Talla's Fallen Temple Ch. 03

"Illya," she answered, quietly as she could manage.

"Try to relax, Illya," he told her, his concern covering a great many layers of confidence. "It'll work. I'll get you out of there."

Get her out of there? Did he mean -? How did he know?

Her surprise must have shown on her face because he gave her a reassuring wink when she retrieved the chalice and set it aside.

He did know, then.

A flash lit into Illya's brain. She saw Nadine and Anzha up in audience. She saw Yua and her two new friends. Of course. They weren't here just to see her, but also to take a look at Zhair'lo, the one who had freed them from their long skirts. Zhair'lo must have learned of the plights of the Sealed Virgins from them.

She seized his erection with both hands, surprising him with her swiftness.

At that moment when she took hold of his penis, the thing that struck her the most about his expression was his humanity. She'd done this with twelve boys already: nine for her Initiation and three tries at her first upgrade. If there was one thing that she clearly remembered of the majority, it was the utter beastliness of their behaviour. Like rutting bulls, they had grunted their careless ways to orgasm, spraying their semen all over her. A few, true enough, had been clumsy and less brazen, but none had looked at her like this boy did.

She looked into his eyes.

Boy?

There was the honest concern in his expression. Underneath that were the layers of cool confidence that could come only from true expertise and never from arrogance. Beneath that, deep inside those black pupils that were widened by the darkness of the Chamber, there was something else.

Darkness. He'd seen things. Illya knew that she was looking at someone who had seen worse things than she had. Suddenly, she felt like a child, impudent and infantile for whining about her short stay in the Dormitory when here stood, not a boy, but a man, who had seen so much worse.

Man.

She felt it in her hands as she stroked him.

"That's good," he commented, almost idly, neither patronizing nor surprised. "Not long now."

She presumed the 'long' referred to time and not size, the latter being an area in which he was clearly no slouch.

His testicles were tightening up. That was one of the signs of impending orgasm the teachers had taught her in her first week. She switched to a single hand grip, leaving her left hand free to catch what was coming.

Illya glanced up to meet his eyes, watching as his facial features pinched together even though his gaze never left her. She gave another look down at his penis and the tiny slit at its tip, ready to expel the magic-laced fluid that would set her free and make her a woman in everyone's eyes.

Another look up into his eyes. Vacant. The beast had taken over. His eyes squeezed shut and she felt his erection twitching in her hand. She turned her attention downward, watching that first pulse stream out to form a puddle in the Synergist -- dead centre on her breastbone and just above an imaginary line drawn from one of her little pink nipples to the other.

Her left hand, mindlessly deployed on the mission it had executed thrice before, began mashing his semen into the clear syrup all about her chest.

He wasn't anywhere near finished ejaculating.

Streak after streak came out of him. She played it out, continuing to jerk him in the same gentle manner for which he'd complimented her. She tried to see how long she could make each streak, trying to get it to stretch from one nipple across to the other.

Each stream, laid in the syrup, was immediately smeared into her flesh.

Even as he began to draw flaccid, she softly milked out the last drops. She looked up through her eyelashes to see that his senses had returned with all of their layers and a new, palpable aura of relief percolating through all of it. Their eyes met, briefly, before he nodded at her chest and sat back on his heels.

She looked back down and started using both of her hands to massage her flat chest.

Warmth.

Not just warmth.

Heat. Real Heat.

A bit of pain came with it. Her flesh hurt.

Something else, too.

There was a faint blue glow coming from ... coming from her breasts. They were growing right before her eyes.

She inhaled excitedly and began massaging herself with greater enthusiasm.

It was working. Freedom at last. Womanhood and everything that went with it.

Heaving with his exertion, Zhair'lo sat back and watched her carefully.

"It worked," she reassured him.

Couldn't he see that? Why the worry in his expression?

"As promised," he said, a light smile covering his concern.

"Nine gods," she said, looking at her breasts as they reached handful-size.

"You're okay?" he asked.

She nodded. What was he worried about?

"Fine," she told him. "Just a little heat and stretching."

"Good," he said, relaxing finally. "Good."

