oneortheother
TMF Expert
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Skyrim TK: Sheogorath’s Game
“After a long and perilous battle featuring deadly draugr, terrifying traps, and copious amounts of potion-quaffing, the Dragonborn defeated the deathlord and strode with pride to the grand treasure chest within. But little did she know what awaited her within!”
“Did you hear something?” the Dragonborn said to the sound of her leather boots scuffing the stone floors as she looked around. That ethereal voice... what had that been? With only one good eye, she really had to turn and move her head around to make sure nothing was sneaking up on them. Her right eye, bold, ghost-blue, and sharp, scanned the tomb, her finger never far from the trigger on her crossbow, but everywhere there was dead—and in most of the draugr’s case, they had been slain more than once.
“I didn’t hear anything, my Thane.” Despite Lydia’s words, her shield and sword were held high in preparation for an attack.
“Neither did I,” Serana said. The vampire’s voice was cool and calm. “But I do sense a faint energy in this crypt. There’s something here, just on the edge of comprehension, but I can’t decipher what it might be.”
“Probably just some residual magic from the ancient nords.” Aela the Huntress had slung her bow on her back, and she was peering down to look at a burial urn. “Besides, what could stop the four of us? I doubt an army could.” She snorted and straightened with a feral, fearless grin on her pale lips.
“I wish you wouldn’t say things like that,” Lydia said. “You know I always have a bad feeling when you do.”
Aela shrugged. “It’s true. Among us, we have the finest markswoman in the land, who, oh, by the way, is also a werewolf with the blessing of Hircine.” She jerked a thumb at Serana. “We have a vampire, heiress of an ancient line and powerful mage.”
“I like to be humble,” the black-haired, red-eyed vampire said.
“We have one of the mightiest housecarls of Dragonsreach.” Aela clasped Lydia on the shoulder. “Oh, and we only have the Dragonborn as well, master of the voices of power.” She waved to the dark-haired woman in leather armour with a scar down her left eye. “What need we fear?”
“All true enough,” the Dragonborn said, pushing a lock of dark-brown hair away from her face. She smiled at Aela. The fierce redheaded hunter was right, and the Dragonborn was glad she had decided to take her along on this trip, glad she had taken all of them, really. She had never understood the artificial restriction of why you would only want one companion. Sure, it might not be very fast to go traipsing around the world with thousands at your back, but four could accomplish a lot more than two—play several of the more interesting card games, for instance.
“All well spoke. But that being said, I’d sooner we left here as soon as possible.”
Aela grunted, and the four of them went to work. A few games, a bit of gold, a frost-enchanted Nordic battleaxe were among the spoils, but what really caught their attention was a golden quill artefact inside the largest treasure chest.
The Dragonborn reached for it and said, “You know, I saw a golden claw that looked li—”
But as soon as her pale fingers brushed across the metal a strange energy enveloped her. She gasped. She could feel the hair of the back of her neck tingling.
“My Thane!” She heard a faint voice and a grab on her arm, and the light span her around and swallowed her.
---
When it spat her out, the Dragonborn was something she had never seen before. She definitely wasn’t in some tomb anymore. She was in some kind of forest, only the sun shone red, white, yellow, green, and orange. Even by Skyrim’s many moons, it was not natural. Beside her in a heap, slowly pushing themselves to their feet, were her three companions.
“Where—” Lydia began to say before a loud, throaty laughter drowned out her words. The Dragonborn’s head snapped at the noise—it was the same voice chuckling voice she had heard back in the tomb.
Seated cross-legged on what appeared to be, based the pungent aroma, a throne of yellow cheese, was an elderly gentleman in a tunic of fluorescent purple with wild yellow eyes that marked him as no mere mortal. “Welcome, my dears! You’ve come at last!” He grinned, pointing at them with a finely carved cane. “Oh, I was afraid you had misplaced your invitations. How nice to see you! Oh, I could just tear out your intestines and strangle you with them.” He stroked his neat white beard and laughed.
“Bold words from an old man,” Aela snarled. She had scrambled back to her feet and had an arrow notched and aimed at the peculiar gentleman’s head.
“You seem hungry. Have a morsel, child.” The man in purple reached into his pocket and tossed something at Aela with reflexes far faster than a man with than many wrinkles on his face should be capable of. But Aela was no fool. She loosed her arrow at him. He caught it with easy, almost contemptuous grab and used it as a skewer to get some cheese from the armrest of his throne. On the other hand, his thrown projective, a sweet roll, hit Aela on the cheek to leave a creamy smear on her tanned skin
“Sheogorath, the Daedric Prince of Madness,” the Dragonborn said in a slow, steady voice as Aela growled and rubbed her face. “I thought I recognised you.”
“Dragonborn! If you’d like my autograph,” Sheogorath said, chomping on cheese. “I’m afraid you’ll need to wait till after our fun today.”
“And what fun might that be?” Lydia asked.
“I’ll tell you, good sir. Myself and the other Daedra lords are waiting for you in this forest. We’d like to ‘persuade you’ to pledge yourselves to our fine and noble causes.”
“So, you’re here for our souls, basically,” Serana said, her arms crossed.
“Nothing as crass as that! Well, maybe, yes.” Sheogorath smiled through a disgusting mouth full of yellow cheese. “An oath of service is what we want. But if any of you escape the forest, you all go free!”
“That’s your idea of a game?” the Dragonborn demanded. “The four of us being hunted in the forest by all you superhuman deities?”
“No, of course not! I for one, won’t be participating, though of course, if any of you go insane in here, I of course consider myself the victor.” He slapped himself on the knee and guffawed. “There’s another twist to the game that I just know you’ll enjoy discovering for yourself later. The other Daedra have all agreed, though it took a lot of arm-twisting and browbeating, I assure you! You need not fear death in this forest… only submission.”
“Molag Bal must have a hand in this,” Serana said, rolling her eyes.
“Why yes, he was my tournament organiser,” Sheogorath replied. “Anywho, without further ado! Off you go! Toodlepip!” And on that note, he poofed away, leaving only the sharp smell of cheese to mark him having been there.
“What now?” the Dragonborn asked
“I am your sword and your shield,” Lydia said. “I won’t let anything happen to you.” But no sooner had those words passed her lips, that the same spectral glow of teleportation reappeared around each of them.
“Oh, and I forgot to mention!” Sheogorath’s voice boomed out of nowhere and everywhere. “It would be no fun if you were all together right in the beginning. Forgive my poor memory! Have fun and remember to keep smiling!”
---
The Dragonborn blinked awake. Even with half-closed eyelids and her one good eye, she could feel the relentless bright glare of the sun. She pushed herself to her feet, swept her long dark hair out of her face, and looked around. She was alone in the sunny forest, though if what Sheogorath had said, that would only be for now. She crouched, her leather boots making almost no sound as she winded her way through the trees and shrubs with her crossbow in hand.
“There’s no use hiding from me, Dragonborn,” came a guttural voice from behind her. She spun and fired a quick shot from her crossbow, but the bolt only hit air before thudding into the trunk of a tree.
“Maybe you’re not used to being hunted, but there’s no better hunter than me,” the male voice was low and feral. “For am I am the Huntsman of the Princes, the Father of Manbeasts, and The Hungry Cat.”
She saw him them, standing tall and powerful with a spear in his hand. Unclothed aside from a loincloth, his tanned body was corded with muscle and scarred from a hundred hunts. His nails were long, yellowed, and clawed. His bristly beard was chestnut-brown and shaggy as was the long hair on his head. Yet he looked so very human, especially compared to the two snarling werewolves beside him.
“Come, Dragonborn. Let me taste your defiance.” Hircine and his two followers streaked towards her then, howling and laughing.
Backpedalling, she let loose another quarrel that caught one of the werewolves on the shoulder to send him staggering back a step, but the other two were closing the distance and quickly. The Dragonborn grunted as she wound the crossbow back, cursing at the fact it took so long to do so. Her next short was rushed, and it sailed past Hircine's shoulder.
“Not good enough, prey!” Hircine said, lunging forward with his spear. The spearpoint smacked the crossbow’s firing mechanism and sent it flying into the bushes.
“Dance with me, then,” the Dragonborn said, drawing her sword from its sheath. Wood clashed against metal, parries were met, and strikes were dodged, with the two werewolves standing there watching.
When Hiricine ducked beneath her guard to jab the blunt butt of the staff into her side, the Dragonborn inhaled a deep breath and shouted, “Fus Ro Dah!”
The Unrelenting Force sent the Daedra tumbling back, but he landed cat-like on his fingers and toes. “I wasn’t going to use my powers if you didn’t use yours. I believe in a fair hunt. But if that’s how you wish to play it…”
The Dragonborn ducked as the first werewolf swung its big claw down at her. She tried to parry with her blade, but the large brown beast ending up wrenching her weapon away. The other grabbed her from behind, under the armpits. As she inhaled to power up another Fus Ro Dah, she was surprised by the sudden sensation coming from this second wolf—the rummaging of those paws around her armpits… was she being?
She shrieked as the answer came to her, the shout fading into a girlish giggle.
Hircine smirked as the werewolves pinned her down to the ground. One pushed down her wrists while the other continued to scratch into her armpits with those hairy clawed hands. “When Sheogorath said we were only to use tickling as a method of persuasion, I thought him, well, mad. But I’m starting to see the merit in such a thing. You cannot speak when you are laughing, can you?”
“I resent that, Hircine.” It was Sheogorath’s voice booming out of nowhere, like some omnipresent commentator. “There’s always a system to my insanity, hehe.”
The Dragonborn gritted her teeth and tried to prove them wrong, but it was simply impossible to tense up and bring forth the power of her shouts when the feeling of those fingers in her armpits turned her muscles and mind to jelly.
Oh, why did it have to be tickling? She knew it was perhaps her most embarrassing weakness. There had been a quest back in Riften where she obtained these Marks of Dibella to blackmail Haelga, a sensual proprietor of a bunkhouse. The Dragonborn had done it, only for the comely blonde Haelga to offer a night of passion in exchange for secrecy. She had begged, saying that her Dibellan Arts were not malicious and no cause for being run out of town. When the Dragonborn had agreed, Haelga had offered a night of extraordinary pleasure in return for silence. The kinky bed restraining had gone well, but afterwards, Haelga had gagged her and used her fingers all over the Dragonborn’s pale, exposed, and very ticklish body. Through fingers, feathers, and a pot of honey that Haelga kept in her room, the Dragonborn had learned exactly how sensitive she was, and she did not like what she had learned. Her tender toes still curled at the thought of her slender feet being licked, her armpits being feathered, and rough fingers goosing her ribs.
