waterman
TMF Expert
- Joined
- Feb 11, 2006
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Setting: Matter of Britain; Grinnerverse
Merlin’s awakening was slow, like the surfacing of a shipwreck buried for centuries.
His body numb, his mind veiled by a deep sleep spell. He opened his eyes amid bluish gleams of an unreal light, and for a moment, he believed himself caught in a dream. The light filtered through translucent surfaces, diaphanous as eternal ice: he was a prisoner of the Glass Tower, reflection of the unseen, a place exiled from time, hidden in the heart of the Valley of No Return.
His limbs were drawn upward and to the sides, restrained by ancient silver rings engraved with runes that pulsed in rhythm with his heartbeat. His legs were spread, bare feet lifted from the floor—exposed, helpless.
That was when he saw her.
Morgan Le Fay, the fae arisen from darkness. She approached with a feline step, her robe dark as midnight streaked with silver, a crown of tiny black serpents woven into her loose hair. Her eyes, irises like hematite, shimmered with power and cruelty.
“You’re awake, my master,” she murmured as she neared his face. “Are you ready to offer me what is rightfully mine?”
“Traitress...” Merlin growled, voice hoarse from forced silence. “Why?”
“Because my blood is older than your knowledge,” she whispered, tracing his cheek with the tip of her nail. “You descend from Luciferyne and Lilith, and within your innate magical power lies the gift to summon the Laughing Demon, the keeper of laughter that shatters the will.”
From beneath her robes, she drew an artifact that seemed to contain both dawn and abyss: the Eye of Grinius, a violet trapezohedron that throbbed like an impure heart.
“Cath Palug, the demon-cat, will serve me. With him at my command, I shall grant my son Mordred the throne that is his by fate. Arthur’s days are numbered.
Now, my good master and lover, it is up to you to make things easier. A descendant of Luciferyne and Lilith must summon the Grinner into this world—with the tongue, through laughter. Do it now, or suffer what follows.”
The wizard clenched his jaw.
“Morgan, your lust for power has clouded the wisdom I once loved in you. Cath Palug obeys no man or woman—it uses them. You would unleash only destruction upon Britain.”
“Then you have chosen the path of suffering, old man not quite wise enough.
You will soon discover that the wards protecting your flesh from harm are powerless against a simple device that nature herself has gifted us.”
With solemn, deliberate grace, the sorceress placed a feather at his feet. It was a white goose feather, long and soft—the sacred weapon of a profane ritual. She knelt before his bare feet, studying them like a cartographer reading a land to be conquered.
Without haste, she let the feather glide across the sole of his left foot. A barely perceptible touch, yet enough to rouse a storm in the wizard’s nerves. His skin prickled. His toes twitched. A shiver.
“Oh? What do I see?” Morgan tilted her head. “Does this trouble you? So delicate, so... intimate?”
She continued. The arch, the heel, the base of the toes. The feather’s movements were slow, caressing, perversely precise—calligraphic in their intent.
Merlin stiffened his neck, clenched his lips. But his eyes began to tremble. His nostrils flared. His chest rose in ever-shorter breaths.
“Are you smiling?” she taunted. “Do you find something amusing?”
The feather danced on, switching feet with sadistic grace. Merlin’s tension grew more visible. A bead of sweat trickled down his temple.
“Ghmm... n-nhh...”
A sound, faint, broken. Morgan stood upright.
“You forget, Merlin,” she said sweetly, “we have known each other’s bodies intimately. And I’ve learned very well where yours responds best.”
She set the feather aside. Rose to her feet and spread her hands. Her long, pointed nails caught the glow of the Eye of Grinius.
Then she bent again, and with the precision of a seer and the hunger of a predator, she began to tickle the soles of his feet with her fingers, pressing into his most sensitive spots.
The reaction was immediate. Merlin jolted as much as the magical chains would allow. His muscles tensed, his body arched against the bonds.
“Gnh–nngh—HHhh…!” A guttural groan. His lips began to tremble like the strings of a lute.
