Talla's Fallen Temple Ch. 19

Complicated mathematics had come into vogue, then, about two hundred years later. Scientists – genealogists – had tried to play the numbers, to make sense of the randomness, to find a piece of music where there was only the rustling of wind through the trees.

Maksa could see the temptation. Occasionally there did seem to be a pattern. A grouping of Catatonic men on one side of the tree almost seemed to lead to a Heroic after three generations.

She winced.

'Almost, but not quite.'

Something was missing.

But what?

She sighed.

Well, there was no use looking if she wanted to find something that wasn't there.

Maksa closed her grey-verging-on-purple eyes and thought.

-----------===================-------------

Standing in front of Sweetness's small gate, Zhair'lo had to admit that the Seal Breaking Summons in his hand made a lot of sense. The moment that the Temple became aware of his intention to join the Fighters, they would naturally want to use his Seal Breaking abilities as much as possible. Everyone seemed to know the Fighters were given to long stints of work far away from the city centre.

'So I'm here,' he thought. 'Waiting.'

"Hello," a boy called out.

Zhair'lo sized him up. A bit on the stocky side, just coming into the confidence of his body but not quite there yet. He stood as if he was about to either spring at Zhair'lo to attack him or jump and skitter away into the cool darkness of the evening.

Faintly, at the edge of his consciousness, he noted the boy seemed familiar somehow. It had to be someone Talla had Served. He was sure it was no acquaintance of his own.

The kid looked up at the gate with a nervous kind of excitation.

"Shen," he said breathlessly, by way of introduction, without looking at Zhair'lo.

"Zhair'lo."

"You done this before?"

A first timer. Zhair'lo tried to remember when the sheer anxiety of being admitted to the Temple had seemed new to him. Feeling obliged to at least try to put the guy at ease, he softened his expression.

"Yes. Your first time tonight?"

Shen's face darkened, but only for a moment, like a cloud passing quickly in front of the sun.

"No," he said. "Second."

He turned to face Zhair'lo. Standing this close, Zhair'lo realized that Shen was both taller and older than himself. It hadn't seemed so, at first, such was his stance and skittishness.

"I'm sure I can handle it, though," Shen said, and all the firmness in his voice told Zhair'lo that this was not bravado but stark honesty.

Zhair'lo drew from this that the first upgrade hadn't gone well. Shen's attitude more or less prevented any discussion of whatever had gone wrong. If the guy thought he had it under control, so be it. He wondered if Zo'kar was going to show up.

"Done Sweetness before?" he asked Shen, who had turned back to face the gate.

"No."

"It's kinda neat, here," Zhair'lo said. "Nicer than Form at least, unless you get to do a Facial."

Shen squinted a moment before looking at Zhair'lo.

"How many have you done?"

"I – uh -"

How many had he done? He'd lost count. Maybe he could remember their names: Talla; Nadine; Anzha; Yua ..

Shen was looking at him, one eyebrow raised.

Right.

"A dozen or so, I guess," he answered, wishing that he'd actually kept proper track.

That got a wide eyed stare.

"At least one of each Discipline?"

"Yeah," Zhair'lo replied ruefully. "They did that on purpose, I imagine."

"Did what?"

"I'm a Seal Breaker, y'see. When girls can't seem to get their first upgrade to work, I go in and try again for them. So I've tried every Discipline by now because – I'm guessing – they want to make sure I can work on anything."

Shen was still staring, but a smile slowly broke across his face.

"Should I be impressed?"

Zhair'lo shrugged and turned to look through the gate.

"I'm a sledgehammer, is all," he said. "They want to make sure they can use me against any kind of wall."

That stopped Shen, at least, from feeling too envious.

"Seems like coming all over chicks would be fun."

"Yeah, it is," Zhair'lo twisted his lips in a half grin. "Plus, a lot of them come for a visit the next night."

This won a smile from the other boy, who even seemed to blush a bit.

"Here she comes," Zhair'lo said, jerking his head toward the gate.

"Huh?"

The gate was raised briefly so they could be beckoned in by a woman in a yellow outfit. Zhair'lo was a bit disappointed. He had been hoping to see the same woman he and Zo'kar had met the first time; the one in the transparent skirt. This wasn't so much for himself as he wanted to see the look on Shen's face,

"Come on, you two," she said. "The others are already waiting inside."

There was a visible change in Shen's attitude. It wasn't fear, exactly, but the bravado had disappeared quite suddenly.

"Y'okay?"

Shen only nodded solemnly, his demeanour having ticked completely over.

By the time she led them to the building Zhair'lo well recognized as the Sweetness's Augmentation Chamber, Shen seemed intent on biting through his lower lip.

Inside, in the little classroom they used for briefings, two boys his age were already seated, facing the front. They twisted around as the newcomers entered and Zhair'lo was pleased to see one of them was Zo'kar.

"Zhai!" he exclaimed as he rose out of his chair. "Good to see ya back. I've had to handle all the Seals without you. Where've you been?"

"Hunting," Zhair'lo replied with a shrug. "I trust you haven't screwed anything up?"

They exchanged a brief, back-pounding embrace. Zhair'lo was about to introduce Shen when the woman stepped up to the front of the room and rapped her knuckles on the desk behind her.

