The serving woman opened the pouch and her eyes widened, as if she had not believed what Kirke was offering until she saw it for herself. Oh, yeah, she would do it. That much money could change her life.
Much as Kirke would have liked to have stopped in the wine house herself and watch the results, she dare not risk Pikus or his men recognizing her. Thus she slipped back out the way she’d come and contented herself with peering in the same window she’d looked through before. As she drew nigh, the serving girl was already retreating, having hastily set the bowl before the prince. To Kirke, the set of her shoulders and expression upon her face wrote her guilt plain as day, but the Rassenians seemed too deep in their cups to notice.
There, the self-satisfied prick sat, gesticulating in the midst of whatever tale he told his countrymen. His words sparked a fresh round of snickering, and one man spit wine from his nose. Kirke couldn’t make out their words from here. Were they talking about her?
He paused his stories only to drink, then settled into his tales and mockery once more.
Of a sudden, the prince laid a hand upon his breast, then began to tug at his collar. It was working. At last it was working …
A coughing fit seized the man, and one of his fellows rose, patting him on the back, while others leaned in with concern. In her mind’s eye, Kirke pictured the prince trying to bite one of them and had to suppress her chortle.
A violent convulsion passed through Pikus and he heaved his man away, pitching over backward. People began to scream, and she heard the front door flung open, with some of the customers fleeing rather than risk being around for whatever the Rassenians would do about this.
Oh. Oh, shit. No brew of Nectar had ever outright killed someone before. Not that Kirke knew of anyway. Was it possible she’d misjudged so badly? A pang of guilt tore at her. She’d wanted revenge for his scorn, not murder. She leaned in closer, actually daring to ease the shutter open a nudge for a better view.
What if the Rassenians blamed the serving girl? Oh, what had she done?
On the floor, the prince thrashed about in utter agony. Transfixed by the sight, Kirke could not look away. The man arched his back with a strangled sob, and even as he did so, his nose ruptured, some other structure pushing its way out from rent flesh.
The man’s wail became so gut-churning Kirke backed away from the window, even as the screams inside the house grew more wild. Nyx’s bosom … What had she unleashed …?
Instinct demanded she run, but Kirke forced it down and dragged her stubborn feet back to the window. She had to know what had happened. She owed it to him, she supposed.
Inside, the prince’s now blood-splattered clothes lay in an empty heap. No, not empty, for something thrashed beneath them. All of his men had backed far away, none daring to approach. A sleeve fluttered. Then a woodpecker burst free of the garments, darting about the wine house as if seeking some egress.
Kirke slapped a hand to her mouth, reeling. She’d … she’d turned him into a fucking bird?
28
Pyrrha
219 Golden Age
The writhing World shifted and shifted again, and Pyrrha was hefted up upon a bed of roots and vines, carried into the orgy unfolding around her. Two dozen Wood spirits—dryads and satyrs alike—were enmeshed in the throes of passion. A coarse tongue was in her ear, vines wrapped around her breasts, and someone was pushing inside her nethers.
The land bent and shifted, the forest buckling inward until it became a sphere enclosing her.
Dazed, she felt it, some alien presence slithering up inside her. Maybe it was the satyr’s hot seed. Maybe it was her own soul surrendering even as her body pled for more. Either way, she knew she was giving over, allowing them to break her will. She knew it, and she still could not turn away. She needed the completeness this world offered.
How tired she had grown of the Mortal Realm.
The satyr atop her leered, its face a frenzied mask of passion, its gyrations so wild as to move beyond animal need and into something monstrous. Abruptly, it lurched over backward, fletching sprouting from its splattered eye.
Pyrrha shrieked at the appearance of an arrow in its head and cast the Wood spirit off her.
The sudden violence cast her spiraling down from the hysteria that had claimed her and revealed the orgy in its awful splendor. A warping of the world as something utterly other had seeped in, and the denizens of that Realm, seeming more plant than person, writhed in copulation that melded them into a single throbbing entity.
Gagging, Pyrrha scrambled backward on her arse. Strong hands seized her arms and dragged her from the glade, and it took a moment before she even knew what was happening. Her rescuer was a tall, silver-eyed woman, a Phoebid probably, with a bow in one hand. She snatched Pyrrha’s wrist and pulled her away, darting through the dark wood as if she could see concealed root and rock.
Pyrrha’s feet kept catching on a hundred hidden obstructions, but the Titan’s grip on her wrist didn’t allow her to fall. Behind her, vines and branches lashed out like grasping fingers, reaching for them. On and on the woman yanked her forward, until at last they burst through the tree line.
Though she wanted to collapse from exhaustion—dozens of scrapes now covered her—the Titan forced her to press on, albeit at a slower pace, only allowing her to stop when they reached a stream. Panting, Pyrrha fell to her knees on the sand and splashed water upon her face.
“What in the whole of Gaia was that?” she rasped, droplets running down her cheeks.
The