“Still resisting? How noble…” Morgan whispered, working on his right foot with one hand while bringing the feather back to the left. The contrast of sensations disoriented him: the insidious softness on one side, the electric scratch of fingernails on the other. His feet danced a desperate ballet in the air, struggling to evade the sadistic torment. But there was no respite, only a teasing that rose to the level of torment.
“Ahh–Hhnn…! N-not...! Hhh—hhhaah!”
The dam burst.
“AHAHA… HA! AHAHAA-HHHH! S-Stop! HAHAHAHAH!”
The laughter erupted, raw and uncontrollable. A mixture of despair and shame, of agony and release. Merlin's eyes clenched shut, wet with tears. His shoulders shook. His feet kicked in the void with erratic spasms.
“AHAHAH! I-I’m—HHAhahaha!—Enough! Don’t… Cease ah ah aha!”
The Eye of Grinius glowed with violet light. The runes on the walls quaked, and a chasm split open in the glass floor.
From the depths, accompanied by dense sulfurous violet smoke, emerged Cath Palug, the demonic cat of laughter, with eyes like spinning wheels and a grin that promised only chaos. Its maw opened in a roar that was also a thunderous laugh, the monstrous parody of human mirth.
Cath Palug’s roaring laughter filled the Tower like an impure echo. The sound vibrated through the glass walls, which seemed to moan, refracting the creature’s grinning face in a thousand fragments.
Morgan lifted the Eye of Grinius to the sky, her face taut with desire.
“Now, blood-born creature… submit to me! Kill…”
But the creature did not bow.
A whisper through the glass walls. A breath of green and blue light. Then, like fog split by dawn, a portal opened between the translucent walls of the tower. A figure stood silhouetted against the approaching sunrise.
Tall, wrapped in a cloak woven of leaves and water pearls, Nimue, the Lady of the Lake, stepped forward in silence. In her hands she bore Excalibur, the sacred blade, which glimmered with golden light, as if the entire spirit realm protected her.
“Morgan… your nightmare ends here.”
The dark fae’s face twisted in a sneer of shock and hatred. “You? Little swamp nymph? Did your pet beasts lead you here through the lake encircling this tower?”
Nimue didn’t answer. Her eyes, as clear as nocturnal water, locked onto Merlin, still wracked by spasms of laughter. The old mage looked back at her, his gaze weighted with both shame and relief.
Cath Palug let out a distorted mewl, like laughter echoed through a thousand throats, and lunged at the newcomer.
Excalibur sliced through the air like a divine hymn. With a single stroke, it beheaded the grinning demon, whose head tumbled among the smoke, leaving a trail of broken giggles and muted moans.
The body dissolved in a violet cloud. The laughter vanished… but did not die. The essence of the Grinner escaped in a whirlwind, scattering among the branches and eyes of the beasts of the Valley.
With an elegant gesture, Nimue traced a sigil of water in the air.
“In the name of the remembering river, I bind you. Until no human—man or woman—laughs in your presence, Grinner, you shall remain imprisoned within the instincts of the beasts in the Valley of No Return. May the world forever be free of your blasphemy.”
Nimue stood motionless, Excalibur still warm in her hands. Her long hair, damp with dew and power, fell over her shoulders as an invisible shiver ran through her wrists. She had fulfilled her duty… yet she did not feel safe. Not here.
At the far end of the hall, Morgan—naked in her failure—stared at her. But her eyes held not only frustration: something worse lurked there. A flame reignited.
“You dared interrupt a sacred rite, little nymph? You deserve something far worse than death…”
With a sharp snap of her fingers, the fae uttered words in the languages that sleep beneath the earth. A whisper of ice and copper rose in the room. The symbols floating on the walls flared to life.
Nimue was lifted off the ground, suspended in midair by invisible threads that wrapped around her without touching, like cords of compressed light.
“What are you doing?!” cried the Lady, struggling to move. But her limbs were stretched, unable to flee. Her arms raised, her sides exposed, her chest held in a strangled breath.
Morgan approached slowly, like an artist before a sacred canvas. Her eyes studied Nimue with manic precision. Nimue trembled slightly, but her gaze remained firm.
“You too descend from a blessed bloodline. Your magical powers are considerable. I cannot kill you. But perhaps…”
She turned briefly, thoughtful, as if seized by an inner vision.
