Even the faintest light was enough to illuminate everything around them.

It still amazed Aster, after all the times she'd seen it, to see light made from magic. It wasn't like sunlight, or candlelight, or any other kind of light, really. It didn't shine from a source - not like it did in the stories Aster read as a child, where the magicians summoned glowing orbs or tongues of flame. This light simplywas. It lit everything equally, casting no shadows and making no highlights, brightest where Demeter walked and dimming slowly as it stretched forward and backward into the cave.

It made everything look unreal, like a dream come to life, and Aster was still learning how to navigate the uneven terrain without shadows to guide her, but she was too transfixed by the strange beauty of it all to mind the occasional bump or stumble.

The cave they'd ventured into had been high on the mountain, higher even than the second Demeter had inspected, though not higher than the scars on the mountain's surface where the long-ago inhabitants of Stale had mined, and it dipped steeply as it crawled slowly into the heart of the mountain. It turned and twisted, split and intersected; it became a maze that Aster, helpless without the sun or the stars to guide her, quickly lost herself in.

She didn't worry. Demeter walked with certainty, as she had in Hemmers-Phore, as she did everywhere, and Aster knew that so long as she stayed closed behind, she would never be truly lost.

Having left at the mouth of the cave all but food and drink, Aster's staff, and what they wore, the adventurers moved swiftly through the tunnels. They swept around bends and down steep inclines. They drifted through low and narrow passageways. Already, the unpredictable rhythm of twists and turns was becoming familiar to Aster, and her mind had gone off to wander elsewhere. She didn't see the wolf until it was beside her.

Aster took no issue with the spiders and centipedes and other many-legged things that crawled along the walls - there were many many-legged things on a farm, after all - but a wolf wasn't something she could flatten under her heel. It was tall and thin, the tips of its pointed ears nearly level with Aster's elbows. Its skin was pale beneath a thin coat of fur, pulled tightly around its bones, pulled tightly around its lips, so its big, yellow fangs were always showing. It had no eyes, nor the sockets where eyes should be.

The horror, like a cold hand wrapping itself around her throat, was all that kept Aster from screaming. She stumbled backwards. Her knife was drawn before she'd found her footing. Demeter was still walking.

"It doesn't know you're here," the older mage said.

The grip around Aster's throat was still tight, but she managed a quiet, hollow reply.

"It can't...hear us? Or smell us?"

"It could, if I let it. But I won't."

Sure enough, the creature paid Aster no mind as it lumbered slowly along the cave, claws clicking on the stone, fangs dripping with something grey and gooey.

She watched it, half in shock and half in awe, until its shape began to dim as Demeter, still walking, took the light with her. Aster stepped lightly and held her knife tightly until she'd caught up again.

"What is it?" she asked. Her voice was still a gentle strangle quieter than it had been before.

"A creature yet to be classified or named, though I would expect it to be a relative of the Ahlam Wolf that lives in these mountains, on the surface."

"What does... Does it eat the spiders and the bugs?" Aster thought of biting into the crunchy exterior of a tarantula and shivered.

"I don't know. Mammals live in these caves, though the insects and arachnids are certainly more abundant. I wouldn't be surprised if it ate the latter."

"I think it does," Aster said, scrunching her nose in disgust - and disapproval. "I think he had bugs in his teeth."

"I see."

"You said he doesn't have a name. Have you seen other wolves like him?"

"No."

"Then why didn't you stop to look at him longer? Don't you want to find out what he eats?"

"I do, and I intend to. There are a great number of creatures in these caves I'd like to see, but there will be time for that later. Presently, I'd like to see a demon."

Aster nodded. After a brief silence, she spoke again.

"Did you know..." She stopped herself, certain of the answer. She asked her second question instead. "Why didn't you tell me he was there? It scared me."

"That's precisely why. I wanted to know if you'd scream."

Aster could hear the amused half-smile in her mentor's voice.

"I didn't," Aster said hopefully.

"You didn't."

***

Without a moon to stop and glance at, Aster had little sense of how long they'd been walking. She guessed that the moon hung halfway between the horizon and directly overhead, still rising, but if Demeter told her that the night was already waning, or that the moon had only just begun to peek over the treetops, she wouldn't be surprised.

They'd walked long enough for the sloping ground to level, and the narrow tunnels to widen. Cavernous hollows came frequently, now, sprawling so enormously that Demeter's light could only illuminate the ground beneath their feet.

Aster was amazed to see pools of water and to hear trickling falls and streams. Vegetation grew, thin patches of green that crawled along the ground and walls, that hung from the ceiling, thicker and taller where the water pooled. Aster gasped aloud when she first saw the glowing mushrooms.

They were small and dim, glowing dull shades of yellow and orange, but in the distant blackness of the cave, they twinkled like distant planets, and their reflection in the trickling water made swirling galaxies. Aster marveled at them, imagining she was an adventurer wandering through space, until Demeter's light began to disappear into a new tunnel.

When they happened upon another wolf, this one tucked away in a cave corner with another of its size and a third much smaller, Aster didn't startle. Nor did she as they walked alongside a parade of small, scampering creatures that reminded her of mice, if mice were hairless. Nor did she as they passed beneath a spider half her size, huddled almost invisibly on the ceiling, and through the tangle of webs it had woven. She let the memory of Caroline pass by without shivering.

Deeper into the mountain they traveled, where the older, warmer air settled, and with every sprawling cavern they passed, the living things only multiplied. Of those that weren't arachnids or insects, most were small and rodent-like. Not rodents, Aster was reminded, every time she saw their fangs, their tall ears, their long, thin limbs, but perhaps related, as Demeter had said of the wolf.

There were other, larger creatures, but Aster rarely caught more than glimpses. Things that resembled lizards, crawling around on their bellies with long tails trailing behind them. Another that looked canine, mistaken by Aster for another wolf, until she'd seen how long its body stretched behind it. Another like nothing Aster had seen, with long, slender fingers growing from long, slender arms, concentric rings of teeth, translucent skin.

Aster understood, now, why the old mining scars stretched no deeper into the caves than sunlight did, as she understood the old man's warnings at the base of the mountain. Demeter stepped past the sickly, long-fingered thing without a glance.

Aster's feet had not yet begun to ache when Demeter slowed to a stop, just before a narrowing. The younger mage stepped quietly alongside her.

"It's here." Demeter's eyes were closed, and as she took a deep, slow breath, a faint smile turned her lips. "Can you feel it?"

Taking a deep breath of her own, though it wasn't as indulgent as her mentor's, Aster closed her eyes and felt for magic. Felt past the slight dampness of the air. Felt past the slight warmth.

There. It was different than the magic she'd felt before. It was cold, if cold was something magic could be, and heavy. It was rumbling, humming, like a lullaby. It touched her in return, a tongue sliding along her sweaty skin.

Startled, Aster opened her eyes and took a step back, sucking in a deep breath when she realized she'd been holding it. She glanced at Demeter, whose eyes were still closed, and whose lips were still turned in faint rapture.

Ch. 03 - Yellow

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