Jaynin
4th Level Red Feather
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Deviantart is being stupid and not letting me post the 4th part of the story I've been writing, so I said, fuck 'em, I'll post it on TMF.
Then I realized that I probably should post the first three parts before that.
So that's a thing.
---
One leg kicked out to the side, flailing helplessly, entirely useless. Despite the muscle she could see in her leg - could feel, could remember spending days and days training to make her body strong - it was useless, and kicked off to the side, in the air. The other leg was tangled, tough green vines wrapped haphazardly around it from ankle to just above the knee. The pattern of the thin, tough vines was random, crisscrossing around the dark elf’s leg in an unfortunate tangle rather than any deliberate pattern of restraint, but regardless of the intent, the result was the same - Zylinde could not move her leg meaningfully, hanging upside by that one limb while the other leg kicked around uselessly. Above her head - below her, because she was upside down - were the warm, murky, swampy waters which surrounded the “islands” she had been hopping between. From here, if she looked at the lazily flowing water, the dark, quick-moving shapes beneath the surface were all too evident. What they were, Zylinde had no idea, but she also knew that she had no desire to find out.
There had been a hollowed-out log placed between two of the safe islands of dry land that dotted this goddess-forsaken swamp, and in trying to cross this makeshift bridge, Zyl had slipped, fallen, and gotten her one leg tangled in the vines that had been growing over the log. Somehow the log bore her weight, even with her struggling, but she had been unable to right herself, to grab the vines and pull herself back up, to curl upwards enough to gain purchase on anything with her hands. It wasn’t that Zyl was physically incapable of such a feat, no - as the first daughter of a prominent house of dark elves, she had proudly entered warrior training, trained alongside her peers for years, and developed the strong, fit body that the warriors of the Queen were so well known for. Situations like this, where her instructors had placed her in peril and expected her to save herself with no outside assistance, were hardly uncommon. If this had just been a case of hanging by a vine and needing to pull herself up, Zylinde could have done it, with time. If she could have just concentrated.
If her body would move the way she wanted it to.
“SToooohoo-HOOOOhoo-hahahah-HAHHAAHAHHAAP YOU LITTLE GREEN BASTARD!” she shrieked upwards, for indeed perched atop that log, an indolent smile on his face, was the slight, short green frame of a Dryad. Not the feckless forest guardian types that the surface elves liked to pal around with, no - he was one of the evil bastard kind that inhabited the Demon Academy, and through a bizarre and unbelievable chain of events, Zyl found herself now dangling by one leg from a hollow log, above swamp water almost certainly filled with nasty creatures, while his featherlike fingers brushed softly against the heel and arch of her trapped foot. It tickled like hell - even though she was teased about it, even though she had tried to train herself to ignore it. Even when she tried to convince herself that a soft, slight touch like that shouldn’t tickle, that not even the most sensitive serving boys they harassed reacted this strongly to such soft stimulation, none of it worked. Zyl felt every little brush of the soft, fibrous fuzziness that covered his fingers - like the annoyingly ticklish surface of a cattail plant - stroking her wildly gyrating foot, and it tickled so much that rather than do anything useful, she held her head in her hands, swung wildly back and forth, and howled with laughter.
Zylinde hated, HATED being tickled.
“You know, if I was in your position, where there was just one person who might be able to help me if they felt like it… I probably wouldn’t go around insulting them, you know?” Iys, the mischievous, smug little bastard of a male Dryad (that much was true, as proclaimed by the shit-eating grin on his face) had carefully calculated his pose and tone so as to maximize the pissing-off of the dangling, amazonian dark elf hanging by a literal thread below him. One hand propped his cheek up, his slim body resting on its front, bare feet kicking idly in the air behind him while he used a single fingertip to stroke along the comically sensitive foot that gyrated and rotated in amusingly futile attempts to avoid his tickling. “Besides, all that kicking and thrashing around is going to either break the log or snap the vine, and if you break the log, it’s gonna be real hard to cross between these two islands. You might be able to jump the gap, you might not. Who knows? Really what you ought to do is just give up while you still can.”
Zyl’s eyes glared murderously up at him as he said those words. Give up. It would be difficult for her to say whether she hated surrender or being tickled more, and these asshole Academy pricks had seemingly designed this whole ordeal in a way that would infuriate her the most. She wanted to glare at him, but then his fingertip ran underneath the ball of her foot, and her body took over, setting her into a swinging panic, free foot kicking fruitlessly as she rotated slowly this way and that thanks to the upside-down dangling position she was in. Over the sound of her own shrieking laughter, trying desperately to eject that soft wiggling finger from the sensitive spot it had found, she heard a sound that made her eyes snap open with sudden, focused horror. The sound of one of the vine’s fibers parting. “Stop-STAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHP YOU FUCKING SHIHEHEHAHHAH SHHHEHEH I’hehe-hahaha-I’M GHAHAHAHAHANNA FAHAAAAAAL!” she screamed, feeling the force of the sound in her throat as laughter warred with words to escape her lips. Unfortunately for the muscular dark elf, that was the only force her words had. Iys ignored her entirely, and when his fingertip attempted to force its way in between her toes, she howled, silver hair dangling below her, arms thrashing in useless fury, churning up the water’s surface… and drawing the attention of lots of those dark shapes beneath the water, making her eyes go wide. “Ihehhehee…. IIhehehahhahaa… ahhahahahahaaa....! IHehheheheheheheheahahhaah stoo-hahaha---!!!”
She heard the vine part, and the tension on her leg abruptly loosened as the vine slithered, rapidly losing tension, and her voice burst embarrassingly from her lips as she plunged towards the water. “I GIVE UUUUUUPPPP!!!”
She felt herself break the water’s surface with a mighty splash.
---
Zylinde had come to the capital city of the demons, Dis, on an errand from her mother. She and her brother Erialen, one year younger than her, were only supposed to meet an artifact dealer, exchange payment for a promised item, stay overnight, and then return home the next day. A small errand, to be sure, nothing of major importance, but both Zylinde and Erialen were of the age when they too were responsible for the reputation and tasks of their noble house, and their mother had judged this an errand of enough simplicity to entrust them with. It did require them to travel to the demons’ city via magic, a new experience for Erialen (although not Zylinde, as she had done this before in military training), and handle themselves accordingly in an unfamiliar place. An easy enough test. Zyl’s mother had entrusted her with one charm to aid her, just in case.
Wrapped around her left wrist was something that looked like a leather bracer with an inert gem embedded in it. It functioned simply, but powerfully - as long as whoever she was speaking to told the truth, it would maintain a gentle blue glow. If she was lied to, the gem would turn red, and buzz gently against her arm. “I don’t intend for you to come back with a mountain of promissory notes because some demon tried to swindle you,” she’d said. “The price was agreed upon months ago and a contract signed. If the seller asks for a single copper more than the amount you have been given, refuse and return immediately. Understand?”
It should have been so easy. The sale went off without a hitch, as Zyl brandished her truth-detecting bracer, put the money on the table, and received the intricately carved gold cube, looking just like her mother had said it was supposed to. Then they found themselves a place to stay in the demons’ city, paid the required coins for a meal and a room with two beds, and settled in for the night. Though Erialen had made some noises about going around to look, as if he hadn’t been losing his eyeballs down the cleavage of succubi for the relatively short walk to the dealer’s establishment and then this lodging, Zyl had pressed the cube into his hands, told him he would be dead meat if he so much as set a toe outside of the room without her permission, and then settled them both in to sleep.
