On Her Altar

It’s always easy to slip away from her party in a city. Ameshe loses herself in the largest library, Mordecai in the seediest tavern—or bloodiest fighting pit, if he can sniff one out—and Niamh is left to her own devices until such time as her services are required again. They perhaps aren’t as close as some crews are, but the arrangement works, and more importantly, it allows her to seek out Glasya’s temples without being interrogated about it.

Niamh descends the stairs in silence, accompanied only by the fading thud of the trapdoor and the dancing shadows of flickering torchlight. Of all the temples she’s visited, this one, buried beneath an unassuming alchemist’s shop in the Trades Ward of Waterdeep, holds a special place in her heart. Not because it’s better than any of the others—certainly there are more elaborate enclaves of diabolical devotion out there—but because it’s where she made her pact.

“Welcome home, Niamh,” a lush voice greets her as she steps at last into the sanctum.

Invari stands by the altar, one hand resting lightly atop the dark stone. Loose waves of dark auburn hair spill over her bare, tawny shoulders, her eyes deep pools of liquid copper in her heart-shaped face, and the black dress she’s poured herself into clings and exposes in equal, tantalising measures. Niamh drinks her in, from the killing spikes of her heels to the golden spirals painted around her short, sharp horns. “Being made Consort agrees with you.”

Invari’s lips—painted sacrificial red—curve, flashing a brief glint of teeth.

“Did you miss me out on the road?”

“Never thought of you once.”

Invari laughs, full-throated. Behind her, the ceiling-high statue of Glasya watches with its permanently inscrutable smile. It was carved long before Invari ever came to Waterdeep, much less rose to her present rank, but there’s always been a similarity about the faces. The expressions. Tiefling as she is, Invari claims Glasya’s bloodline as her heritage, and it expresses itself more with every passing year.

Her tail flicks side to side. “Come and greet me then, wanderer,” she says, holding out her arms, and Niamh steps into her perfumed embrace. The scent reminds her of the dreams she’s been having since she made her pact. Malbolgian dreams, full of laughter and whispers and hot fingermarks on her skin.

“Did she tell you I was coming?” Niamh asks, as Invari’s tail loops around her ankle. “Did you have visions of me?”

“I had visions.”

Invari lifts a hand. Her glossy black nails are long, almost claws—all save her fore and middle fingers. These she traces over Niamh’s lips. “They came as they usually do: vague and decadent. As our wicked lady’s voice in this plane, I am bound to interpret her designs.” Her fingers slip into Niamh’s mouth. “And you are bound to make them manifest.”

Niamh sucks lightly, stroking the seam of Invari’s fingers with the flat of her tongue. Invari’s breast is heavy in her palm, her thigh bare and warm between Niamh’s own. She leans back against the altar, tugging at Niamh’s belt as Niamh pulls off her fingers to kiss her properly, their mouths sliding together slow and indulgent. A Consort’s dress being far more accessible than a working warlock’s garb, Niamh gets her hand in place first.

Soft moans sigh into her mouth as she works her fingers, Invari’s hips rocking into her touch, encouraging her deeper. She sinks them to the lowest knuckle into warmth and wet, stroking her thumb over Invari’s clit in languid circles until she tenses and clenches and tips her head back with a long, pleased exhale.

“Been a while for you, has it?” Niamh murmurs. Invari’s pupil-less eyes glimmer beneath part-lowered lids.

“Your turn.”

A devotee of Glasya doesn’t come into her temple and disobey her high priestess. Niamh discards her clothes and takes her place atop the altar, beneath her patron’s stone gaze and Invari’s curvaceous thighs. Hot lips and sharp tiefling teeth burn their way down her neck, over her breasts, her stomach; fingers with claws dig into her thigh, and fingers without press into her cunt. She arches, moaning as Invari’s tongue flicks over her clit in a serpentine ripple no human could match.

“That’s right,” Invari breathes, “say your devotions. Give thanks loud enough for her to hear.”