That night, she had believed she would never receive such a thorough, torturous tickle ever again, but she soon believed otherwise. Hircine sat on her thighs, his large, muscular frame pinning her to the ground. The werewolves shifted around so they were sitting on one arm each.
“Now, we see the spoils of the hunt,” Hircine said in a whisper, with his eyes as black as midnight. Before she could even twist her mouth into forming a “Fus”, the werewolves had started. Their paws grazed her pale skin just below her leather bracers and stroked along them till they arrived at her stretched-out armpits. Their claws made short work of the leather sleeves of her armour so she had to contend with those hairy, fuzzy fingers dancing around the bare skin of her terribly ticklish underarms.
Hircine lifted up her tunic and showed her abdomen no mercy as well. His long fingernails were nimble and lethal as they darted from ribs to sides to stomach. They were as unpredictable as any seasoned hunter, striking here and there when they weren’t expected—a quick poke here, a sudden squeeze there, and then suddenly ten fingers spidering along the ribs. The Dragonborn roared with laughter as powerful and as loud as her mightiest shouts under this tri-pronged attack.
“Want it to stop?” Hircine said as a finger wormed into her navel. “Swear to me your oath of fealty and hunt by my side. Then all this can stop.”
She shook her head, and Hircine laughed. The werewolves got up from their posts as the Dragonborn gasped for breath. Hircine took her hands and held them back—his were so large and strong that he could hold back both her wrists with just one hand. His free hand he used to tease at her neck, her collarbone, and her armpits, but the real danger came from the wolves. Once the Dragonborn felt her leather boots being pulled off, she knew what was happening.
“Please, not there! Not there!”
“Do you yield to me?”
She bit her lip, and Hircine shrugged and nodded to his beasts. The claws grabbed at her ankles and she felt the rough tongues lapping at her soles. Riding around a horse everywhere and buying potions to moisture her skin was becoming a decision she was starting to regret more and more. Haelga’s tongue had been bad enough, but these werewolf tongues were rough and scratchy like that of bristly brushes. And there were two of them, one for each horrendously ticklish foot.
The Dragonborn’s fingers fought to escape Hircine's grasp, but his hand was tough as old oak. The coarse tongues were working their way through her toes now, despite her every attempt to kick them away or clench her delicate toes shut. But no, in and out the gaps they went, the furry hands holding the toes in place for the digit abuse. Even their paws seemed to tickle her hypersensitive digits, the very act of grabbing them for the tongue to lick already making her giggle.
Hircine released her wrists to dive both hands into her armpits. Perhaps he could see that she was too overwhelmed to do anything even with her hands free. Her weapons were out of reach, and she couldn’t muster the strength to dislodge him with the atrocity being done to her ticklish feet. She was beaten. Or was she?
An arrow flew and caught hit Hircine on the forehead. He went toppling back, grunting. The wolves got up, snarling.
“Leave my companion alone,” Aela shouted from the distance. More arrows came flying towards them. The werewolves went prowling after her, but they went scrabbling for cover after a half a dozen shafts were sticking out of their legs and chests.
Hircine stood up and yanked the bow from his head, laughing at the blood that came trickling down. “You always were one of my finest warriors. But the pup does not challenge the pack lea—”
“FUS RO DAH!” The Dragonborn’s blast sent Hircine flying high into the air like a ragdoll and landing out of sight.
“Are you okay?” Aela came jogging towards her with her bow still trained on the werewolves, but they had gone scurrying off after their master. “I heard your, erm, shouting.”
The Dragonborn coughed and took a deep breath as she picked up her leather boots, her sword, and her crossbow. “I really don’t know where to begin. Thanks for the save. Have you seen Lydia or Serana?”
O-O-O
“You foul abomination. You parasitic blight on the universe!”
Serana closed her eyes as the vitriol washed over her. “Well, nice to meet you, too,” she muttered.
“I heard that, such insolence from a damnable vampiric creature such as yourself! Oh, if I hadn’t been tricked into this game, I would pull out your entrails and burn them in front of you.”
Serana groaned. It was just her luck that she ran into Meridia Daedra of Life and the Lady of Infinite Energies. All the tomes she had read had explained that Meridia despised the undead for flouting the traditional rules of life of death, but the black-haired vampire had expected a bit of exaggeration in those old tales. It seemed that for once, the books had been perfectly accurate.
Meridia grabbed Serana by the chin and forced her to look at her. The Daedra was breathtakingly beautiful with her white, translucent skin, hair the colour of sunrise, and pale white tunic, but the stormy grey eyes showed not a shred of mercy. A spriggan had grabbed Serana by the wrists and yanked her up in the air, till her legs several dangled inches from the ground. The tall, tree-like creature was nothing but wood and magical energy, so it made sense that it would serve as Meridia’s hunting partner in this. Vines grew and wrapped around Serana’s ankles, wrists, and waist to further restrain her.
“Scream for it, monster,” Meridia whispered to her, and Serana understood exactly the ‘persuasion’ that Sheogorath had meant. Meridia’s nails were long, golden, and ruthless as they dug deep into Serana’s armpits through the thin fabric of her royal vampire armour. Her fingers were warm, almost hot, and they seemed to melt through Serana’s clothes to really get at the pale, milk-white flesh beneath. Serana tugged and tugged, but the spriggan’s grip was implacable. Frost and electric magic crackled and fizzled away in her fingertips. There was something about Meridia’s flashing quick strokes that seemed to be draining her magicka the way a lightning spell would.
“It pleases me to know that your dead flesh remains sensitive,” Meridia said with a bright smile. “And I hope you are not thinking of submitting to me, for I would never take one such as yourself into my service. But let us hope your screams attract the Dragonborn to come rescue you. Let’s take another step in that direction.” She nodded to the spriggan, and with a yelp, Serana’s discovered some kind of insect was coming out of the sapling creature to wander down into Serana’s boots.
Were they beetles, spiders, ants? Whatever they were, they make no secret of their presence—their legs were hairy and numerous, and Serana shivered as they trickled down her ankles and began to explore her alabaster feet. It was a bit like when you were ahorse, and you suddenly discovered you had an inch on your feet, perhaps magnified by about a thousand.
Those insects crawled around along the ball of her foot and the generous cranny of the arches, scratching and wiggling around all the soft areas. They moved with a frenzied energy as they explored the curves and the tiny folds of the soft, sensitive skin of Serana’s pale feet with their miniscule legs, feelers, and appendages. She tried to clench her black-painted toes to squash them, but whatever the pests were, they seemed too hardy to be crushed so easily and trying to do so just ending up with her receiving a fuzzy tickle between her digits for her trouble.
“Oh, listen to that desperate laughter!” Meridia said, her long, cruel fingers going down to assault Serana’s navel for a while, paying particular attention to the belly button. “Sheogorath was mad for suggesting this method of torture, but I do see that it has some value in prolonging torment. If the Dragonborn doesn’t come, we could do this for days, couldn’t we? Months? Years?” She tittered to herself, her fingers scampering even faster across Serana’s toned stomach. The vampire woman’s red eyes grew bleary from so much forced laughter. She shook her head, her long black hair flying to and fro, but the tickling just kept on coming. More of the vermin were starting to migrate to other locations too. A steady influx of them were scurrying up around her kneecaps, some of them even going up to the inner thighs in search of new spots to plunder for mirth from the bound woman.
A sharp clanging sound cut through Serana’s high-pitched laughter. Meridia turned, a pale eyebrow raised. Lydia stood there, banging her steel sword against her shield.
“Let her go!” the dark-haired nord cried, charging towards them. Her sword crashed into the spriggan to make the tree-like apparition give an anguished roar.
“Your would-be saviour, I take it?” Meridia said to Serana, before turning and blasting a bolt of Lydia’s chestplate to send sprawling on her back. “Mediocre.”
Meridia snapped her elegant fingers and another spriggan spawned from the weeds and bushes below Lydia to haul the girl up till she was in the same perilous position as her companion. Before long, she was snorting and gasping the way Serana was as well, with the same vile insects sneaking under and around the gaps in her armour to roam around the sensitive spots around her lean, muscular body.
“Whawhahwhahahahat is thihihis!” Lydia closed her eyes and strained against the spriggan’s grasp, but she made no progress than Serana. And when the bugs brushed across the weak spot on her arch, scurrying over it relentless and constantly, her laughter grew as high and girlish as the vampire’s had.
“Didn’t expect a tough one like you to be so ticklish,” Meridia said. She cracked her knuckles and then went straight back to kneading Serana’s sides. “Once I’ve finished tickling this fiend half to death, I’ll come have firm words with you. I appreciate loyalty, even if it’s loyalty to beasts like this one.”
“Thehehe Drahahhagonbohohorn will come fohohohor uhuhuhs!”
“I’m sure. But till then, I shall have to content myself with the sounds of your laughter. And remember, human, if you want to stop, you know you need only pledge yourself to my service.” Serana tried to say something, but Meridia’s fingers scythed into the pale-skinned girl’s underarms once more. “No such offer is available to you, undead. Scream for me, instead.”
O-O-O
“So, the Dragonborn and the huntress went off in search of their distressed companions! Would they be able to handle their distressingly ticklish bodies? Oh, who knows?”
“Would you please shut up, Sheogorath?” the Dragonborn shouted into the air.
“You have no sense of humour.”
“My friends being tortured has rather diminished it,” she said as she ran towards a new noise, having recognised the sounds of those anguished shrieks and squeals. That laughter was undoubtedly Lydia’s, who had made a similar noise when she had been convinced to try a special foot pampering treatment which included a rather vigorous exfoliation. Intermingled with that noise was the sound of Serana’s desperate squeaks and guffaws, which was higher and more frantic. It sent tingles down the Dragonborn’s spine. The last time Serana had sounded so strained was when her father, the great vampire Lord Harkon, had disciplined her in the rack back at Castle Volkihar. The loving father had not wanted to scar his daughter too much, so he had taught his traumatic lesson with feathers, scrub brushes, and Death Hounds.
“Come on, let’s go,” she said, and Aela nodded. They went sprinting towards the noise. The Dragonborn holstered her crossbow and Aela did the same to maximise celerity. So preoccupied where they with running as quickly as they could, that neither of them noticed the thin, translucent gossamer till they were both wrapped in it.
“Come into my parlour, said the spider to the fly,” said a low, husky voice. “Why, hello, Dragonborn. I was hoping you would stumble by.”
