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By the time she convinces Ord that there is really a problem, they've both got to fight for their lives! ", "description_bbcode_parsed": "Several years after the last incident, Ary is researching a spell in the library when one of the sculptures, a qäßbøn, begins stalking her. By the time she convinces Ord that there is really a problem, they've both got to fight for their lives! ", "writing": "Attacked at the Library\n© 2019 Jack Doe. All characters belong to their creator. Do not distribute without all copyright notices and disclaimers intact.\nWriting this story does not constitute endorsement of the events depicted herein by the author. Readers are explicitly discouraged from engaging in any activities that are illegal or harmful to themselves or others.\n------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------\nThe flames on Ary’s candelabrum flickered dimly, doing their best to pierce the dark, dusty gloom of the ancient library. Books—some of them seemingly older than time itself—were crammed, stacked, and even heaped on the old, dark, wooden shelves, their covers faded with time but still weakly illuminating in different hues of red, green, brown, and black. Their lettering ran the gamut from gold and silver to black or completely obscured through centuries of storage. As the flames licked at the shadows, the apprentice mage squinted and peered at the covers, looking for one book in particular that her master, Ord, had sent her to fetch.\nSighing, she took a step back and looked about her. She was in one of many dead-end alcoves that made up the labyrinthine tangle of bookcases. This particular alcove was all books, but she had passed several that contained ancient specimens preserved in jars of yellow-green liquid. Other specimens were stuffed, with some of the smaller specimens acting as bookends on various shelves and the larger specimens standing on the floor where there wasn’t quite enough bookcase to fill the alcove. Now, as she looked above her at the brass nameplates that described the shelves’ contents, she rolled her eyes: she was in the wrong alcove…again.\nThough she didn’t mind the shadows, the dust, or the sometimes strange eternal inhabitants of the place—if anything, she thought it made the place cozy—she had her own research she wanted to be doing, not running errands for her increasingly senile-seeming master.\nAs she thrust her candelabrum into the darkness ahead of her and again set off through the seemingly endless right angles that made up the main aisle through the library, something caught her attention. Her jaw went slightly slack, and she came to a stop, too distracted by what she saw to pass by it without stopping to inspect it.\nIt was one of the larger taxidermy specimens, but it was completely unlike anything Ary had ever seen—and she had seen quite her share of unusual beasts. It walked erect on what appeared to be another pair of hands. Hands and feet each had four fingers and a thumb, each of them tipped with sharp claws. The only real difference between the hands and feet—aside from their placement on the creature’s body—was the length of these claws: those on the hands were long, almost as long as the palm and fingers themselves, while the ones on the “feet” were far shorter, roughly the length of the shortest joint on the creature’s fingers. \nStanding just over six feet tall, it was a creature of contrasts: its body was smooth, skink-like all over, yet only on the back of its head and the tip of its tail, it had tufts of fur. Along its back between its shoulder blades were six sharp spikes arrayed like a paper fan oriented vertically, with shorter spikes protruding up and back or down and back, growing longer as they reach the vertical center between its shoulder blades and jutted straight back. Ary mused that the spines must be defensive. \nCertainly, the creature had better ways to attack. At the top of its head were two horns that protruded up and swept backwards, much like an impala. But further down its forehead, straddling its fifth eye—for it had five of them—were two more horns, much shorter but every bit as wicked-looking as their longer counterparts. Two mule-like ears erupted from the space outside of those horns, and two eyes were arranged vertically on either side, inset from the ears but outset from the horns. All of the eyes were golden-colored and oblong. The creature had no nose to speak of. Instead, the space at the center of its face was blank, and immediately below that formed its mouth, full of many closely spaced teeth but interrupted by tusks reminiscent of a boar’s, giving it both an underbite and an overbite. Ary shuddered at the thought of being bitten by such curved, wicked-looking teeth. Even its chin appeared to be hard and sharp, as if it could be thrust out like a stiletto to impale unsuspecting prey.\nBut despite its striking and fearsome features, it somehow managed—in line with its blend of contrasts—to remain graceful and even seductive. Despite the obvious strength the creature had, evidenced by the lean musculature particularly prominent in its chest but also visible in its thighs and arms, its body was slender and lanky; the muscles presented a streamlined appearance, none of them bulging or interrupting the flowing lines of its profile, and in truth, its tiny waist gave it an almost delicate look. Two round, seemingly perfect buttocks perched below its waist. Though not particularly large, the creature’s rump was accentuated lewdly by its long, slender tail that gave the creature more than a hint of wantonness. \nHad it been female, Ary mused, her master might have tried to hit on it despite its alien face. But the creature was unquestionably male. A sheath perched between its muscled legs. Somehow—and in contrast to its provocative buttocks—it managed to make its presence known without being salacious, an almost gentle reminder that while many parts of it might appear feminine, it was not, in fact, a member of the fairer sex. Its testes, despite their relative largeness, each about the size of a lemon, were not gaudy, but were gracefully positioned unobtrusively beneath its sheath.\nIts coloration held up the contrasting theme, as well. While its body, particularly its dorsal side, was primarily a dark mottling of blacks and grays that slowly mixed in bits of tan and even pink near its belly, chest, and buttocks, the palms of its hands and feet and the insides of its ears were pearly with just a hint of pink tint. Golden dots, maybe the size of Ary’s thumb, appeared on the creature’s hips and shoulders, adding just one more element of contrast to its already remarkable physique.\nBut the thing that was most striking about it was that despite its completely unmoving and clearly preserved state, Ary was almost certain that it was alive. Perhaps it was the way its eyes seemed to follow her much better than any of the other specimens did. Perhaps it was the way that its skin still seemed so supple, its colors still vibrant. Or maybe it was because—though Ary couldn’t swear to it—it seemed like it was still breathing.\nAry shook her head. That was nonsense, of course. Why would Ac—the library’s owner, a sorceress and old acquaintance of Ord’s who had invited him to stay there while some reconstruction was done on his tower—keep live specimens in her library, especially amongst so much priceless knowledge? Still, the creature’s body was quite the sight to see, and Ary made a mental note to herself to come back to investigate it further if and when she ever found the time amongst the various errands Ord sent her on and her own research priorities.\nTransfixed by this unusual-looking creature that seemed to stare back at her with hungry, predatory eyes, Ary hated to tear herself away. \n“Just one more thing,” she finally compromised with herself, her curiosity momentarily winning out over her sense of duty.\nOf course, Ord would probably not approve of this kind of curiosity, but then again, Ord didn’t have to know, she thought as she glanced up at the creature as if to make sure it wouldn’t mind and then gave a very minute examination of its sheath contents. She dared not touch the creature, afraid she might cause the ancient specimen to crumble—how embarrassing would that explanation be?—but by placing her head very close to its chest, she was able to look down inside the unobtrusive flap of skin. Tucked deep inside was the sharp, pointed tip of a penis. Ary smiled to herself. It wasn’t often she got to see such things, and she vowed to make this little, intimate moment with the dead, stuffed creature her little secret.\nBut, the sense of being late that had been steadily growing in her mind since she first laid eyes on this strange creature finally won her over, and she forced herself to turn away and proceed down the twisting, winding aisle.\nThe creature’s eyes watched her go. Then its head turned, and then, floating on a giraffe-like neck, moved into the aisle to make sure the coast was clear. Then, with silent agility, it reached up, grasped the top of the bookcases, and flipped itself up into the rafters, where it watched the triple-dot of light intently as Ary moved about the library below. Almost catlike in its slinking movements, it stalked her for some time. The hairs on the back of its head quivered with anticipation, and its penis, a slender, pinkish-red, tapered thing somewhat resembling the phallus of a deer, poked out of its sheath and began throbbing.\nAry had stopped at another alcove, put her candelabrum down, and was at that moment poring over the contents of some ancient, green-backed tome, squinting in the dim light to read the words scrawled on the page. \nThe creature, meanwhile, crouched above her, gripped the rafters with its feet, and silently reached down to grasp the top of the bookcase behind her. Moving with the fluid, controlled movements of an acrobat, it lowered itself to the bookcase and then nimbly arched its back, brought its feet over the edge of the bookcase, and lowered itself to the ground. Moving up silently behind her, it extended its fingers, its wicked claws glinting in the light as its penis throbbed desperately, itself looking like another blood-colored claw protruding from the creature’s groin.\nA brilliant flash of light appeared, startling the apprentice. But before she could even raise her head, the flash was gone. She blinked and looked around, confused.\n“Ord?” she called. “Is that you?”\nThe creature froze, striking as nonchalant a pose as it could as Ary looked around. But her gaze did not quite make it as far as the creature, and shrugging, she muttered something about leftover magic and the need to install proper protective spells in places like libraries as she returned her attention to the book.\nThe creature waited breathlessly for several minutes. Then, deciding it was safe to move again, it broke its pose and again advanced on the mage. Its penis, which had retreated when Ary looked up, now crept back out, darkened, and began to throb. Wasting no time, the creature slunk up behind Ary and moved one of its claws, carefully avoiding her peripheral vision, up under her neck to slice her open. Its cock throbbed viciously, and its cruel mouth almost seemed to grin as the muscles in its arms tensed.\nBut then it stopped, a crafty expression crossing its face. It leaned up, moved its mouth right beside Ary’s ear, and hissed.\nAry yelped, felt something graze against her throat, and whirled, grasping her neck defensively and dropping the book with a resounding thud on the floor. But looking behind her, she saw nothing. Her pulse racing, she cautiously moved her hand and winced to feel a light sting against her throat. Pulling her hand into view, she gasped to see a small line of blood across her palm.\nHer pupils constricted, and she began to breathe faster.\n“W–what’s out there?” she called into the gloom. “Show yourself!”\nAnother brilliant flash of light came and went, making Ary jump.\n“Master Ord, this isn’t funny!” she protested.\nBut there was no answer.\n“All right, enough!” Ary snapped. \nShe held one of her hands high over her head and muttered some words. Then she frowned.\n“What the heck?”\nShe uttered the words again, very deliberately, but still nothing happened.\n“Why can’t I cast this stupid spell?” she demanded. Once more, she uttered the words, more loudly and very deliberately.\nA sphere of white-colored light appeared in the palm of her hand, instantly making the whole area as bright as day.