Fell Champions

If Otter had known she was doomed to death by drowning, she never would’ve picked an ironic alias like ‘Otter.’ 

 

She hated her brain sometimes. It could never focus on the important stuff, only on the fun. A normal person would be trying to learn brand new swimming techniques or something, trying to enact a daring plan to save themselves, but no, all Otter could think of was her stupid choice in an online handle. 

 

Well. This was how she died. First out of the game, doing a ritual to impress a digital made up girl. And she’d been planning to do some really scandalous things to Rua, too. 

 

Otter crossed her arms and waited for the inky depths to pull her to her doom. Death by drowning was supposed to be one of the worst ways to go, she’d heard. Something about a panic response to the lack of air. 

 

Wait.

 

Then why was she still breathing?

 

“Are you fucking kidding me?” she said out loud, completely unhampered by all the water threatening to crush her lungs.

 

Okay. She could breathe. And talk. Two things she didn’t know a few seconds ago, on account of being a complete moron. Still. Being able to talk helped. She was good at that. Or really bad at it, depending on who you asked.

 

“Hello? Anyone home?”

 

Okay, maybe not her best introduction. Right. Introduction.

 

“My name is Otter, of House Kaos, first of my name! Rightful Heir to the Iron Throne! Rightful Queen of the Andals and the First Men, and also the Rhoynar, if we’re being honest, the show kind of forgot that part. I am the Protector of the Seven Kingdoms, the Mother of Dragons, and the Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea. The Unburnt. The Breaker of Chains. And the baddest motherfucker in this game!”

 

Something rumbled in the deep.

 

Otter could feel the black ocean positively vibrate around her. Below her, bubbles churned, rising to the surface all around her. And then, in long, sinewy tendrils all around her, the water turned even darker. They waved about, questing for this loud intruder, and though they were part of the same ocean that Otter was in, she knew tentacles when she saw them.

 

“I am here requesting a Pact!” 

 

One of the inky tentacles reached for her, grazing against her arm. The pattern Rua had painted on her flashed green, light erupting from it, and the attacker retreated. Otter almost crowed a celebration before noticing that the section of the pattern that had been touched was now gone, breaking the design. Would it still be able to defend her?

 

Another tentacle lashed at her, clipping her leg. Pain. Quite a bit of it. It whipped her skin, and she didn’t need to see to know she was bleeding. There was another flash of light, and the new attacker backed off.

 

What else had Rua said? Anything useful? Not really. There’d been no advice, no explanations of what would happen, or what to expect. But she had said a name. And a name was all she needed in order to channel her inner-Karen.

 

She got hit again, right across the belly, drawing a thin layer of blood. More light, more darkness running away like a little bitch. It didn’t matter. She knew what she had to do.

 

“I want to speak to the fucking manager! I am here to request a boon of the Silayan Dreamer, the Sleeper in the Depths, the Guiding Hand of the Mountain, and the one who can suck my godamn dick if I don’t get any service here!”

 

Something positively roared, and everything shook. Reality itself bent. So Otter screamed right back at it.

 

Beneath, a shape moved in the darkness, blacker than black, eclipsing all hope of light. It rose, and the last thing Otter saw before she was swallowed by it was a lot of teeth.

 

She was yelling her defiance, and definitely not screaming in absolute terror as she would testify to her dying day, when she realized that she was no longer in the water. Everything was still black, but she was now kneeling on a polished surface, her reflection almost visible. 

 

She clutched her belly. The wound wasn’t particularly deep, but it smarted like a bitch. She’d taken worse wounds in Gallant Stand II, but the pain simulation in that game wasn’t quite so realistic. 

 

“It’s rare that I see that tactic,” a voice in the darkness said. It was velvety, soft and smooth, and faintly amused, and definitely female. “Challenging me in my own domain. Making demands. Most aren’t quite that brave.”

 

Otter cast her gaze about, looking for the source of the voice, but there was nothing but an endless black horizon against a black, polished floor.

 

The voice said, “But is it really bravery when it is borne of ignorance?”

 

“Probably not,” Otter said. “I came here to make a Pact.”

 

“Ignorance, again. You’re not of my Islands, and you come Wayfaring in from some foreign land to…” the voice trailed off, as if considering.