“What is this? Who are you?” Aela said as she fought to get free of the webs. The webs weren’t strong enough to completely bind her, but they were enough to tangle her up and slow her down, as if a net had been thrown over her.
“Namira is my name. I am the Mistress of Decay, the Devourer of the Dead, and the Spirit Daedra.”
The Dragonborn tore the webbing out of her face so she could get a good look at her foe. If all war-paint make-up were removed from her face, Namira have been comely, but right now, she looked more too frightening to be considered beautiful. She had a narrow face, curly dark hair ended at her shoulders, and thin, pale lips, but what framed everything were her eyes. They were a bright sickly green, the colour of poison ivy, and they were accentuated by the heavy black paint around her eyes that were like deep, dark, ghoulish eye circles. Her robes were as dark as mourning.
Looming behind the Daedra was a giant spider, bigger than any of the monsters the Dragonborn and her companions had fought on their travels. With its monstrous hair faces and eight beady eyes, it would have been a difficult foe at the best of times. And to make matters worse, Namira’s hands glowed with black power, and she fired sprays of dark energy that seeped the energy from the women like some foul entropy. In addition, with their arms and weapons debilitated by the gunk from the webs, the two women were quickly disarmed, disabled, and defeated.
Namira popped them onto a giant cobweb and leered at them. She pulled off their shoes, chuckling. At a glance, the Dragonborn’s Imperial feet were paler and dainty, while the Huntress’s Nord feet were longer, larger, and with more-structured arches.
The spider hovered over Aela, dripping venom from its mouth. The nord groaned and strained against the sticky webbing but couldn’t dislodge herself. Aela’s green eyes went wide with fear as the spider leaned in—but this spider wasn’t about to devour her, or no. A pair of long, thin spider legs started brushing at her elbows before it reached the armpits till Aela was red in the face. Two more dexterous legs began rummaging around her ribs and poking at her sides. Due to the arachnid’s size, the hairs on its legs were as thick and long as needles, and those bristles made Aela burst with boyish laughter.
“Rehehehehelease me, fohohohoul beheheast!” Aela grunted and threw her body to and fro, but aside from making the web vibrate silently, little else was achieved by her exertions. Four fuzzy, bristly appendages continued to prod and stroke her all over. The spider was close to Aela’s face, and its noxious breath continued to wash over her, though little did Aela know that this spider’s breath did not poison—its fumes heightened one’s sensitivity, being part stimulant and part aphrodisiac.
Things were no easier for the Dragonborn. “The saporous taste of human flesh is something I have always relished,” Namira said, leaning in, and the Dragonborn only had a second to compute what that meant before the strong sudden sensation struck her—sharp teeth nibbling at the bottom of her heel to make her gasp.
The Dragonborn gnashed her teeth together and closed her eyes as that Daedric mouth went up to her toes. The tongue swirled all over the place too, till the sole was damp with Namira’s saliva. The ball of the foot was a particularly troubling spot when Namira’s mouth focused on that spot, especially the lower teeth when they bit and rubbed that spot just below the ball of the foot right where it met the arch.
“Stahahahap bihihihiting!” the Dragonborn wailed as Namira took her big toe into her mouth and swirling her tongue all around it. While the focus was on those ivory digits, the devious Daedra skated her long black fingernails all over the rest of the sole, which was still slick and all too sensitive.
While Namira continued her gluttonous feast, her other spiders were not idle. These one were smaller—the normal spiders that creeped in closets and outhouses, not the massive ones that had lairs in caves.
Hundreds of these tiny arachnids scampered across the foot that Namira was not slumbering over. They rummaged and scurried all over her heel, arch, and toes like some rampaging horde. Spiders from the same brood had wandered over to Aela, as well. The auburn-haired huntress was writhing and roaring as the giant spider launched a series of constant thrusts towards her midsection and armpits with its long hairy legs, and its kin took advantage by voyaging over to the unattended feet. Aela’s Ancient Nord Armour didn’t cover her legs much, so that section from mid-thigh to shin was another area where the spiders made a beeline towards, in order to scamper all over the delicate flesh there.
When the giant spider attacking Aela’s stomach leaned in close once more, the strong nord strained her neck up and bit the creature on its face to make it screech in pain. All at once, Namira yelped as well, reaching for her face where Aela had bitten the gargantuan arachnid.
The Dragonborn’s grey eyes grew wide. Was there some kind of familiar relationship between the duo? They shared pain?
That distraction was all the time she needed. She took a deep breath. “YOL TOOR SHUIl!” the explosion of fire erupted out of her from the dragon shout.
Namira recoiled and the Dragonborn tore free from the weakened webs.
“Run!” Aela shouted. “One gets away, then we all win. Go!”
Biting her lip and hot with shame, the Dragonborn ran.
O-O-O
“FUS RO DAH!” The Dragonborn’s shout cut over the squalor of squawking laughter. Meridia closed her eyes, her long gold hair streaming back as the wave washed over her.
“Dra—” was all she got out before a crossbow bolt crashed into the head of the spriggan beside her, which had been staggered by the force of the shout. This spriggan had been grasping Serana, who wrenched herself free from its woody, branchy grasp and immediately fired a stream of frost at the Daedra of Life.
“Time you experienced hibernation,” Serana said as her ice magic started to slow down Meridia’s movement.
Meridia’s eyes glowed red gold with anger as she raised a hand to form an energy ball in her hands, but a shoulder charge from Lydia knocked her to the ground.
‘No, you don’t!” the Nord warrior shouted.
“I regret offering you the chance to join meheheheheee! Stahahahap thahahahat!” The alabaster-skinned Daedra wriggled as Lydia’s fingers starting rummaging under her elegant white tunic.
“Quick thinking, Lydia!” the Dragonborn said as her crossbow finished off the second spriggan.
“Oh, this has been a long time coming,” Serana said as her vampiric drain turned the first spriggan into kindling.
As Lydia continued to straddle Meridia and use her fingers to goose her sides, ribs, and stomach. Serana and the Dragonborn made their way over with wide grins on their faces.
“About time we get to dish a bit of it out for once,” the Dragonborn said as she sat down beside Meridia’s right foot. The foot was pale, slender, and sinuous, clad in strappy, elegant silver sandals, and the toenails gleamed in the light like mother-of-pearl. Those sandals were ripped off with haste.
“Indeed,” Serana said and grabbed the Daedra’s left foot in the crook of her arm and went to work, scribbling her fingers across the exquisite sole.
“Nohohohoho! You cahahahan’t do thihihis!” Meridia shrieked, her hectic howling cutting through the forest noise.
“Contrary to that, Meri, but I’m afraid they can,” boomed Sheogorath’s voice from the sky, cackling.
The Dragonborn smiled. For once, Sheogorath had said something that sounded perfectly reasonable and agreeable. And contrary to Meridia’s loud and desperate proclamation, do this they did.
It was a good thing there were three of them, for one or even two of them might have had real trouble containing the animated Daedra. True to her title as the Lady of Infinite Energies, she was bouncing, wriggling, and twisting constantly under the hands probing her ticklish spots.
Meridia’s feet were so soft it was as if the Daedra had never walked on them, and the Dragonborn was pleased to note they were exceptionally ticklish. The silvery toes spasmed and twitched with every finger-stroke down the sole, and it was a marvel just to watch them wiggle with so much frenetic energy. With that in mind, the Dragonborn was content to just pick up a twig from the floor and brush it with a slow, casual nonchalance up and down the sole and watch the food tremor in disproportionate reaction to the light touch. It also suited the Dragonborn’s poetic nature to torment this nature-esque goddess with such an innocuous item of nature like the humble leaf.
Serana, who perhaps possessed a more vindictive mind, grabbed those glinting toes to keep the quivering sole still so her nails could really rake up and dig into those plush things. She got a particularly frantic reaction when she pushed the digits back to extend the arch and then really scratched deep into that high, taut arch.
And of course, Lydia kept up her assault on the upperbody with her trademark diligence. She seemed to have built up a good rhythm, though the Dragonborn thought that her technique wasn’t especially creative. It was as reliable as any regimented training routine. About ten seconds tunnelling under the arms, slowly working and squeezing her way down Meridia’s ribcage till she reached the sides of the stomach, poking around there for another second seconds, whirling her nails across the stomach for another ten seconds, spending ten more seconds getting inside the navel, then it was back up the sides and ribs again before ending the ticklish cycle with ten fingernails in those delicate armpits.
Meridia’s shaking hands were free to try to push Lydia’s questing arms away, but likely due to the onslaught of her hypersensitive feet, the light energy she tried to channel through her fingertips fizzled and died, and whenever she tried to use raw strength to grab Lydia’s wrists, she would only be able to sustain it for a few seconds before a combination of Lydia’s muscles and the mind-warping foot tickling sabotaged her.
And it didn’t take long for all this to take its toll. At first, Meridia’s bright eyes had shone with vicious wrath, but by now, they had faded to the glimmer of the fading sun. Before long, the three had tickled her so ferociously that those startling eyes closed as the Daedra huffed and puffed.
“Looks like she’s out of it,” Lydia said, standing up. “She definitely won’t be chasing us anymore.”
“Indeed,” the Dragonborn nodded, “that’s one win for us. But now what? Should we go back for Aela?”
Serana’s expression was insouciant. “She can take it. Why don’t we just leave her?” She shrugged. “Surely it’s better we try to escape. She’ll be free if we get out anyway.”
“So, we just let her suffer until that happens?” Lydia crossed her arms. “That’s pretty heartless.”
“I was locked in a coffin for years,” Serana said. “Trust me, that’s true suffering. Aela will be fine. I’m sure she’s been through worse. She’s a fighter, a warrior, a member of that elite group called the Companions, no?”
“No companion of yours, it seems,” Lydia said, rolling her eyes.
“What do you mean by that?” Serana said, her forehead furrowing as she narrowed her glowing eyes.
“No need to argue,” the Dragonborn said, trying to stand between them. “Let’s just calm down, okay?”
“Oh, such discord! Such dissent! You really don’t get along, do you?” This voice came out of nowhere, but it was far from the squeaky, excitable voice of Sheogorath—this voice was lower, gruffer, and full of mockery.
“Molag Bal,” the Dragonborn said, narrowing her eyes.
The Daedric Prince appeared, hopping down from a tall tree with a thump on the leafy ground. His hair was black and spiky, his build was large and strong, and his thin face was lined with arrogance. In his hand was an ugly, spiky great mace.