Then, suddenly, she stopped. She smiled. An idea had taken root.
She raised one hand and traced an ethereal glyph in the air, which lit up with hues of indigo and green. The energy streams holding Nimue shifted. From cords of air they became filaments, then ghostly hands, made of liquid light.
Nimue flinched. “What... what are you doing?”
The answer came not in words, but in action.
One of the airy hands slipped beneath her floating robe, gently brushing her left side. Then another followed, to the right. The touch was intangible, yet precise, targeted like a forbidden caress. A third, more slender, slid up into the space beneath her arms, slowly teasing an unreachable spot.
Nimue’s eyes flew open. Her breath caught.
“N-no... wait—ah—ah…!”
A sudden, high-pitched giggle escaped her lips. Shame and surprise wrestled in her gaze. The air tensed with stifled laughter. Her face twisted into a grimace teetering between outrage and astonishment.
“Ah-hhnnh! D-don’t—oh oh oh oh Morgan! Hhhihih! I command you—oh oh!”
Morgan looked on with satisfaction. “Now this is more like it… Even a nymph has her weaknesses, doesn’t she?”
The magical hands began to scratch more insistently. Not pain. Not an assault. Just a forced, indecent pleasure that overwhelmed her will.
Nimue shut her eyes, trying in vain to gather inner strength, but her body betrayed her. Her abdominal muscles twitched, her back arched, the laughter began to take shape—like a spirit unwilling to be caged.
“Nnh-hahaha—HAHAH! Morgan! STOP! Curse you—AHH-hhihih!”
Her laughter was more delicate than Merlin’s—less beastly. It was crystalline, feminine, desperately restrained, yet ever closer to collapse.
The spectral hands seemed to delight in every tremble. They wandered from her sides to the crevices between her ribs, slipped beneath her arms like sentient wind, scratching, brushing, stroking, pinching—like curious fingers determined to explore every nuance of her laughter.
“AAAHAH! No—Nooo! AHAHAH-Hhhihhihihi! Stop them—please—AHAH!”
“You can’t repay me for my loss with anything less than your eternal defeat! Lady of the Lake, I may have found a torment worthy of you!”
Morgan extended a hand, and with a sharp snap, the spell changed.
Nimue was hurled into the air, her laughter still cracked between her teeth, and plunged into the lake that encircled the Tower.
The waters welcomed her with the silence of a trap.
The currents transformed into watery hands—translucent and gentle, yet tireless. A new torment, this time eternal.
Nimue, still shivering, tried to rise again. But the fingers of water returned to her sides, then under her arms, and once more into the folds of her robes.
And the laughter… resumed.
“Nnnhhh—ahhh—NO! AAHhahaha! Y-you’re—AHhh-hahaha! Driving me—nnnh—mad!”
Her body, floating, was wrapped in an embrace of laughter, and as she was slowly dragged toward the bottom of the lake, Morgan watched from above, her gaze calm as one who has composed a cruel poem.
“I cannot kill you, sister of the woods. But you will laugh… until the lake itself runs dry.”
The wind whispered through the ancient peaks of the Valley Without Return, carrying with it memories of glory and betrayal. The lake’s waters, still and dark, hid within their embrace secrets and laughter no one could hear without paying a price.
In the heart of the glass tower, Morgan stood tall—a proud shadow, guardian of a dark power and an ancient design. Her eyes scanned the invisible horizon, beyond the crystal walls and the chains of runes, toward a future uncertain yet inevitable.
“He will come,” she murmured, her voice caressing the air like a spell. “Uther’s son… the sovereign who shapes the destiny of these lands. He will come to reclaim what was taken.”
In the lake, Nimue lay wrapped in the currents that held her prisoner. Her spasms of muffled laughter blended with the breath of nature. But in her eyes, behind the veil of torture, burned a spark no magic could extinguish.
Her gaze, turned upward toward the surface, awaited the moment of liberation—the hour when the sacred blade, Excalibur, would be claimed by the true king.
And so, in the calm before the storm, a promise echoed in the air—thick with magic and waiting: a promise of return, of reckoning between light and shadow, between laughter and power, between love and betrayal.
