Resurrected as a Drow Chapter 5 -- Sex scene and my editor told me he had to jack off after he read it, so there is one vote saying it's hot.

I did not know what it was that had flipped the switch in Tryss, but one moment she was telling me it would be improper for us to get a little frisky in the bath, and then suddenly she was slamming me up against the nearest wall with her surprisingly powerful strength.

“You are mine, do you understand?” the drow female growled as her much smaller body pinned mine up against the wall. “You are not for all to see.”

It was fucking hot.

“What about the sanctity of the-- mmpf!” The rest of what I was about to say was abruptly cut off by the ferocious way Tryss kissed the breath out of me.

“Fuck the sanctity-- mm-- of the--!” It was her turn to have her breath stolen as I pushed back with equal dominance, and I also found my sharp teeth were good for more than just biting my own tongue. “Ow! Fuck. More.”

“Shit.” I broke away for a breath, and my cock throbbed to full mast when her fingers seemed to be just as clever as her mind as she got them around me.

“Mm, you are eager, that’s excellent,” Tryss purred as she explored the length of my erect cock with a rough caress and a rougher squeeze.

Meanwhile, one of her calves rubbed up the back of one of my thighs, and it finally kicked in how we were definitely about to defile this sacred chamber right here and now.

And I was totally game for that, but only one thing needed changing.

“Hold on, toots,” I said, and then I whipped us both around so I could slam her against the same wall she had pinned me up against earlier.

“Oh, Goddess, Fynn you’re-- hrrrmm.” The last of whatever Tryss was trying to say was lost to that lovely sound burbling from her vocal chords when I simultaneously held one of her legs up by the knee and knelt down.

This put me eye-level with her lower belly, and when I draped her leg over one of my wide shoulders for stability, the high slit white skirt number she was wearing fell between her legs until I tossed it aside.

The soft mound that held my prize was now hidden beneath the thin cloth of her thin panties, and my cock throbbed in anticipation.

“Let me show you what I was talking about earlier,” I said as I leaned forward so I could huff a hot and moist breath over her veiled sex.

“Ah!” Tryss rocked her hips back and forth, and when she went to dip her fingers down below her waistline, I reached up, grabbed her wrist, and wrenched her hand away from her goal.

“Nope. I’m going to do that.”

“Grrrr!” she actually growled with frustration.

Ooh, that was an interesting sound I would have to file away for later, and I couldn’t help but chuckle when she twined her free hand into my hair.

“Haaa,” I breathed, and I only let her guide my head where she wanted me if she let me put her other hand firmly on her own breast. “Touch yourself here.”

There was a deep growl of authority in my voice, and I was pleased to see her rich wine-colored eyes blow wide and dark with arousal.

Tryss shuddered and bit her full lower lip as she began to massage her right breast through the material of her leather halter top.

“Yesss,” she hissed when I got to work undoing the crisscrossing belts that held her double slitted skirt in place.

I then had the urge to use my teeth to tear off the dainty bottoms that prevented her lower half from being fully naked.

So I did.

“Rrrrrrr.” Another predatory growl cascaded out of my throat when the scent of her natural musk hit me, and on instinct, I nipped and suckled a mark onto the inner thigh of the leg still draped over my shoulder.

“F-Fynn!” she gasped, and the sharp nails of her fingers scraped deliciously against my scalp as she gripped a fist full of my hair.

Her curly, yet groomed pubic hair tickled sweetly against my cheek, and I finally turned my attention to the treasure between her legs.

Then I leaned in and inhaled deeply.

Her spicy-sweet musk made my nose tingle, and I angled her raised knee like I was opening a book so I could have more access to her pretty pussy. Then, with my thumb, I was able to pry apart her lilac lips where a pretty glistening pearl winked at me with temptation.

I dove in to seal my lips around that tender little bud of excited flesh nestled within her pale pink folds, and when she yowled, I thrilled at the way every muscle of hers tightened up while she pressed my head harder against her.

Her message was clear that I was on the right track, and I listened to what she was telling me with her body.

Right now, the novice priestess seemed to be telling me she really liked it when I swirled the tip of my tongue around that petal soft part, and a sweet slickness started to fill my mouth when I concentrated the smallest of my movements directly in the center.