Sleep that was rudely interrupted by a gentle shake on her shoulder sometime in the dark of night. “Zyl… Zyl, I need to use the… the washroom,” Erialen’s voice whispered in her ear, a little shaky. She heard the sounds of the floorboards creaking slightly as he swayed from foot to foot, and gritted her teeth in irritation at having been awoken. Irritation at him, yes, but at herself, too - Mother was always going on about needing to take responsibility for the orders one gave, and she HAD told him to get permission before leaving the room, so she snapped out a drowsy affirmative and then closed her eyes immediately, falling back into sleep as his footsteps quickly retreated.
It was a few hours later when Zylinde awoke, sitting upright in bed after a minute, and groaning with irritation. She’d had much rougher nights, courtesy of “surprise raid” training exercises, slept in strange beds before, everything else. For some reason, though, her head felt heavy, as if she was having a hard time getting her mind to wake up with her body. When she stood up and started to stretch, her body was going through the motions, and her mind focused blankly on the featureless wall in front of her. It was so unremarkable that it took her a good ten seconds to realize that the “featureless” wall probably should have featured Erialen’s sleeping form in his bed, and that it did not. This slapped Zyl awake like cold water to the face, something else she had also experienced, and she dashed out through the open door into the hallway. “Eri! Dammit, I told you not to… to… leave without…?”
The lodging house was not where Zyl found herself.
When she turned around, there was no door behind her.
Instead, stretching up further than the eye could see, was a spiral staircase that went up, up, up… vanishing into the distance. Countless archways branched off from this staircase, leading who knew where, and she gaped at the sheer scale of the structure she had somehow found herself inside. Was she in a dream? More like a nightmare, really, as Erialen’s absence meant the relic they had come to procure was also missing with him, and if he had somehow gotten sucked up into this tower, that meant she was going to have to go looking in every single one of those rooms in order to find him. Her heart quailed at the thought of that momentarily, but then Zyl steeled herself. Never one to sit around and mope, or to quit when things got difficult, the dark elf took but a moment to adjust herself. Her silver hair was long, but spiked in a style that meant it mostly stayed in place and didn’t fall further than her shoulder blades, befitting a warrior and making it harder to grab onto. She was not wearing much - a brief white top around her breasts, tied snugly to keep her breasts from getting in the way too much, and an even briefer set of bottoms, along with the lie detection bracer on her left forearm. Modesty was not a concern of hers as Zyl knew her toned, muscular body was attractive, and her only concern was with her freedom of movement. Barefoot or no, unarmed or no, barely clothed or no, she took the first step onto the infinite staircase.
“OW! FUCK!” she hissed, as her foot ran into something invisible and hard. “The hell? The fuck?” she snarled, looking around at the wide, circular space which constituted the bottom of this ridiculous staircase. It was a plain, circular area with a red carpet floor but nothing else, no other doors or entryways, and a cursory examination revealed no other ways to go. Zylinde unleashed a cautious jab at the stairway, and again ran into something unyielding. “Ow! Shhhh…” she groaned, shaking her hand, and gritting her teeth. She hated stupid puzzles! Where was she, anyway? “ERI! Get your damn ass down here!” she shouted up into the distance, but there was no answer. “Who the fuck is --”
“My, my. What a foulmouthed and impatient guest we have,” cooed a voice from behind her, and such was Zyl’s irritation and pent-up frustration that her first instinct was to pivot on one heel, turn, and throw a hard punch right in the direction of the voice. “So violent, too. Well, I guess the dark elves’ military training is pretty effective, isn’t it?” continued the owner of the voice, who Zyl saw as a bronze-skinned succubus with green hair, yellow horns, and stupidly large tits. Her punch had sunk into those breasts to the elbow, although she was clearly a projection, as the dark elf’s fist had passed straight through the succubus. “Welcome to the Demon Academy, oh-so-violent dark elf girl. I’m the Headmistress, Arishna, and we were hoping that you might be willing to play along with a little --”
“Shut your whore mouth, you lying bitch,” Zyl snapped, cutting her off, thrusting her left forearm towards Arishna, where the buzzing crystal was glowing a noticeable shade of red. “Don’t play tricks with me. This bracer tells me when someone’s lying to me. So, you sound like you’re in charge here, huh, Headmistress? I don’t have time for your bullshit games. Tell me where my brother and the relic are, or better yet, bring them to me right now, and let me out of here. Right now.” The dark elf was considerably taller than the projection of the succubus, more than a foot taller even, and she towered over the top-heavy demon with her hands on her hips, trying to appear intimidating to someone she was incapable of touching.
“Look at that. What an interesting little enchantment. Well then.” The succubus’ grin bore more than a slight hint of mischief. “No beating around the bush. Take a look.” A wave of her hand, and a large projection suddenly materialized in front of Zyl.
“Nuuhuh-heheh-EHEHHEHEHEheeheheheh PLEASE! Oheheh-heheheh oh please PLEHEHEHEEEEZE! Nyhhehehe-huuhahha-AHAHAHAHahahah nooooo!” It was most certainly someone that looked like Eri, even if he had been stripped of all of his clothing and looked like he was flailing around in a shallow pool of water. Above him was a succubus, floating in the air, who seemed to realize she was being watched and gave a wink and a suggestive flick of her tongue in Zyl’s direction, but Zylinde’s attention was less on the succubus and what she was holding - the relic they had bought! She was dangling it over Eri’s head, making him fumble and reach up for it, but a large naga was coiled around his legs, making it hard for him to keep his footing, and tickling his sides, waist, hips, around his shaft, and especially his underarms when he reached up for the cube… “NYehheHEHEHEHEHeheheeh giehheah-hahahah-HEHEHEHEHEHHE GIVE THAHHAAHHAAHAHHAHAAHAAAT BAAAAHAHAAAACK!”
“Both your brother and, in case you didn’t care enough about him, the neat little artifact you bought, are at the top of our tower. In order to get them back, you’re going to have to play this little game we’ve devised, for our amusement.” The red jewel on Zyl’s bracer changed back to blue. It was her face that started to redden with anger, and her punch, futile though it was, passed straight through Arishna’s face. Undeterred, the succubus continued to speak. “Oh, don’t be like that. It’ll be fun for us. Whether or not it’s fun for you, well, that’s up to you, really. Here are the rules. We’ve set up a series of… hmmm. Dungeons? No, more like… obstacle courses, perhaps? Challenges? Something along those lines. Complete each one and you’ll go higher and higher up the tower. Finish them all, and you’ll get both Eri and your treasure back.” Even though the jewel stayed blue, it did not diminish Zyl’s rage. For five whole minutes after Arishna’s pronouncement, she threw useless punches at the succubus’ projection, and when that proved unsatisfactory, tried to bash her way through the invisible wall over the stairway. Arishna watched her with silent amusement, waiting for her to finally stop, breathing heavily, before she continued.