Niamh’s hands sink into Invari’s hair. She doesn’t close her eyes to the pleasure, though—she keeps them open, gazing up at the statue. Dozens of candles, tended by Supplicants, light the sanctum, and in their flickering orange light Glasya’s carved face seems almost alive, the lips almost to shift into a smile; the same smile that, ever since the night of her pact, she’s endlessly longed to see in the flesh again. It has a daughter in Invari’s lips, and their soft, insistent devouring might be as close as Niamh, a mere mortal, will ever get to what she really wants.

Something cold touches her hip. She looks down. Invari, mouth still pressed to Niamh’s cunt, is tapping the hilt of a ceremonial knife on her stomach.

“It’s consecrated to her,” she says, and the vibrations of her voice roll hotly through Niamh’s belly.

“You’re consecrated to her,” Niamh replies.

“As are you. As is everything here. But this was forged in Malbolge.” Invari trails the knife down the inside of Niamh’s thigh—not enough to cut, just to scrape, to shiver. “She is the Sixth Hell and the Sixth Hell is she. What say you, Niamh? Will you take her into your heart?”

Niamh meets her eyes and finds copper fire blazing back. “Always.”

The handle of the knife—smooth and curved, carved of some infernal bone—takes the place of Invari’s tongue and fingers, and Niamh cries out as it enters her. There’s magic in it, she can tell that much; it reacts to her own, hissing and spitting like water in hot oil. Invari kneels over her, fucking her the same way she executes all her plans: with unshakeable confidence and relentless patience, knowing that her skills will get her what she—and Glasya—wants eventually.

Niamh comes in a crackle of magic, bronze light sparking in her palms, in the corners of her eyes. Invari twists the knife, extracting every last shudder and whimper she can before withdrawing it. The handle glistens. Niamh reaches for her waist, wanting the heat of her, the weight of her—and has her, knelt over her face, dress drawn aside so Niamh doesn’t have to stop looking at her whilst she buries her tongue in her cunt.

The knife clatters to the altar, then the floor. The flames of the candles stretch high, twisting this way and that in their own wax-melt ecstasy. Invari rides her face, back arched, tail lashing. “Yes, there, there—tell her you love her, show me how you love her!”

She’s flushed golden, molten dark. Above her perfect breasts, over her heart, the scar of her initiation stands out pale. Every Consort has that same scar, gifted in a ceremony of bloodletting to devote their hearts to Glasya, though it always seemed to Niamh that Invari didn’t need to. She was born devoted, with Glasya’s blood flowing through her; blessed from birth because one of her ancestors lay with the Princess of Hell. In her dreams, Niamh is that ancestor, is Invari’s mother, her grandmother, tangled in Infernal limbs atop charred-black sheets, giving her body to the Hells for the glory of that burning touch.

Invari cries out, moaning in the perfect harmony of a devotional prayer. Niamh’s mouth fills with the taste of her—the shadow of orgasm floats through her at that taste, and she licks faster, hungrier, glutting herself until Invari finally tears away, shuddering and half-laughing. “Enough, enough; you’ve greed enough for Mammon to envy, enough!”

They part. Clean up under Glasya’s watchful gaze. Invari kisses her several times, until the taste of each other is intermingled indistinguishably between their mouths.

“When you leave the city,” Invari tells her, as she’s buckling her belt, “go south.”

“How far south?”

“Amn. Tiamat’s lackeys are making moves, so say our sisters in Athkatla, and it’s interfering with our work there.”

Niamh nods. It won’t be hard to convince her party to come hunt dragon cultists with her. “Anything else?”

“Only a reminder.” Invari kisses her one last time, lingering, her lips far hotter than flesh ought to be. “Do good work, Niamh. We’ll be watching.”

“You or her?”

Invari’s eyes flash. It might be the candles. It might not. “Is there a difference?”

As far as Niamh’s concerned, the answer to that question doesn’t matter at all.