Looking down at her heavily-notched sword, Drysia's eyes widened with an idea.
Drysia grabbed a water stone from an item pouch. One of the items they'd grabbed off the Dragon guards, the stone carried a charge of mana that would generate water at will or until the mana ran out. Holding her sword high and out of the way, she called out.
"Water! Full force!"
The stone blasted out a gush of water, spraying Elmerin all over, with the backsplash even rinsing off the traces of mucus on her armor. The force cleaned off most of the ooze and mucus from the vines, while diluting them around Elmerin and Drysia.
Dropping the stone, Drysia turned as the Lustvines and the Dragons arrived at almost the same time -and lunged, throwing her sword, covered with the sap and ooze of the Lustvines straight into the midst of the Dragons.
Lustvines were not smart. They followed the instincts implanted in their ancestors by the evil magician that had created them. Among these was the imperative to attack those who harmed them, as determined by detecting and tracking the traces of their fellows.
Normal Lustvines were able to judge whether they should fight against an opponent.
Monsterized Lustvines lost that judgement.
And right now, the strongest source of their injured fellows' traces was the sword thrown among the heavily armed Dragons.
The flowers charged straight at the heavily-armed men wearing the symbol of the two dragons twined around a staff.
Elmerin was struggling to pull himself up as Drysia rushed over to him. "You are a fucking idiot," she snapped, yanking his arm over her shoulders.
"The vines-"
"Busy. But not for long." Drysia was surprised at Elmerin's weight. He was quite a bit lighter than she expected almost 2 meters of lean muscle to be. "You aren't running any spells, are you?"
"Ah, charmed item. Abatement of Burden."
"Huh." Drysia continued to haul Elmerin down the corridor. An item to make things lighter. That explained a couple of things.
"Too far."
"Far?"
"Safe room."
"To the nearest public safe room, yes." Drysia was scanning the wall to the left. "The Cothmores have their own boltholes." She paused, then released Elmerin to lean against the wall. "Here."
He watched as she counted down a column of carved filigree, then left along an ordinary-looking row of bricks. She pulled at the fifth brick, showing that it was half the thickness of its neighbors. Behind it was a space with an impression of the Cothmore Arms.
"Harpy, deer, horse, locust…" Tapping each animal in turn caused the impression to sink in. The whole wall moved out over half a meter, revealing a recessed door behind it. Above the handle was another, raised, copy of the Cothmore Arms.
"Locust, horse, harpy, deer." Drysia pushed each in turn, then grabbed and turned the handle.
Click. Drysia quickly grabbed Elmerin around the chest.
"Hurry. It closes by itself after a minute."
His head swimming, Elmerin struggled to do as she said, both of them stumbling inside the room as the exterior panel slid shut and the inner door swung closed.
"A little further… lay here." Drysia all but dropped Elmerin on the bedstead's bare mattress, then flopped down to sit beside him.
The room was a stellar example of Cothmore wealth. Fine rosewood paneled the walls, while cherrywood carefully selected to be just a shade lighter made up the furniture. Opposite the bed stood a round oak table and matching chairs, all delicately inlaid with glass patterns. The walls around the table were covered in cabinets, carved with fine designs. Along the base of the walls ran heat stones, cold when they had entered, but now starting to glow softly to heat the room; autostarting stones were expensive.
The bedstead itself contained four ornate columns, one on each corner, with the head and footboard featuring pierced designs of bold hunting scenes. The mattress was almost new, covered in silk from the spiders of Metsa and using the spring build introduced by the Summoned rather than being stuffed.
Elmerin looked upward and squinted. The light crystals in here were much larger and cleaner than the ones out in the labyrinth. "It doesn't smell like dust and mold in here."
"The Cothmores keep these secret rooms in much better repair than they do the labyrinth." Drysia's tone was flat. "Let's get those wet clothes off you. There should be blankets in one of the cabinets."
Indeed, the wet clothing felt gross. Sitting up, Elmerin stripped off the wet garments and boots as Drysia rummaged and brought out a blanket -an overembroidered monstrosity, but made of rich materials. She looked at him and froze.
"Drysia, what-?"
Grabbing his jaw, she pulled him to where she could look directly into his eyes. "Your eyes are green. I mean the white part."
Adrenaline shot through Elmerin, forcing him off the bed and dumping out the item bags. He found the rope he had used to get up to the statues' shelf earlier. "Sky must have had most of the ropes on them."
"Just get over here," snapped Drysia, pointing to the bed.
Green corneas after Lustvine mucus exposure meant a massive amount of the mucus' lust-promoting chemicals had been absorbed -enough to drive the target out of their mind. Shortly after their corneas turned green, they would enter a blackout state where they would lose control of their actions. In the absence of healing or potions, there was only one solution.
"Tie me down," Elmerin ordered. "Without my magic, I won't be able to get loose."
Drysia had already grabbed the rope from him and was running it through the pierced headboard. Around his wrists individually, binding them together, then through the headboard again. A couple more loops and she tied it off, then cut off the excess length. She used that to bind his feet together.
"Hey!" Elmerin yelped as she took off her belt.
"Be quiet." Drysia picked up his belt off the floor and linked them together, using the leather lengths to bind his tied feet to the footboard, buckling them securely. "You know the code."
Elmerin closed his eyes and nodded. The very informal and unwritten Guild Code had a lot of rules and customs, some exclusive to a specific guild, but one that stayed through the years was you did not fuck -literally- with someone under the influence of Lustvine. It was a fast way to get kicked out of any guild and turned over to the Watch.