With a gesture, the succubus turned a number of spaces on the ground floor carpet into stone, with symbols inscribed on them. One of these spaces was glowing, active. A pedestal rose out of the floor, with an unassuming necklace strung around it, and Zyl spitted Arishna with a glare. Her unasked question was answered nonetheless by the succubus, who had guessed what she was thinking: “The necklace is a kind of… key. It will let you use the portals to get around to each challenge, among other things. Before you ask: no, you are not going to leave this tower any other way than by participating in this little challenge. For our amusement.” The gem remained blue, and Zyl picked it up with her pinky, looking at Arishna suspiciously. The part about “other things” had aroused her suspicions, and she let loose with a barrage of questions, to see if she could catch the succubus in a lie.
“Is this necklace cursed?” Arishna shook her head no, and Zyl glanced at her gem. “Will it hurt me to put this on?” Another no. “Will it help me in any way, shape, or form?” A nod, and still blue. “Grrh…” Clearly, Zyl had wanted to find some fault in this, and she was still suspicious of it, so she carried it in her left hand instead of putting on, resulting in an eye-roll from the succubus. “I still don’t trust you. Not a damn bit. And who the fuck do you think you are, kidnapping my brother and me? Making me participate in this… bullshit, whatever the hell it is? I’m part of a noble house of the dark elves. When I get out of here, you better believe I am going to pull every string I have and then some to teach you your place. Don’t think that just because you have a temporary advantage with your magic crap that I’m giving in to this whole shit arrangement…” Zyl continued to talk as she stepped onto the first portal, realizing she should have asked if the portal was safe to take, but too late, as her body seemingly was jerked forward, and... stayed on her feet, only a slight sway in her step, and squinted. “The hell is this?
“Welcome to the first challenge: the Lake Area!” Arishna called out, her voice suddenly much louder, gestures more grandiose, as if her intended audience had suddenly changed. “Here, as you can see, the challenge is to travel between these small, safe islands, avoiding treacherous traps along the way, to reach the goal! Now, for our first audience poll - how many times do you think she’ll give up before reaching the end? Vote NOW!” Then, she looked back to Zyl and grinned. “I had forgotten to mention - the other function of that necklace. If you end up trapped and unable to get free, for any reason, simply say ‘I give up’ and the enchantment will bring you back to a safe place, namely --”
“Fuck that! And fuck this stupid game - you should have thought it through better! I never give up, no matter what. Keep your dumb necklace. I’m swimming to the finish.” Zylinde had taken in the “course” at a glance, a series of raised islands thrusting out of a swamp, or at least that’s what it appeared to be. Maybe it was a shallow lake, or something - the watery arena stretched as far as the eye could see in all directions. There was somehow a sun in the sky, and blue clouds, and the temperature was quite warm, so Zyl had reasoned the water would also be warm. Each island had trees and other flora growing on it, obscuring the view of what was on each one, but she guessed it was hiding some kind of bullshit and she was having none of that. They extended in a long, straight line, culminating in some island on which she could barely see something sparkling in the distance, which must be the ‘goal’. The air was for some reason sparkly, or twinkling, or something like that, maybe like a light haze that made it difficult to see too far. Tossing the necklace on the grassy surface of her island, Zyl slid over the side and into the water. It was clear, although since the lakebed was muddy, visibility wasn’t perfect, and her own landing stirred up a great deal of murkiness that hid her body below the chest. Deep, but not so deep she couldn’t stand - and deep enough to swim.
“Well, if you had waited to hear the whole explanation, you would have heard me tell you about the tickle monsters in the water, which is why you really should try to avoid falling into it…” Zyl’s head whipped around and stared at Arishna with a look of… rage? Horror? Disbelief? Before a word could leave her lips, however, a shriek of laughter raced to the front and burst from her surprised expression. “I had been going to tell you that to discourage exactly this sort of cheating, the tickle monsters in the lake all have a very powerful but short-acting hypersensitivity venom. The longer they nibble on you, the worse and worse the tickling gets, but it should wear off within a few minutes of you not being in the water. That said… I wonder if you can get out of the water without the necklace? We didn’t exactly design the sides of these islands to be climbed, you know.”
Zyl was not listening. Something had latched onto her side and was nibbling - its teeth were dull, small little nubs, not good for actually chewing through any flesh. But it was absolutely fantastic at stimulating her oversensitive nerves, which had seemed to flare up with ticklishness out of the blue! “GET OHOHOOOOFF! GET OFFFFFHEHEHEEEEE!” she howled, reaching into the water to try and tear the offending whatever-it-was off of her, when a series of smaller nibbles raced through her inner thighs and brought her to her knees with a sudden squeal. That meant Zyl dipped below the water’s surface for a moment, and when she rose, she slapped at her sides wildly, knocking something small, fleshy, and with tickly nibbly teeth back into the water. “NUhhehHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA FUAHHAHEHEH FUCK YOUHOUHOOOUU!” she screamed up at Arishna, but her words were robbed of impact by the desperate laughter and frantic flailing caused by the ticklish aquatic creatures which Arishna had been sure to seed the water with.
The ticklish nibbling creatures were like tiny fish, but there were also some larger, tentacle-like creatures as well, all of them swarming blindly to her ticklish flesh and nibbling incessantly. Their mouths were perfectly designed to stimulate ticklish nerves, and the sensation was especially effective against Zyl’s firm, muscular frame. As Arishna had promised, the sensation seemed to grow worse with time, both because of the purported tickle venom, but also because more and more of them sensed her thrashing in the water, and swarmed to her. Little nibbling sensations spread in the crevices of her body, into the spaces between her toes and along the sides of her feet, in the insides of her thighs and the crack of her ass. Larger, sucking mouths took the opportunity of this distraction to find themselves other sensitive places, latching onto her body just above the hips and applying a sort of pressure that felt like fingertips wiggling firmly into the muscle.
Zyl’s thrashing was entirely useless, and was in fact making her situation much worse - agitating the water’s surface, and clouding the water around her, allowed more and more of the creatures to approach. Realizing the situation she’d gotten herself into, she clawed her fingers and sunk them into the side of the ‘island’ she’d jumped off of, realizing it was made of relatively soft soil, and desperately trying to climb her way up. “Oho! Maybe our plucky challenger will make it back to safe ground after her ill-advised leap into the ticklish depths! It’s got to be hard to climb that soft, crumbly soil, though… but she’s so strong, maybe she can overcome that disadvantage!” Zyl was not particularly listening to Arishna’s announcement going on above her, as the top-heavy succubus leaned over the ledge to narrate her struggles, but when the dark elf reached up to try and pull herself further up along the island’s side, two tentacles lashed from the water’s murky depths and tickled beneath her outstretched armpits, resulting in a surprised shriek, flailing, and a mighty splash as her form disappeared entirely from the water.