\n“Sheesh, finally!” She sighed. “That’ll teach me to try to do things the non-magic way,” she muttered, blowing out the candelabrum and looking all around, left, right, up, and down. \nBut when she looked up, there was nothing there save for the rafters and the tops of bookcases. \nSquinting in the bright light as his eyes adjusted, the creature had, quite impressively, somersaulted over the bookcase into the alcove on the other side of it the moment it hissed in Ary’s ear. Now it waited, its large, mule-like ears swiveling this way and that, listening for Ary to resume her studies. Its sensitive hearing could even hear as her heartbeat eventually slowed and her breathing returned to normal. It heard her stoop, pick up the book, and flip the pages back to where she had been reading. Now, with a wicked grin, it crept back up the bookcase and peered over the top. There was Ary, her head looking down at the pages. The creature’s penis emerged once more, quivering with anticipation as he crept to the bookcase immediately behind her, grasped the top of it with his feet, and lowered his face down behind her ear again while bringing a claw over to hover beside her right temple.\nHe hissed.\nAry yelped and whirled, driving her head against the creature’s sharp claw. Dropping the book, she recoiled and covered her temple with her hand while looking madly about for her tormentor. Yet there was still nothing there. Another blinding flash was the only thing out of the ordinary, and her legs and hand trembled with fear of her unseen attacker.\nAs the creature’s penis withdrew once again, the creature grinned and leapt up into the rafters as the mage quickly turned and began to walk briskly out of the library.\nYes, it seemed to think, go and find your master. Then, I shall kill you both.\nThe heavy library door creaked open and then slammed shut. The creature made itself comfortable, draped over the rafters like a jaguar over a branch, its penis tucked back into its sheath.\nThe door opened again several minutes later, and light immediately appeared everywhere at once—a powerful lighting spell that illuminated the whole library. The creature moved its neck and head to watch as Ary returned, talking excitedly to her unamused, elderly master. The creature’s heart skipped a beat on seeing its primary target, and almost automatically, it coiled itself up into pouncing position.\n“My girl, what you speak of is utter nonsense,” Ord was saying. “Ac has assured me that this place bears no ghosts, and even if there were ghosts, their incorporeal form makes it utterly impossible for them to have injured you. Are you quite sure, my dear, that you aren’t just experiencing some momentary klutziness?”\nJust then, he bumped hard into a bookcase, smacking his forehead and wincing.\n“Master Ord,” Ary replied evenly, “I am not the klutz; you are. I tell you, there’s something here, yet even though it hisses in my ear and has caused the injuries I have shown you, there is nothing to see! What else, o master, would you say it is if not a ghost?”\n“Who put that bookcase there?” Ord grumbled, rubbing his forehead.\n“I’m certain it was there before you,” Ary retorted.\n“Yes, well… I’ll have it turned into a chair.”\n“And then you’ll trip on that, too.”\n“A table, then!”\n“Master Ord,” Ary said with barely contained exasperation, “If you were to turn it into a wall—an exterior wall—you would still run into it. I advise you to leave the poor bookcase alone and help me to figure out what is actually attacking me in here!”\nAt this, the creature’s eyes gleamed. Though it had its orders, it had just hit on a fantastic way to weaken its targets…and have some fun at the same time. It deftly flipped itself over the rafters and dropped down behind the mages. Careful to hug the bookcases in case one of its quarries turned around, it quickly slunk up behind them. Synchronizing its movements to theirs, it slid up right behind Ary and hissed in her ear.\n“Augh!” Ary cried, whirling to face the now-frozen creature.\n“Oh, come now, my dear!” Ord said, his own exasperation showing, “That’s merely a stuffed creature, one of Ac’s prized possessions!”\nAry did a double-take. “Wait, but—no, it—hey, that’s not supposed to be there!” she finally managed.\nOrd raised his eyebrows amusedly.\n“That—that thing—it was over there before,” Ary said, pointing to a bookcase.\n“My dear, where would it fit?” Ord asked patiently.\n“Not there,” Ary sighed, “Past that bookcase, over near where I was researching before.”\n“And I suppose it’s impossible that there would be two of them?” Ord prodded.\nAry hesitated. “Well, I—I didn’t see one here before,” she said, biting her lip thoughtfully.\nOrd patted her hand patronizingly. “There, there, my girl,” he said. “Maybe you’ve been a little overworked, hmm? Maybe I should let you have a day off.”\n“No!” Ary hesitated, and then added, “I–I don’t need a day off. This isn’t me being overworked. There’s something going on here; I know it!”\nAs she turned to look suspiciously at the creature, the hair on the back of her neck stood up. Had its expression changed? Was it now…leering at her?\n“Whatever you say,” Ord said, advancing deeper into the library. “Well, if I’ve got to come down this way anyway, I might as well get that spell myself.”\nA flicker of irritation crossed Ary’s face. “I could have gotten it,” she said petulantly, “If it weren’t for that stupid creature!”\n“It’s called a Qäßbøn,” Ord said lightly as he continued walking away. “They used to be native to the Andes, but poaching rendered them extinct.”\n“A Q–what?” Ary asked, her irritation giving way to curiosity as she gave one last glance at the creature whose name she couldn’t pronounce and then turned to follow her master. \nSenile as he might seem, he did still have an awful lot of knowledge lurking about in the rusty, creaking place that was his mind.\n“A Qäßbøn,” Ord said offhandedly as he peered up and down the various bookcases, moving surprisingly fast for someone who didn’t know the layout intimately. “They were a proud race of—“\nHe trailed off, going to a book and lifting it down.\nAry sighed and shrugged. Well, if he wasn’t going to tell her anything more and didn’t need her to find the book for him, she was going to go research her own stuff. At least with him here, if something did happen, she’d be able to call out to him. Frowning, she retraced her steps back to where she’d seen the creature previously. She gasped.\n“Master Ord, Master Ord!” she cried, running over to him. “Come quickly! The Q—the creature—isn’t where it used to be!”\n“Whassat?” Ord asked, looking up from his book. “Oh. Well, then, you shouldn’t misplace things,” he said, returning his attention to his book.\n“Come on, Master Ord!” Ary cried, grabbing his arm and forcibly dragging him towards the spot while he continued to read his book intently. “Look!” she said, pointing.\nThe wizened mage glanced up to see a Qäßbøn standing right in front of him. He blinked. “My dear, are you feeling all right?” he asked. “There is a Qäßbøn there, clear as day. Have your eyes been giving you problems lately?”\nAry’s veins froze. There had not been anything there mere seconds ago when she last looked. Now, the Qäßbøn was right in front of her. And its penis, which had not been erect before—of that fact she was absolutely certain—now jutted proudly out in front of it, throbbing at her.\nThen it grinned.\nAry shrieked and leapt backwards, immediately conjuring a defensive spell.\n“Ary!” Ord barked, “Do not roughhouse in the library! Do you have any idea how much priceless information is contained in here?”\n“But it’s alive!” Ary cried.\n“Utter nonsense!” Ord retorted. “My girl, you need to—“\nThe creature had crept up behind him, and to Ary’s horror, slid its claw up under Ord’s throat. Holding a claw to its face to call for her to be silent, the creature leaned forward and hissed in Ord’s ear. It was at that moment that Ord trailed off. His eyes widened and glanced at Ary, whose expression was unmistakable: he was in grave danger.\nWith the snap of his fingers, the space around him erupted in flames. Scores of books exploded as their pages ignited. Using that as a distraction, Ord quickly squirmed his way out of the blaze to safety next to Ary and then snapped his fingers again. The fires all quenched instantly, but as the smoke cleared, both mages gasped: the Qäßbøn was gone.\n“Are you all right?” Ary asked.\nOrd looked himself over and then nodded. “Not a scratch,” he replied, “But the books…” He shook his head. “Those shouldn’t have been burnt! I specifically aimed to miss them!”\nAry pursed her lips, forming her words carefully. “I believe you,” she said. “It…it all happened really fast, but I think the flames almost…bounced off of the whatever-you-call-it and hit the books instead.”\nOrd frowned. “Qäßbøns aren’t immune to magic,” he replied. “Or, they weren’t. In fact, many of those slain were killed with magic. I wonder if this one has somehow adapted to withstand magic attacks?”\nAnother blinding flash came and went.\n“What is that?” Ary asked. “It’s been happening ever since I came in earlier.”\nA smile crept over Ord’s face. “That explains a lot,” he said.\nAry cocked her head. “It does?”\nOrd nodded. “We need to find something to shove up that thing’s dick.”\nAry blinked. “What?”\n“Just help me find something.”\nThe creature was standing in a neighboring aisle, contemplating what it was going to do. It hadn’t expected to be set on fire. Not that it had suffered any harm whatsoever, but still, it wasn’t used to being on the defensive. Its eyes narrowed in irritation as it tried to decide what to do next. While it had been enjoying the game of cat and mouse while it was the cat, having a mouse that could fight back was, decidedly, not nearly as fun.\nMoving silently, it leapt back up into the rafters and quickly located its quarries again. No more fooling around, it seemed to think. Time to take them out once and for all. To its surprise, it found that the two had split up. His face crinkled into a sadistic grin. He quickly stalked Ord as he walked among the bookcases, apparently moving with purpose as he looked for something.\n“No,” the mage muttered to himself, examining a sword hastily as he walked by. “No,” he said again as he looked at a trident. “No—”\n“Master Ord! Will this work?” Ary called, jogging up with an umbrella in her hand.\nOrd cocked his head. “Since when is that a weapon?” he asked.\n“But if we should shove it in, then it wouldn’t come back out,” Ary protested.\nOrd pursed his lips. “Kind of big,” he said, “But I think you’ve got the right idea. Can you find a smaller one?”\nAry trotted back to the main entrance to the library and rummaged amongst the umbrellas there. “How about this one?” she asked, holding up a child’s parasol.\n“That should be perfect!” Ord said. “Now, we’ll just, ah, imbue it with some anti-magic properties, and…voila!”\nThe Qäßbøn did not understand any of this discourse, but it did know that its quarries were together again—a bad thing—but also distracted—a good thing. Using their distraction to his advantage, he leapt down behind Ary and advanced quickly.\n“Look out!” Ord cried.\nAry ducked just as the Qäßbøn’s claws sailed right over her head. One of them grazed her on the shoulder, and she winced. Refusing to be the victim, she tucked and rolled and then countered with a freezing spell.\nOr she would have, had the spell actually gone off. She scowled at her fingers and tried the spell again, but still nothing happened.\nMeanwhile, the creature was not about to be evaded so easily. Stalking forward menacingly, his claws flashing, he advanced on the apprentice mage, who lay on her back facing him and began to inch backwards on seeing that her spell was not going to go through.\nA bolt of lightning shot from Ord’s fingers, racing towards the Qäßbøn, but instead of hitting him, it curved around, sent a tentative spark towards a stack of books, and then shot hard onto Ary, making her cry out and her hair stand on end.\n“Ary!” Ord cried.\nKnowing that magic did not seem to be working, he lunged forward and threw the nearest thing handy—which happened to be a preserved fetal pig—at the Qäßbøn.\nThe glass jar crashed against the creature’s horns and broke, spilling its contents all over the Qäßbøn’s face. It screamed and recoiled as the preservative got into its eyes. Ary and Ord acted quickly. As the Qäßbøn clawed at its face, blinded by the stinging liquid, Ary slunk up to its once-again-erect cock and drove the umbrella into the tip, not stopping until the ribs of the umbrella pushed inside, lodging it inside.\nSensing that it was under attack and needing to get free, the Qäßbøn whipped its tail out, knocking both Ord and Ary to the ground. But instead of attacking them, it grimaced, squeezed its eyes closed, and vanished.\nThe mages looked at each other, then at the place where the Qäßbøn had been.\n“Where’d it go?” Ary asked anxiously, on her feet in an instant.\nOrd grabbed a trident from a nearby stand and gingerly poked the area where the Qäßbøn had been.\n“It doesn’t appear he turned invisible,” he said at length.\n“Then—where did he go?” Ary asked again. “You don’t suppose he teleported?”\nOrd pursed his lips. “Qäßbøns couldn’t teleport,” he said thoughtfully, “But that is no ordinary Qäßbøn.”\nAry started. “What do you mean?” she asked.\n“You remember how I said we had to plug up his dick?” Ord asked.\nAry nodded slowly. “It seemed like a weird thing to do.”\n“It’s Nance’s doing,” Ord said, smiling sagely. “Mark my words, there won’t be any more blinding flashes of light.”\n“But what are they? And—for the third time—where is the whatchacallit?”