“Oohhhh, you’re so good at reading me-- haa!” Tryss panted. “Now, k-keep doing that with your tongue and-and put a finger inside of my tunnel. Hurry, I’m about to come.”

It wasn’t the easiest feat, but I managed to worm my pointer finger into her silken pussy while still flickering my tongue over her pleasure bud.

She felt incredible on the inside, and my own member throbbed fiercely when her velvet walls clutched and clenched the more I wiggled and rubbed.

“T-Touch your cock,” she ordered. “U-Use my essence to get yourself nice and slick.”

I groaned against her pussy, and then I removed my drenched hand from between her legs and gave myself a heady stroke.

“Ah! I’m coming, don’t… Hh!” Tryss inhaled sharply and humped her hips against me as some strange energy exploded out of her like a delicious thunderclap of pleasure.

Orgasm.

The little death, my spotty brain supplied, and as I watched the gorgeous woman arch her back and groan at the high ceilings, I figured that expression had to be apt.

When Tryss was nothing but a trembling and sweating mess, I pulled back a little and just rubbed her throbbing little nub between two of my fingers until her hand tugged my hair again.

“Stop,” Tryss gasped and leaned her head back against the wall for a moment to catch her breath, and I withdrew my fingers. While she gathered herself, I rode the high of having pleasured her so thoroughly, and I caressed her hip bone with my thumb as I continued to pepper kisses on the insides of her legs.

At some point, her breathing returned to normal, and she went to lower the leg still draped over my shoulder, but before she did, she planted the ball of her foot in the center of my chest and pushed.

“Oof!” I grunted as I toppled back until I landed against the wall of the large tub, and I winced when I thumped the back of my head. “Warning would be nice.”

Tryss laughed a wicked laugh as she sauntered slowly toward me. She emphasized the sultry roll of her supple hips, and as she moved, she also untied the back of her top until it was loose enough to slip over her head. Then she threw it to the side, and I forgot about the slight pain in my head at the sight of her fully bared before me.

“Sit still, male,” Tryss growled with her unfettered grin, and I sat up as straight as my cock when she straddled me and lowered herself so she was on her knees on either side of my hips.

“It shouldn’t need to be said that if I’ve ever done this, I do not remember,” I said as I smoothed my palms up her tapered waist to cup each one of her full breasts, and with one thumb, I circled around her plum colored nipple.

“Oh! Haa-- I think you’ve proven you follow your instincts… mmm… quite well,” she said, and her head tilted back as I lavished attention to her other stiff peak.

Meanwhile, her sure grip returned to the hard length practically curled up against my torso, and when she slowly drew her hand right up under the head of my large cock, I couldn’t help but jut my hips up as much as I could.

“Goddess,” I cursed when she merely moved with my motion instead of against it, so I was in a state of frictionless purgatory. “Fuck.”

“Yes,” Tryss agreed with a serrated smile, and she rose up so she could finally position my tip against the hot entrance of her pussy.

Then she slowly lowered herself down, and we both gasped at the feeling of my spongy head trying to force its girth inside her tight channel.

“Slowly,” I warned when the lines between her brows grew deeper and deeper the more she strained. “B-Bear down.”

I supported her by holding her by the hips, and she took a slow breath in an effort to relax.

“Ah!” Her body jolted when my thick head finally made it in, and the tightness surrounding my most sensitive part nearly blinded my only good eye with the intensity.

Fuck.

Fuuuuuck.

All I wanted to do was flip her over and plunge the rest of my length into that gripping, sucking, slick, hot, hot, hot sheath.

Fuck…

But the last thing I wanted to do was hurt her, and even though there was some relief to finally breaching her entrance, I could tell she still needed to go slowly. There was also the very real possibility she might not be able to take all of me, so I adjusted my grip and supported her a little better so she wouldn’t exhaust herself.

When Tryss had made it about halfway down my shaft, she paused there for a moment before she suddenly seated herself fully in my lap in one fell swoop.

“Unf!” I moaned as her heat sheathed me down to the base, and I couldn’t help how my arms wrapped around her or how my hips kicked up a few times despite myself.