A few seconds passed, and then - “NYEEEHEHEHAHAHAHAHAA AHAHAHAHAH STOOOOHAHAHAH STOOOOOP IHIHIHEHHAHAHAHAHAHA!” With a huge whooshing sound, Zyl broached the water’s surface once again, the air glittering and sparkling madly all around her, clawed fingers flailing, and sank into the soil of the island. It seemed as if she clawed desperately at it, rather than trying to actually pull herself up and climb back onto the island, and was rather trying not to be pulled down into the water. Her head and arms were above water, exposing her armpits for a thorough nibbling, and after a few deep, heaving breaths she screamed, half-ticklish and half raging, and shook her body forcefully in a desperate attempt to regain lost ground, coming back up to her full height and bringing her chest above the water once again. “SToooo-hooHHHAHAAAAP! FUCKKHAHAHAH FUCKKHAHAAA!” she howled, slapping at the water’s surface, eyes going wide when a tentacle grabbed a slapping wrist and tried to pull her down. Zyl pulled back with frantic strength, and after a few seconds of strain, a curious-looking ball with sucker tentacles growing out of its body popped up into the air - which she punched so hard that its tentacle released and the ball flew ten feet off before it skipped off the water’s surface again and sank down.
The surge of adrenaline left Zyl breathing heavily, and she turned back to the island’s flank, thinking somehow her ordeal had ended. Yet when she reached once more to start climbing, a half-dozen more tentacles lashed out of the water, coiling around her wrists, and pulling her back, causing her to arch, and exposing her sides and underarms to more of their fellows to start wiggling up and down in her clearly sensitive armpits, leading to ticklish tears mingling with tears of frustration. Once again, Zyl tried to overpower the being in control of the tentacles, but her extended bout of thrashing and adrenaline rush had left her temporarily winded, the growing ticklishness sapping her strength, and she failed to dislodge this new set of tentacles from the lake bed. Furious with her own weakness, furious at this tickling humiliation, furious in general, she trusted that the truth bracer had been leading her in the right direction and screamed: “I GIHIEHEHAHAHAH GIVE UP!” Arishna had said speaking that phrase would take her to a safe place, right? Since she’d realized the bracer would reveal her lies, she seemed to have been fairly honest…
Nothing happened.
“Oh! There’s the first submission! Hope nobody placed any bets on her making it through the course without giving up once, because we haven’t even made it to the first obstacle!” The projection of the succubus turned around and glanced behind her for a second. “Unfortunately for our contestant here, speaking the key phrase sent the necklace back to safe ground, and left her in the water--”
“YOU LYING BIHIHIHIHIIIIIIITCH!” Zyl howled, murder in her eyes momentarily, before her body made her surrender to laughter once more. Of all the things she hated about tickling… that might have been the thing she hated the most. Zyl wanted to be angry. To be furious. Instead, the tickling was making her laugh like a weak little girl. No matter how she willed herself to stop, it didn’t work. The ticklish tendrils under her arms, along her sides, the nibbling all over her lower body, it was like a growing ball of electricity racing through her body, slowly taking over her movements, forcing her to dance to its tune. Eyes full of desperate rage, she glared up at the projection of the succubus, boobs jiggling gratuitously, and howled: “YOUHAHHHEHEHE LIIHIHIIIED!”
“I didn’t lie, I said the necklace had an enchantment on it to take you to safety! You’re the one who threw the necklace down and jumped in the water. By all rights I should leave you there, buuuuuuuut.... I guess it would be a poor contest and waste of effort if you just got stuck on the very first trap! So, I’ll give you the necklace just this one time, and call this your mulligan,” the succubus said with a sweet smile. “That’s what I’d like to say, but I’m sure you’ve realized that this isn’t the real me, and I can’t actually touch anything around here, so…” A murderous howl escaped Zyl’s lips, and Arishna rolled her eyes. “I’m just joking. As horrible as you must think we are, nothing in this whole challenge is going to hurt you. Here.” The necklace, tossed by a thread of Arishna’s magic, sailed over the side of the island and settled itself neatly around Zyl’s neck. “It would be poor form, plus a whole lot of liability, if you ended up dead or something. You’re just going to have the shit tickled out of you, Zyl. I’m not going to let you drown or let you get hurt.” It didn’t particularly make the dark elf feel better to see that the gem in her bracer glowed blue, and she had to choke down her pride and growl once more: “I GIVE UP!”
---
Just like the first time she’d spoken the phrase, Zyl found herself on the warm, soft grass, her abrupt fall towards the water broken, after the incident with the log. At least this time she’d caught herself before falling completely in the water, so she only had to wring out her hair as she sat upright, legs crossed, and muttered curses under her breath at Arishna’s smiling projection. “That was a better try! Much better! You got past the first island easy and aaaaaalmost made it over the log trap to get to the third island! Only your second submission, you’re doing great so far, Zylinde~” the succubus teased. “I hope everyone appreciates the effort our contestant is going through to provide us entertainment! Everyone, show her how much you like what you’ve seen so far!”
“Who the hell are you talking to? Sometimes it seems like you’re talking to me, and then sometimes it seems like you’re talking to… yourself, or someone else?” Zylinde grumbled, doing some stretches to limber herself up again, eyes narrowed. The log trap connected the second and third islands, and there looked like at least ten by her guess. Not even a third of the way through this goddess-forsaken bullshit.
“The audience, of course,” Arishna replied matter-of-factly.
“Audience? I don’t see an audience. What the hell do you mean?” Even as she said it, the dark elf started to get a prickly sense of foreboding between her shoulder blades, and Arishna’s smile - plus the fact that jewel had shone blue this whole time - made Zylinde dread the answer she was about to get.
“It’s impractical to pack everyone who wants to watch into this space, of course. It’d limit our ability to design the courses too much on top of that. So, everyone is keeping track of you… through these.” Arishna reached out to seemingly thin air, but when she brought her palm forward, Zylinde saw a tiny little sphere glinting in the light. Like a miniature scrying sphere. Glinting in the light. Sparkling --
With a sudden gasp, she looked up, a subconscious impression suddenly crashing to the forefront of her consciousness. The twinkling, or sparkling, she’d seen in the air, obscuring her ability to see far. The sparkliness in the water when she’d been trying to escape. “Just how many of those damn things are there?!” she demanded, a look of horror on her face, but Zyl answered her own question as she looked into the distance, realizing what those hundreds of tiny sparkles were. Every single one was a small scrying crystal, transmitting the image of her from dozens of different angles, floating through the air, showing her struggles and humiliation to Goddess knew how many lecherous demons. The thought filled her with fury once more, and she turned to Arishna, who shook her head with a smirk.
“I told you right at the beginning that this was for our entertainment, didn’t I? You’ve still got a few more hours before we’ll close the course for the day… if you don’t finish today, we’ll just have to come back tomorrow, and keep coming back for as many days as it takes you to finish.” Arishna giggled. “That would be terribly disappointing for the audience if it took you too long to get done, though. We have a lot more courses people want to see you try! More traps, more creatures… much, much more fun.”
Zylinde felt the scope of her ordeal slowly dawning on her. Hours before closing. Days to finish. More courses. “What… happens if I don’t finish today?”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” Arishna said with a smile. “We’ll take you back to your room, let you take a shower, have a meal, and rest. There’s no point to this if you’re not refreshed and at full power each day. Right? Just keep in mind we’re putting on a show with your brother as well, though rest assured - we’re giving him rest and meals too, but the longer you take to get there, the longer we have fun with him~”
Zylinde barely heard her, facing out over the lake and its ten damned islands. For a moment, she considered exploding in fury, but. The task seemed daunting, overwhelming. Like it was so insurmountable that trying to finish it was inconceivable. She’d been tickled to tears and submission twice, in the first third of the first course. For a moment, she stood there, lost in thought, and then took a step forward.