“Vampire,” he said to Serana in a soft voice, “if you disagree with the black-haired nord, why don’t you ‘convince’ her?”
“I-I,” Serana blinked, “a great suggestion.” And then she flew at Lydia, drilling her nails at that nook between the shoulder and ribs where the armour did not cover in order to ensure flexible movement.
“Oh, what a twist,” Sheogorath said from the clouds. The Dragonborn could hear the grin in his voice.
“I helped create the first vampire,” Molag Bal said, chuckling, “it’s only natural their loyalties would be to I, Prince of Domination, God of Schemes, and Harvester of Souls. Now, submit to me, Dragonborn, and let us end this farce.”
With a strike that was surprisingly quick for a man his size, Molag Bal stepped forward and smacked the crossbow out of her hands. He followed it with a strong ankle sweep that took her legs out from under her. And as the Dragonborn was tumbling to the floor, Molag reached out with his free hand and snatched up one of her bare feet.
He lifted the foot up as if it weighed nothing at all and scratched his fingernails all over the free foot. The Dragonborn burst into laughter as his rough, callused fingers worked wildly over her sensitive sole. There was little exploration or focus on spots that were more sensitive—he just kept dragging his nails upon the pale, delicate skin at random, not even bothering to focus on places that might be more vulnerable.
The Dragonborn flailed, punched, and kicked at him as she hung upside down and wilted under this ceaseless tickle assault, but the burly Daedra shrugged off her blows. She had no weapons, and she couldn’t muster up the lung control to use her shouts while her ticklish feet were under such an aggressive scrabbling.
“I’ve had enough of you!” Serana shouted as she lunged at Lydia. She peeled off the nord warrior’s steel-toed boots. Somehow, Lydia was the only member of the group whose shoes had remained on throughout, so her feet were damp with perspiration. It seemed that made them mighty sensitive—Lydia was rolled onto her stomach and she was pounding her gauntlet-clad fist hard onto the ground as Serana’s ten fierce, furious fingernails scribbled all over the black-haired girl’s wrinkly soles. “Time to see how ticklish your feet are!”
But Lydia had a lot more muscle than the vampire girl, and after a few more seconds of acute ticklish distress, she twisted her way free.
“Calm down!” She shoved the smaller girl till Serana was on her back. “If this is the only way to snap you to your senses, then so be it.” She slipped her fingers under Serana’s pink and black chest armour and squeezed her fingers all around the cool, flesh within, reaching up underneath the blouse-like garment blouse as far as she can. Such dogged attacks on Serana’s sides and stomach quickly forced the breath and anger out of her, till the raven-haired Vampire was on her back breathless.
“Lyhihihidia, hehehehelp meheeee!” the Dragonborn wailed as she continued her limp and ineffectually kicks and punches while Molag Bol continued ravaging her foot with fiendish movements.
“At once, my Thane!” Lydia picked up her shield and sword and landed a quick slash down Molag Bal’s back. He grunted and ceased his foot tickling, though he did not drop the Dragonborn. He continued to parry and counter-attack with his spiked mace, while the Dragonborn flopped about as the two danced and spun.
After her head was dragged through a bush, the Dragonborn decided she had endured enough of this silliness. “YOL TOOR SHUIl!” The flame blast washed over Molag Bol, and the Dragonborn and her companions escaped as the blaze engulfed more of the forest.
“Sorry about that,” Serana said.
“It was my fault as well,” Lydia replied. “I shouldn’t have raised my voice at you.”
The Dragonborn smiled at the two of them. “Now, we just have to get Aela and everything will be okay again.”
“It pleases me to see such comradery,” said a voice out of nowhere, but it did not have the silky tones of Molag Bal nor the electric eccentricity of Sheogorath—this voice was soft, feminine, and lacking in malice. The source of the voice stepped out of a tree behind them. Her hair was a long, luminous silver, her face was pale and graceful, and her smile was unfazed by the weapons pointed at her.
“Azura, Daedric Prince of Dusk and Dawn, Mother of the Rose, and Queen of the Night Sky, at your service.” The woman bowed low, her long hair almost sweeping the ground. She was clad in black robes embroidered with silver scales. “I do not believe it your destiny to be forced into servitude by us here.”
“So, uh, you’re not going to fight us?” the Dragonborn’s voice was a little louder than she had intended on account of the shout building in the back of her throat.
“I propose we come into an agreement, but nothing as vulgar as a contract.” Azura’s eyes were orange and very warm. “I overheard your spat. Why don’t we save your companion? In return, you help me out with a certain star of mine that’s gone missing.”
Lydia crossed her arms. “This seems a little too good to be true.”
“I don’t know,” Serana said, scratching her chin. “Maybe we should trust her. Azura is one of the few Daedra considered not to be wholly evil.”
Azura’s laughter was gentle and melodious. “Thank you for the compliment.”
“Alright, we’ll trust you to keep your word.”
“Marvellous.” Azura’s hands flashed with light.
Backtracking was a simple matter, and before long, they had returned to where Namira and her pets had been. Aela had not endured well. She back on the web with Namira, the Mistress of Decay, slobbering over one foot as before.
In addition to the giant spider’s legs continued to savage her midsection with slashing, prodding tickles and smaller spidery brethren skittering across her long, pale feet, Namira had conjured several disembodied hands to join in on the action as well. Some were entirely yellowed bone while others were in varying states of decomposition, but all of them moved with hungry energy as they squeezed along the thighs
So enraptured was Namira with her ticklish foot feasting, that she didn’t notice their arrival till a crossbow bolt thwanged through the air and pierced through the web to drop the sweaty, panting Nord woman to the ground. The smaller spiders scurried away, and the big one reared back.
“You!” Namira said, her long black nails pulsing with energy. She stared at the Dragonborn then Azura. “Oh, so that’s the way of things, is it? I’ll make you rue such a pact.”
Namira would have said more, but a powerful kick hit her across the side of the head and knocked her to the ground.
“How do you like my feet now?” Aela snarled.
With hurried movements, Namira scrambled back to her feet, breathing hard. Another bolt from the Dragonborn’s crossbow ripped through her spider’s torso and sent it crashing lifelessly to the ground. Namira scowled at them, flanked by her skeletal and non-skeletal hands.
“Now, this is hardly sporting,” she said, surrounded by the five powerful individuals.
“Agreed,” said another voice out of the shadows. It was a whispery female voice. “My sister is subverting how this game ought to be played.”
“Aye, a cheater!” boomed the familiar, jolly voice of Sheogorath. “A cheater, but, oh, I’ll allow it because I’m excited to see what happens next.”
“Nocturnal,” Azura said, her palms glowing with light. “Dear sister, I did not think you would join in on this.”
“Neither did I,” said Nocturnal, the Daedra known as Night Mistress and Lady Luck. “But the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune led me here, as they have led me to you.” A cowl shrouded her features so all that was visible was a thin smile. Her cloak were black as night, though it had a low décolleté which showed a pair of full, pale breasts. She extended a hand the colour of fog and pointed at the Dragonborn. Nocturnal’s shadow, long from the bright, uncanny sun, flew towards her.
“FUS RO DAH!” the Dragonborn shouted at the spectre, but the unrelenting force passed straight through it. She gaped in disbelief as the shadow slipped through her, making her feel as though she’d just walked through a spray of salty wind.
“Nice try, Dragonborn, but your shadow is mine,” the apparition whispered, and suddenly, there were two black silhouettes pushing the Dragonborn to the ground. One was obviously Nocturnal, but the other was… no, it couldn’t be! The Dragonborn gasped. It looked just like her reflection in a clear pool of water.
Yet her copy showed little loyalty. It grabbed at the Dragonborn’s left foot and starting scratching her nails right at the very centre of the sole, right in her arches which was so deathly sensitive to the firm stimulation of fingers. How had it known that was her spot! Actually, it made perfect sense that it would—it was her.
Nocturnal’s shadow was not idle, either. While the shadowy Dragonborn made a beeline for all the Dragonborn’s worst locations on her terribly ticklish feet, she struck with keen fingers around the stomach and armpits with chill fingers that seemed to reach straight through her leather armour.
Through bleary eyes, the Dragonborn saw pandemonium spreading across the rest of the party. Lydia was kicking, swinging, and chortling as she fought off a horde of tiny spiders that kept trying to hop onto her and sneak under clothing in search of delicate spots where they could rummage around, like her armpits or her belly button. Much incidental tickling was still achieved as they scampered up the tops of her bare feet, the shins, and the neck, however.
Namira was wiggling and pawing at the dirt as Aela took the Daedra’s feet into a headlock. Roaring in triumph, she scratched her nails hard and deep under those pale, black-painted toes and up and down those earthy soles. But as she tasted the sweetness of revenge, Namira grabbed at Aela’s wrinkled warrior feet victory and started striking back, which promoted a grunting shriek from the Huntress.
Serana would have helped out, but Namira’s floating hands were proving tricky foes. Serana could blast them with her magic or swat them away, but they kept on coming, and with a dozen of them, they quickly tickled her to the ground, with one hand going for each of the main spots, including two for the vampire’s particularly sensitive soles, to keep her pacified.
Nocturnal and Azura were locked in a ticklish conflict as well. They both had each other by the shoulders and were trying to push each other down, with light and dark energy pulsing all around them. But the hem of Nocturnal pitch-black cloak split and spread into tiny feathery limbs which snaked under Azura’s sleeves to wiggle into her armpits, brush under her chin, stroke along her collarbones, or tease the sides of her ample bosoms that had been exposed by the cleavage of her attire. Rich, husky laughter spilled from Azura’s lips.
The Daedra glanced about and seemed to recognise the situation. “Drahahahagonbohohohorn! Ruhuhuhun!” Her eyes and palms shone with blinding brightness, and everything was white. All the shadows faded away.
The Dragonborn and her companions ran till the light faded. He last thing they saw when they turned back was Azura pinned to a tree by Nocturnal’s shadows as the two Daedra took out their frustrations.
“That’s how it ends, eh?” Sheogorath said in a quiet, contemplative voice. “Well, I would have liked a more amusing ending. More laughter, more tears, more soiled undergarments, that sort of thing.”
“Too bad,” the Dragonborn said. “Try again later, if you must.”
Sheogorath cackled at that. “Maybe I shall! Oh, maybe I shall!”
And so the Dragonborn and her companions escaped Sheogorath’s game, but they never forgot Azura’s kindness. True to her word, the Dragonborn sought out the Shrine of Azura upon her return to Skyrim. There, the Dragonborn paid her debt and purified Azura’s Star, because temptation or no, that was the kind of Dragonborn she was.