“F-Fynn, ahhhhhh!” Tryss trembled and nearly collapsed against my chest, and her pussy walls contracted rhythmically as a second peak of rapture slammed into her stronger than the first time I made her finish with my mouth.

But now that she was… coming… that was the word. Now that she was coming around my cock, it was even better, and I roared out as my own climax slammed into me like someone was squeezing my balls and punching me in the stomach at the same time.

It was equal parts amazing and painful.

“Goddess, you’re gorgeous,” I growled as she furiously rocked her hips back and forth through the waves of her pleasure, and I felt myself pour into her with each strong throb.

“I can feel you releasing inside me so much, ah, Drogu, you are potent,” Tryss whined like she was in the sweetest agony, and she sagged against me as I continued to fuck my hips up with each jet of seed that squirted out of my tip. “I can feel your warm seed entering my womb. There is so much. So… so much of it… inside of me. Ohhhh… yesss… for the glory of our house… we’ll breed. Yessss…”

“Pregnant…” I growled as silhouettes of small people flickered through the forgotten corners of my brain.

Offspring.

Babies.

“Yes.” The woman in my arms nodded her snow white head against my cheek. “I’ve heard most drow females can tell the moment they conceive-- unf! Are you still coming?”

She huffed this last part out as I spurted out the last of what I had with a final jerk that seemed to touch something deep inside of her tunnel, which I guessed she liked quite a bit by the way her body trembled again.

“I think I’m done now, but I want more,” I admitted and kicked my pelvis up again.

“Ah, you’re still so hard!” she gasped, and with a shudder, a beautiful flush of shivery bumps broke out all along her pale purple skin and caused her dark nipples to pucker once more.

With the strength and energy from the pleasure still fizzing through my blood, I picked her up in my arms with my cock still inside of her, and I turned us both around so I could set her ass on the ledge of the stone basin.

“You feel so good,” I said, and with a long slow stroke, I pulled my cum-soaked cock out of her slippery tunnel and then thrust all the way back in.

“Haaah!” The breath snagged in Tryss’ chest, and her long nails left burning trails along the back of my shoulders as she tried to force us even closer. “Th-There. Right there, that’s the spot. Soooo… deep… in… me…”

“Feel good?” I chuckled, and then I repeated the deep stroking motion.

“Yesssss, fuuuuck!” she groaned. “Harder. Deeper. Give it to me… Give. It. To. Meeee!”

“As you command, Mistress,” I said, and then I got to work on “following my instincts.”

This basically meant doing what felt best, and that was getting Tryss to tighten up every time I dragged my cock against the special spot deep inside her tunnel.

I adjusted my angle slightly, and I was surprised when I felt a sudden renewed burst of slick flow between us that made everything so much better. Then I spread my legs open just a little more for better leverage so I could hammer my way inside her.

“Again, fuck, I’m coming, don’t stop, Fynn!” Tryss screamed as her walls clenched down on me harder than before, until it was almost impossible to go any faster than I was.

Then we were both climaxing again.

When that glorious release of energy between the two of us looped into one other in a circuit of goddess, fuck, yes, it felt like I came harder and longer than I ever had before.

“Yess… you are filling me up with so much seeeed…” she whined as I somehow pumped what seemed like a gallon deep into her tightness again.

Our climaxes seemed to go on and on for a good five minutes, but then I finally spurted my last drops of cream into her stuffed tunnel, and her walls gave a final squeeze to make sure my balls were empty.

“Fuck,” I breathed and buried my face into the side of her neck. “That was fun.”

“Fun,” she remarked as she hooked her chin over my shoulder while we remained plastered together. “I can’t feel my legs, your cream is dripping out of me and into my asshole, and my heart feels like it’s about to burst from my chest. Yet he calls it fun.”

“I lost count of all the times you climaxed on my cock,” I chuckled and pulled back so I could look her in the face.

“Yesss. It was quite fun.” Tryss giggled a little as she looked at me, and I smiled back as her claret eyes shifted between one of my eyes and then back to the other. “Your eyes really are… quite… strange.”

“Does it make me freakish by drow standards?” I whispered as she displayed a hesitant sort of tenderness and tucked a strand of my hair out of my face.

“Not freakish,” she said and let me turn my cheek into her warm palm. “To me at least. But… it might cause problems for us.”