\nOrd sighed impatiently. “Do you remember the last time Nance sent something to attack us?”\nAry pursed her lips and nodded. “The gryphon.”\n“Right. And you remember how we defeated it?”\nAry had to wrack her brain. Though it had only been a couple of years since then, a lot had happened. “Its penis—” she began.\n“Yes, exactly. And I might have told you that Nance had a particular affinity for penises. Well, he learned his lesson this time: he’s not going to let us drain this creature of its energy through its penis. No, somehow the creature absorbs magic from the air. I suspect, though, that he didn’t know how much he’d need. He may be single-minded, but he never was the best at conducting experiments—one of several reasons I let him go—so he got sloppy: he used a simple venting mechanism to let it blow off extra steam, so to speak, if it collected too much magic. In so doing, he left it vulnerable, whereas if he’d done a proper design, it would be much harder to defeat.”\nAry frowned. “But what does that have to do with its—”\n“Penis? Well, he had to make the vent somewhere, didn’t he? Maybe the mouth, or the anus, or even one of its ears. Heck, he could even have created a completely unnatural stoma for the energy to pass out of, but no, this is Nance we’re talking about, so even though we figured out his secret last time, it had to be the penis again. In that sense, he only half-learned his lesson.”\nAry nodded slowly. “So, we’re going to make him overflow with magic, then?”\n“That’s right. We can’t kill him in the traditional sense; he’ll just regenerate. Make no mistake, we may have to keep attacking him physically to keep him distracted, but we won’t be able to kill him fully until the magic builds up past its critical limit.”\nAry pursed her lips. “So, where is he now?”\n“Hiding,” Ord replied, shrugging. “And trying to get that stuff out of his eyes, which I imagine must sting something fierce. It was good luck that it just happened to be handy.”\n“So…do we need to go hunt him down?”\nOrd shrugged. “That umbrella ought to do him in.”\n“But how?” Ary asked, “And what if he pulls it out?”\nOrd laughed. “Bah, like he would ever figure out the need! Qäßbøns were famously stupid. They quickly became extinct due to their lack of survival instinct and susceptibility…to magi—hmm…” He trailed off thoughtfully. “You know, we should probably go find him,” he said abruptly. “If Nance has engineered a creature based on that forgotten species, then he has probably learned a thing or two from the last time. If that’s the case—”\nThe Qäßbøn was, at that moment, still desperately trying to get the awful sting out of its eyes. Bleary and hardly able to see, it made walking along the rafters particularly treacherous as it repeatedly lost its footing, smacking its umbrella-stuffed dick against the wood and collecting a variety of very unpleasant splinters, but not so unpleasant as the umbrella lodged in its urethra, and also not so unpleasant as the fiery burn in its eyes that made them drool tears and ooze thick mucus. At last, able to see well enough to tell that it was still not safe, it teleported once more to the floor above. There it threw caution aside and began ransacking the place looking for water. It at last spied some outside in the courtyard fountain. Going to it was risky, but not going to it was intolerable. With much to gain and comparatively little to lose, the creature teleported down, materializing within the fountain itself and at last quenching the fires that burned its eyes.\n“Did you hear that?” Ary asked, cocking her head upwards to listen above them.\n“Whassat?” Ord asked\nAry rolled her eyes. Of course he hadn’t heard it.\n“There was a bump and a crash upstairs,” Ary replied, “But now I don’t hear anything.”\nThey continued onward, Ord carrying the trident and Ary carrying a sword she’d found. Neither had any experience with physical combat, but both knew that their magic was useless against the creature.\nAs they passed a large window, something strange in the fountain caught Ary’s eye.\n“There!” she cried, pointing.\nOrd looked out, saw the beast looking much relieved—though its eyes were still bloodshot—and now actively trying to pull the umbrella from its penis.\n“Count of three,” he said. “One, two, three!”\nThe two teleported at the same time, materializing on either side of the Qäßbøn, their weapons unsteady but drawn. The Qäßbøn looked from one to the other in shock and then whipped its tail, knocking them both into the fountain, and teleported once more.\n“Got to keep after him,” Ord said, picking himself and his trident out of the water.\n“There he is!” Ary yelled, pointing inside the building again.\nIn an instant, they were back inside, their clothes dripping onto the stone floor and leaving a trail of water behind them as they quickly moved to where Ary had seen the Qäßbøn. But to their dismay, when they reached the spot, it was gone.\n“Where the hell did he go?” Ary asked, frustrated.\nNeither of them saw it as it swung down from the rafters behind them. Its claws extended and dug into both of their scalps. The humans dropped their weapons and grabbed their heads protectively, feeling trickles of blood running through their hair. Then the Qäßbøn teleported again.\n“Damn it!” Ary yelled. “Where the hell did it go this time?”\nAs if in answer, the fountain splashed as he reappeared in it.\n“Here we go again,” Ord said, rolling his eyes. “One, two, three!”\nBut nothing happened.\n“Huh…that’s…odd,” Ord said, furrowing his brow. “I’m certain I used the right spell…”\nHe tried again, but with no effect.\n“This happened to me earlier,” Ary said. “I was trying to cast an illumination spell, but I couldn’t. I tried it over and over, but I couldn’t get it to work until it just eventually worked again.”\n“Those claws,” Ord muttered. “They must suppress magical ability!” He shook his head and glared out the window at the Qäßbøn, which was once again trying to pull the umbrella from its dick. “Well, I’ve got to hand it to Nance; he’s outdone himself this time. Better get ready to teleport as soon as you can,” he said, “And don’t get clawed again!”\nAry rolled her eyes. Duh.\nThe Qäßbøn screamed in pain as it tried to yank the umbrella from its swollen, throbbing dick. Having never seen an umbrella before, it didn’t realize that trying to pull it out would only cause the umbrella to expand and dig into the walls of its urethra. As a result, every attempt made it double over and scream but yielded no progress towards freeing itself from the cruel instrument. Yet it could feel the buildup of magic inside itself. It was not quite smart enough to grasp the physiology of its predicament, but it did know that the build-up was uncomfortable. It felt, for lack of a better way to describe it, as though it was constipated and had a urinary tract infection and blue balls all at once. A general sense of bloatedness, a dull ache, and a burning urge to relieve itself made it hard to focus on anything else. Yet this dull unpleasantness paled in comparison to the sharp, searing pain it felt every time it tried to pull the umbrella out of its dick. It knew, too, that its time of being unharrassed was limited. The scratches to the humans had only delayed their ability to teleport back, and when they came again, the Qäßbøn was certain they would try to prevent him from clearing his dick.\nBut, the building magical pressure was reacting to the magical ward on the umbrella, giving ethereal magic a very real motive force, like a sail harnessing the wind to drive a ship. And that motive force was steadily increasing, steadily digging the pointed ribs of the umbrella through the sinewy urethral wall to embed them in the spongy tissue that made up the inside of the Qäßbøn’s somewhat human-shaped glans, creating sharp protrusions on it that resembled the barbs of a cat’s penis. Gritting its teeth, the Qäßbøn’s eyes rolled back in its head as it begrudgingly pushed the umbrella deeper into its own body to alleviate the pressure the ribs made. To its relief, the ribs closed back in and quit digging into it so mercilessly. Though the Qäßbøn was not nearly as smart as a human, this concept gave it an idea, albeit one it didn’t like very much. Taking a deep breath, it squeezed its eyes closed and slowly shoved one of its claws up its dick along the umbrella, groaning in pain as the sharp appendage cut and dug into the flesh, making it itch, burn, and sting. Holding its breath, it fished around until it found one of the umbrella ribs, and with a groan of pain, it wrenched it free of its flesh and guided it out through its urethra.\nOne down, seven to go.\nA tingling feeling appeared all over his skin. He bared his teeth just as Ord materialized in front of him, clutching a trident. The human looked around to get his bearings and then spied him.\nLetting go of his penis with a roar of pain, the Qäßbøn lunged toward Ord in a rage fueled by frustration and prolonged anguish. In three bounds, he closed the distance, opened his mouth wide, and extended his claws.\n“Ary?” Ord called, gripping his trident and holding his ground. “Hmm…well, this is unpleasant.”\nAt just the last minute, Ord teleported, appearing behind the Qäßbøn. The creature was on all fours to cover ground more quickly, and Ord saw his chance. With a fast thrust, he jabbed the trident towards the Qäßbøn’s soft underside, narrowly missing his balls and instead impaling him in the rear. The Qäßbøn’s eyes went wide, and he whirled in a fury, his ass yanking the trident out of Ord’s hand and flinging it across the room. Blood seeped from the creature’s injured anus as it stalked forward, deliberately, menacingly. With the wall behind him, Ord had nowhere to go. He backed up as far as he could, pressing his back against the cold stone. The Qäßbøn’s hand shot out, grabbing and squeezing him, its face livid. It picked him up and brought him to its mouth. Its jaws opened, and Ord shuddered.\n“How does a creature purpose-built for one task smell like it’s eaten an army?” he wondered absent-mindedly, forgetting his predicament.\n“Master!”\nOrd whipped his head to see Ary manifested behind and to the left of the Qäßbøn. Her hands were glowing.\n“You fool! Have you learned nothing? I’m supposed to be the senile one!” Ord protested as a bolt of flame materialized.\nOrd sighed and muttered a flame protection spell just as the ball sailed over the Qäßbøn’s head.\n“Daft and with terrible aim?” Ord chided, “What on earth have I been teaching you?”\nThe ball crashed into the ceiling. A crack appeared in the stonework, quickly spiderwebbing out. A pebble dropped onto the Qäßbøn, who ignored it and lifted Ord to its mouth. The heat of the creature’s breath felt like a furnace.\nAnother pebble dropped. The Qäßbøn’s mouth closed around Ord’s head.\nA large stone fell. Ord could feel the Qäßbøn’s teeth pricking his neck.\nAll at once, the Qäßbøn screamed and dropped Ord. The stone from the ceiling crashed down next to the Qäßbøn. Ord fell to the ground, tucking at the last moment and mostly avoiding injury. Meanwhile, Ary backed away from whacking the umbrella with the flat of her sword, but she was too slow. Fueled by anguish, the Qäßbøn swung its hand, caught Ary, and flung her across the room. She slammed into a wall, the wind knocked out of her, and crumpled on the ground.\n“It’s rude to hit a girl!” Ord rebuked the Qäßbøn. “If I ever get my hands on Nance, I’m going to teach him a thing or two that I never could impart to him before: some damned manners!”\nAt that moment, he hopped out of the way as another stone landed right on top of the Qäßbøn’s head, momentarily crumpling its neck. Its eyes blinked individually and gingerly looked up to see what had happened. Then, shaking off its disorientation, its eyes all focused on Ord once more. Its hand flashed out, claws glinting, and narrowly missed the mage’s head. Ord felt the wind of them brush his face and heard the faint singing noise as they sliced through the air. The Qäßbøn lunged.\nA scream filled the air. Ord opened his eyes, expecting to have materialized next to Ary but finding himself instead face-to-face with the screaming Qäßbøn. He quickly took several hurried steps back, abruptly remembering the pricks on his neck and muttering something about it not being fair that he should lose his magic every time the creature scratched him. Then he saw the source of the screaming: in its attempt to lunge, the Qäßbøn had gotten the handle of the umbrella stuck on some rubble and had at first shoved it into its penis, once again burying the freed rib, and then yanked on it, driving the ribs so hard as to poke them out the sides of its glans. Intermittent jets of magic followed each rib, painting the room with blinding flashes of multicolored, sparkling light, like water trying to break free through a crack in a dam.