Another was you stood by your team or party members when they were in trouble. All Elmerin could do was hope Drysia would stand by that, rather than her relationship with the Cothmores.
"You did ask me to sleep with you when we were on the stairs, before you retracted it." Elmerin snapped.
"That was sleep with you." Drysia was going through the item bags he'd dropped on the floor and her own. "Lustvine goo overdose makes it too one-sided and cruel." She glared at him, then brought over the vials she'd found. "Here's the detox potions they gave us, and this other one is a painkiller. Let's see if they help."
"A painkiller?"
"Having sex under Lustvine goop is pleasurable, but if you're not, it hurts like the dungeons of Kalshi of Dark." Drysia grabbed his jaw again and dumped the potions down his throat.
Cough. "How would -ahhh!" The first real wave of the Lustvines effect had hit. "How would you know?"
"Nevermind." Drysia headed for the cabinets and began rummaging through them. "I noticed something when I was tying your legs. Do you feel anything up your butt?"
Elmerin flushed. "Ye-es." He panted as he tried not to moan.
"If it's what I think it is, I'll take back calling you an idiot." Drysia brought over a large bowl, tongs, and a couple other items. "First, this." She cut open a small package, shaking out an item any of the Summoned might have recognized. "This condom's going on you to keep your mess down. On it goes."
"Ahh- Ah…" Elmerin kept telling himself it was the Lustvine making her hands feel so good as she placed the condom, and its effect on his mind that made it seem she was going more slowly than she strictly needed too.
Trying to distract himself, he said, "That doesn't feel like leather."
"Nah, the Cothmores import the fancy rubber stuff from the south." Drysia was pulling on some gloves. "Costs them a fortune."
Elmerin concentrated. "The county doesn't… doesn't make that much." He took a deep breath. "What… what is he doing?"
"You want a list?" Drysia picked up a pair of tongs. "Rammeld's probably having ten kinds of fits over the illegal shit Lisko's been up to, just based on what I know. Try to hold still." Drysia grabbed the object poking out of Elmerin's butt with the tongs and pulled.
"GaaAAAH!" Elmerin arched and bucked as the object slid smoothly out. With it gone he felt a sense of loss; it had felt so good.
"I definitely apologize for calling you an idiot." Drysia eyed the length of Lustvine, now held in the tongs. "Let's see, one, two…" she squeezed the seed pods out of the vine segment one by one. Elmerin whimpered. "I see twelve here. That's the most these things ever have in one vine, so you should be fine until your mana recharges or someone finds us."
"Dri- Argh!" Elmerin gritted his teeth as the next wave was one of pain, pain that could be ended if he… "Drys, please!"
Drysia grabbed his chin and looked at his eyes. "You're a really dark green now. What would you do if Lisko tried to take Kres?"
For a moment, that drove all other thoughts away. "I'd kill him."
"Good, your brain isn't mush yet. Do you want me to use this?" Drysia held up a dildo with a harness clearly intended to keep it in.
The clouds were coming back. "Yes, please. Hurry."
It wasn't his imagination this time. Drysia put the dildo in slowly, easing it in, the mucus left from the vine section making it an easy process. On the other hand, she buckled the harness with crisp, efficient motions.
So good. He was sinking into the pleasure of how incredible it felt.
"One more thing." Drysia shoved a piece of folded cloth into his mouth and tied another around it. "I am not listening to 'fuck me' constantly repeated once you completely black out. You moaning is going to be bad enough." She pulled the blanket over him. "Try to get some sleep once the goo wears off."
*******
People in this chapter:
Elmerin
Drysia
Red Dragon pursuit group
Items, magic:
Abatement of Burden: A merchant's failed attempt to find a way to transport goods other than by item bags. His idea did not account for bulk.
Condom: Made of cloth, cloth-fiber paper, animal intestine, leather, or rubber from the sap of the Gebra tree species. While they can be used as is, most on the market have varying levels of enchantment to help them do their job of preventing STD transmission and pregnancy, including staying on and not breaking. At the low end are plain cloth-fiber paper condoms that cost almost nothing, while the highest end are rubber condoms with disease-killing and sperm-destroying spells, spells to hold them on, spells to prevent breakage, and spells to prevent any form of damage, such as from pins.
Some manufacturers also include spells that cause the condoms to break down after use, with a wait of 6 - 12 hours, to prevent reuse. The spells used are ones that wear off eventually, instead of more expensive permanent ones, and no merchant wants to deal with the results of some rich kid reusing a condom that no longer works as needed. That people need to constantly buy new ones, while the used condoms are decaying rather than lying around where they're discarded, are seen as benefits.
Sex toys: All sex toys are at least enchanted with a cleanliness spell. The Summoned were very big on hygiene, and the priests of Khedia of Light, who governs hygiene and cleanliness, picked up their teachings, turned them into something practical for their current world, and disseminated them. One of the results was certain items under law having to be enchanted with cleanliness spells, including toilets, cleaning items, and sex toys. Sex toys can have an additional and wide variety of spells enchanted on them.
Non-magic animals:
The "harpy" referred to here is a large predatory bird, similar to Earth's Harpy Eagle. The Summoned who dubbed it such thought it was funny, particularly since mythological harpies only exist on Tas when created by experimenting magicians. Unfortunately, "harpy", rather than its previous name of gladial, stuck.