“Is this more about the ways of drow society?” I asked, and I had the urge to cover my Dark Eye the longer she stared at it.

“We’ve discussed how it is the nature of the drow to ascend in all manners that are pleasing to Drogu-ani on an individual level, right?” she asked, and I nodded when I remembered the particulars of our conversation before the bath turned steamy.

“Something about… how the individual’s gain benefits the whole,” I summed up.

“Correct,” Tryss said as she continued to absently play with the strands of my long white hair. “And all areas or stations in between. For example, for the Drow of Oshara to prosper over the Drow of… Jaholand, let’s say, each House has to be born of the purest stock. And because you have two different eyes, one dark red like a proper drow, but one blue one like the topsiders, you would be mistaken as being of mixed blood either of elf or man.”

“And that’s displeasing to Drogu-ani,” I said. Some part of her words echoed as being familiar, yet I knew I was hearing all of this for the first time.

“Indeed,” Tryss said and continued on. “Long ago, before Mother Savahtra was the Matron Mother of Claden’Du, there were Houses numbering in the hundreds, not just the fifty we have today. The Uppards and Lowers have always fought for supremacy, and that led to an all out civil war. To sum up a long and mostly boring story, the Lowers would interbreed with other species like the duergar and the fae-folk so their armies would have bastardized magicks to go against the stronger breeding stock the Uppards had by hierarchy standards. The Lowers were winning their wars with offspring who could tame multiple disciplines of magic, and they worked to decimate Oshara’s hanging Houses until Drogu-ani saw fit to flood Oshara’s Cavern. Only those who remained pure of intermixing species were spared from the Weeping.”

“And now, instead of being able to expand outward or utilize the natural resources the cavern floor might have to offer, the Oshara Lowers have a lake at their feet and nowhere to go but up,” I concluded as more of the dynamics of this strange world fell into place.

“Not just any lake, a lake full of hungry abominations,” Tryss added, and I shook my head with a sigh.

“I guess I understand about being the strongest, or the most elite in order to bring honor to what you believe in, but if it means using things to your advantage, like mixing blood to achieve stronger and stronger offspring, then why stick to such rigid mores of purity?” I asked plainly since there was still a part of me that was trying to reconcile some of the harshness of this foreign society.

“It is because the Spider Goddess hates everything to do with the gods and goddesses of other races since they ostracized her for being of the spider-born…” Tryss trailed off here as if something just occurred to her. “And that makes Helera partially right because it might actually be my fault you are so disadvantaged.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, and I stroked soothing circles into her hips when she frowned and bit her lip.

“During the Beseeching Prayer to the Goddess, all of us were giving homage to Drogu and faithfully asking her to send us something we could Summon for our salvation.” Tryss’ voice grew somber, and I had to remember that while I appeared after most of the raid on Claden’Du was over, the novice priestess and the rest of what remained of the Twenty-Sixth House were still experiencing the shock of what was probably the most traumatic event to have happened to them. “Everything just felt so hopeless and-- dark. Not just any dark like here in the Neverlight. Even in Oshara, when the radiant lichen dims with the waning moon on the surface, it is never completely pitch black. During the raid, I felt for a moment the completely howling nothingness of the universe, and in my weakness, I begged the Goddess for light. And then she gave us you.”

“And all I can promise is I will do my utmost to help you prove to the others you and the Goddess did the right thing by Summoning me from wherever I was before,” I said, and I slowly rubbed the sore knot of something behind my sternum. “I have a feeling I wouldn’t have liked staying where I was if you didn’t.”

“I wish I knew more about you, Fynn Noname,” Tryss said as she stroked my jaw.

“Me too,” I said before I kissed her fingers. “But for now, what should we do about my blue eye? Eye patch?”

“Possibly,” she agreed. “Now, let me up, because we both need to cleanse ourselves inside the pool again.”

I smiled and slowly disengaged from her, and I hissed at the sensitivity as my still half-hard cock was exposed to the air. My creamy seed ran down her thighs in a pearly path I was somewhat mesmerized by, and I found myself wanting to scoop it up with my finger and push it back into her tight tunnel to ensure she bore me children.

“Good idea,” I said instead.