“After a long and perilous battle featuring deadly draugr, terrifying traps, and copious amounts of potion-quaffing, the Dragonborn defeated the deathlord and strode with pride to the grand treasure chest within. But little did she know what awaited her within!”
“Did you hear something?” the Dragonborn said to the sound of her leather boots scuffing the stone floors as she looked around. That ethereal voice... what had that been? With only one good eye, she really had to turn and move her head around to make sure nothing was sneaking up on them. Her right eye, bold, ghost-blue, and sharp, scanned the tomb, her finger never far from the trigger on her crossbow, but everywhere there was dead—and in most of the draugr’s case, they had been slain more than once.
“I didn’t hear anything, my Thane.” Despite Lydia’s words, her shield and sword were held high in preparation for an attack.
“Neither did I,” Serana said. The vampire’s voice was cool and calm. “But I do sense a faint energy in this crypt. There’s something here, just on the edge of comprehension, but I can’t decipher what it might be.”
“Probably just some residual magic from the ancient nords.” Aela the Huntress had slung her bow on her back, and she was peering down to look at a burial urn. “Besides, what could stop the four of us? I doubt an army could.” She snorted and straightened with a feral, fearless grin on her pale lips.
“I wish you wouldn’t say things like that,” Lydia said. “You know I always have a bad feeling when you do.”
Aela shrugged. “It’s true. Among us, we have the finest markswoman in the land, who, oh, by the way, is also a werewolf with the blessing of Hircine.” She jerked a thumb at Serana. “We have a vampire, heiress of an ancient line and powerful mage.”
“I like to be humble,” the black-haired, red-eyed vampire said.
“We have one of the mightiest housecarls of Dragonsreach.” Aela clasped Lydia on the shoulder. “Oh, and we only have the Dragonborn as well, master of the voices of power.” She waved to the dark-haired woman in leather armour with a scar down her left eye. “What need we fear?”
“All true enough,” the Dragonborn said, pushing a lock of dark-brown hair away from her face. She smiled at Aela. The fierce redheaded hunter was right, and the Dragonborn was glad she had decided to take her along on this trip, glad she had taken all of them, really. She had never understood the artificial restriction of why you would only want one companion. Sure, it might not be very fast to go traipsing around the world with thousands at your back, but four could accomplish a lot more than two—play several of the more interesting card games, for instance.
“All well spoke. But that being said, I’d sooner we left here as soon as possible.”
Aela grunted, and the four of them went to work. A few games, a bit of gold, a frost-enchanted Nordic battleaxe were among the spoils, but what really caught their attention was a golden quill artefact inside the largest treasure chest.
The Dragonborn reached for it and said, “You know, I saw a golden claw that looked li—”
But as soon as her pale fingers brushed across the metal a strange energy enveloped her. She gasped. She could feel the hair of the back of her neck tingling.
“My Thane!” She heard a faint voice and a grab on her arm, and the light span her around and swallowed her.
---
When it spat her out, the Dragonborn was something she had never seen before. She definitely wasn’t in some tomb anymore. She was in some kind of forest, only the sun shone red, white, yellow, green, and orange. Even by Skyrim’s many moons, it was not natural. Beside her in a heap, slowly pushing themselves to their feet, were her three companions.
“Where—” Lydia began to say before a loud, throaty laughter drowned out her words. The Dragonborn’s head snapped at the noise—it was the same voice chuckling voice she had heard back in the tomb.
Seated cross-legged on what appeared to be, based the pungent aroma, a throne of yellow cheese, was an elderly gentleman in a tunic of fluorescent purple with wild yellow eyes that marked him as no mere mortal. “Welcome, my dears! You’ve come at last!” He grinned, pointing at them with a finely carved cane. “Oh, I was afraid you had misplaced your invitations. How nice to see you! Oh, I could just tear out your intestines and strangle you with them.” He stroked his neat white beard and laughed.
“Bold words from an old man,” Aela snarled. She had scrambled back to her feet and had an arrow notched and aimed at the peculiar gentleman’s head.
“You seem hungry. Have a morsel, child.” The man in purple reached into his pocket and tossed something at Aela with reflexes far faster than a man with than many wrinkles on his face should be capable of. But Aela was no fool. She loosed her arrow at him. He caught it with easy, almost contemptuous grab and used it as a skewer to get some cheese from the armrest of his throne. On the other hand, his thrown projective, a sweet roll, hit Aela on the cheek to leave a creamy smear on her tanned skin
“Sheogorath, the Daedric Prince of Madness,” the Dragonborn said in a slow, steady voice as Aela growled and rubbed her face. “I thought I recognised you.”
“Dragonborn! If you’d like my autograph,” Sheogorath said, chomping on cheese. “I’m afraid you’ll need to wait till after our fun today.”
“And what fun might that be?” Lydia asked.
“I’ll tell you, good sir. Myself and the other Daedra lords are waiting for you in this forest. We’d like to ‘persuade you’ to pledge yourselves to our fine and noble causes.”
“So, you’re here for our souls, basically,” Serana said, her arms crossed.
“Nothing as crass as that! Well, maybe, yes.” Sheogorath smiled through a disgusting mouth full of yellow cheese. “An oath of service is what we want. But if any of you escape the forest, you all go free!”
“That’s your idea of a game?” the Dragonborn demanded. “The four of us being hunted in the forest by all you superhuman deities?”
“No, of course not! I for one, won’t be participating, though of course, if any of you go insane in here, I of course consider myself the victor.” He slapped himself on the knee and guffawed. “There’s another twist to the game that I just know you’ll enjoy discovering for yourself later. The other Daedra have all agreed, though it took a lot of arm-twisting and browbeating, I assure you! You need not fear death in this forest… only submission.”
“Molag Bal must have a hand in this,” Serana said, rolling her eyes.
“Why yes, he was my tournament organiser,” Sheogorath replied. “Anywho, without further ado! Off you go! Toodlepip!” And on that note, he poofed away, leaving only the sharp smell of cheese to mark him having been there.
“What now?” the Dragonborn asked
“I am your sword and your shield,” Lydia said. “I won’t let anything happen to you.” But no sooner had those words passed her lips, that the same spectral glow of teleportation reappeared around each of them.
“Oh, and I forgot to mention!” Sheogorath’s voice boomed out of nowhere and everywhere. “It would be no fun if you were all together right in the beginning. Forgive my poor memory! Have fun and remember to keep smiling!”
---
The Dragonborn blinked awake. Even with half-closed eyelids and her one good eye, she could feel the relentless bright glare of the sun. She pushed herself to her feet, swept her long dark hair out of her face, and looked around. She was alone in the sunny forest, though if what Sheogorath had said, that would only be for now. She crouched, her leather boots making almost no sound as she winded her way through the trees and shrubs with her crossbow in hand.
“There’s no use hiding from me, Dragonborn,” came a guttural voice from behind her. She spun and fired a quick shot from her crossbow, but the bolt only hit air before thudding into the trunk of a tree.
“Maybe you’re not used to being hunted, but there’s no better hunter than me,” the male voice was low and feral. “For am I am the Huntsman of the Princes, the Father of Manbeasts, and The Hungry Cat.”
She saw him them, standing tall and powerful with a spear in his hand. Unclothed aside from a loincloth, his tanned body was corded with muscle and scarred from a hundred hunts. His nails were long, yellowed, and clawed. His bristly beard was chestnut-brown and shaggy as was the long hair on his head. Yet he looked so very human, especially compared to the two snarling werewolves beside him.
“Come, Dragonborn. Let me taste your defiance.” Hircine and his two followers streaked towards her then, howling and laughing.
Backpedalling, she let loose another quarrel that caught one of the werewolves on the shoulder to send him staggering back a step, but the other two were closing the distance and quickly. The Dragonborn grunted as she wound the crossbow back, cursing at the fact it took so long to do so. Her next short was rushed, and it sailed past Hircine's shoulder.
“Not good enough, prey!” Hircine said, lunging forward with his spear. The spearpoint smacked the crossbow’s firing mechanism and sent it flying into the bushes.
“Dance with me, then,” the Dragonborn said, drawing her sword from its sheath. Wood clashed against metal, parries were met, and strikes were dodged, with the two werewolves standing there watching.
When Hiricine ducked beneath her guard to jab the blunt butt of the staff into her side, the Dragonborn inhaled a deep breath and shouted, “Fus Ro Dah!”
The Unrelenting Force sent the Daedra tumbling back, but he landed cat-like on his fingers and toes. “I wasn’t going to use my powers if you didn’t use yours. I believe in a fair hunt. But if that’s how you wish to play it…”
The Dragonborn ducked as the first werewolf swung its big claw down at her. She tried to parry with her blade, but the large brown beast ending up wrenching her weapon away. The other grabbed her from behind, under the armpits. As she inhaled to power up another Fus Ro Dah, she was surprised by the sudden sensation coming from this second wolf—the rummaging of those paws around her armpits… was she being?
She shrieked as the answer came to her, the shout fading into a girlish giggle.
Hircine smirked as the werewolves pinned her down to the ground. One pushed down her wrists while the other continued to scratch into her armpits with those hairy clawed hands. “When Sheogorath said we were only to use tickling as a method of persuasion, I thought him, well, mad. But I’m starting to see the merit in such a thing. You cannot speak when you are laughing, can you?”
“I resent that, Hircine.” It was Sheogorath’s voice booming out of nowhere, like some omnipresent commentator. “There’s always a system to my insanity, hehe.”
The Dragonborn gritted her teeth and tried to prove them wrong, but it was simply impossible to tense up and bring forth the power of her shouts when the feeling of those fingers in her armpits turned her muscles and mind to jelly.
Oh, why did it have to be tickling? She knew it was perhaps her most embarrassing weakness. There had been a quest back in Riften where she obtained these Marks of Dibella to blackmail Haelga, a sensual proprietor of a bunkhouse. The Dragonborn had done it, only for the comely blonde Haelga to offer a night of passion in exchange for secrecy. She had begged, saying that her Dibellan Arts were not malicious and no cause for being run out of town. When the Dragonborn had agreed, Haelga had offered a night of extraordinary pleasure in return for silence. The kinky bed restraining had gone well, but afterwards, Haelga had gagged her and used her fingers all over the Dragonborn’s pale, exposed, and very ticklish body. Through fingers, feathers, and a pot of honey that Haelga kept in her room, the Dragonborn had learned exactly how sensitive she was, and she did not like what she had learned. Her tender toes still curled at the thought of her slender feet being licked, her armpits being feathered, and rough fingers goosing her ribs.