She’d never give up.
Not ever.
Then I realized that I probably should post the first three parts before that.
So that's a thing.
---
One leg kicked out to the side, flailing helplessly, entirely useless. Despite the muscle she could see in her leg - could feel, could remember spending days and days training to make her body strong - it was useless, and kicked off to the side, in the air. The other leg was tangled, tough green vines wrapped haphazardly around it from ankle to just above the knee. The pattern of the thin, tough vines was random, crisscrossing around the dark elf’s leg in an unfortunate tangle rather than any deliberate pattern of restraint, but regardless of the intent, the result was the same - Zylinde could not move her leg meaningfully, hanging upside by that one limb while the other leg kicked around uselessly. Above her head - below her, because she was upside down - were the warm, murky, swampy waters which surrounded the “islands” she had been hopping between. From here, if she looked at the lazily flowing water, the dark, quick-moving shapes beneath the surface were all too evident. What they were, Zylinde had no idea, but she also knew that she had no desire to find out.
There had been a hollowed-out log placed between two of the safe islands of dry land that dotted this goddess-forsaken swamp, and in trying to cross this makeshift bridge, Zyl had slipped, fallen, and gotten her one leg tangled in the vines that had been growing over the log. Somehow the log bore her weight, even with her struggling, but she had been unable to right herself, to grab the vines and pull herself back up, to curl upwards enough to gain purchase on anything with her hands. It wasn’t that Zyl was physically incapable of such a feat, no - as the first daughter of a prominent house of dark elves, she had proudly entered warrior training, trained alongside her peers for years, and developed the strong, fit body that the warriors of the Queen were so well known for. Situations like this, where her instructors had placed her in peril and expected her to save herself with no outside assistance, were hardly uncommon. If this had just been a case of hanging by a vine and needing to pull herself up, Zylinde could have done it, with time. If she could have just concentrated.
If her body would move the way she wanted it to.
“SToooohoo-HOOOOhoo-hahahah-HAHHAAHAHHAAP YOU LITTLE GREEN BASTARD!” she shrieked upwards, for indeed perched atop that log, an indolent smile on his face, was the slight, short green frame of a Dryad. Not the feckless forest guardian types that the surface elves liked to pal around with, no - he was one of the evil bastard kind that inhabited the Demon Academy, and through a bizarre and unbelievable chain of events, Zyl found herself now dangling by one leg from a hollow log, above swamp water almost certainly filled with nasty creatures, while his featherlike fingers brushed softly against the heel and arch of her trapped foot. It tickled like hell - even though she was teased about it, even though she had tried to train herself to ignore it. Even when she tried to convince herself that a soft, slight touch like that shouldn’t tickle, that not even the most sensitive serving boys they harassed reacted this strongly to such soft stimulation, none of it worked. Zyl felt every little brush of the soft, fibrous fuzziness that covered his fingers - like the annoyingly ticklish surface of a cattail plant - stroking her wildly gyrating foot, and it tickled so much that rather than do anything useful, she held her head in her hands, swung wildly back and forth, and howled with laughter.
Zylinde hated, HATED being tickled.
“You know, if I was in your position, where there was just one person who might be able to help me if they felt like it… I probably wouldn’t go around insulting them, you know?” Iys, the mischievous, smug little bastard of a male Dryad (that much was true, as proclaimed by the shit-eating grin on his face) had carefully calculated his pose and tone so as to maximize the pissing-off of the dangling, amazonian dark elf hanging by a literal thread below him. One hand propped his cheek up, his slim body resting on its front, bare feet kicking idly in the air behind him while he used a single fingertip to stroke along the comically sensitive foot that gyrated and rotated in amusingly futile attempts to avoid his tickling. “Besides, all that kicking and thrashing around is going to either break the log or snap the vine, and if you break the log, it’s gonna be real hard to cross between these two islands. You might be able to jump the gap, you might not. Who knows? Really what you ought to do is just give up while you still can.”
Zyl’s eyes glared murderously up at him as he said those words. Give up. It would be difficult for her to say whether she hated surrender or being tickled more, and these asshole Academy pricks had seemingly designed this whole ordeal in a way that would infuriate her the most. She wanted to glare at him, but then his fingertip ran underneath the ball of her foot, and her body took over, setting her into a swinging panic, free foot kicking fruitlessly as she rotated slowly this way and that thanks to the upside-down dangling position she was in. Over the sound of her own shrieking laughter, trying desperately to eject that soft wiggling finger from the sensitive spot it had found, she heard a sound that made her eyes snap open with sudden, focused horror. The sound of one of the vine’s fibers parting. “Stop-STAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHP YOU FUCKING SHIHEHEHAHHAH SHHHEHEH I’hehe-hahaha-I’M GHAHAHAHAHANNA FAHAAAAAAL!” she screamed, feeling the force of the sound in her throat as laughter warred with words to escape her lips. Unfortunately for the muscular dark elf, that was the only force her words had. Iys ignored her entirely, and when his fingertip attempted to force its way in between her toes, she howled, silver hair dangling below her, arms thrashing in useless fury, churning up the water’s surface… and drawing the attention of lots of those dark shapes beneath the water, making her eyes go wide. “Ihehhehee…. IIhehehahhahaa… ahhahahahahaaa....! IHehheheheheheheheahahhaah stoo-hahaha---!!!”
She heard the vine part, and the tension on her leg abruptly loosened as the vine slithered, rapidly losing tension, and her voice burst embarrassingly from her lips as she plunged towards the water. “I GIVE UUUUUUPPPP!!!”
She felt herself break the water’s surface with a mighty splash.
---
Zylinde had come to the capital city of the demons, Dis, on an errand from her mother. She and her brother Erialen, one year younger than her, were only supposed to meet an artifact dealer, exchange payment for a promised item, stay overnight, and then return home the next day. A small errand, to be sure, nothing of major importance, but both Zylinde and Erialen were of the age when they too were responsible for the reputation and tasks of their noble house, and their mother had judged this an errand of enough simplicity to entrust them with. It did require them to travel to the demons’ city via magic, a new experience for Erialen (although not Zylinde, as she had done this before in military training), and handle themselves accordingly in an unfamiliar place. An easy enough test. Zyl’s mother had entrusted her with one charm to aid her, just in case.
Wrapped around her left wrist was something that looked like a leather bracer with an inert gem embedded in it. It functioned simply, but powerfully - as long as whoever she was speaking to told the truth, it would maintain a gentle blue glow. If she was lied to, the gem would turn red, and buzz gently against her arm. “I don’t intend for you to come back with a mountain of promissory notes because some demon tried to swindle you,” she’d said. “The price was agreed upon months ago and a contract signed. If the seller asks for a single copper more than the amount you have been given, refuse and return immediately. Understand?”
It should have been so easy. The sale went off without a hitch, as Zyl brandished her truth-detecting bracer, put the money on the table, and received the intricately carved gold cube, looking just like her mother had said it was supposed to. Then they found themselves a place to stay in the demons’ city, paid the required coins for a meal and a room with two beds, and settled in for the night. Though Erialen had made some noises about going around to look, as if he hadn’t been losing his eyeballs down the cleavage of succubi for the relatively short walk to the dealer’s establishment and then this lodging, Zyl had pressed the cube into his hands, told him he would be dead meat if he so much as set a toe outside of the room without her permission, and then settled them both in to sleep.