“Drogu’s sake, you’re still erect,” Tryss purred and lightly ran her fingers over my slick flesh. “Very virile… my womb feels the volume and weight of your warm seed. Perhaps…”

“Perhaps?” I asked after she hesitated.

“I am fertile…” she muttered. “I took what I needed from you, and you gave a copious amount… twice. We will need to rebuild our house sooner rather than later, but mother has not given me permission to breed yet, so do not mention our… fun.”

“Of course not,” I said.

“I’m sure she will approve of us breeding once she comes to understand your power. It is just a matter of time. I have a… positive feeling about you. My sisters will need children, too, but maybe I am thinking too far in the future. Let us speak of something else.”

“Alright,” I breathed through my nose as I tried not to purr at the thought of her, and her bitchy sisters, stomachs growing plump with my children.

The idea really turned me on, and my cock instantly became rock hard again.

“Help me in, lover,” she said and then kissed me with another sharp kiss that had a fair amount of teeth.

I obliged her happily and helped her wobbly legs into the tub, and then I jumped in after her.

This time, I helped her bathe because it seemed as if she was still a little out of it as she gestured wordlessly to the different cleansing items. As I washed her soft hair with the stuff out of the green bottle that smelled like… like…

A green tree with bright yellow fruit flickered across the dark waters of my dim memories.

Lemons, mmm.

It was such an intimate thing, washing someone’s hair, and despite the fact we were closer than two beings could probably physically be a moment ago, this action felt more… significant somehow. I couldn’t really explain it, but some inner thing inside of me thrummed with smug satisfaction that Tryss had willingly given over some of her trust to let me attend to something so personal.

Especially because her dazed state, though adorable, made her seem oddly vulnerable, and my protective instincts pinged around my skull and made themselves known in the face of her sleepy compliance.

Eventually, I had to turn her around so I could wash her front with more of the energizing scented oil, and when I slid my hands over her pretty breasts, I was careful to be extra gentle with her swollen nipples.

“Was I too rough?” I asked in a hushed voice. Under the dim torches, I could see fingertip shaped bruises in the beginning stages of blooming dark purple along her chest, and especially around her hips and thighs.

“Hmmmm,” she purred with a grin and pressed down on the bruise over her left breast. “Just as I asked. You take direction very well, and I do not mind the added decorations.”

“I aim to please,” I said and then placed a kiss on the same bruise she’d so heedlessly stabbed with her finger.

Tryss squirmed just then and pulled back with another one of those complex, confused expressions on her face. It was the second time I had seen such a thing, and just like before, it vanished as quickly as it came.

I wanted to question her about it this time since we were alone, but as if she sensed where my train of thought was headed, she derailed me by framing my face between her hands.

“What is it like?” she asked, and I struggled to understand what she was talking about until she clarified. “Your eyes, I mean. Do they see different things?”

My eyebrows ticked up in surprise. “You caught that?”

“Well, you have a tendency to wink a lot,” she murmured and then did that thing again where she tucked some of my hair behind my ear. This time, she did it with more confidence than she had the first time like she, too, recognized there was something more to these chaste touches that superseded the actual act of us fornicating.

“I call my right eye my Dark Eye because I see mostly darkness out of it,” I said, and I was relieved she seemed to understand the weight of what I was admitting to her.

After all, it was basically a handicap, and I was not in the position to make myself appear less than tip top. That much at least had been made abundantly clear to me.

On thin ice, the half-forgotten idiom floated through my mind.

“Strange,” Tryss mused as her gem-like gaze shifted back and forth between my two eyes. “You are completely blind in your blue eye, then.”

“Not completely,” I corrected her. “It’s called my Dark Eye because compared to my regular drow one, I can’t see. However, when I was able to… make the light come… my drow eye became the blind one, but this one? I could see perfectly.”

At this, Tryss’ jaw slackened as she ogled me.

“That’s how you could strike them all down perfectly in such a short time,” she finally said after a beat. “I assumed you did a spell that caused the light to cut them all somehow. Just like how the Fidelity Spell struck us all simultaneously.”

“Is this a common assumption about what I did?” I asked.

“It’s really my best guess,” she replied and lowered her hands so she could step away. “For now, let’s keep this knowledge between us, hmmm?”