The legend was only just beginning.
Merlin’s awakening was slow, like the surfacing of a shipwreck buried for centuries.
His body numb, his mind veiled by a deep sleep spell. He opened his eyes amid bluish gleams of an unreal light, and for a moment, he believed himself caught in a dream. The light filtered through translucent surfaces, diaphanous as eternal ice: he was a prisoner of the Glass Tower, reflection of the unseen, a place exiled from time, hidden in the heart of the Valley of No Return.
His limbs were drawn upward and to the sides, restrained by ancient silver rings engraved with runes that pulsed in rhythm with his heartbeat. His legs were spread, bare feet lifted from the floor—exposed, helpless.
That was when he saw her.
Morgan Le Fay, the fae arisen from darkness. She approached with a feline step, her robe dark as midnight streaked with silver, a crown of tiny black serpents woven into her loose hair. Her eyes, irises like hematite, shimmered with power and cruelty.
“You’re awake, my master,” she murmured as she neared his face. “Are you ready to offer me what is rightfully mine?”
“Traitress...” Merlin growled, voice hoarse from forced silence. “Why?”
“Because my blood is older than your knowledge,” she whispered, tracing his cheek with the tip of her nail. “You descend from Luciferyne and Lilith, and within your innate magical power lies the gift to summon the Laughing Demon, the keeper of laughter that shatters the will.”
From beneath her robes, she drew an artifact that seemed to contain both dawn and abyss: the Eye of Grinius, a violet trapezohedron that throbbed like an impure heart.
“Cath Palug, the demon-cat, will serve me. With him at my command, I shall grant my son Mordred the throne that is his by fate. Arthur’s days are numbered.
Now, my good master and lover, it is up to you to make things easier. A descendant of Luciferyne and Lilith must summon the Grinner into this world—with the tongue, through laughter. Do it now, or suffer what follows.”
The wizard clenched his jaw.
“Morgan, your lust for power has clouded the wisdom I once loved in you. Cath Palug obeys no man or woman—it uses them. You would unleash only destruction upon Britain.”
“Then you have chosen the path of suffering, old man not quite wise enough.
You will soon discover that the wards protecting your flesh from harm are powerless against a simple device that nature herself has gifted us.”
With solemn, deliberate grace, the sorceress placed a feather at his feet. It was a white goose feather, long and soft—the sacred weapon of a profane ritual. She knelt before his bare feet, studying them like a cartographer reading a land to be conquered.
Without haste, she let the feather glide across the sole of his left foot. A barely perceptible touch, yet enough to rouse a storm in the wizard’s nerves. His skin prickled. His toes twitched. A shiver.
“Oh? What do I see?” Morgan tilted her head. “Does this trouble you? So delicate, so... intimate?”
She continued. The arch, the heel, the base of the toes. The feather’s movements were slow, caressing, perversely precise—calligraphic in their intent.
Merlin stiffened his neck, clenched his lips. But his eyes began to tremble. His nostrils flared. His chest rose in ever-shorter breaths.
“Are you smiling?” she taunted. “Do you find something amusing?”
The feather danced on, switching feet with sadistic grace. Merlin’s tension grew more visible. A bead of sweat trickled down his temple.
“Ghmm... n-nhh...”
A sound, faint, broken. Morgan stood upright.
“You forget, Merlin,” she said sweetly, “we have known each other’s bodies intimately. And I’ve learned very well where yours responds best.”
She set the feather aside. Rose to her feet and spread her hands. Her long, pointed nails caught the glow of the Eye of Grinius.
Then she bent again, and with the precision of a seer and the hunger of a predator, she began to tickle the soles of his feet with her fingers, pressing into his most sensitive spots.
The reaction was immediate. Merlin jolted as much as the magical chains would allow. His muscles tensed, his body arched against the bonds.
“Gnh–nngh—HHhh…!” A guttural groan. His lips began to tremble like the strings of a lute.
“Still resisting? How noble…” Morgan whispered, working on his right foot with one hand while bringing the feather back to the left. The contrast of sensations disoriented him: the insidious softness on one side, the electric scratch of fingernails on the other. His feet danced a desperate ballet in the air, struggling to evade the sadistic torment. But there was no respite, only a teasing that rose to the level of torment.
