Leresai thought herself dead. As the world around her went gold, not the black she was expecting, her head curled into a downward position. Her last action was an attempt to shield herself. The shimmer was gone but the pentagram remained lit up in a gold light. Lord Carro lay unmoved at her feet.

This is a split instance before you are to die, North Princess.

In Leresai's head, she heard Roquíns voice. He continued.

Time has stopped for you. Only your conscious mind remains mobile. You should see around you, filtered only by your imagination. To which, you must be careful. Look with your mind can you see me?

She could. The gold tinged world of the employing rush of Aethyr dissolved into normal sight. He stood beside the sorrel nightmare. Running along the river's edge were a clan of strange undead beasts. Grayish skin, contorted skulls, hunched vertebrae that jutted out through mummified skin. Dead white eyes. They were undead kobolds. Short, foul, ghastly creatures. Ghasts, actually.

The tri-foil orchid sacré dropped from Roquíns gauntlets, and burned away in the blink of an eye.

Understand what is happening, Leresai, this is a manifestation of your greatest fears. It would have been so much more pleasant the other way for the both of us.

The ghasts marched forward to her. Roquín took off his helm, and dropped it. He removed his gauntlets, his pauldrons, his gorget neck guard. His plate mail fell from his bare chest.

Shadows crowded her. Cold, dead reptilian claws stroked her thighs. Several of the claws hooked under the waistband of her riding breeches, pulling them down to her ankles. Another dead, reptilian claw grabbed her crotch roughly, clenching her undergarment and ripping it off. Long dry scaly fingers explored inside her mound. Four digits squeezed in her gape, buried nearly to a fist uncomfortably.

She realized, those hands were more purposeful than the other ghasts. A pack leader, she surmised. He held onto her thighs licked up into the crack of her derriere. She felt chilled as there was no warmth to his tongue.

The alpha squealed at the others to hold her down. His cold tongue lapped at her anus, grunting like a wild boar in pleasure as if it were enjoying the taste of the last shit she took.

Roquín pulled off the rest of his suit. He stood nude. He walked towards her and his cock slung like a pendulum hitting against his knees in stride with his gait. Though of scarlet red flesh, and glistening wet, his penis appeared sharp as a pitchfork. Any entrance of it in her would cut her jagged.

Roquín! She screamed in her mind. the noble soul of Roquín could not possibly be contemplating something so grotesque!

The ghasts started biting on her thighs and the bevels of her ribs, gnawing with gums and rotted teeth. They smelled of bile and dead flesh. Mummified penises sheathed like dogs revealed beneath the cracking and flaking of their calcified foreskins dark bruising with an oozing sheen beneath.

She felt as if she had seen this somewhere before.

Something is not right.

She was no longer being held by ghasts. Something continued still to lick at her anus and thrust its fingers into her vagina. She turned her mind to see the contorted undead creature with a strange moon face stretched along a gaunt skull with one eye that blinked slowly. The other orb crushed in a ruin.

"I have taught them to hate your stench, and the stench of all of womankind," the creature said. "It is a sacrifice I make now as I make fetish of the shit from your very rectum. Necessary to diminish your strength, and make you into nothing."

Calm your mind, Leresai. Came the voice of Roquín. Calm your mind. Before you permanently damage yourself. What you see are manifestations of your deepest fears. It is a metaphor made flesh through your imagination. Your fear is entwined with the eros of others. It is entwined as well with my own desire. But the fear creates something in between that sickens both of us.

Ask yourself this, Leresai, is it even plausible that I, Roquín Solpest, born of woman, have hanging from my loins a three-foot-long demon schlong swinging like a pendulum between my legs? It is absurd on the face of it.

It is mere fear, you can surpass fear.

She stared at the demon schlong, realizing it was comical and it could not be real. The final creature disappeared as it hissed bitterly. Her clothes were still intact. Roquín stood by the nightmare, Sellanna. His hand rubbing her mane. The other held the sacré. They were frozen in place.

I can no more move in this moment than you can. The same for the ghasts who are leering at you nearby. We are all caught up in this moment. We retreat in our fears. Project our desires. Without understanding, they become unbalanced and most unholy.

"Then, what is to be done," she asked.

I could let the stream of time continue, and eventually it will have to no matter what I do, but that would kill you. There is another way however.

"Accept your penetration, Roquín?"

Only of your mind.

"So I can avoid death if I allow you to take possession of me when we return to the Mundi?"

Given the current circumstances, it is best that I do so. Leresai, do you know what makes a fiend fiendish? Exposure to the disruption caused by teleportation. It contorts every cell in the body. Your transition back without my presence, with the pentagram destroyed, you will be subjected to that destruction like any creature of the wild would be if it were caught up in a mad vortex out of the unraveled threads of nature.

"What of Carro?"

I know nothing of the man's worth, but chances are, he'll return a gibbering idiot. Nonetheless, Rhoethella should still be able to extract what she needs. So your geas will be completed regardless.

I will not remain long, Leresai. I swear on my phylactery. Get me down to the catacombs. I have a friend to whom I need you to rendezvous. Do this for me, and we will deal with those insolent men, if you so choose to waste time with them.

"They will come for me regardless of what I do, won't they?"

Correct.

"If I say yes?"

Then our desire becomes mutual. We seal it with a kiss.

She saw no other way forward. She resigned herself to placing her fate in Roquín's hands. All anger left her then and her body relaxed. The air around her turned gaseous gold once more. She imagined her mouth open, lips wide; a handsome man with a soft beard and course red hair touched her face with delicate, loving fingers and then embraced her.

He locked his lips to hers and their tongues made merry. She pulled the banded towel down and placed his hands on her breast.

For me to be properly aroused for this seal of agreement you must squeeze them roughly, as roughly as your conscience will allow.

He obeyed her demand as they kissed. Leresai enjoyed the warmth of his touch with lips and hands.

Perhaps if I had a lady of your caliber, I would not desire my own end so highly. Could I be a knight once more? In Mundi again without Lady Insatiable's Jest rattling my will to live at every moment? It makes me wonder.

Roquín pushed her banded towel back in place, and fastened the buttons of her cendal robe. He then helped with lifting her up and placed her in the saddle.

She was swept up in a funnel of gold reaching out beyond the horizon of Aethyr. She leaned in a crouch, riding and holding on to Sellanna. The cool breeze and shimmering mane in her smiling face as she rode back down into the Mundi.