Sleep that was rudely interrupted by a gentle shake on her shoulder sometime in the dark of night. “Zyl… Zyl, I need to use the… the washroom,” Erialen’s voice whispered in her ear, a little shaky. She heard the sounds of the floorboards creaking slightly as he swayed from foot to foot, and gritted her teeth in irritation at having been awoken. Irritation at him, yes, but at herself, too - Mother was always going on about needing to take responsibility for the orders one gave, and she HAD told him to get permission before leaving the room, so she snapped out a drowsy affirmative and then closed her eyes immediately, falling back into sleep as his footsteps quickly retreated.
It was a few hours later when Zylinde awoke, sitting upright in bed after a minute, and groaning with irritation. She’d had much rougher nights, courtesy of “surprise raid” training exercises, slept in strange beds before, everything else. For some reason, though, her head felt heavy, as if she was having a hard time getting her mind to wake up with her body. When she stood up and started to stretch, her body was going through the motions, and her mind focused blankly on the featureless wall in front of her. It was so unremarkable that it took her a good ten seconds to realize that the “featureless” wall probably should have featured Erialen’s sleeping form in his bed, and that it did not. This slapped Zyl awake like cold water to the face, something else she had also experienced, and she dashed out through the open door into the hallway. “Eri! Dammit, I told you not to… to… leave without…?”
The lodging house was not where Zyl found herself.
When she turned around, there was no door behind her.
Instead, stretching up further than the eye could see, was a spiral staircase that went up, up, up… vanishing into the distance. Countless archways branched off from this staircase, leading who knew where, and she gaped at the sheer scale of the structure she had somehow found herself inside. Was she in a dream? More like a nightmare, really, as Erialen’s absence meant the relic they had come to procure was also missing with him, and if he had somehow gotten sucked up into this tower, that meant she was going to have to go looking in every single one of those rooms in order to find him. Her heart quailed at the thought of that momentarily, but then Zyl steeled herself. Never one to sit around and mope, or to quit when things got difficult, the dark elf took but a moment to adjust herself. Her silver hair was long, but spiked in a style that meant it mostly stayed in place and didn’t fall further than her shoulder blades, befitting a warrior and making it harder to grab onto. She was not wearing much - a brief white top around her breasts, tied snugly to keep her breasts from getting in the way too much, and an even briefer set of bottoms, along with the lie detection bracer on her left forearm. Modesty was not a concern of hers as Zyl knew her toned, muscular body was attractive, and her only concern was with her freedom of movement. Barefoot or no, unarmed or no, barely clothed or no, she took the first step onto the infinite staircase.
“OW! FUCK!” she hissed, as her foot ran into something invisible and hard. “The hell? The fuck?” she snarled, looking around at the wide, circular space which constituted the bottom of this ridiculous staircase. It was a plain, circular area with a red carpet floor but nothing else, no other doors or entryways, and a cursory examination revealed no other ways to go. Zylinde unleashed a cautious jab at the stairway, and again ran into something unyielding. “Ow! Shhhh…” she groaned, shaking her hand, and gritting her teeth. She hated stupid puzzles! Where was she, anyway? “ERI! Get your damn ass down here!” she shouted up into the distance, but there was no answer. “Who the fuck is --”
“My, my. What a foulmouthed and impatient guest we have,” cooed a voice from behind her, and such was Zyl’s irritation and pent-up frustration that her first instinct was to pivot on one heel, turn, and throw a hard punch right in the direction of the voice. “So violent, too. Well, I guess the dark elves’ military training is pretty effective, isn’t it?” continued the owner of the voice, who Zyl saw as a bronze-skinned succubus with green hair, yellow horns, and stupidly large tits. Her punch had sunk into those breasts to the elbow, although she was clearly a projection, as the dark elf’s fist had passed straight through the succubus. “Welcome to the Demon Academy, oh-so-violent dark elf girl. I’m the Headmistress, Arishna, and we were hoping that you might be willing to play along with a little --”
“Shut your whore mouth, you lying bitch,” Zyl snapped, cutting her off, thrusting her left forearm towards Arishna, where the buzzing crystal was glowing a noticeable shade of red. “Don’t play tricks with me. This bracer tells me when someone’s lying to me. So, you sound like you’re in charge here, huh, Headmistress? I don’t have time for your bullshit games. Tell me where my brother and the relic are, or better yet, bring them to me right now, and let me out of here. Right now.” The dark elf was considerably taller than the projection of the succubus, more than a foot taller even, and she towered over the top-heavy demon with her hands on her hips, trying to appear intimidating to someone she was incapable of touching.
“Look at that. What an interesting little enchantment. Well then.” The succubus’ grin bore more than a slight hint of mischief. “No beating around the bush. Take a look.” A wave of her hand, and a large projection suddenly materialized in front of Zyl.
“Nuuhuh-heheh-EHEHHEHEHEheeheheheh PLEASE! Oheheh-heheheh oh please PLEHEHEHEEEEZE! Nyhhehehe-huuhahha-AHAHAHAHahahah nooooo!” It was most certainly someone that looked like Eri, even if he had been stripped of all of his clothing and looked like he was flailing around in a shallow pool of water. Above him was a succubus, floating in the air, who seemed to realize she was being watched and gave a wink and a suggestive flick of her tongue in Zyl’s direction, but Zylinde’s attention was less on the succubus and what she was holding - the relic they had bought! She was dangling it over Eri’s head, making him fumble and reach up for it, but a large naga was coiled around his legs, making it hard for him to keep his footing, and tickling his sides, waist, hips, around his shaft, and especially his underarms when he reached up for the cube… “NYehheHEHEHEHEHeheheeh giehheah-hahahah-HEHEHEHEHEHHE GIVE THAHHAAHHAAHAHHAHAAHAAAT BAAAAHAHAAAACK!”
“Both your brother and, in case you didn’t care enough about him, the neat little artifact you bought, are at the top of our tower. In order to get them back, you’re going to have to play this little game we’ve devised, for our amusement.” The red jewel on Zyl’s bracer changed back to blue. It was her face that started to redden with anger, and her punch, futile though it was, passed straight through Arishna’s face. Undeterred, the succubus continued to speak. “Oh, don’t be like that. It’ll be fun for us. Whether or not it’s fun for you, well, that’s up to you, really. Here are the rules. We’ve set up a series of… hmmm. Dungeons? No, more like… obstacle courses, perhaps? Challenges? Something along those lines. Complete each one and you’ll go higher and higher up the tower. Finish them all, and you’ll get both Eri and your treasure back.” Even though the jewel stayed blue, it did not diminish Zyl’s rage. For five whole minutes after Arishna’s pronouncement, she threw useless punches at the succubus’ projection, and when that proved unsatisfactory, tried to bash her way through the invisible wall over the stairway. Arishna watched her with silent amusement, waiting for her to finally stop, breathing heavily, before she continued.