\nThe pain the Qäßbøn felt was excruciating. Having driven the ribs through its flesh, one might think that the pressure would be alleviated somewhat, but in fact, the lack of backwards pressure on the ribs and the increasing magical pressure on the canopy now drove those ribs out even more persistently than before, the folded pieces of canopy applying excruciating pressure on the interior penile tissue, much like a dull knife through a brick of cheese. Blood began as a few drops and increased to a slow trickle out the Qäßbøn’s urethral slit as the relentless magical energy drove the umbrella to cut up more and more tissue.\nWith the Qäßbøn distracted by its pain, Ord quickly moved over to Ary, who had recovered somewhat and gotten to her feet. Then the old mage slunk around as quickly as he dared to grab his trident. Exchanging glances, the mages advanced on the moaning Qäßbøn, Ord moving towards its head and Ary towards its midsection.\nThe Qäßbøn, blinded by pain, had a lucid moment and saw the mages approaching. Its life was in grave danger. Despite the insufferable agony it felt that only grew worse by the second, it knew it had to act, or in a few seconds, it would be unable to. Summoning all of the mental clarity it could muster, it teleported.\nThe mages looked at each other, sighing in exasperation as they once again tried to locate their quarry.\nThe Qäßbøn had teleported to relative safety, and now it doubled over, clutching its stomach with one hand and its dick with the other. The buildup of magic inside of it was beginning to tear it apart. Around the holes created by the umbrella ribs, little cracks in its skin began to form, exposing a sticky, red network of bloody crevices with the consistency and color of a raspberry danish. Skin began to break into jagged, hexagonal pieces that floated on that network like tectonic plates. Periodic bursts of light illuminated the cracks in every color, like multi-colored glitter confetti in a spotlight. On the inside, the concentrated magic became a furnace. The Qäßbøn’s testes grew warm to the touch, then scalding, then searing as the magic inside of them began to liquefy their contents, individual tubules of testes slowly fusing together to become yellow-hot pools of energy that spread and began to engulf the tissue around them. The magic buildup caused even the skin on its balls to glow from the heat contained inside, two yellow, mushy orbs looking strikingly out-of-place against the otherwise neutral colors of the creature’s hide.\nHis leg kicked out involuntarily as the sheer pressure of the magic, compounded by the liquefying, expanding tissue, drove the umbrella out even further. The ribs, designed to spread outward as the umbrella opened, began to stretch the Qäßbøn’s tapered penis, spreading its urethra open around the umbrella’s shaft. Crusted blood that had adhered to the handle was now forcibly ripped off, breaking open new, open sores along the Qäßbøn’s urethral wall that only increased the flow of blood that dribbled down the Qäßbøn’s penis and cooked on its balls, a noxious stench of burning blood.\nThe heat inside the Qäßbøn’s testes was beginning to spread like tiny, slow-moving, yellow lightning bolts along its groin. They radiated outwards, some moving towards its anus and others moving up its belly. To his horror, the umbrella began to melt, but the magical guard on it remained intact. If the Qäßbøn had ever had hopes of pushing the umbrella in and removing the ribs one-by-one as he had started to do, those hopes were now dashed as the very metal of the ribs melted together, fusing it into a nasty, 8-hooked fishhook that was never coming out of his penis without utter mutilation. And yet the magical pressure seemed to want to do exactly that. The Qäßbøn screamed and threw itself onto its back, desperately grasping at its dick with both hands and feet, all of its limbs shaking with agony.\nOrd and Ary looked up abruptly. They’d heard something below them, and not trusting their magic, rushed down the stairs and burst into the library. But with this floor so obscured by bookcases, they could see little; they could only hear the Qäßbøn thrashing somewhere in the distance. Glancing at each other, they surged forward into the labyrinthine aisles of books, trying to get to the source of the sound.\nThe spreading pastry-crust pieces of skin on the Qäßbøn’s dick began to heat up as the molten pool of magic and tissue in his balls reached the base of his dick. One-by-one, they began to glow dark red, then bright red, then orange, then yellow, and then they burst into flames, turned to a crisp, and disappeared, exposing a network of lightly glowing, spongy pink tissue underneath. The pores in the tissue glowed a deeper fuchsia, occasionally sparkling with magical energy.\nThe umbrella shifted. With less skin to keep it in place, it dug in and raked eight gouges into the spongy tissue, long, excruciating gashes being cut into the Qäßbøn’s flesh. The Qäßbøn thrashed and put his hands on the umbrella, desperately trying to shove it back inside, but the heat of the metal burned his hands, and he screamed shrilly.\n“This way!” Ary cried, sprinting agilely down the convoluted corridors while Ord panted, trying to keep up several yards behind.\nShe rounded a corner and skidded to a stop, gasping in horror at what she saw. Ord slammed into her, and both grimaced before looking up at the rafters.\nAt that moment, the Qäßbøn’s thrashing imbalanced him, and he plummeted some twenty feet to the ground, landing on his back. The spines Ary had assumed were for defense bent awkwardly and then shattered, eliciting an ear-piercing shriek. The creature’s tail thrashed about wildly, slamming into bookcases and knocking over displays. Broken glass, preservative, and old samples flew through the air, landing on books and beginning to eat through their pages.\n“You incompetent fool!” Ord yelled, “Stop destroying my friend’s library!”\nIn a rage and despite Ary’s more even-minded protests for him to mind his safety, he surged forward, leapt around the creature’s thrashing body, and drove the trident through its tail and into a deep crevice in the floor. The tip of the tail twitched spastically, but now it could not do any more damage. Recovering his senses, Ord took a few steps back and sagged to the ground, disbelieving how bad of a day this had been. Meanwhile, Ary stood behind the creature’s head, far enough to be well out of harm’s way as it continue to thrash and kick ferociously.\nThere was a brief pause, like a stone falling through the air before hitting the ground. For a split-second, the Qäßbøn quit thrashing. And then, all at once, the umbrella shifted again. The ribs ripped completely free of the penile tissue, splitting it into eight ribbons held together only by the bleeding urethra. But, the molten metal had pooled inside the Qäßbøn’s body and formed a plug, preventing it from moving forward any further. The built-up magic still had no place to escape, but that little bit of movement gave it momentum. It shoved the umbrella-plug outward, the molten pieces forming sharp, jagged brambles as they flowed into the spongy material and cooled. The Qäßbøn’s scream rose in pitch until it was no longer audible, yet the energy it contained shattered every glass jar on the floor with a deafening crash. Preservative splashed onto numerous books, causing millennia-old spells to be lost forever. \n“No!” Ord cried. “No, you horrible, worthless waste of magic! Do you realize the destruction you’ve done?! Just die already!”\nHe raced over, took Ary’s sword, and began hacking and slashing at the creature’s body, inflicting deep, red gashes all over it. When it tried to strike him with its arm, he cut the arm off. When it lashed out with a leg, he hacked at it over and over until it was hewn from the creature’s body. The openings revealed the extent of the damage the magic had done: the Qäßbøn’s core innards were a golden yellow blob with the viscosity of molten metal that began to slowly run out everywhere Ord cut. How he was still alive was a mystery to both Ord and Ary, but nevertheless, he continued to flail and scream until Ord cut out his voice box. Now he only hissed in agony as his remaining limbs continued to try to flail and his chest heaved with exertion, his five eyes squeezed shut and his teeth bared in pain.\nYet despite all of the wounds Ord had inflicted, the magic itself was still trapped, buried in the Qäßbøn’s now blue-glowing balls. Ord could not even come within two feet of them for the intense heat they put off. Their heat had begun burning the Qäßbøn’s remaining leg, and now great, charred sores opened up to reveal more of the red paste of blood and tissue that hadn’t yet been liquefied.\nAt last, satisfied that the Qäßbøn could do no more damage, Ord collapsed against the wall again, looking on in grim determination while Ary watched in compassionate horror as the Qäßbøn began its death-throes. The umbrella had begun carving out the inside of his penis, the sharp, multi-pointed metal acting like a reamer to scrape out chunks of spongy tissue with each convulsion of the Qäßbøn’s body. The umbrella handle itself hung slack, unsupported by the stretched-out, bleeding, and encrusted urethral tube. Having been erect for so long and so overheated, the creature’s penile tissue had dried out, the once-sticky blood in the spongy flesh drying and crusting into scabs barely held together by bits of flesh. Its sheath had long since disappeared beneath the bloody tissue and was no longer separately differentiable as streams of cooked-on blood obscured the line where sheath stopped and cock started. The acrid smell of burning flesh tainted the air as the creature’s balls turned white-hot, glowing like tiny quasars beneath the Qäßbøn’s crusted penis.\n“Master Ord,” Ary said as she sidled up to him, “What happens when he dies?”\n“Oh, he can’t die,” Ord replied. “He can hardly be called “alive.” He’s held together by magic, you know.”\n“Yes, yes, fine,” Ary pressed impatiently, “But what happens when, well, when that magic ceases to hold him together?”\nOrd frowned, not quite getting it, and then a moment of lucidity broke through his features.\n“We’ve got to get out of here!” he cried. “Now!”\nThey both focused on getting as far away from there as possible.\nJust as they vanished, the light in the Qäßbøn’s balls blinked out. The umbrella launched itself out of his penis, shredding what was left of the tissue into threads as the umbrella shot through the wall, arced into the air in the courtyard, and then fell to the ground in a splintered heap. The sudden release of magic sent a shockwave through the library, knocking over every bookcase, sending pages flying, and crumbling the very walls. With a colossal grinding sound, the whole floor of the library collapsed, dropping down onto the Qäßbøn and squashing him like a giant bug. His superheated guts caused the stones that landed on him to melt and some to explode. The pages near his body burst into flames that were quickly snuffed out by the rubble. All that remained intact—if such a word can be used—were his now-black balls and the shredded remains of his penis. As if a protective shield had been removed, his balls now began to split open, a blinding stream of light emitting from them so hot that it sliced through the rocks.\nThe Qäßbøn’s crushed, suffocating head’s last experience was the feeling of its penis-strands being ripped off of it and sucked into its balls, and then its balls imploding, a sensation akin to being kicked repeatedly in the groin by an elephant.\nThus perished the Qäßbøn.\n*************\nSomewhere many miles away, a mage looked on as his creation self-destructed. His face was livid from screaming at his crystal ball, his clothes were torn, his hair pulled out in patches, and his whole body sweating and shaking with rage.\n“You fucking idiot!” he screamed. “You had one job: kill that damned old fool! But what did you do? You toyed with them! You disobeyed! And then, when you realized you were going to die, you still didn’t have the good sense to at least take them with you!”\nHe screamed so hard that he fell over, blacking out momentarily. He woke back up seconds later, saw the crystal ball, and began screaming all over again.\n“That’s it!” he shrieked. “Two years of preparation, two years of making you into a perfect killing machine! And defeated by a fucking umbrella?! That’s fucking it! If I want something done, I will do it myself!”\nClosing his eyes, a snarl on his face, he teleported.\n*************\nOrd and Ary watched from the relative safety of the courtyard. As the creature expired, the older mage shook his head. “Ac is going to kill me,” he said, shaking his head sadly. “All that knowledge, lost forever! What a terrible, terrible waste!”\nAry sighed and hung her head. “It’s not your fault, Master Ord,” she said. “I’m sure Ac will—“\n“Of course it’s not my fault!” Ord snapped. “It’s that ungrateful former apprentice of mine! How was I to know that he would be so reckless? The last time was bad enough, but this—this is unforgivable! He must pay for what he has done!”\nTheir skin tingled as they felt someone materialize behind them.\n", "writing_bbcode_parsed": "Attacked at the Library
© 2019 Jack Doe. All characters belong to their creator. Do not distribute without all copyright notices and disclaimers intact.