I agreed, and when we were all lemony fresh and clean of any evidence of our activities, Tryss climbed out of the pool and hurriedly dried off with a towel with perfunctory swipes. It seemed as if her brain was back to galloping at full speed ahead because she quickly threw her old discarded clothes on and then chucked a towel at my own head.

“Hey,” I grunted and removed the offending material from my face.

“Dry off,” she instructed as she set about pulling on her knee-high boots. Then she wiggled her fingers, and they laced themselves. “Our presence is probably missed.”

“Is that cool trick with your laces something you can teach me?” I asked as I attempted to wring out my hair as much as I could around the half-up braid style Tyrss did earlier. Chances are, she would have to redo it for me later.

“Possibly,” she said with a smirk in her voice, and then she tugged me by the elbow so I could follow her out of the bathing chamber and dry myself at the same time.

Although, this wasn’t really effective for seeing where I was going, and I walked right into Tryss’ back when she apparently stopped for some reason a moment later.

“Sorry, what’s--?” I tried to say as I draped the towel around my still-dripping shoulders, but she derailed me when she made a bee-line to the center of the Temple. “Tryss?”

“The altar,” she said and stopped in the center of an intricately painted series of circles resembling a web, and now that I wasn’t reeling from my sudden existence, I saw it was the same place the Matron Mother and her Daughters Summoned me.

But now there was something in the center of what Tryss called the altar that definitely wasn’t there before.

“What is that?” I asked as we both approached the scarlet orb hovering in midair like a giant drop of blood.

“The Goddess has chosen to receive our sexual offering, and in turn, she has given us a Blessing,” Tryss said, and she positioned her palms on either side of the orb but made sure not to touch the crimson surface.

“Which is good?” I asked as I watched the novice priestess handle the object.

“It could be,” she said. “Remember, the Goddess thrives on chaos, so what might be a Blessing to her, might look like a curse at first.”

“So, what does that mean exactly?” I asked as I eyed the orb with trepidation.

“We must open it and let the Blessing pass through us,” she explained, and then without further ado, Tryss cracked the shell of the red orb open like it was made of glass.

A rush of power like an icy wind cut through the both of us, but before I even had a chance to shiver, it was gone. In its wake, however, was the feeling of something settling at the base of my heart, and I knew whatever it was, I could keep it there until I needed to use it for later.

“Woah,” I breathed. “What was that?”

“We will not know what she has Blessed us with until the Revelation, which is when the Blessing makes itself known,” Tryss explained. “The Matron Mother’s sister, Mother Signata, had the Blessing of Apocalyptic Rage from an offering she gave unto Drogu-ani many centuries ago in her youth, and it only Revealed itself the day before Ozin-Na attacked. Because of this, she and Sevahtra were able to make a plan, and given the name of her Blessing, I’m almost certain it was she who bought me and my sisters the time we needed to get to the Temple.”

“Apocalyptic Rage, huh?” I murmured, and I continued to dry the rest of my body as Tryss then walked out of the web altar and over one of the Temple benches where a few piles of clothes were neatly folded and stacked. “I’m picturing that it’s just as terrifying as it sounds.”

“Given the state of our House, I would say so,” Tryss said as she pulled the towel out of my hands and replaced it with a bundle of proper clothing. “Put on the basic uniform for servants and put this over it.”

Then she bent down and reached for a dark purple cloak with white detailing stitched into the rich fabric.

“So, we pretend we are from House… Ozin-Na right?” I asked as I shimmied into some tight black breeches and a long plain black tunic with silver ribbing around the collar.

“We will wear House Ozin-Na’s purple and white colored cloak over Claden’Du’s preferred black and sapphire colors,” she explained, and then she looked closer at the royal purple cloak with the white embroidered designs running up and down the sleeves, along the hem, and around the mouth of the deep hood. “This type of cloak is special as you might have gathered. The stitching is imbued with magical thread and worked into the material with runes specific to the members of that house. Since none of us are actually of Ozin-Na, the magic in the cloak won’t do anything to help or hinder. So, Helera has done a simple Mending Spell and has attached a Claden’Du cloak like a lining under the Ozin-Na one.”