“Ahh–Hhnn…! N-not...! Hhh—hhhaah!”
The dam burst.
“AHAHA… HA! AHAHAA-HHHH! S-Stop! HAHAHAHAH!”
The laughter erupted, raw and uncontrollable. A mixture of despair and shame, of agony and release. Merlin's eyes clenched shut, wet with tears. His shoulders shook. His feet kicked in the void with erratic spasms.
“AHAHAH! I-I’m—HHAhahaha!—Enough! Don’t… Cease ah ah aha!”
The Eye of Grinius glowed with violet light. The runes on the walls quaked, and a chasm split open in the glass floor.
From the depths, accompanied by dense sulfurous violet smoke, emerged Cath Palug, the demonic cat of laughter, with eyes like spinning wheels and a grin that promised only chaos. Its maw opened in a roar that was also a thunderous laugh, the monstrous parody of human mirth.
Cath Palug’s roaring laughter filled the Tower like an impure echo. The sound vibrated through the glass walls, which seemed to moan, refracting the creature’s grinning face in a thousand fragments.
Morgan lifted the Eye of Grinius to the sky, her face taut with desire.
“Now, blood-born creature… submit to me! Kill…”
But the creature did not bow.
A whisper through the glass walls. A breath of green and blue light. Then, like fog split by dawn, a portal opened between the translucent walls of the tower. A figure stood silhouetted against the approaching sunrise.
Tall, wrapped in a cloak woven of leaves and water pearls, Nimue, the Lady of the Lake, stepped forward in silence. In her hands she bore Excalibur, the sacred blade, which glimmered with golden light, as if the entire spirit realm protected her.
“Morgan… your nightmare ends here.”
The dark fae’s face twisted in a sneer of shock and hatred. “You? Little swamp nymph? Did your pet beasts lead you here through the lake encircling this tower?”
Nimue didn’t answer. Her eyes, as clear as nocturnal water, locked onto Merlin, still wracked by spasms of laughter. The old mage looked back at her, his gaze weighted with both shame and relief.
Cath Palug let out a distorted mewl, like laughter echoed through a thousand throats, and lunged at the newcomer.
Excalibur sliced through the air like a divine hymn. With a single stroke, it beheaded the grinning demon, whose head tumbled among the smoke, leaving a trail of broken giggles and muted moans.
The body dissolved in a violet cloud. The laughter vanished… but did not die. The essence of the Grinner escaped in a whirlwind, scattering among the branches and eyes of the beasts of the Valley.
With an elegant gesture, Nimue traced a sigil of water in the air.
“In the name of the remembering river, I bind you. Until no human—man or woman—laughs in your presence, Grinner, you shall remain imprisoned within the instincts of the beasts in the Valley of No Return. May the world forever be free of your blasphemy.”
Nimue stood motionless, Excalibur still warm in her hands. Her long hair, damp with dew and power, fell over her shoulders as an invisible shiver ran through her wrists. She had fulfilled her duty… yet she did not feel safe. Not here.
At the far end of the hall, Morgan—naked in her failure—stared at her. But her eyes held not only frustration: something worse lurked there. A flame reignited.
“You dared interrupt a sacred rite, little nymph? You deserve something far worse than death…”
With a sharp snap of her fingers, the fae uttered words in the languages that sleep beneath the earth. A whisper of ice and copper rose in the room. The symbols floating on the walls flared to life.
Nimue was lifted off the ground, suspended in midair by invisible threads that wrapped around her without touching, like cords of compressed light.
“What are you doing?!” cried the Lady, struggling to move. But her limbs were stretched, unable to flee. Her arms raised, her sides exposed, her chest held in a strangled breath.
Morgan approached slowly, like an artist before a sacred canvas. Her eyes studied Nimue with manic precision. Nimue trembled slightly, but her gaze remained firm.
“You too descend from a blessed bloodline. Your magical powers are considerable. I cannot kill you. But perhaps…”
She turned briefly, thoughtful, as if seized by an inner vision.