Attendants arrived with wet towels. A few of the torches near the exit doors were lit as a safety precaution. The incessant drumming had ceased. Even the generally enforced rules about silence were relaxed as whispers could be heard up in the seats.

Zhair'lo took his brown kilt from an Initiate and refastened it round his waist. With a wink and what must have been his second or third sigh of relief, he followed the rules of the the ritual and departed.

Illya sat on her altar, waiting a few moments for the sound of Zhair'lo's exit, before she dismounted. An attendant, a Virgin in a knee-length skirt, handed Illya her top back. She didn't bother putting it on. There was no rule that said she had to.

Besides, it wouldn't fit anymore, would it?

She looked at the girl in front of her again.

'You're Abundance,' she made a silent and stunned realization, 'and mine are bigger than yours.'

Illya looked up into the darkness where hundreds of women watched from safe anonymity. She wanted to scream at them. She wanted to yell, "Look! Breasts! Look at me! I'm not ashamed! Send your pity elsewhere!"

Instead she settled for one deep inhalation, heaving her chest at them, before she departed and went through the door to the examination room. She knew what to do here, same as before: find a bed; sit on the end of it; wait for a doctor.

The difference was that her three previous visits had been preceded by failure. The first had been confusing. She hadn't even known that she'd failed. How was she to know her breasts could grow so quickly? Had anyone told her how big she should expect them to get? Then came the disappointing news, the pity in the doctor's eyes -- that shameful look that had followed her all the days since.

Not anymore. Not one week more, not one day more, not one damned bell more.

She sat on the edge of that bed, her arms folded under her proudly displayed breasts. It wasn't quite a smile on her face -- she knew that -- it was something else that a casual onlooker would take for a smile.

The physician arrived.

"Well," she said, "it looks like our hero has done it again."

Illya twitched at this.

"Congratulations," the woman said with a nod. "Let me see."

Putting her hands behind her back, Illya surrendered herself to her medical ministrations. She inhaled sharply when foreign fingers first touched her enlarged flesh.

"Heightened sensitivity is normal," the doctor noted in that dispassionate voice typical of the medical profession. "Especially after a double upgrade."

"Double?" Illya asked. "I got a double, too?"

"Undoubtedly," the physician remarked as she continued to gently knead and squeeze Illya's breasts. "Our young Conduit is very tricky to control, as I understand it."

So it hadn't been an illusion, that her breasts were larger than those of the girl who'd handed back her clothing.

Illya endured the rest of the examination in stunned silence. She couldn't understand her own feelings. She'd been so angry and bitter -- and that hadn't gone away -- but something had changed and it wasn't just in her body. Something inside her had changed, too. She concentrated on catching her breath and trying to keep the happy tingle in her spine from showing on her face.

Maybe she just hadn't believed that it would really work. Or maybe she'd just kept herself from believing too hard, to save herself from the crushing disappointment of her previous attempts.

Zhair'lo.

He was the key.

She'd always planned on signing up for Service the day after her upgrade and immediately throwing herself to the maximum pacing, fully random from the beginning. Let them pass her out to whomever came up on the list. It would go that way after the first one anyway, so why kid yourself? Just go with it. Throw yourself at it. Live it. Take all of the erections, any of them. That was the way to go.

But a new thing had struck her with Zhair'lo when she'd taken him in her hands.

Here was one who knew what he was doing. Age of a boy, but years in his eyes that spoke of a man's wisdom.

He would do it right and, since the Temple gave her the option, she would have him do it to her.

The physician departed to copy notes down somewhere. Since she hadn't dismissed Illya yet, Illya waited contentedly on the edge of her bed.

A small, brown-haired head poked out from around her curtain.

"Hi," the girl said, timidly.

Illya recognized her at once, this sudden arrival sending a chill of excitement through her body again. This was the one she'd seen high up in the gallery; the one who'd seen right through her fake humility and obedience.

"Hi," Illya said, vaguely welcoming.

The girl stepped out from behind the curtain, revealing herself to be an Initiate with breasts even larger than Illya's. That didn't seem right, but it was a secondary concern.

"I'm Talla," the girl said. "I think we should talk when you get out of here."

Words wouldn't come out, so Illya simply nodded in agreement.

Talla gave a slight nod of her head and slipped back out of sight.