Writing this story does not constitute endorsement of the events depicted herein by the author. Readers are explicitly discouraged from engaging in any activities that are illegal or harmful to themselves or others.
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The flames on Ary’s candelabrum flickered dimly, doing their best to pierce the dark, dusty gloom of the ancient library. Books—some of them seemingly older than time itself—were crammed, stacked, and even heaped on the old, dark, wooden shelves, their covers faded with time but still weakly illuminating in different hues of red, green, brown, and black. Their lettering ran the gamut from gold and silver to black or completely obscured through centuries of storage. As the flames licked at the shadows, the apprentice mage squinted and peered at the covers, looking for one book in particular that her master, Ord, had sent her to fetch.
Sighing, she took a step back and looked about her. She was in one of many dead-end alcoves that made up the labyrinthine tangle of bookcases. This particular alcove was all books, but she had passed several that contained ancient specimens preserved in jars of yellow-green liquid. Other specimens were stuffed, with some of the smaller specimens acting as bookends on various shelves and the larger specimens standing on the floor where there wasn’t quite enough bookcase to fill the alcove. Now, as she looked above her at the brass nameplates that described the shelves’ contents, she rolled her eyes: she was in the wrong alcove…again.
Though she didn’t mind the shadows, the dust, or the sometimes strange eternal inhabitants of the place—if anything, she thought it made the place cozy—she had her own research she wanted to be doing, not running errands for her increasingly senile-seeming master.
As she thrust her candelabrum into the darkness ahead of her and again set off through the seemingly endless right angles that made up the main aisle through the library, something caught her attention. Her jaw went slightly slack, and she came to a stop, too distracted by what she saw to pass by it without stopping to inspect it.
It was one of the larger taxidermy specimens, but it was completely unlike anything Ary had ever seen—and she had seen quite her share of unusual beasts. It walked erect on what appeared to be another pair of hands. Hands and feet each had four fingers and a thumb, each of them tipped with sharp claws. The only real difference between the hands and feet—aside from their placement on the creature’s body—was the length of these claws: those on the hands were long, almost as long as the palm and fingers themselves, while the ones on the “feet” were far shorter, roughly the length of the shortest joint on the creature’s fingers.
Standing just over six feet tall, it was a creature of contrasts: its body was smooth, skink-like all over, yet only on the back of its head and the tip of its tail, it had tufts of fur. Along its back between its shoulder blades were six sharp spikes arrayed like a paper fan oriented vertically, with shorter spikes protruding up and back or down and back, growing longer as they reach the vertical center between its shoulder blades and jutted straight back. Ary mused that the spines must be defensive.
Certainly, the creature had better ways to attack. At the top of its head were two horns that protruded up and swept backwards, much like an impala. But further down its forehead, straddling its fifth eye—for it had five of them—were two more horns, much shorter but every bit as wicked-looking as their longer counterparts. Two mule-like ears erupted from the space outside of those horns, and two eyes were arranged vertically on either side, inset from the ears but outset from the horns. All of the eyes were golden-colored and oblong. The creature had no nose to speak of. Instead, the space at the center of its face was blank, and immediately below that formed its mouth, full of many closely spaced teeth but interrupted by tusks reminiscent of a boar’s, giving it both an underbite and an overbite. Ary shuddered at the thought of being bitten by such curved, wicked-looking teeth. Even its chin appeared to be hard and sharp, as if it could be thrust out like a stiletto to impale unsuspecting prey.
But despite its striking and fearsome features, it somehow managed—in line with its blend of contrasts—to remain graceful and even seductive. Despite the obvious strength the creature had, evidenced by the lean musculature particularly prominent in its chest but also visible in its thighs and arms, its body was slender and lanky; the muscles presented a streamlined appearance, none of them bulging or interrupting the flowing lines of its profile, and in truth, its tiny waist gave it an almost delicate look. Two round, seemingly perfect buttocks perched below its waist. Though not particularly large, the creature’s rump was accentuated lewdly by its long, slender tail that gave the creature more than a hint of wantonness.
Had it been female, Ary mused, her master might have tried to hit on it despite its alien face. But the creature was unquestionably male. A sheath perched between its muscled legs. Somehow—and in contrast to its provocative buttocks—it managed to make its presence known without being salacious, an almost gentle reminder that while many parts of it might appear feminine, it was not, in fact, a member of the fairer sex. Its testes, despite their relative largeness, each about the size of a lemon, were not gaudy, but were gracefully positioned unobtrusively beneath its sheath.
Its coloration held up the contrasting theme, as well. While its body, particularly its dorsal side, was primarily a dark mottling of blacks and grays that slowly mixed in bits of tan and even pink near its belly, chest, and buttocks, the palms of its hands and feet and the insides of its ears were pearly with just a hint of pink tint. Golden dots, maybe the size of Ary’s thumb, appeared on the creature’s hips and shoulders, adding just one more element of contrast to its already remarkable physique.
But the thing that was most striking about it was that despite its completely unmoving and clearly preserved state, Ary was almost certain that it was alive. Perhaps it was the way its eyes seemed to follow her much better than any of the other specimens did. Perhaps it was the way that its skin still seemed so supple, its colors still vibrant. Or maybe it was because—though Ary couldn’t swear to it—it seemed like it was still breathing.
Ary shook her head. That was nonsense, of course. Why would Ac—the library’s owner, a sorceress and old acquaintance of Ord’s who had invited him to stay there while some reconstruction was done on his tower—keep live specimens in her library, especially amongst so much priceless knowledge? Still, the creature’s body was quite the sight to see, and Ary made a mental note to herself to come back to investigate it further if and when she ever found the time amongst the various errands Ord sent her on and her own research priorities.
Transfixed by this unusual-looking creature that seemed to stare back at her with hungry, predatory eyes, Ary hated to tear herself away.
“Just one more thing,” she finally compromised with herself, her curiosity momentarily winning out over her sense of duty.
Of course, Ord would probably not approve of this kind of curiosity, but then again, Ord didn’t have to know, she thought as she glanced up at the creature as if to make sure it wouldn’t mind and then gave a very minute examination of its sheath contents. She dared not touch the creature, afraid she might cause the ancient specimen to crumble—how embarrassing would that explanation be?—but by placing her head very close to its chest, she was able to look down inside the unobtrusive flap of skin. Tucked deep inside was the sharp, pointed tip of a penis. Ary smiled to herself. It wasn’t often she got to see such things, and she vowed to make this little, intimate moment with the dead, stuffed creature her little secret.
But, the sense of being late that had been steadily growing in her mind since she first laid eyes on this strange creature finally won her over, and she forced herself to turn away and proceed down the twisting, winding aisle.
The creature’s eyes watched her go. Then its head turned, and then, floating on a giraffe-like neck, moved into the aisle to make sure the coast was clear. Then, with silent agility, it reached up, grasped the top of the bookcases, and flipped itself up into the rafters, where it watched the triple-dot of light intently as Ary moved about the library below. Almost catlike in its slinking movements, it stalked her for some time. The hairs on the back of its head quivered with anticipation, and its penis, a slender, pinkish-red, tapered thing somewhat resembling the phallus of a deer, poked out of its sheath and began throbbing.
Ary had stopped at another alcove, put her candelabrum down, and was at that moment poring over the contents of some ancient, green-backed tome, squinting in the dim light to read the words scrawled on the page.
The creature, meanwhile, crouched above her, gripped the rafters with its feet, and silently reached down to grasp the top of the bookcase behind her. Moving with the fluid, controlled movements of an acrobat, it lowered itself to the bookcase and then nimbly arched its back, brought its feet over the edge of the bookcase, and lowered itself to the ground. Moving up silently behind her, it extended its fingers, its wicked claws glinting in the light as its penis throbbed desperately, itself looking like another blood-colored claw protruding from the creature’s groin.
A brilliant flash of light appeared, startling the apprentice. But before she could even raise her head, the flash was gone. She blinked and looked around, confused.
“Ord?” she called. “Is that you?”
The creature froze, striking as nonchalant a pose as it could as Ary looked around. But her gaze did not quite make it as far as the creature, and shrugging, she muttered something about leftover magic and the need to install proper protective spells in places like libraries as she returned her attention to the book.
The creature waited breathlessly for several minutes. Then, deciding it was safe to move again, it broke its pose and again advanced on the mage. Its penis, which had retreated when Ary looked up, now crept back out, darkened, and began to throb. Wasting no time, the creature slunk up behind Ary and moved one of its claws, carefully avoiding her peripheral vision, up under her neck to slice her open. Its cock throbbed viciously, and its cruel mouth almost seemed to grin as the muscles in its arms tensed.
But then it stopped, a crafty expression crossing its face. It leaned up, moved its mouth right beside Ary’s ear, and hissed.
Ary yelped, felt something graze against her throat, and whirled, grasping her neck defensively and dropping the book with a resounding thud on the floor. But looking behind her, she saw nothing. Her pulse racing, she cautiously moved her hand and winced to feel a light sting against her throat. Pulling her hand into view, she gasped to see a small line of blood across her palm.
Her pupils constricted, and she began to breathe faster.
“W–what’s out there?” she called into the gloom. “Show yourself!”
Another brilliant flash of light came and went, making Ary jump.
“Master Ord, this isn’t funny!” she protested.
But there was no answer.
“All right, enough!” Ary snapped.
She held one of her hands high over her head and muttered some words. Then she frowned.
“What the heck?”
She uttered the words again, very deliberately, but still nothing happened.
“Why can’t I cast this stupid spell?” she demanded. Once more, she uttered the words, more loudly and very deliberately.
A sphere of white-colored light appeared in the palm of her hand, instantly making the whole area as bright as day.
“Sheesh, finally!” She sighed. “That’ll teach me to try to do things the non-magic way,” she muttered, blowing out the candelabrum and looking all around, left, right, up, and down.
But when she looked up, there was nothing there save for the rafters and the tops of bookcases.
Squinting in the bright light as his eyes adjusted, the creature had, quite impressively, somersaulted over the bookcase into the alcove on the other side of it the moment it hissed in Ary’s ear. Now it waited, its large, mule-like ears swiveling this way and that, listening for Ary to resume her studies. Its sensitive hearing could even hear as her heartbeat eventually slowed and her breathing returned to normal. It heard her stoop, pick up the book, and flip the pages back to where she had been reading. Now, with a wicked grin, it crept back up the bookcase and peered over the top. There was Ary, her head looking down at the pages. The creature’s penis emerged once more, quivering with anticipation as he crept to the bookcase immediately behind her, grasped the top of it with his feet, and lowered his face down behind her ear again while bringing a claw over to hover beside her right temple.
He hissed.