That night, she had believed she would never receive such a thorough, torturous tickle ever again, but she soon believed otherwise. Hircine sat on her thighs, his large, muscular frame pinning her to the ground. The werewolves shifted around so they were sitting on one arm each.
“Now, we see the spoils of the hunt,” Hircine said in a whisper, with his eyes as black as midnight. Before she could even twist her mouth into forming a “Fus”, the werewolves had started. Their paws grazed her pale skin just below her leather bracers and stroked along them till they arrived at her stretched-out armpits. Their claws made short work of the leather sleeves of her armour so she had to contend with those hairy, fuzzy fingers dancing around the bare skin of her terribly ticklish underarms.
Hircine lifted up her tunic and showed her abdomen no mercy as well. His long fingernails were nimble and lethal as they darted from ribs to sides to stomach. They were as unpredictable as any seasoned hunter, striking here and there when they weren’t expected—a quick poke here, a sudden squeeze there, and then suddenly ten fingers spidering along the ribs. The Dragonborn roared with laughter as powerful and as loud as her mightiest shouts under this tri-pronged attack.
“Want it to stop?” Hircine said as a finger wormed into her navel. “Swear to me your oath of fealty and hunt by my side. Then all this can stop.”
She shook her head, and Hircine laughed. The werewolves got up from their posts as the Dragonborn gasped for breath. Hircine took her hands and held them back—his were so large and strong that he could hold back both her wrists with just one hand. His free hand he used to tease at her neck, her collarbone, and her armpits, but the real danger came from the wolves. Once the Dragonborn felt her leather boots being pulled off, she knew what was happening.
“Please, not there! Not there!”
“Do you yield to me?”
She bit her lip, and Hircine shrugged and nodded to his beasts. The claws grabbed at her ankles and she felt the rough tongues lapping at her soles. Riding around a horse everywhere and buying potions to moisture her skin was becoming a decision she was starting to regret more and more. Haelga’s tongue had been bad enough, but these werewolf tongues were rough and scratchy like that of bristly brushes. And there were two of them, one for each horrendously ticklish foot.
The Dragonborn’s fingers fought to escape Hircine's grasp, but his hand was tough as old oak. The coarse tongues were working their way through her toes now, despite her every attempt to kick them away or clench her delicate toes shut. But no, in and out the gaps they went, the furry hands holding the toes in place for the digit abuse. Even their paws seemed to tickle her hypersensitive digits, the very act of grabbing them for the tongue to lick already making her giggle.
Hircine released her wrists to dive both hands into her armpits. Perhaps he could see that she was too overwhelmed to do anything even with her hands free. Her weapons were out of reach, and she couldn’t muster the strength to dislodge him with the atrocity being done to her ticklish feet. She was beaten. Or was she?
An arrow flew and caught hit Hircine on the forehead. He went toppling back, grunting. The wolves got up, snarling.
“Leave my companion alone,” Aela shouted from the distance. More arrows came flying towards them. The werewolves went prowling after her, but they went scrabbling for cover after a half a dozen shafts were sticking out of their legs and chests.
Hircine stood up and yanked the bow from his head, laughing at the blood that came trickling down. “You always were one of my finest warriors. But the pup does not challenge the pack lea—”
“FUS RO DAH!” The Dragonborn’s blast sent Hircine flying high into the air like a ragdoll and landing out of sight.
“Are you okay?” Aela came jogging towards her with her bow still trained on the werewolves, but they had gone scurrying off after their master. “I heard your, erm, shouting.”
The Dragonborn coughed and took a deep breath as she picked up her leather boots, her sword, and her crossbow. “I really don’t know where to begin. Thanks for the save. Have you seen Lydia or Serana?”
O-O-O
“You foul abomination. You parasitic blight on the universe!”
Serana closed her eyes as the vitriol washed over her. “Well, nice to meet you, too,” she muttered.
“I heard that, such insolence from a damnable vampiric creature such as yourself! Oh, if I hadn’t been tricked into this game, I would pull out your entrails and burn them in front of you.”
Serana groaned. It was just her luck that she ran into Meridia Daedra of Life and the Lady of Infinite Energies. All the tomes she had read had explained that Meridia despised the undead for flouting the traditional rules of life of death, but the black-haired vampire had expected a bit of exaggeration in those old tales. It seemed that for once, the books had been perfectly accurate.
Meridia grabbed Serana by the chin and forced her to look at her. The Daedra was breathtakingly beautiful with her white, translucent skin, hair the colour of sunrise, and pale white tunic, but the stormy grey eyes showed not a shred of mercy. A spriggan had grabbed Serana by the wrists and yanked her up in the air, till her legs several dangled inches from the ground. The tall, tree-like creature was nothing but wood and magical energy, so it made sense that it would serve as Meridia’s hunting partner in this. Vines grew and wrapped around Serana’s ankles, wrists, and waist to further restrain her.
“Scream for it, monster,” Meridia whispered to her, and Serana understood exactly the ‘persuasion’ that Sheogorath had meant. Meridia’s nails were long, golden, and ruthless as they dug deep into Serana’s armpits through the thin fabric of her royal vampire armour. Her fingers were warm, almost hot, and they seemed to melt through Serana’s clothes to really get at the pale, milk-white flesh beneath. Serana tugged and tugged, but the spriggan’s grip was implacable. Frost and electric magic crackled and fizzled away in her fingertips. There was something about Meridia’s flashing quick strokes that seemed to be draining her magicka the way a lightning spell would.
“It pleases me to know that your dead flesh remains sensitive,” Meridia said with a bright smile. “And I hope you are not thinking of submitting to me, for I would never take one such as yourself into my service. But let us hope your screams attract the Dragonborn to come rescue you. Let’s take another step in that direction.” She nodded to the spriggan, and with a yelp, Serana’s discovered some kind of insect was coming out of the sapling creature to wander down into Serana’s boots.
Were they beetles, spiders, ants? Whatever they were, they make no secret of their presence—their legs were hairy and numerous, and Serana shivered as they trickled down her ankles and began to explore her alabaster feet. It was a bit like when you were ahorse, and you suddenly discovered you had an inch on your feet, perhaps magnified by about a thousand.
Those insects crawled around along the ball of her foot and the generous cranny of the arches, scratching and wiggling around all the soft areas. They moved with a frenzied energy as they explored the curves and the tiny folds of the soft, sensitive skin of Serana’s pale feet with their miniscule legs, feelers, and appendages. She tried to clench her black-painted toes to squash them, but whatever the pests were, they seemed too hardy to be crushed so easily and trying to do so just ending up with her receiving a fuzzy tickle between her digits for her trouble.
“Oh, listen to that desperate laughter!” Meridia said, her long, cruel fingers going down to assault Serana’s navel for a while, paying particular attention to the belly button. “Sheogorath was mad for suggesting this method of torture, but I do see that it has some value in prolonging torment. If the Dragonborn doesn’t come, we could do this for days, couldn’t we? Months? Years?” She tittered to herself, her fingers scampering even faster across Serana’s toned stomach. The vampire woman’s red eyes grew bleary from so much forced laughter. She shook her head, her long black hair flying to and fro, but the tickling just kept on coming. More of the vermin were starting to migrate to other locations too. A steady influx of them were scurrying up around her kneecaps, some of them even going up to the inner thighs in search of new spots to plunder for mirth from the bound woman.
A sharp clanging sound cut through Serana’s high-pitched laughter. Meridia turned, a pale eyebrow raised. Lydia stood there, banging her steel sword against her shield.
“Let her go!” the dark-haired nord cried, charging towards them. Her sword crashed into the spriggan to make the tree-like apparition give an anguished roar.
“Your would-be saviour, I take it?” Meridia said to Serana, before turning and blasting a bolt of Lydia’s chestplate to send sprawling on her back. “Mediocre.”
Meridia snapped her elegant fingers and another spriggan spawned from the weeds and bushes below Lydia to haul the girl up till she was in the same perilous position as her companion. Before long, she was snorting and gasping the way Serana was as well, with the same vile insects sneaking under and around the gaps in her armour to roam around the sensitive spots around her lean, muscular body.
“Whawhahwhahahahat is thihihis!” Lydia closed her eyes and strained against the spriggan’s grasp, but she made no progress than Serana. And when the bugs brushed across the weak spot on her arch, scurrying over it relentless and constantly, her laughter grew as high and girlish as the vampire’s had.
“Didn’t expect a tough one like you to be so ticklish,” Meridia said. She cracked her knuckles and then went straight back to kneading Serana’s sides. “Once I’ve finished tickling this fiend half to death, I’ll come have firm words with you. I appreciate loyalty, even if it’s loyalty to beasts like this one.”
“Thehehe Drahahhagonbohohorn will come fohohohor uhuhuhs!”
“I’m sure. But till then, I shall have to content myself with the sounds of your laughter. And remember, human, if you want to stop, you know you need only pledge yourself to my service.” Serana tried to say something, but Meridia’s fingers scythed into the pale-skinned girl’s underarms once more. “No such offer is available to you, undead. Scream for me, instead.”
O-O-O
“So, the Dragonborn and the huntress went off in search of their distressed companions! Would they be able to handle their distressingly ticklish bodies? Oh, who knows?”
“Would you please shut up, Sheogorath?” the Dragonborn shouted into the air.
“You have no sense of humour.”
“My friends being tortured has rather diminished it,” she said as she ran towards a new noise, having recognised the sounds of those anguished shrieks and squeals. That laughter was undoubtedly Lydia’s, who had made a similar noise when she had been convinced to try a special foot pampering treatment which included a rather vigorous exfoliation. Intermingled with that noise was the sound of Serana’s desperate squeaks and guffaws, which was higher and more frantic. It sent tingles down the Dragonborn’s spine. The last time Serana had sounded so strained was when her father, the great vampire Lord Harkon, had disciplined her in the rack back at Castle Volkihar. The loving father had not wanted to scar his daughter too much, so he had taught his traumatic lesson with feathers, scrub brushes, and Death Hounds.
“Come on, let’s go,” she said, and Aela nodded. They went sprinting towards the noise. The Dragonborn holstered her crossbow and Aela did the same to maximise celerity. So preoccupied where they with running as quickly as they could, that neither of them noticed the thin, translucent gossamer till they were both wrapped in it.
“Come into my parlour, said the spider to the fly,” said a low, husky voice. “Why, hello, Dragonborn. I was hoping you would stumble by.”