Then, suddenly, she stopped. She smiled. An idea had taken root.
She raised one hand and traced an ethereal glyph in the air, which lit up with hues of indigo and green. The energy streams holding Nimue shifted. From cords of air they became filaments, then ghostly hands, made of liquid light.
Nimue flinched. “What... what are you doing?”
The answer came not in words, but in action.
One of the airy hands slipped beneath her floating robe, gently brushing her left side. Then another followed, to the right. The touch was intangible, yet precise, targeted like a forbidden caress. A third, more slender, slid up into the space beneath her arms, slowly teasing an unreachable spot.
Nimue’s eyes flew open. Her breath caught.
“N-no... wait—ah—ah…!”
A sudden, high-pitched giggle escaped her lips. Shame and surprise wrestled in her gaze. The air tensed with stifled laughter. Her face twisted into a grimace teetering between outrage and astonishment.
“Ah-hhnnh! D-don’t—oh oh oh oh Morgan! Hhhihih! I command you—oh oh!”
Morgan looked on with satisfaction. “Now this is more like it… Even a nymph has her weaknesses, doesn’t she?”
The magical hands began to scratch more insistently. Not pain. Not an assault. Just a forced, indecent pleasure that overwhelmed her will.
Nimue shut her eyes, trying in vain to gather inner strength, but her body betrayed her. Her abdominal muscles twitched, her back arched, the laughter began to take shape—like a spirit unwilling to be caged.
“Nnh-hahaha—HAHAH! Morgan! STOP! Curse you—AHH-hhihih!”
Her laughter was more delicate than Merlin’s—less beastly. It was crystalline, feminine, desperately restrained, yet ever closer to collapse.
The spectral hands seemed to delight in every tremble. They wandered from her sides to the crevices between her ribs, slipped beneath her arms like sentient wind, scratching, brushing, stroking, pinching—like curious fingers determined to explore every nuance of her laughter.
“AAAHAH! No—Nooo! AHAHAH-Hhhihhihihi! Stop them—please—AHAH!”
“You can’t repay me for my loss with anything less than your eternal defeat! Lady of the Lake, I may have found a torment worthy of you!”
Morgan extended a hand, and with a sharp snap, the spell changed.
Nimue was hurled into the air, her laughter still cracked between her teeth, and plunged into the lake that encircled the Tower.
The waters welcomed her with the silence of a trap.
The currents transformed into watery hands—translucent and gentle, yet tireless. A new torment, this time eternal.
Nimue, still shivering, tried to rise again. But the fingers of water returned to her sides, then under her arms, and once more into the folds of her robes.
And the laughter… resumed.
“Nnnhhh—ahhh—NO! AAHhahaha! Y-you’re—AHhh-hahaha! Driving me—nnnh—mad!”
Her body, floating, was wrapped in an embrace of laughter, and as she was slowly dragged toward the bottom of the lake, Morgan watched from above, her gaze calm as one who has composed a cruel poem.
“I cannot kill you, sister of the woods. But you will laugh… until the lake itself runs dry.”
The wind whispered through the ancient peaks of the Valley Without Return, carrying with it memories of glory and betrayal. The lake’s waters, still and dark, hid within their embrace secrets and laughter no one could hear without paying a price.
In the heart of the glass tower, Morgan stood tall—a proud shadow, guardian of a dark power and an ancient design. Her eyes scanned the invisible horizon, beyond the crystal walls and the chains of runes, toward a future uncertain yet inevitable.
“He will come,” she murmured, her voice caressing the air like a spell. “Uther’s son… the sovereign who shapes the destiny of these lands. He will come to reclaim what was taken.”
In the lake, Nimue lay wrapped in the currents that held her prisoner. Her spasms of muffled laughter blended with the breath of nature. But in her eyes, behind the veil of torture, burned a spark no magic could extinguish.
Her gaze, turned upward toward the surface, awaited the moment of liberation—the hour when the sacred blade, Excalibur, would be claimed by the true king.
And so, in the calm before the storm, a promise echoed in the air—thick with magic and waiting: a promise of return, of reckoning between light and shadow, between laughter and power, between love and betrayal.
The legend was only just beginning.