With a gesture, the succubus turned a number of spaces on the ground floor carpet into stone, with symbols inscribed on them. One of these spaces was glowing, active. A pedestal rose out of the floor, with an unassuming necklace strung around it, and Zyl spitted Arishna with a glare. Her unasked question was answered nonetheless by the succubus, who had guessed what she was thinking: “The necklace is a kind of… key. It will let you use the portals to get around to each challenge, among other things. Before you ask: no, you are not going to leave this tower any other way than by participating in this little challenge. For our amusement.” The gem remained blue, and Zyl picked it up with her pinky, looking at Arishna suspiciously. The part about “other things” had aroused her suspicions, and she let loose with a barrage of questions, to see if she could catch the succubus in a lie.
“Is this necklace cursed?” Arishna shook her head no, and Zyl glanced at her gem. “Will it hurt me to put this on?” Another no. “Will it help me in any way, shape, or form?” A nod, and still blue. “Grrh…” Clearly, Zyl had wanted to find some fault in this, and she was still suspicious of it, so she carried it in her left hand instead of putting on, resulting in an eye-roll from the succubus. “I still don’t trust you. Not a damn bit. And who the fuck do you think you are, kidnapping my brother and me? Making me participate in this… bullshit, whatever the hell it is? I’m part of a noble house of the dark elves. When I get out of here, you better believe I am going to pull every string I have and then some to teach you your place. Don’t think that just because you have a temporary advantage with your magic crap that I’m giving in to this whole shit arrangement…” Zyl continued to talk as she stepped onto the first portal, realizing she should have asked if the portal was safe to take, but too late, as her body seemingly was jerked forward, and... stayed on her feet, only a slight sway in her step, and squinted. “The hell is this?
“Welcome to the first challenge: the Lake Area!” Arishna called out, her voice suddenly much louder, gestures more grandiose, as if her intended audience had suddenly changed. “Here, as you can see, the challenge is to travel between these small, safe islands, avoiding treacherous traps along the way, to reach the goal! Now, for our first audience poll - how many times do you think she’ll give up before reaching the end? Vote NOW!” Then, she looked back to Zyl and grinned. “I had forgotten to mention - the other function of that necklace. If you end up trapped and unable to get free, for any reason, simply say ‘I give up’ and the enchantment will bring you back to a safe place, namely --”
“Fuck that! And fuck this stupid game - you should have thought it through better! I never give up, no matter what. Keep your dumb necklace. I’m swimming to the finish.” Zylinde had taken in the “course” at a glance, a series of raised islands thrusting out of a swamp, or at least that’s what it appeared to be. Maybe it was a shallow lake, or something - the watery arena stretched as far as the eye could see in all directions. There was somehow a sun in the sky, and blue clouds, and the temperature was quite warm, so Zyl had reasoned the water would also be warm. Each island had trees and other flora growing on it, obscuring the view of what was on each one, but she guessed it was hiding some kind of bullshit and she was having none of that. They extended in a long, straight line, culminating in some island on which she could barely see something sparkling in the distance, which must be the ‘goal’. The air was for some reason sparkly, or twinkling, or something like that, maybe like a light haze that made it difficult to see too far. Tossing the necklace on the grassy surface of her island, Zyl slid over the side and into the water. It was clear, although since the lakebed was muddy, visibility wasn’t perfect, and her own landing stirred up a great deal of murkiness that hid her body below the chest. Deep, but not so deep she couldn’t stand - and deep enough to swim.
“Well, if you had waited to hear the whole explanation, you would have heard me tell you about the tickle monsters in the water, which is why you really should try to avoid falling into it…” Zyl’s head whipped around and stared at Arishna with a look of… rage? Horror? Disbelief? Before a word could leave her lips, however, a shriek of laughter raced to the front and burst from her surprised expression. “I had been going to tell you that to discourage exactly this sort of cheating, the tickle monsters in the lake all have a very powerful but short-acting hypersensitivity venom. The longer they nibble on you, the worse and worse the tickling gets, but it should wear off within a few minutes of you not being in the water. That said… I wonder if you can get out of the water without the necklace? We didn’t exactly design the sides of these islands to be climbed, you know.”
Zyl was not listening. Something had latched onto her side and was nibbling - its teeth were dull, small little nubs, not good for actually chewing through any flesh. But it was absolutely fantastic at stimulating her oversensitive nerves, which had seemed to flare up with ticklishness out of the blue! “GET OHOHOOOOFF! GET OFFFFFHEHEHEEEEE!” she howled, reaching into the water to try and tear the offending whatever-it-was off of her, when a series of smaller nibbles raced through her inner thighs and brought her to her knees with a sudden squeal. That meant Zyl dipped below the water’s surface for a moment, and when she rose, she slapped at her sides wildly, knocking something small, fleshy, and with tickly nibbly teeth back into the water. “NUhhehHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA FUAHHAHEHEH FUCK YOUHOUHOOOUU!” she screamed up at Arishna, but her words were robbed of impact by the desperate laughter and frantic flailing caused by the ticklish aquatic creatures which Arishna had been sure to seed the water with.
The ticklish nibbling creatures were like tiny fish, but there were also some larger, tentacle-like creatures as well, all of them swarming blindly to her ticklish flesh and nibbling incessantly. Their mouths were perfectly designed to stimulate ticklish nerves, and the sensation was especially effective against Zyl’s firm, muscular frame. As Arishna had promised, the sensation seemed to grow worse with time, both because of the purported tickle venom, but also because more and more of them sensed her thrashing in the water, and swarmed to her. Little nibbling sensations spread in the crevices of her body, into the spaces between her toes and along the sides of her feet, in the insides of her thighs and the crack of her ass. Larger, sucking mouths took the opportunity of this distraction to find themselves other sensitive places, latching onto her body just above the hips and applying a sort of pressure that felt like fingertips wiggling firmly into the muscle.
Zyl’s thrashing was entirely useless, and was in fact making her situation much worse - agitating the water’s surface, and clouding the water around her, allowed more and more of the creatures to approach. Realizing the situation she’d gotten herself into, she clawed her fingers and sunk them into the side of the ‘island’ she’d jumped off of, realizing it was made of relatively soft soil, and desperately trying to climb her way up. “Oho! Maybe our plucky challenger will make it back to safe ground after her ill-advised leap into the ticklish depths! It’s got to be hard to climb that soft, crumbly soil, though… but she’s so strong, maybe she can overcome that disadvantage!” Zyl was not particularly listening to Arishna’s announcement going on above her, as the top-heavy succubus leaned over the ledge to narrate her struggles, but when the dark elf reached up to try and pull herself further up along the island’s side, two tentacles lashed from the water’s murky depths and tickled beneath her outstretched armpits, resulting in a surprised shriek, flailing, and a mighty splash as her form disappeared entirely from the water.
A few seconds passed, and then - “NYEEEHEHEHAHAHAHAHAA AHAHAHAHAH STOOOOHAHAHAH STOOOOOP IHIHIHEHHAHAHAHAHAHA!” With a huge whooshing sound, Zyl broached the water’s surface once again, the air glittering and sparkling madly all around her, clawed fingers flailing, and sank into the soil of the island. It seemed as if she clawed desperately at it, rather than trying to actually pull herself up and climb back onto the island, and was rather trying not to be pulled down into the water. Her head and arms were above water, exposing her armpits for a thorough nibbling, and after a few deep, heaving breaths she screamed, half-ticklish and half raging, and shook her body forcefully in a desperate attempt to regain lost ground, coming back up to her full height and bringing her chest above the water once again. “SToooo-hooHHHAHAAAAP! FUCKKHAHAHAH FUCKKHAHAAA!” she howled, slapping at the water’s surface, eyes going wide when a tentacle grabbed a slapping wrist and tried to pull her down. Zyl pulled back with frantic strength, and after a few seconds of strain, a curious-looking ball with sucker tentacles growing out of its body popped up into the air - which she punched so hard that its tentacle released and the ball flew ten feet off before it skipped off the water’s surface again and sank down.