“What is this? Who are you?” Aela said as she fought to get free of the webs. The webs weren’t strong enough to completely bind her, but they were enough to tangle her up and slow her down, as if a net had been thrown over her.
“Namira is my name. I am the Mistress of Decay, the Devourer of the Dead, and the Spirit Daedra.”
The Dragonborn tore the webbing out of her face so she could get a good look at her foe. If all war-paint make-up were removed from her face, Namira have been comely, but right now, she looked more too frightening to be considered beautiful. She had a narrow face, curly dark hair ended at her shoulders, and thin, pale lips, but what framed everything were her eyes. They were a bright sickly green, the colour of poison ivy, and they were accentuated by the heavy black paint around her eyes that were like deep, dark, ghoulish eye circles. Her robes were as dark as mourning.
Looming behind the Daedra was a giant spider, bigger than any of the monsters the Dragonborn and her companions had fought on their travels. With its monstrous hair faces and eight beady eyes, it would have been a difficult foe at the best of times. And to make matters worse, Namira’s hands glowed with black power, and she fired sprays of dark energy that seeped the energy from the women like some foul entropy. In addition, with their arms and weapons debilitated by the gunk from the webs, the two women were quickly disarmed, disabled, and defeated.
Namira popped them onto a giant cobweb and leered at them. She pulled off their shoes, chuckling. At a glance, the Dragonborn’s Imperial feet were paler and dainty, while the Huntress’s Nord feet were longer, larger, and with more-structured arches.
The spider hovered over Aela, dripping venom from its mouth. The nord groaned and strained against the sticky webbing but couldn’t dislodge herself. Aela’s green eyes went wide with fear as the spider leaned in—but this spider wasn’t about to devour her, or no. A pair of long, thin spider legs started brushing at her elbows before it reached the armpits till Aela was red in the face. Two more dexterous legs began rummaging around her ribs and poking at her sides. Due to the arachnid’s size, the hairs on its legs were as thick and long as needles, and those bristles made Aela burst with boyish laughter.
“Rehehehehelease me, fohohohoul beheheast!” Aela grunted and threw her body to and fro, but aside from making the web vibrate silently, little else was achieved by her exertions. Four fuzzy, bristly appendages continued to prod and stroke her all over. The spider was close to Aela’s face, and its noxious breath continued to wash over her, though little did Aela know that this spider’s breath did not poison—its fumes heightened one’s sensitivity, being part stimulant and part aphrodisiac.
Things were no easier for the Dragonborn. “The saporous taste of human flesh is something I have always relished,” Namira said, leaning in, and the Dragonborn only had a second to compute what that meant before the strong sudden sensation struck her—sharp teeth nibbling at the bottom of her heel to make her gasp.
The Dragonborn gnashed her teeth together and closed her eyes as that Daedric mouth went up to her toes. The tongue swirled all over the place too, till the sole was damp with Namira’s saliva. The ball of the foot was a particularly troubling spot when Namira’s mouth focused on that spot, especially the lower teeth when they bit and rubbed that spot just below the ball of the foot right where it met the arch.
“Stahahahap bihihihiting!” the Dragonborn wailed as Namira took her big toe into her mouth and swirling her tongue all around it. While the focus was on those ivory digits, the devious Daedra skated her long black fingernails all over the rest of the sole, which was still slick and all too sensitive.
While Namira continued her gluttonous feast, her other spiders were not idle. These one were smaller—the normal spiders that creeped in closets and outhouses, not the massive ones that had lairs in caves.
Hundreds of these tiny arachnids scampered across the foot that Namira was not slumbering over. They rummaged and scurried all over her heel, arch, and toes like some rampaging horde. Spiders from the same brood had wandered over to Aela, as well. The auburn-haired huntress was writhing and roaring as the giant spider launched a series of constant thrusts towards her midsection and armpits with its long hairy legs, and its kin took advantage by voyaging over to the unattended feet. Aela’s Ancient Nord Armour didn’t cover her legs much, so that section from mid-thigh to shin was another area where the spiders made a beeline towards, in order to scamper all over the delicate flesh there.
When the giant spider attacking Aela’s stomach leaned in close once more, the strong nord strained her neck up and bit the creature on its face to make it screech in pain. All at once, Namira yelped as well, reaching for her face where Aela had bitten the gargantuan arachnid.
The Dragonborn’s grey eyes grew wide. Was there some kind of familiar relationship between the duo? They shared pain?
That distraction was all the time she needed. She took a deep breath. “YOL TOOR SHUIl!” the explosion of fire erupted out of her from the dragon shout.
Namira recoiled and the Dragonborn tore free from the weakened webs.
“Run!” Aela shouted. “One gets away, then we all win. Go!”
Biting her lip and hot with shame, the Dragonborn ran.
O-O-O
“FUS RO DAH!” The Dragonborn’s shout cut over the squalor of squawking laughter. Meridia closed her eyes, her long gold hair streaming back as the wave washed over her.
“Dra—” was all she got out before a crossbow bolt crashed into the head of the spriggan beside her, which had been staggered by the force of the shout. This spriggan had been grasping Serana, who wrenched herself free from its woody, branchy grasp and immediately fired a stream of frost at the Daedra of Life.
“Time you experienced hibernation,” Serana said as her ice magic started to slow down Meridia’s movement.
Meridia’s eyes glowed red gold with anger as she raised a hand to form an energy ball in her hands, but a shoulder charge from Lydia knocked her to the ground.
‘No, you don’t!” the Nord warrior shouted.
“I regret offering you the chance to join meheheheheee! Stahahahap thahahahat!” The alabaster-skinned Daedra wriggled as Lydia’s fingers starting rummaging under her elegant white tunic.
“Quick thinking, Lydia!” the Dragonborn said as her crossbow finished off the second spriggan.
“Oh, this has been a long time coming,” Serana said as her vampiric drain turned the first spriggan into kindling.
As Lydia continued to straddle Meridia and use her fingers to goose her sides, ribs, and stomach. Serana and the Dragonborn made their way over with wide grins on their faces.
“About time we get to dish a bit of it out for once,” the Dragonborn said as she sat down beside Meridia’s right foot. The foot was pale, slender, and sinuous, clad in strappy, elegant silver sandals, and the toenails gleamed in the light like mother-of-pearl. Those sandals were ripped off with haste.
“Indeed,” Serana said and grabbed the Daedra’s left foot in the crook of her arm and went to work, scribbling her fingers across the exquisite sole.
“Nohohohoho! You cahahahan’t do thihihis!” Meridia shrieked, her hectic howling cutting through the forest noise.
“Contrary to that, Meri, but I’m afraid they can,” boomed Sheogorath’s voice from the sky, cackling.
The Dragonborn smiled. For once, Sheogorath had said something that sounded perfectly reasonable and agreeable. And contrary to Meridia’s loud and desperate proclamation, do this they did.
It was a good thing there were three of them, for one or even two of them might have had real trouble containing the animated Daedra. True to her title as the Lady of Infinite Energies, she was bouncing, wriggling, and twisting constantly under the hands probing her ticklish spots.
Meridia’s feet were so soft it was as if the Daedra had never walked on them, and the Dragonborn was pleased to note they were exceptionally ticklish. The silvery toes spasmed and twitched with every finger-stroke down the sole, and it was a marvel just to watch them wiggle with so much frenetic energy. With that in mind, the Dragonborn was content to just pick up a twig from the floor and brush it with a slow, casual nonchalance up and down the sole and watch the food tremor in disproportionate reaction to the light touch. It also suited the Dragonborn’s poetic nature to torment this nature-esque goddess with such an innocuous item of nature like the humble leaf.
Serana, who perhaps possessed a more vindictive mind, grabbed those glinting toes to keep the quivering sole still so her nails could really rake up and dig into those plush things. She got a particularly frantic reaction when she pushed the digits back to extend the arch and then really scratched deep into that high, taut arch.
And of course, Lydia kept up her assault on the upperbody with her trademark diligence. She seemed to have built up a good rhythm, though the Dragonborn thought that her technique wasn’t especially creative. It was as reliable as any regimented training routine. About ten seconds tunnelling under the arms, slowly working and squeezing her way down Meridia’s ribcage till she reached the sides of the stomach, poking around there for another second seconds, whirling her nails across the stomach for another ten seconds, spending ten more seconds getting inside the navel, then it was back up the sides and ribs again before ending the ticklish cycle with ten fingernails in those delicate armpits.
Meridia’s shaking hands were free to try to push Lydia’s questing arms away, but likely due to the onslaught of her hypersensitive feet, the light energy she tried to channel through her fingertips fizzled and died, and whenever she tried to use raw strength to grab Lydia’s wrists, she would only be able to sustain it for a few seconds before a combination of Lydia’s muscles and the mind-warping foot tickling sabotaged her.
And it didn’t take long for all this to take its toll. At first, Meridia’s bright eyes had shone with vicious wrath, but by now, they had faded to the glimmer of the fading sun. Before long, the three had tickled her so ferociously that those startling eyes closed as the Daedra huffed and puffed.
“Looks like she’s out of it,” Lydia said, standing up. “She definitely won’t be chasing us anymore.”
“Indeed,” the Dragonborn nodded, “that’s one win for us. But now what? Should we go back for Aela?”
Serana’s expression was insouciant. “She can take it. Why don’t we just leave her?” She shrugged. “Surely it’s better we try to escape. She’ll be free if we get out anyway.”
“So, we just let her suffer until that happens?” Lydia crossed her arms. “That’s pretty heartless.”
“I was locked in a coffin for years,” Serana said. “Trust me, that’s true suffering. Aela will be fine. I’m sure she’s been through worse. She’s a fighter, a warrior, a member of that elite group called the Companions, no?”
“No companion of yours, it seems,” Lydia said, rolling her eyes.
“What do you mean by that?” Serana said, her forehead furrowing as she narrowed her glowing eyes.
“No need to argue,” the Dragonborn said, trying to stand between them. “Let’s just calm down, okay?”
“Oh, such discord! Such dissent! You really don’t get along, do you?” This voice came out of nowhere, but it was far from the squeaky, excitable voice of Sheogorath—this voice was lower, gruffer, and full of mockery.
“Molag Bal,” the Dragonborn said, narrowing her eyes.
The Daedric Prince appeared, hopping down from a tall tree with a thump on the leafy ground. His hair was black and spiky, his build was large and strong, and his thin face was lined with arrogance. In his hand was an ugly, spiky great mace.
“Vampire,” he said to Serana in a soft voice, “if you disagree with the black-haired nord, why don’t you ‘convince’ her?”