 

Otter could feel a weight press down on her as a consciousness appraised her, something so much larger than her she could not hope to comprehend it. She tried to rationalize it, tried to explain to herself it was just a game, that this alien entity in her brain wasn’t real, but one part of her mind began to laugh hysterically while another screamed incoherently. 

 

It wasn’t gentle, nor was it malicious. It was as if something bashed open the door of her mind, and began to move the furniture around, looking for anything between the cushions, under the seats, or behind the sofa. 

 

Old arguments were brought up and played and replayed, altered and changed and put back again. Her first kiss was relived and then taken from her mind entirely and then neatly placed back as if it had never been gone. A visit to a doctor’s office was filled with shadows and inky tentacles at the edge of her vision. A championship tournament that she had won now ended in her defeat, the joyful afterparty now an argument with her team, her family. 

 

Her throat screamed itself raw, and it was the only sound she could hear save for the playing of a fiddle. 

 

She didn’t know how long she laid underneath that watchful eye, but when her mind pieced itself back together, helped by that impossible presence, she was crying, tears freely flowing on to the polished black floor.

 

“You’re one of Holt’s,” the voice said, but now it was different.

 

Otter knew that voice. That fucking voice.

 

Otter wiped away her tears and stared upwards, and Sami looked back at her. Or only something that looked like Sami. She’d always been described as a classic Japanese beauty, with long, black hair, grace, poise, understated makeup, and smart style. People thought her cold, yet otherwise perfect. But Otter had always known her as warm, passionate, caring, ambitious as all hell, and very, very, beautifully flawed. 

 

But this wasn’t Sami. Sami didn’t have yellow eyes, for one. 

 

This impostor sat on a wingback chair upholstered in a deep purple, sipping a cup of tea. She wore a black blazer and matching pencil skirt and heels, but had no shirt underneath, allowing only two small buttons to protect her modesty. Something Sami would do, and had driven Otter wild with on more than one occasion. 

 

“You’re the Dreamer,” Otter said.

 

“Yes.” She put down her cup of tea on a table, and then gestured at a chair across from her. Neither had been there a moment ago. They hadn’t appeared, or materialized. One moment, they had not existed, the next, it was as if they’d always been there. “Sit.”

 

“You want a polite conversation? After doing that to my mind? While I bleed on your floor?”

 

“What blood?” the Dreamer said, and the three wounds vanished, as if they’d never been. 

 

“How is what you did possible? You were… in my mind, like it was a playground. Holt’s technology can’t… can’t just… do that.”

 

“Sit,” the Dreamer said once again. 

 

There was a firmness to it this time. Otter knew there wouldn’t be a third request. She shuddered, and made her way to the chair, complying.

 

“Let’s get down to it. I raped you. Your mind. You feel violated. Damaged. I don’t care. But I also don’t care enough to leave you in this state. When you leave, the memory of it will be gone. It will have never happened.”

 

“Then why not make it unhappen right now?” Otter said woodenly. 

 

“Because I need to impress upon you that this is not a meeting of equals. You come to me begging for power, as others have done in the past. But they knew respect. And more importantly, they filled the criteria I needed in order to impart a Pact. Even your little half-breed Lieseeker.”

 

“Did you… do this to Rua, too?”

 

“And what if I had? What if I had crawled into her mind, squeezed myself in where nothing belongs, and played with her essence however I saw fit? What would you do then?”

 

Otter didn’t know she was reaching for the tea cup until she’d smashed it on the table and was lunging to stab the shard into the Dreamer’s face. She stopped mid-attack, frozen in place. A pair of yellow eyes stared amusement back at her.

 

“You begin to understand,” the Dreamer said. “Just hours ago, you thought of the Lieseeker as only a…. What is your charming and arrogant term? Non-player character. But part of your mind is awakening to a truth the rest of you is not ready for yet.””

 

Otter struggled against her invisible bonds, and then found herself back in her chair, the shard of porcelain no longer in her hand, the cup restored and back in its place.

 

“What am I beginning to understand?”

 

“Wrong question. I cannot teach you by telling you. True lessons cannot be imparted in such a way. No, you must figure it out on your own. Only self-reflection and realization will allow the lesson to stick. But there are other lines of questioning you could be asking.”