The surge of adrenaline left Zyl breathing heavily, and she turned back to the island’s flank, thinking somehow her ordeal had ended. Yet when she reached once more to start climbing, a half-dozen more tentacles lashed out of the water, coiling around her wrists, and pulling her back, causing her to arch, and exposing her sides and underarms to more of their fellows to start wiggling up and down in her clearly sensitive armpits, leading to ticklish tears mingling with tears of frustration. Once again, Zyl tried to overpower the being in control of the tentacles, but her extended bout of thrashing and adrenaline rush had left her temporarily winded, the growing ticklishness sapping her strength, and she failed to dislodge this new set of tentacles from the lake bed. Furious with her own weakness, furious at this tickling humiliation, furious in general, she trusted that the truth bracer had been leading her in the right direction and screamed: “I GIHIEHEHAHAHAH GIVE UP!” Arishna had said speaking that phrase would take her to a safe place, right? Since she’d realized the bracer would reveal her lies, she seemed to have been fairly honest…
Nothing happened.
“Oh! There’s the first submission! Hope nobody placed any bets on her making it through the course without giving up once, because we haven’t even made it to the first obstacle!” The projection of the succubus turned around and glanced behind her for a second. “Unfortunately for our contestant here, speaking the key phrase sent the necklace back to safe ground, and left her in the water--”
“YOU LYING BIHIHIHIHIIIIIIITCH!” Zyl howled, murder in her eyes momentarily, before her body made her surrender to laughter once more. Of all the things she hated about tickling… that might have been the thing she hated the most. Zyl wanted to be angry. To be furious. Instead, the tickling was making her laugh like a weak little girl. No matter how she willed herself to stop, it didn’t work. The ticklish tendrils under her arms, along her sides, the nibbling all over her lower body, it was like a growing ball of electricity racing through her body, slowly taking over her movements, forcing her to dance to its tune. Eyes full of desperate rage, she glared up at the projection of the succubus, boobs jiggling gratuitously, and howled: “YOUHAHHHEHEHE LIIHIHIIIED!”
“I didn’t lie, I said the necklace had an enchantment on it to take you to safety! You’re the one who threw the necklace down and jumped in the water. By all rights I should leave you there, buuuuuuuut.... I guess it would be a poor contest and waste of effort if you just got stuck on the very first trap! So, I’ll give you the necklace just this one time, and call this your mulligan,” the succubus said with a sweet smile. “That’s what I’d like to say, but I’m sure you’ve realized that this isn’t the real me, and I can’t actually touch anything around here, so…” A murderous howl escaped Zyl’s lips, and Arishna rolled her eyes. “I’m just joking. As horrible as you must think we are, nothing in this whole challenge is going to hurt you. Here.” The necklace, tossed by a thread of Arishna’s magic, sailed over the side of the island and settled itself neatly around Zyl’s neck. “It would be poor form, plus a whole lot of liability, if you ended up dead or something. You’re just going to have the shit tickled out of you, Zyl. I’m not going to let you drown or let you get hurt.” It didn’t particularly make the dark elf feel better to see that the gem in her bracer glowed blue, and she had to choke down her pride and growl once more: “I GIVE UP!”
---
Just like the first time she’d spoken the phrase, Zyl found herself on the warm, soft grass, her abrupt fall towards the water broken, after the incident with the log. At least this time she’d caught herself before falling completely in the water, so she only had to wring out her hair as she sat upright, legs crossed, and muttered curses under her breath at Arishna’s smiling projection. “That was a better try! Much better! You got past the first island easy and aaaaaalmost made it over the log trap to get to the third island! Only your second submission, you’re doing great so far, Zylinde~” the succubus teased. “I hope everyone appreciates the effort our contestant is going through to provide us entertainment! Everyone, show her how much you like what you’ve seen so far!”
“Who the hell are you talking to? Sometimes it seems like you’re talking to me, and then sometimes it seems like you’re talking to… yourself, or someone else?” Zylinde grumbled, doing some stretches to limber herself up again, eyes narrowed. The log trap connected the second and third islands, and there looked like at least ten by her guess. Not even a third of the way through this goddess-forsaken bullshit.
“The audience, of course,” Arishna replied matter-of-factly.
“Audience? I don’t see an audience. What the hell do you mean?” Even as she said it, the dark elf started to get a prickly sense of foreboding between her shoulder blades, and Arishna’s smile - plus the fact that jewel had shone blue this whole time - made Zylinde dread the answer she was about to get.
“It’s impractical to pack everyone who wants to watch into this space, of course. It’d limit our ability to design the courses too much on top of that. So, everyone is keeping track of you… through these.” Arishna reached out to seemingly thin air, but when she brought her palm forward, Zylinde saw a tiny little sphere glinting in the light. Like a miniature scrying sphere. Glinting in the light. Sparkling --
With a sudden gasp, she looked up, a subconscious impression suddenly crashing to the forefront of her consciousness. The twinkling, or sparkling, she’d seen in the air, obscuring her ability to see far. The sparkliness in the water when she’d been trying to escape. “Just how many of those damn things are there?!” she demanded, a look of horror on her face, but Zyl answered her own question as she looked into the distance, realizing what those hundreds of tiny sparkles were. Every single one was a small scrying crystal, transmitting the image of her from dozens of different angles, floating through the air, showing her struggles and humiliation to Goddess knew how many lecherous demons. The thought filled her with fury once more, and she turned to Arishna, who shook her head with a smirk.
“I told you right at the beginning that this was for our entertainment, didn’t I? You’ve still got a few more hours before we’ll close the course for the day… if you don’t finish today, we’ll just have to come back tomorrow, and keep coming back for as many days as it takes you to finish.” Arishna giggled. “That would be terribly disappointing for the audience if it took you too long to get done, though. We have a lot more courses people want to see you try! More traps, more creatures… much, much more fun.”
Zylinde felt the scope of her ordeal slowly dawning on her. Hours before closing. Days to finish. More courses. “What… happens if I don’t finish today?”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” Arishna said with a smile. “We’ll take you back to your room, let you take a shower, have a meal, and rest. There’s no point to this if you’re not refreshed and at full power each day. Right? Just keep in mind we’re putting on a show with your brother as well, though rest assured - we’re giving him rest and meals too, but the longer you take to get there, the longer we have fun with him~”
Zylinde barely heard her, facing out over the lake and its ten damned islands. For a moment, she considered exploding in fury, but. The task seemed daunting, overwhelming. Like it was so insurmountable that trying to finish it was inconceivable. She’d been tickled to tears and submission twice, in the first third of the first course. For a moment, she stood there, lost in thought, and then took a step forward.
She’d never give up.
Not ever.