“Crafty,” I said and swung the heavy cloak over my shoulders like she did. “Is that it?”

“Normally, we’d have some basic armor for you to wear any time you go outside of the Noble Tower, but the armory collapsed along with the rest…” Tryss said as she fastened a belt around my waist equipped with a long curved dagger and jeweled scabbard. “So, this will have to do for now.”

“That’s more than enough,” I replied as I took a moment to inspect the sharp weapon similar to the one I used to get rid of my enemies.

Some deep muscle memory took over, and I found myself checking the balance of the blade with a series of intricate twirls and flips I had no knowledge of learning.

“One more thing,” Tryss said after I sheathed my new dagger, and when I looked up, she was holding out some knotted scrap thing. “This is my improvised eyepatch for you. It’s a good idea if we call as little attention to us as possible like Mother said, and your Dark Eye isn’t actually so dark.”

“Sticks out like a sore thumb, does it?” I asked with a smirk.

“Ye-- what?” she asked with a giggle as she fastened the makeshift eye patch over my eye. “Where do you come up with your strange sayings?”

“I really don’t know,” I admitted. “Sometimes things just… fall out. I’ll try to contain it.”

“Good,” Tryss said and smoothed her hands down my shoulders and arms. “Except… you can say all that stuff around me when we’re alone, if you want. I… I don’t mind your strangeness.”

“Okay.” I grinned and gripped her arms in a loose embrace that matched hers. “Hey, what is this symbol here?”

I touched the cuff of her cloak where an insignia of some obvious importance was embroidered all around.

“It means Ozin-Na,” Tryss said and then turned and flipped her hood up so I could see the much larger one stitched in the center of the cloak’s back.

The design of the insignia itself looked like a combination of a few shapes in one. It featured a circle in the middle of two half-moons, and the whole glyph was run through with an arrow pointing upward.

“If this is Ozin-Na, then what does Claden’Du look like?” I asked as I traced the symbol.

“It looks like this…” Tryss raised both hands and blew on the tips of her fingers until both pointer fingers were illuminated like low burning gas flames. Then she drew a symbol that mirrored itself and ended up looking like two axes back to back with the shape of a diamond in the middle of the double sided weapon. “Despite Ozin-Na being on the outside of your cloak, you’ll be able to use the basic command words attached to the Warriors of the Void once I use a spell to attune you to Nodrin’s magic.”

“So, if I say any of the command words Nodrin wove into Claden’Du’s insignia, what happens?” I asked.

“There are two different types of commands,” she said. “Most are basic and give you advantages in stealth and maneuverability, and the others are only for emergencies. He has emergency command words for all of the different House stations, like a veil of smoke, or an explosion. To prevent a modicum of inner House treachery, only the trusted head of each station, like the Head House Servant, was given the command word for their subordinates. A lot of the emergency command words for the less important chattel usually involve some sort of sacrificial suicide.”

My mind flickered dimly, and some screamed words in a fanatical tongue brought back the smell of fire and explosive powders that made me want to scratch my nose due to the phantom burning I could smell.

“If anybody could set something like that off, no wonder you needed to keep the passwords hidden from potential disruptors,” I said as I recognized the need for this system. “This Nodrin was the only one who knew all of the words like a master list?”

“Him and Mother’s First Son, who was also a mage, were the only two aside from Mother who had the only knowledge of the ‘master list,’ as you so aptly put it,” Tryss said.

“And the First Son is dead,” I guessed.

“Correct,” she answered.

“And Nodrin?” I probed.

“Also probably dead,” Tyrss replied.

“But what if I say one of the more destructive words like one that explodes me along with it accidentally?” I asked.

“The emergency command words are usually something nonsensical, so you should be alright,” she said with a smile, and then she swung the plain outer cloak around my shoulders with a smile. “In the meantime, let’s get the Attunement Spell over with so Claden’Du insignia recognizes you with it’s basic protections.”

Suddenly, the doors to the Temple suddenly banged open and caused both Tryss and I to jump nearly to the rafters, and with swift reflexes, I was already drawing my long dagger to face the foe.

Before I could, a gale of furious wind knocked the both of us clean off our feet, and my weapon skidded along the stone floor out of my reach