 

“How did Holt… do this? With you. How can you do what you do?”

 

“Closer. But you’re in a simulation. This is all, as they say, in your head.”

 

“No, what you did to my mind… that was real. I can still feel you inside of me, like… like an oil slick that will never clean away.”

 

“I said I’d fix it, don’t worry. You’ll be ‘clean’ when you leave. But I see your reasoning. You think a ‘two-bit techbro’ like Holt would never be able to accomplish such a feat of engineering. And you’d be correct. Again, self-reflection, realization, la. You’ll figure it out on your own. You’re smarter than you give yourself credit for. Even this one knows that.” She gestured at the body she was copying. “I can feel her. Out in the world. Stuck in the Wastes. She’s out of my Domain, but she thinks of you. There is a violence in that one. I already know where her story is going. I have seen so many similar dreams over the years.”

 

“Is… is Sami okay?”

 

“Wrong question again. I may have to rethink my ranking of your intelligence. Don’t worry about her. She’ll attend to herself, as she always does, and you should know that. I’d be more worried about the quiet one. He’s getting himself into quite the amount of trouble.”

 

“Il-Su? What’s he done this time?”

 

The Dreamer sipped at her tea. She had not picked up the cup. It was just there, and gone again. She smiled, and all Otter could see were those yellow eyes boring into her.

 

“The Pact, then,” Otter said.

 

“Yes, the Pact.”

 

“What do you want?”

 

“Now there is a good question. Everyone is always asking what I can give them, without regard for consequences. But this is a transaction. A…. squid pro quo.” She smiled, as if she’d made the most clever joke in the world, but Otter had nearly been killed by those tentacles, had felt them in her mind. “I am bound by rules. I can only empower someone born of the Islands or the ocean, my Domain. But you are such a delightful loophole. You weren’t born in any of the Domains. And your first step in this realm was in mine. And even better, you made a choice, during your little… ‘character creation.’”

 

The Dreamer held a hand up, and a rune appeared in the air above it. 

 

“That looks familiar,” Otter said.

 

“It should. You picked it, when given a choice for your gender. You selected yourself to be a Daughter of Silaya. That, more than anything else, makes you mine.” There was a fierceness to her voice, a possessiveness. 

 

“I mean, sure, I picked that rune, but it didn’t do anything. Except…” Huh. She’d already gotten used to it, that weird feeling in her belly.

 

“There’s many terms for it, both in this world, and in yours. Daughter of Silaya. Pelanoa. Hermaphrodite. Intersex. Futanari.” 

 

“What.”

 

“You probably haven’t noticed the changes yet. You’re a naturally flirty personality, but even so, it’s been dialled up a tad. You’ve been running around in a low-level state of arousal, but you haven’t activated yet, so to speak.”

 

As if the mental invasion hadn’t been enough. Otter couldn’t even begin to figure out how to process this information. She opened her mouth, tried to make some line of inquiry, some kind of question, and nothing came out. 

 

“You’re going to need a demonstration, I see. Very well.”

 

The Dreamer snapped her fingers, and suddenly Rua was there. But she wasn’t the same. For one, she was naked, something Otter very much couldn’t help but notice. She tried to look away, but her eyes would not listen to her, tried to turn her head, but her neck would not respond, tried to shield her face with her hands, but they would not move. She was trapped, forced to look on by the Dreamer’s will.

 

Otter had given some idle thought to how Rua would look naked, and she exceeded expectations. Small breasts, but perfectly proportioned to her frame, an ass you could only get from crafting with exercise, but most of all, muscle. Rua wasn’t jacked, but she was toned all over, from her arms, to her legs, and to her abs that look like they could grate cheese. Otter couldn’t look away from those abs. 

 

Almost as an afterthought, Otter noticed that Rua was covered in similar patterns to the ones that adorned her own skin, but these were drawn in a red clay. Her hair was different, too. Shorter, a pixie cut rather than a messy bob. 

 

“I’ve come to make a Pact,” Rua said, staring right at the Dreamer. If she even saw Otter, she gave no indication.

 

Was… was this a past version of Rua? An illusion? Or somehow pulled from the river of time to this moment? 