Ary yelped and whirled, driving her head against the creature’s sharp claw. Dropping the book, she recoiled and covered her temple with her hand while looking madly about for her tormentor. Yet there was still nothing there. Another blinding flash was the only thing out of the ordinary, and her legs and hand trembled with fear of her unseen attacker.
As the creature’s penis withdrew once again, the creature grinned and leapt up into the rafters as the mage quickly turned and began to walk briskly out of the library.
Yes, it seemed to think, go and find your master. Then, I shall kill you both.
The heavy library door creaked open and then slammed shut. The creature made itself comfortable, draped over the rafters like a jaguar over a branch, its penis tucked back into its sheath.
The door opened again several minutes later, and light immediately appeared everywhere at once—a powerful lighting spell that illuminated the whole library. The creature moved its neck and head to watch as Ary returned, talking excitedly to her unamused, elderly master. The creature’s heart skipped a beat on seeing its primary target, and almost automatically, it coiled itself up into pouncing position.
“My girl, what you speak of is utter nonsense,” Ord was saying. “Ac has assured me that this place bears no ghosts, and even if there were ghosts, their incorporeal form makes it utterly impossible for them to have injured you. Are you quite sure, my dear, that you aren’t just experiencing some momentary klutziness?”
Just then, he bumped hard into a bookcase, smacking his forehead and wincing.
“Master Ord,” Ary replied evenly, “I am not the klutz; you are. I tell you, there’s something here, yet even though it hisses in my ear and has caused the injuries I have shown you, there is nothing to see! What else, o master, would you say it is if not a ghost?”
“Who put that bookcase there?” Ord grumbled, rubbing his forehead.
“I’m certain it was there before you,” Ary retorted.
“Yes, well… I’ll have it turned into a chair.”
“And then you’ll trip on that, too.”
“A table, then!”
“Master Ord,” Ary said with barely contained exasperation, “If you were to turn it into a wall—an exterior wall—you would still run into it. I advise you to leave the poor bookcase alone and help me to figure out what is actually attacking me in here!”
At this, the creature’s eyes gleamed. Though it had its orders, it had just hit on a fantastic way to weaken its targets…and have some fun at the same time. It deftly flipped itself over the rafters and dropped down behind the mages. Careful to hug the bookcases in case one of its quarries turned around, it quickly slunk up behind them. Synchronizing its movements to theirs, it slid up right behind Ary and hissed in her ear.
“Augh!” Ary cried, whirling to face the now-frozen creature.
“Oh, come now, my dear!” Ord said, his own exasperation showing, “That’s merely a stuffed creature, one of Ac’s prized possessions!”
Ary did a double-take. “Wait, but—no, it—hey, that’s not supposed to be there!” she finally managed.
Ord raised his eyebrows amusedly.
“That—that thing—it was over there before,” Ary said, pointing to a bookcase.
“My dear, where would it fit?” Ord asked patiently.
“Not there,” Ary sighed, “Past that bookcase, over near where I was researching before.”
“And I suppose it’s impossible that there would be two of them?” Ord prodded.
Ary hesitated. “Well, I—I didn’t see one here before,” she said, biting her lip thoughtfully.
Ord patted her hand patronizingly. “There, there, my girl,” he said. “Maybe you’ve been a little overworked, hmm? Maybe I should let you have a day off.”
“No!” Ary hesitated, and then added, “I–I don’t need a day off. This isn’t me being overworked. There’s something going on here; I know it!”
As she turned to look suspiciously at the creature, the hair on the back of her neck stood up. Had its expression changed? Was it now…leering at her?
“Whatever you say,” Ord said, advancing deeper into the library. “Well, if I’ve got to come down this way anyway, I might as well get that spell myself.”
A flicker of irritation crossed Ary’s face. “I could have gotten it,” she said petulantly, “If it weren’t for that stupid creature!”
“It’s called a Qäßbøn,” Ord said lightly as he continued walking away. “They used to be native to the Andes, but poaching rendered them extinct.”
“A Q–what?” Ary asked, her irritation giving way to curiosity as she gave one last glance at the creature whose name she couldn’t pronounce and then turned to follow her master.
Senile as he might seem, he did still have an awful lot of knowledge lurking about in the rusty, creaking place that was his mind.
“A Qäßbøn,” Ord said offhandedly as he peered up and down the various bookcases, moving surprisingly fast for someone who didn’t know the layout intimately. “They were a proud race of—“
He trailed off, going to a book and lifting it down.
Ary sighed and shrugged. Well, if he wasn’t going to tell her anything more and didn’t need her to find the book for him, she was going to go research her own stuff. At least with him here, if something did happen, she’d be able to call out to him. Frowning, she retraced her steps back to where she’d seen the creature previously. She gasped.
“Master Ord, Master Ord!” she cried, running over to him. “Come quickly! The Q—the creature—isn’t where it used to be!”
“Whassat?” Ord asked, looking up from his book. “Oh. Well, then, you shouldn’t misplace things,” he said, returning his attention to his book.
“Come on, Master Ord!” Ary cried, grabbing his arm and forcibly dragging him towards the spot while he continued to read his book intently. “Look!” she said, pointing.
The wizened mage glanced up to see a Qäßbøn standing right in front of him. He blinked. “My dear, are you feeling all right?” he asked. “There is a Qäßbøn there, clear as day. Have your eyes been giving you problems lately?”
Ary’s veins froze. There had not been anything there mere seconds ago when she last looked. Now, the Qäßbøn was right in front of her. And its penis, which had not been erect before—of that fact she was absolutely certain—now jutted proudly out in front of it, throbbing at her.
Then it grinned.
Ary shrieked and leapt backwards, immediately conjuring a defensive spell.
“Ary!” Ord barked, “Do not roughhouse in the library! Do you have any idea how much priceless information is contained in here?”
“But it’s alive!” Ary cried.
“Utter nonsense!” Ord retorted. “My girl, you need to—“
The creature had crept up behind him, and to Ary’s horror, slid its claw up under Ord’s throat. Holding a claw to its face to call for her to be silent, the creature leaned forward and hissed in Ord’s ear. It was at that moment that Ord trailed off. His eyes widened and glanced at Ary, whose expression was unmistakable: he was in grave danger.
With the snap of his fingers, the space around him erupted in flames. Scores of books exploded as their pages ignited. Using that as a distraction, Ord quickly squirmed his way out of the blaze to safety next to Ary and then snapped his fingers again. The fires all quenched instantly, but as the smoke cleared, both mages gasped: the Qäßbøn was gone.
“Are you all right?” Ary asked.
Ord looked himself over and then nodded. “Not a scratch,” he replied, “But the books…” He shook his head. “Those shouldn’t have been burnt! I specifically aimed to miss them!”
Ary pursed her lips, forming her words carefully. “I believe you,” she said. “It…it all happened really fast, but I think the flames almost…bounced off of the whatever-you-call-it and hit the books instead.”
Ord frowned. “Qäßbøns aren’t immune to magic,” he replied. “Or, they weren’t. In fact, many of those slain were killed with magic. I wonder if this one has somehow adapted to withstand magic attacks?”
Another blinding flash came and went.
“What is that?” Ary asked. “It’s been happening ever since I came in earlier.”
A smile crept over Ord’s face. “That explains a lot,” he said.
Ary cocked her head. “It does?”
Ord nodded. “We need to find something to shove up that thing’s dick.”
Ary blinked. “What?”
“Just help me find something.”
The creature was standing in a neighboring aisle, contemplating what it was going to do. It hadn’t expected to be set on fire. Not that it had suffered any harm whatsoever, but still, it wasn’t used to being on the defensive. Its eyes narrowed in irritation as it tried to decide what to do next. While it had been enjoying the game of cat and mouse while it was the cat, having a mouse that could fight back was, decidedly, not nearly as fun.
Moving silently, it leapt back up into the rafters and quickly located its quarries again. No more fooling around, it seemed to think. Time to take them out once and for all. To its surprise, it found that the two had split up. His face crinkled into a sadistic grin. He quickly stalked Ord as he walked among the bookcases, apparently moving with purpose as he looked for something.
“No,” the mage muttered to himself, examining a sword hastily as he walked by. “No,” he said again as he looked at a trident. “No—”
“Master Ord! Will this work?” Ary called, jogging up with an umbrella in her hand.
Ord cocked his head. “Since when is that a weapon?” he asked.
“But if we should shove it in, then it wouldn’t come back out,” Ary protested.
Ord pursed his lips. “Kind of big,” he said, “But I think you’ve got the right idea. Can you find a smaller one?”
Ary trotted back to the main entrance to the library and rummaged amongst the umbrellas there. “How about this one?” she asked, holding up a child’s parasol.
“That should be perfect!” Ord said. “Now, we’ll just, ah, imbue it with some anti-magic properties, and…voila!”
The Qäßbøn did not understand any of this discourse, but it did know that its quarries were together again—a bad thing—but also distracted—a good thing. Using their distraction to his advantage, he leapt down behind Ary and advanced quickly.
“Look out!” Ord cried.
Ary ducked just as the Qäßbøn’s claws sailed right over her head. One of them grazed her on the shoulder, and she winced. Refusing to be the victim, she tucked and rolled and then countered with a freezing spell.
Or she would have, had the spell actually gone off. She scowled at her fingers and tried the spell again, but still nothing happened.
Meanwhile, the creature was not about to be evaded so easily. Stalking forward menacingly, his claws flashing, he advanced on the apprentice mage, who lay on her back facing him and began to inch backwards on seeing that her spell was not going to go through.
A bolt of lightning shot from Ord’s fingers, racing towards the Qäßbøn, but instead of hitting him, it curved around, sent a tentative spark towards a stack of books, and then shot hard onto Ary, making her cry out and her hair stand on end.
“Ary!” Ord cried.
Knowing that magic did not seem to be working, he lunged forward and threw the nearest thing handy—which happened to be a preserved fetal pig—at the Qäßbøn.
The glass jar crashed against the creature’s horns and broke, spilling its contents all over the Qäßbøn’s face. It screamed and recoiled as the preservative got into its eyes. Ary and Ord acted quickly. As the Qäßbøn clawed at its face, blinded by the stinging liquid, Ary slunk up to its once-again-erect cock and drove the umbrella into the tip, not stopping until the ribs of the umbrella pushed inside, lodging it inside.
Sensing that it was under attack and needing to get free, the Qäßbøn whipped its tail out, knocking both Ord and Ary to the ground. But instead of attacking them, it grimaced, squeezed its eyes closed, and vanished.
The mages looked at each other, then at the place where the Qäßbøn had been.
“Where’d it go?” Ary asked anxiously, on her feet in an instant.
Ord grabbed a trident from a nearby stand and gingerly poked the area where the Qäßbøn had been.
“It doesn’t appear he turned invisible,” he said at length.
“Then—where did he go?” Ary asked again. “You don’t suppose he teleported?”
Ord pursed his lips. “Qäßbøns couldn’t teleport,” he said thoughtfully, “But that is no ordinary Qäßbøn.”
Ary started. “What do you mean?” she asked.
“You remember how I said we had to plug up his dick?” Ord asked.
Ary nodded slowly. “It seemed like a weird thing to do.”
“It’s Nance’s doing,” Ord said, smiling sagely. “Mark my words, there won’t be any more blinding flashes of light.”
“But what are they? And—for the third time—where is the whatchacallit?”
Ord sighed impatiently. “Do you remember the last time Nance sent something to attack us?”