“I-I,” Serana blinked, “a great suggestion.” And then she flew at Lydia, drilling her nails at that nook between the shoulder and ribs where the armour did not cover in order to ensure flexible movement.
“Oh, what a twist,” Sheogorath said from the clouds. The Dragonborn could hear the grin in his voice.
“I helped create the first vampire,” Molag Bal said, chuckling, “it’s only natural their loyalties would be to I, Prince of Domination, God of Schemes, and Harvester of Souls. Now, submit to me, Dragonborn, and let us end this farce.”
With a strike that was surprisingly quick for a man his size, Molag Bal stepped forward and smacked the crossbow out of her hands. He followed it with a strong ankle sweep that took her legs out from under her. And as the Dragonborn was tumbling to the floor, Molag reached out with his free hand and snatched up one of her bare feet.
He lifted the foot up as if it weighed nothing at all and scratched his fingernails all over the free foot. The Dragonborn burst into laughter as his rough, callused fingers worked wildly over her sensitive sole. There was little exploration or focus on spots that were more sensitive—he just kept dragging his nails upon the pale, delicate skin at random, not even bothering to focus on places that might be more vulnerable.
The Dragonborn flailed, punched, and kicked at him as she hung upside down and wilted under this ceaseless tickle assault, but the burly Daedra shrugged off her blows. She had no weapons, and she couldn’t muster up the lung control to use her shouts while her ticklish feet were under such an aggressive scrabbling.
“I’ve had enough of you!” Serana shouted as she lunged at Lydia. She peeled off the nord warrior’s steel-toed boots. Somehow, Lydia was the only member of the group whose shoes had remained on throughout, so her feet were damp with perspiration. It seemed that made them mighty sensitive—Lydia was rolled onto her stomach and she was pounding her gauntlet-clad fist hard onto the ground as Serana’s ten fierce, furious fingernails scribbled all over the black-haired girl’s wrinkly soles. “Time to see how ticklish your feet are!”
But Lydia had a lot more muscle than the vampire girl, and after a few more seconds of acute ticklish distress, she twisted her way free.
“Calm down!” She shoved the smaller girl till Serana was on her back. “If this is the only way to snap you to your senses, then so be it.” She slipped her fingers under Serana’s pink and black chest armour and squeezed her fingers all around the cool, flesh within, reaching up underneath the blouse-like garment blouse as far as she can. Such dogged attacks on Serana’s sides and stomach quickly forced the breath and anger out of her, till the raven-haired Vampire was on her back breathless.
“Lyhihihidia, hehehehelp meheeee!” the Dragonborn wailed as she continued her limp and ineffectually kicks and punches while Molag Bol continued ravaging her foot with fiendish movements.
“At once, my Thane!” Lydia picked up her shield and sword and landed a quick slash down Molag Bal’s back. He grunted and ceased his foot tickling, though he did not drop the Dragonborn. He continued to parry and counter-attack with his spiked mace, while the Dragonborn flopped about as the two danced and spun.
After her head was dragged through a bush, the Dragonborn decided she had endured enough of this silliness. “YOL TOOR SHUIl!” The flame blast washed over Molag Bol, and the Dragonborn and her companions escaped as the blaze engulfed more of the forest.
“Sorry about that,” Serana said.
“It was my fault as well,” Lydia replied. “I shouldn’t have raised my voice at you.”
The Dragonborn smiled at the two of them. “Now, we just have to get Aela and everything will be okay again.”
“It pleases me to see such comradery,” said a voice out of nowhere, but it did not have the silky tones of Molag Bal nor the electric eccentricity of Sheogorath—this voice was soft, feminine, and lacking in malice. The source of the voice stepped out of a tree behind them. Her hair was a long, luminous silver, her face was pale and graceful, and her smile was unfazed by the weapons pointed at her.
“Azura, Daedric Prince of Dusk and Dawn, Mother of the Rose, and Queen of the Night Sky, at your service.” The woman bowed low, her long hair almost sweeping the ground. She was clad in black robes embroidered with silver scales. “I do not believe it your destiny to be forced into servitude by us here.”
“So, uh, you’re not going to fight us?” the Dragonborn’s voice was a little louder than she had intended on account of the shout building in the back of her throat.
“I propose we come into an agreement, but nothing as vulgar as a contract.” Azura’s eyes were orange and very warm. “I overheard your spat. Why don’t we save your companion? In return, you help me out with a certain star of mine that’s gone missing.”
Lydia crossed her arms. “This seems a little too good to be true.”
“I don’t know,” Serana said, scratching her chin. “Maybe we should trust her. Azura is one of the few Daedra considered not to be wholly evil.”
Azura’s laughter was gentle and melodious. “Thank you for the compliment.”
“Alright, we’ll trust you to keep your word.”
“Marvellous.” Azura’s hands flashed with light.
Backtracking was a simple matter, and before long, they had returned to where Namira and her pets had been. Aela had not endured well. She back on the web with Namira, the Mistress of Decay, slobbering over one foot as before.
In addition to the giant spider’s legs continued to savage her midsection with slashing, prodding tickles and smaller spidery brethren skittering across her long, pale feet, Namira had conjured several disembodied hands to join in on the action as well. Some were entirely yellowed bone while others were in varying states of decomposition, but all of them moved with hungry energy as they squeezed along the thighs
So enraptured was Namira with her ticklish foot feasting, that she didn’t notice their arrival till a crossbow bolt thwanged through the air and pierced through the web to drop the sweaty, panting Nord woman to the ground. The smaller spiders scurried away, and the big one reared back.
“You!” Namira said, her long black nails pulsing with energy. She stared at the Dragonborn then Azura. “Oh, so that’s the way of things, is it? I’ll make you rue such a pact.”
Namira would have said more, but a powerful kick hit her across the side of the head and knocked her to the ground.
“How do you like my feet now?” Aela snarled.
With hurried movements, Namira scrambled back to her feet, breathing hard. Another bolt from the Dragonborn’s crossbow ripped through her spider’s torso and sent it crashing lifelessly to the ground. Namira scowled at them, flanked by her skeletal and non-skeletal hands.
“Now, this is hardly sporting,” she said, surrounded by the five powerful individuals.
“Agreed,” said another voice out of the shadows. It was a whispery female voice. “My sister is subverting how this game ought to be played.”
“Aye, a cheater!” boomed the familiar, jolly voice of Sheogorath. “A cheater, but, oh, I’ll allow it because I’m excited to see what happens next.”
“Nocturnal,” Azura said, her palms glowing with light. “Dear sister, I did not think you would join in on this.”
“Neither did I,” said Nocturnal, the Daedra known as Night Mistress and Lady Luck. “But the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune led me here, as they have led me to you.” A cowl shrouded her features so all that was visible was a thin smile. Her cloak were black as night, though it had a low décolleté which showed a pair of full, pale breasts. She extended a hand the colour of fog and pointed at the Dragonborn. Nocturnal’s shadow, long from the bright, uncanny sun, flew towards her.
“FUS RO DAH!” the Dragonborn shouted at the spectre, but the unrelenting force passed straight through it. She gaped in disbelief as the shadow slipped through her, making her feel as though she’d just walked through a spray of salty wind.
“Nice try, Dragonborn, but your shadow is mine,” the apparition whispered, and suddenly, there were two black silhouettes pushing the Dragonborn to the ground. One was obviously Nocturnal, but the other was… no, it couldn’t be! The Dragonborn gasped. It looked just like her reflection in a clear pool of water.
Yet her copy showed little loyalty. It grabbed at the Dragonborn’s left foot and starting scratching her nails right at the very centre of the sole, right in her arches which was so deathly sensitive to the firm stimulation of fingers. How had it known that was her spot! Actually, it made perfect sense that it would—it was her.
Nocturnal’s shadow was not idle, either. While the shadowy Dragonborn made a beeline for all the Dragonborn’s worst locations on her terribly ticklish feet, she struck with keen fingers around the stomach and armpits with chill fingers that seemed to reach straight through her leather armour.
Through bleary eyes, the Dragonborn saw pandemonium spreading across the rest of the party. Lydia was kicking, swinging, and chortling as she fought off a horde of tiny spiders that kept trying to hop onto her and sneak under clothing in search of delicate spots where they could rummage around, like her armpits or her belly button. Much incidental tickling was still achieved as they scampered up the tops of her bare feet, the shins, and the neck, however.
Namira was wiggling and pawing at the dirt as Aela took the Daedra’s feet into a headlock. Roaring in triumph, she scratched her nails hard and deep under those pale, black-painted toes and up and down those earthy soles. But as she tasted the sweetness of revenge, Namira grabbed at Aela’s wrinkled warrior feet victory and started striking back, which promoted a grunting shriek from the Huntress.
Serana would have helped out, but Namira’s floating hands were proving tricky foes. Serana could blast them with her magic or swat them away, but they kept on coming, and with a dozen of them, they quickly tickled her to the ground, with one hand going for each of the main spots, including two for the vampire’s particularly sensitive soles, to keep her pacified.
Nocturnal and Azura were locked in a ticklish conflict as well. They both had each other by the shoulders and were trying to push each other down, with light and dark energy pulsing all around them. But the hem of Nocturnal pitch-black cloak split and spread into tiny feathery limbs which snaked under Azura’s sleeves to wiggle into her armpits, brush under her chin, stroke along her collarbones, or tease the sides of her ample bosoms that had been exposed by the cleavage of her attire. Rich, husky laughter spilled from Azura’s lips.
The Daedra glanced about and seemed to recognise the situation. “Drahahahagonbohohohorn! Ruhuhuhun!” Her eyes and palms shone with blinding brightness, and everything was white. All the shadows faded away.
The Dragonborn and her companions ran till the light faded. He last thing they saw when they turned back was Azura pinned to a tree by Nocturnal’s shadows as the two Daedra took out their frustrations.
“That’s how it ends, eh?” Sheogorath said in a quiet, contemplative voice. “Well, I would have liked a more amusing ending. More laughter, more tears, more soiled undergarments, that sort of thing.”
“Too bad,” the Dragonborn said. “Try again later, if you must.”
Sheogorath cackled at that. “Maybe I shall! Oh, maybe I shall!”
And so the Dragonborn and her companions escaped Sheogorath’s game, but they never forgot Azura’s kindness. True to her word, the Dragonborn sought out the Shrine of Azura upon her return to Skyrim. There, the Dragonborn paid her debt and purified Azura’s Star, because temptation or no, that was the kind of Dragonborn she was.