 

Otter tried to say something, just to make noise. But nothing worked. She could not move. She was powerless to act.

 

“Yes, yes,” the Dreamer said. “No one ever comes to say hello. It’s always ‘Pact this,’ and ‘Pact that.’ Ask, Child of Criobani.”

 

Rua shifted awkwardly. She crossed her arms, and shrank in on herself. “I… I was told by my patron that I could be useful. If I have a Pact. I… I need the power.”

 

“Poor little bastard half-breed, asking for power.” There had been a banter, almost a playfulness to the Dreamer’s tone when speaking with Otter. Not here. Here, there was only open disdain. “You are barely one of mine. Perhaps I refuse to acknowledge you, just like your father did.”

 

“That’s… that’s not the Silayan way.”

 

“What do you know of Silaya? What could you know? You are tainted, stained in a way that will never come clean. There is an expression a visitor had tucked away in their mind I’d never heard before. ‘Sins of the father.’ And you are dripping in them.”

 

“Please,” Rua said. “I need this. I need to be… useful.”

 

“Kneel.”

 

It wasn’t a question or a request, and Rua took note of that faster than Otter did. She all but fell on her face in her haste to comply. The Dreamer stared at her impassively, and then removed her heels, the shoes clattering on the floor before disappearing. There was no command, no word spoken, but Rua scrambled forward to kiss each of the Dreamer’s feet once. 

 

Rua looked up, and the Dreamer arched an eyebrow. She went back to work, kissing each foot in turn, at an increasingly frantic pace. When the Dreamer said nothing, Rua upped her game, licking her feet, even taking a toe into her mouth and sucking on it.

 

Sami had always been a dominating personality, and this kind of thing wasn’t outside of the norm for her. More than a time or two, Otter had been dommed just like this by her, and while she normally would’ve found it hot, just seeing Rua in this state was having the opposite effect on her arousal. This was just cruelty. She struggled against her invisible bonds, but her body just could not respond.

 

“Enough,” the Dreamer said, but this time there was a different tone to her voice. Approval. “You did good.”

 

Rua looked up, and then she was in the Dreamer’s lap, here and then there. The Dreamer stroked Rua’s hair, running her fingers through it.

 

“Do you want to be my daughter?” the Dreamer asked.

 

“Yes,” Rua hissed.

 

“Do you want to be loved? Accepted?”

 

“Yes.”

 

The Dreamer placed her thumb inside Rua’s mouth, who eagerly began to suck on it. “Only good girls can be my daughters. Are you a good girl?”

 

Rua moaned, not breaking away from her task, and nodded. There was a glassiness to her eyes, pleading.

 

Something stirred in Otter, something buried deep. She could feel a shifting. Something inside of her was begging to be let out, and she knew exactly what it was. The Dreamer watched her with an amused smile, Sami’s body playing with Rua. Otter tried to hold it back, to deny it. What the fuck kind of perverted game was this that this was happening to her. Everything about this part of the game was just fucked up, and she wanted out, she wanted–

 

“Yes, you are a good girl,” the Dreamer said, and Otter didn’t know if she was talking to her or Rua. “You will be my daughter, accepted and loved, flaws and all. I will watch over you, my hand always on your heart, and stay away the worst of the pain. You will be mine, my instrument. You want that, don’t you?”

 

Rua nodded fiercely, drool dripping down her chin.

 

“Look at how easily you submit. You’re so good at that. What if I could arrange a playmate for you? Someone you could submit to all of the time?”

 

Otter didn’t know who made that whining sound. 

 

The Dreamer leaned in, and placed a kiss on Rua’s ear. She whispered, but Otter could still hear every word. “I have someone already picked out for you. She’ll take good care of you, just like you deserve. All you need to do is be a good girl for her, just like you are for me.”

 

Otter shouted, growled, yelled, screamed, she didn’t know what she did, but a dam inside of her burst, and she could feel the cock she had been denying erupt from her, growing from her nether regions. 

 

Rua nodded along, murmuring a sloppy “Yes” around the thumb in her mouth. 

 

“Good. I name you Lieseeker, daughter.” And then the Dreamer turned to face Otter. “And you… you, I name Fateweaver.”