Ary pursed her lips and nodded. “The gryphon.”
“Right. And you remember how we defeated it?”
Ary had to wrack her brain. Though it had only been a couple of years since then, a lot had happened. “Its penis—” she began.
“Yes, exactly. And I might have told you that Nance had a particular affinity for penises. Well, he learned his lesson this time: he’s not going to let us drain this creature of its energy through its penis. No, somehow the creature absorbs magic from the air. I suspect, though, that he didn’t know how much he’d need. He may be single-minded, but he never was the best at conducting experiments—one of several reasons I let him go—so he got sloppy: he used a simple venting mechanism to let it blow off extra steam, so to speak, if it collected too much magic. In so doing, he left it vulnerable, whereas if he’d done a proper design, it would be much harder to defeat.”
Ary frowned. “But what does that have to do with its—”
“Penis? Well, he had to make the vent somewhere, didn’t he? Maybe the mouth, or the anus, or even one of its ears. Heck, he could even have created a completely unnatural stoma for the energy to pass out of, but no, this is Nance we’re talking about, so even though we figured out his secret last time, it had to be the penis again. In that sense, he only half-learned his lesson.”
Ary nodded slowly. “So, we’re going to make him overflow with magic, then?”
“That’s right. We can’t kill him in the traditional sense; he’ll just regenerate. Make no mistake, we may have to keep attacking him physically to keep him distracted, but we won’t be able to kill him fully until the magic builds up past its critical limit.”
Ary pursed her lips. “So, where is he now?”
“Hiding,” Ord replied, shrugging. “And trying to get that stuff out of his eyes, which I imagine must sting something fierce. It was good luck that it just happened to be handy.”
“So…do we need to go hunt him down?”
Ord shrugged. “That umbrella ought to do him in.”
“But how?” Ary asked, “And what if he pulls it out?”
Ord laughed. “Bah, like he would ever figure out the need! Qäßbøns were famously stupid. They quickly became extinct due to their lack of survival instinct and susceptibility…to magi—hmm…” He trailed off thoughtfully. “You know, we should probably go find him,” he said abruptly. “If Nance has engineered a creature based on that forgotten species, then he has probably learned a thing or two from the last time. If that’s the case—”
The Qäßbøn was, at that moment, still desperately trying to get the awful sting out of its eyes. Bleary and hardly able to see, it made walking along the rafters particularly treacherous as it repeatedly lost its footing, smacking its umbrella-stuffed dick against the wood and collecting a variety of very unpleasant splinters, but not so unpleasant as the umbrella lodged in its urethra, and also not so unpleasant as the fiery burn in its eyes that made them drool tears and ooze thick mucus. At last, able to see well enough to tell that it was still not safe, it teleported once more to the floor above. There it threw caution aside and began ransacking the place looking for water. It at last spied some outside in the courtyard fountain. Going to it was risky, but not going to it was intolerable. With much to gain and comparatively little to lose, the creature teleported down, materializing within the fountain itself and at last quenching the fires that burned its eyes.
“Did you hear that?” Ary asked, cocking her head upwards to listen above them.
“Whassat?” Ord asked
Ary rolled her eyes. Of course he hadn’t heard it.
“There was a bump and a crash upstairs,” Ary replied, “But now I don’t hear anything.”
They continued onward, Ord carrying the trident and Ary carrying a sword she’d found. Neither had any experience with physical combat, but both knew that their magic was useless against the creature.
As they passed a large window, something strange in the fountain caught Ary’s eye.
“There!” she cried, pointing.
Ord looked out, saw the beast looking much relieved—though its eyes were still bloodshot—and now actively trying to pull the umbrella from its penis.
“Count of three,” he said. “One, two, three!”
The two teleported at the same time, materializing on either side of the Qäßbøn, their weapons unsteady but drawn. The Qäßbøn looked from one to the other in shock and then whipped its tail, knocking them both into the fountain, and teleported once more.
“Got to keep after him,” Ord said, picking himself and his trident out of the water.
“There he is!” Ary yelled, pointing inside the building again.
In an instant, they were back inside, their clothes dripping onto the stone floor and leaving a trail of water behind them as they quickly moved to where Ary had seen the Qäßbøn. But to their dismay, when they reached the spot, it was gone.
“Where the hell did he go?” Ary asked, frustrated.
Neither of them saw it as it swung down from the rafters behind them. Its claws extended and dug into both of their scalps. The humans dropped their weapons and grabbed their heads protectively, feeling trickles of blood running through their hair. Then the Qäßbøn teleported again.
“Damn it!” Ary yelled. “Where the hell did it go this time?”
As if in answer, the fountain splashed as he reappeared in it.
“Here we go again,” Ord said, rolling his eyes. “One, two, three!”
But nothing happened.
“Huh…that’s…odd,” Ord said, furrowing his brow. “I’m certain I used the right spell…”
He tried again, but with no effect.
“This happened to me earlier,” Ary said. “I was trying to cast an illumination spell, but I couldn’t. I tried it over and over, but I couldn’t get it to work until it just eventually worked again.”
“Those claws,” Ord muttered. “They must suppress magical ability!” He shook his head and glared out the window at the Qäßbøn, which was once again trying to pull the umbrella from its dick. “Well, I’ve got to hand it to Nance; he’s outdone himself this time. Better get ready to teleport as soon as you can,” he said, “And don’t get clawed again!”
Ary rolled her eyes. Duh.
The Qäßbøn screamed in pain as it tried to yank the umbrella from its swollen, throbbing dick. Having never seen an umbrella before, it didn’t realize that trying to pull it out would only cause the umbrella to expand and dig into the walls of its urethra. As a result, every attempt made it double over and scream but yielded no progress towards freeing itself from the cruel instrument. Yet it could feel the buildup of magic inside itself. It was not quite smart enough to grasp the physiology of its predicament, but it did know that the build-up was uncomfortable. It felt, for lack of a better way to describe it, as though it was constipated and had a urinary tract infection and blue balls all at once. A general sense of bloatedness, a dull ache, and a burning urge to relieve itself made it hard to focus on anything else. Yet this dull unpleasantness paled in comparison to the sharp, searing pain it felt every time it tried to pull the umbrella out of its dick. It knew, too, that its time of being unharrassed was limited. The scratches to the humans had only delayed their ability to teleport back, and when they came again, the Qäßbøn was certain they would try to prevent him from clearing his dick.
But, the building magical pressure was reacting to the magical ward on the umbrella, giving ethereal magic a very real motive force, like a sail harnessing the wind to drive a ship. And that motive force was steadily increasing, steadily digging the pointed ribs of the umbrella through the sinewy urethral wall to embed them in the spongy tissue that made up the inside of the Qäßbøn’s somewhat human-shaped glans, creating sharp protrusions on it that resembled the barbs of a cat’s penis. Gritting its teeth, the Qäßbøn’s eyes rolled back in its head as it begrudgingly pushed the umbrella deeper into its own body to alleviate the pressure the ribs made. To its relief, the ribs closed back in and quit digging into it so mercilessly. Though the Qäßbøn was not nearly as smart as a human, this concept gave it an idea, albeit one it didn’t like very much. Taking a deep breath, it squeezed its eyes closed and slowly shoved one of its claws up its dick along the umbrella, groaning in pain as the sharp appendage cut and dug into the flesh, making it itch, burn, and sting. Holding its breath, it fished around until it found one of the umbrella ribs, and with a groan of pain, it wrenched it free of its flesh and guided it out through its urethra.
One down, seven to go.
A tingling feeling appeared all over his skin. He bared his teeth just as Ord materialized in front of him, clutching a trident. The human looked around to get his bearings and then spied him.
Letting go of his penis with a roar of pain, the Qäßbøn lunged toward Ord in a rage fueled by frustration and prolonged anguish. In three bounds, he closed the distance, opened his mouth wide, and extended his claws.
“Ary?” Ord called, gripping his trident and holding his ground. “Hmm…well, this is unpleasant.”
At just the last minute, Ord teleported, appearing behind the Qäßbøn. The creature was on all fours to cover ground more quickly, and Ord saw his chance. With a fast thrust, he jabbed the trident towards the Qäßbøn’s soft underside, narrowly missing his balls and instead impaling him in the rear. The Qäßbøn’s eyes went wide, and he whirled in a fury, his ass yanking the trident out of Ord’s hand and flinging it across the room. Blood seeped from the creature’s injured anus as it stalked forward, deliberately, menacingly. With the wall behind him, Ord had nowhere to go. He backed up as far as he could, pressing his back against the cold stone. The Qäßbøn’s hand shot out, grabbing and squeezing him, its face livid. It picked him up and brought him to its mouth. Its jaws opened, and Ord shuddered.
“How does a creature purpose-built for one task smell like it’s eaten an army?” he wondered absent-mindedly, forgetting his predicament.
“Master!”
Ord whipped his head to see Ary manifested behind and to the left of the Qäßbøn. Her hands were glowing.
“You fool! Have you learned nothing? I’m supposed to be the senile one!” Ord protested as a bolt of flame materialized.
Ord sighed and muttered a flame protection spell just as the ball sailed over the Qäßbøn’s head.
“Daft and with terrible aim?” Ord chided, “What on earth have I been teaching you?”
The ball crashed into the ceiling. A crack appeared in the stonework, quickly spiderwebbing out. A pebble dropped onto the Qäßbøn, who ignored it and lifted Ord to its mouth. The heat of the creature’s breath felt like a furnace.
Another pebble dropped. The Qäßbøn’s mouth closed around Ord’s head.
A large stone fell. Ord could feel the Qäßbøn’s teeth pricking his neck.
All at once, the Qäßbøn screamed and dropped Ord. The stone from the ceiling crashed down next to the Qäßbøn. Ord fell to the ground, tucking at the last moment and mostly avoiding injury. Meanwhile, Ary backed away from whacking the umbrella with the flat of her sword, but she was too slow. Fueled by anguish, the Qäßbøn swung its hand, caught Ary, and flung her across the room. She slammed into a wall, the wind knocked out of her, and crumpled on the ground.
“It’s rude to hit a girl!” Ord rebuked the Qäßbøn. “If I ever get my hands on Nance, I’m going to teach him a thing or two that I never could impart to him before: some damned manners!”
At that moment, he hopped out of the way as another stone landed right on top of the Qäßbøn’s head, momentarily crumpling its neck. Its eyes blinked individually and gingerly looked up to see what had happened. Then, shaking off its disorientation, its eyes all focused on Ord once more. Its hand flashed out, claws glinting, and narrowly missed the mage’s head. Ord felt the wind of them brush his face and heard the faint singing noise as they sliced through the air. The Qäßbøn lunged.
A scream filled the air. Ord opened his eyes, expecting to have materialized next to Ary but finding himself instead face-to-face with the screaming Qäßbøn. He quickly took several hurried steps back, abruptly remembering the pricks on his neck and muttering something about it not being fair that he should lose his magic every time the creature scratched him. Then he saw the source of the screaming: in its attempt to lunge, the Qäßbøn had gotten the handle of the umbrella stuck on some rubble and had at first shoved it into its penis, once again burying the freed rib, and then yanked on it, driving the ribs so hard as to poke them out the sides of its glans. Intermittent jets of magic followed each rib, painting the room with blinding flashes of multicolored, sparkling light, like water trying to break free through a crack in a dam.
The pain the Qäßbøn felt was excruciating. Having driven the ribs through its flesh, one might think that the pressure would be alleviated somewhat, but in fact, the lack of backwards pressure on the ribs and the increasing magical pressure on the canopy now drove those ribs out even more persistently than before, the folded pieces of canopy applying excruciating pressure on the interior penile tissue, much like a dull knife through a brick of cheese. Blood began as a few drops and increased to a slow trickle out the Qäßbøn’s urethral slit as the relentless magical energy drove the umbrella to cut up more and more tissue.
With the Qäßbøn distracted by its pain, Ord quickly moved over to Ary, who had recovered somewhat and gotten to her feet. Then the old mage slunk around as quickly as he dared to grab his trident. Exchanging glances, the mages advanced on the moaning Qäßbøn, Ord moving towards its head and Ary towards its midsection.
The Qäßbøn, blinded by pain, had a lucid moment and saw the mages approaching. Its life was in grave danger. Despite the insufferable agony it felt that only grew worse by the second, it knew it had to act, or in a few seconds, it would be unable to. Summoning all of the mental clarity it could muster, it teleported.
The mages looked at each other, sighing in exasperation as they once again tried to locate their quarry.
The Qäßbøn had teleported to relative safety, and now it doubled over, clutching its stomach with one hand and its dick with the other. The buildup of magic inside of it was beginning to tear it apart. Around the holes created by the umbrella ribs, little cracks in its skin began to form, exposing a sticky, red network of bloody crevices with the consistency and color of a raspberry danish. Skin began to break into jagged, hexagonal pieces that floated on that network like tectonic plates. Periodic bursts of light illuminated the cracks in every color, like multi-colored glitter confetti in a spotlight. On the inside, the concentrated magic became a furnace. The Qäßbøn’s testes grew warm to the touch, then scalding, then searing as the magic inside of them began to liquefy their contents, individual tubules of testes slowly fusing together to become yellow-hot pools of energy that spread and began to engulf the tissue around them. The magic buildup caused even the skin on its balls to glow from the heat contained inside, two yellow, mushy orbs looking strikingly out-of-place against the otherwise neutral colors of the creature’s hide.
His leg kicked out involuntarily as the sheer pressure of the magic, compounded by the liquefying, expanding tissue, drove the umbrella out even further. The ribs, designed to spread outward as the umbrella opened, began to stretch the Qäßbøn’s tapered penis, spreading its urethra open around the umbrella’s shaft. Crusted blood that had adhered to the handle was now forcibly ripped off, breaking open new, open sores along the Qäßbøn’s urethral wall that only increased the flow of blood that dribbled down the Qäßbøn’s penis and cooked on its balls, a noxious stench of burning blood.
The heat inside the Qäßbøn’s testes was beginning to spread like tiny, slow-moving, yellow lightning bolts along its groin. They radiated outwards, some moving towards its anus and others moving up its belly. To his horror, the umbrella began to melt, but the magical guard on it remained intact. If the Qäßbøn had ever had hopes of pushing the umbrella in and removing the ribs one-by-one as he had started to do, those hopes were now dashed as the very metal of the ribs melted together, fusing it into a nasty, 8-hooked fishhook that was never coming out of his penis without utter mutilation. And yet the magical pressure seemed to want to do exactly that. The Qäßbøn screamed and threw itself onto its back, desperately grasping at its dick with both hands and feet, all of its limbs shaking with agony.
Ord and Ary looked up abruptly. They’d heard something below them, and not trusting their magic, rushed down the stairs and burst into the library. But with this floor so obscured by bookcases, they could see little; they could only hear the Qäßbøn thrashing somewhere in the distance. Glancing at each other, they surged forward into the labyrinthine aisles of books, trying to get to the source of the sound.
The spreading pastry-crust pieces of skin on the Qäßbøn’s dick began to heat up as the molten pool of magic and tissue in his balls reached the base of his dick. One-by-one, they began to glow dark red, then bright red, then orange, then yellow, and then they burst into flames, turned to a crisp, and disappeared, exposing a network of lightly glowing, spongy pink tissue underneath. The pores in the tissue glowed a deeper fuchsia, occasionally sparkling with magical energy.
The umbrella shifted. With less skin to keep it in place, it dug in and raked eight gouges into the spongy tissue, long, excruciating gashes being cut into the Qäßbøn’s flesh. The Qäßbøn thrashed and put his hands on the umbrella, desperately trying to shove it back inside, but the heat of the metal burned his hands, and he screamed shrilly.
“This way!” Ary cried, sprinting agilely down the convoluted corridors while Ord panted, trying to keep up several yards behind.
She rounded a corner and skidded to a stop, gasping in horror at what she saw. Ord slammed into her, and both grimaced before looking up at the rafters.
At that moment, the Qäßbøn’s thrashing imbalanced him, and he plummeted some twenty feet to the ground, landing on his back. The spines Ary had assumed were for defense bent awkwardly and then shattered, eliciting an ear-piercing shriek. The creature’s tail thrashed about wildly, slamming into bookcases and knocking over displays. Broken glass, preservative, and old samples flew through the air, landing on books and beginning to eat through their pages.
“You incompetent fool!” Ord yelled, “Stop destroying my friend’s library!”
In a rage and despite Ary’s more even-minded protests for him to mind his safety, he surged forward, leapt around the creature’s thrashing body, and drove the trident through its tail and into a deep crevice in the floor. The tip of the tail twitched spastically, but now it could not do any more damage. Recovering his senses, Ord took a few steps back and sagged to the ground, disbelieving how bad of a day this had been. Meanwhile, Ary stood behind the creature’s head, far enough to be well out of harm’s way as it continue to thrash and kick ferociously.
There was a brief pause, like a stone falling through the air before hitting the ground. For a split-second, the Qäßbøn quit thrashing. And then, all at once, the umbrella shifted again. The ribs ripped completely free of the penile tissue, splitting it into eight ribbons held together only by the bleeding urethra. But, the molten metal had pooled inside the Qäßbøn’s body and formed a plug, preventing it from moving forward any further. The built-up magic still had no place to escape, but that little bit of movement gave it momentum. It shoved the umbrella-plug outward, the molten pieces forming sharp, jagged brambles as they flowed into the spongy material and cooled. The Qäßbøn’s scream rose in pitch until it was no longer audible, yet the energy it contained shattered every glass jar on the floor with a deafening crash. Preservative splashed onto numerous books, causing millennia-old spells to be lost forever.
“No!” Ord cried. “No, you horrible, worthless waste of magic! Do you realize the destruction you’ve done?! Just die already!”
He raced over, took Ary’s sword, and began hacking and slashing at the creature’s body, inflicting deep, red gashes all over it. When it tried to strike him with its arm, he cut the arm off. When it lashed out with a leg, he hacked at it over and over until it was hewn from the creature’s body. The openings revealed the extent of the damage the magic had done: the Qäßbøn’s core innards were a golden yellow blob with the viscosity of molten metal that began to slowly run out everywhere Ord cut. How he was still alive was a mystery to both Ord and Ary, but nevertheless, he continued to flail and scream until Ord cut out his voice box. Now he only hissed in agony as his remaining limbs continued to try to flail and his chest heaved with exertion, his five eyes squeezed shut and his teeth bared in pain.
Yet despite all of the wounds Ord had inflicted, the magic itself was still trapped, buried in the Qäßbøn’s now blue-glowing balls. Ord could not even come within two feet of them for the intense heat they put off. Their heat had begun burning the Qäßbøn’s remaining leg, and now great, charred sores opened up to reveal more of the red paste of blood and tissue that hadn’t yet been liquefied.
At last, satisfied that the Qäßbøn could do no more damage, Ord collapsed against the wall again, looking on in grim determination while Ary watched in compassionate horror as the Qäßbøn began its death-throes. The umbrella had begun carving out the inside of his penis, the sharp, multi-pointed metal acting like a reamer to scrape out chunks of spongy tissue with each convulsion of the Qäßbøn’s body. The umbrella handle itself hung slack, unsupported by the stretched-out, bleeding, and encrusted urethral tube. Having been erect for so long and so overheated, the creature’s penile tissue had dried out, the once-sticky blood in the spongy flesh drying and crusting into scabs barely held together by bits of flesh. Its sheath had long since disappeared beneath the bloody tissue and was no longer separately differentiable as streams of cooked-on blood obscured the line where sheath stopped and cock started. The acrid smell of burning flesh tainted the air as the creature’s balls turned white-hot, glowing like tiny quasars beneath the Qäßbøn’s crusted penis.
“Master Ord,” Ary said as she sidled up to him, “What happens when he dies?”
“Oh, he can’t die,” Ord replied. “He can hardly be called “alive.” He’s held together by magic, you know.”
“Yes, yes, fine,” Ary pressed impatiently, “But what happens when, well, when that magic ceases to hold him together?”
Ord frowned, not quite getting it, and then a moment of lucidity broke through his features.
“We’ve got to get out of here!” he cried. “Now!”
They both focused on getting as far away from there as possible.
Just as they vanished, the light in the Qäßbøn’s balls blinked out. The umbrella launched itself out of his penis, shredding what was left of the tissue into threads as the umbrella shot through the wall, arced into the air in the courtyard, and then fell to the ground in a splintered heap. The sudden release of magic sent a shockwave through the library, knocking over every bookcase, sending pages flying, and crumbling the very walls. With a colossal grinding sound, the whole floor of the library collapsed, dropping down onto the Qäßbøn and squashing him like a giant bug. His superheated guts caused the stones that landed on him to melt and some to explode. The pages near his body burst into flames that were quickly snuffed out by the rubble. All that remained intact—if such a word can be used—were his now-black balls and the shredded remains of his penis. As if a protective shield had been removed, his balls now began to split open, a blinding stream of light emitting from them so hot that it sliced through the rocks.
The Qäßbøn’s crushed, suffocating head’s last experience was the feeling of its penis-strands being ripped off of it and sucked into its balls, and then its balls imploding, a sensation akin to being kicked repeatedly in the groin by an elephant.
Thus perished the Qäßbøn.
*************
Somewhere many miles away, a mage looked on as his creation self-destructed. His face was livid from screaming at his crystal ball, his clothes were torn, his hair pulled out in patches, and his whole body sweating and shaking with rage.
“You fucking idiot!” he screamed. “You had one job: kill that damned old fool! But what did you do? You toyed with them! You disobeyed! And then, when you realized you were going to die, you still didn’t have the good sense to at least take them with you!”
He screamed so hard that he fell over, blacking out momentarily. He woke back up seconds later, saw the crystal ball, and began screaming all over again.
“That’s it!” he shrieked. “Two years of preparation, two years of making you into a perfect killing machine! And defeated by a fucking umbrella?! That’s fucking it! If I want something done, I will do it myself!”
Closing his eyes, a snarl on his face, he teleported.
*************
Ord and Ary watched from the relative safety of the courtyard. As the creature expired, the older mage shook his head. “Ac is going to kill me,” he said, shaking his head sadly. “All that knowledge, lost forever! What a terrible, terrible waste!”
Ary sighed and hung her head. “It’s not your fault, Master Ord,” she said. “I’m sure Ac will—“
“Of course it’s not my fault!” Ord snapped. “It’s that ungrateful former apprentice of mine! How was I to know that he would be so reckless? The last time was bad enough, but this—this is unforgivable! He must pay for what he has done!”
Their skin tingled as they felt someone materialize behind them.
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