Now that they had some light, Zhair'lo was able to give her a once over. The yellow silk blouse, embroidered with gold floral patterns, covered a nice size pair of breasts, at least for a Sweetness woman. As well, while her hair was fantastically done and her eyes a brilliant blue, she didn't have the air of a Facial woman. Her attitude, in fact, rather reminded him of the stern Form women who had given him instructions in the past.

"We're short on time," she explained, "and this will be a heavy night, what with the four of you and ten more after that. Let's be about it."

Fourteen, Zhair'lo realized, was quite out of the ordinary. Someone whose memory he had drained had told him the average night was much lower than that.

"Zhair'lo, Zo'kar," she rattled off. "You've been here before and you know how delicate things are. Zo'kar will be doing a Within upgrade and Zhair'lo will do Lips. Your job is to keep the tips of your penises away from where they shouldn't be. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Mistress," they replied in unison.

She immediately dismissed them from her attention.

"Jake, Shen. Pay attention closely. Sweetness upgrades are unlike any others. There's a degree of precision required here that wouldn't matter anywhere else."

Zhair'lo sat back next to Zo'kar, and watched as the woman discarded her skirt and spread her legs toward the four boys. It was tough to decide, Zhair'lo thought, whether to give his undivided attention to the immaculate genitals displayed in front of him, or to devote a small share of his brainpower to studying the shocked looks on the faces of the other two boys.

"Shen," she said. "You will be doing a Pussy upgrade. The Source will turn her hips, like so, to make it easier for you to rub against her pubic hair without touching the cleavage of her lips. Do you understand? You must not come in contact with her lips until you are certain you have Seized."

"Seized?" Shen let the query burst out of him.

Zhair'lo raised an eyebrow at this, but the woman in yellow went on smoothly.

"You can only hold one Discipline at a time," she calmly addressed both boys. "Once you have Seized to that one Discipline, you will be safe from any accidental collisions. At the start however, you must be careful."

The discussion went on and it became apparent that this was Jake's first upgrade, so absolutely everything had to be explained to him, from the Protocol for handing off the Synergist to the time and manner of bowing and finally the proper targeting of his ejaculation.

When the instruction was complete, she replaced her skirt and stood up.

"Sienna, dear?" she called to a woman at the door.

"Mistress?"

"Lead these boys down to the Waiting Room, please."

As they filed out, Jake looking far more stunned than Zhair'lo remembered himself being the first time this had been explained to him, the woman in yellow coughed very lightly, just enough to get Zhair'lo's attention. When he turned to look, she beckoned him over.

"Listen," she said, a hint of actual worry in her voice. "That boy, Shen, is a bit of a tough case."

"Some trouble with his last attempt?"

She jerked back in surprise, but quickly shook her head in what Zhair'lo knew was a gesture of concern over the time.

"Yes. We don't think it was his fault, but it caused him no small amount of trauma."

Zhair'lo tilted his head in acknowledgement of this. There was a part of him that wanted to know exactly what had gone wrong, but a much larger part of him felt it would have been a violation of Shen's privacy. Consequently, he said nothing.

"We're putting him third, just before you," she said. "Try to keep him calm. You should be able to give a man's point of view of how these things go, much more clearly than I possibly could."

"You think he'll have problems?"

She let out a breath of air.

"We're pretty sure he won't, but we'd appreciate you keeping his nerves down."

He thought about this for a moment.

"Why not let him go first, then?"

"What's that?"

Zhair'lo knew pretence when he saw it. The woman had given a false, panicked look over his shoulder only after he had asked the question. She was feigning that time was pressing in order to avoid answering.

He squared his shoulders and enunciated clearly.

"If you're worried about his nerves, why not let him go first?" Zhair'lo asked. "And why didn't he know what it meant to Seize, if he's tried this before?"

She twisted her lips, somewhat spoiling the beauty of her face.

"As I said," her voice soured. "The failure of his previous upgrade was likely not his fault."

The rushed look came over her face again.

"You really must get going."

'Not likely,' he thought. 'If we're number three and four on the schedule, we have plenty of time.'

But he also knew a few other things. The first was that this woman who had not even given them her name wasn't going to tell him anything more about the reasons for the upgrade order. The second was that he didn't really need that piece of information. The third was that, given how unimportant it was, there was no use pissing her off by insisting further.

With a shrug – because, oh, how they hated shrugging – he jogged off down the hall to catch up with the others.

"What was that about?" Shen asked.

"Some nonsense about Seal Breaking," he tried not to let guilt of lying show on his face.

"What's that?" Jake wondered nervously.

"Some girls," Zo'kar put in, "can't take their first upgrades very well. Just doesn't work. They call it being 'Sealed'."

"Oh."

"So guys like me and Zo'kar come in and we try a little harder," Zhair'lo added, wondering if this would make Shen more or less nervous.

"Apparently, it's a rare ability, this breaking of Seals," Zo'kar threw in.

Zhair'lo was about to add something about how Sealed Virgins were rare and they were usually thrown in after the new girls, since new girls went every night and always got first dibs. He caught himself short when something occurred to him.

How had it always been done? The new guys – the ones who had been chosen by their own Virgins – had normally gone first, hadn't they? After that, he alone or he and Zo'kar would do the Sealed ones.

But here was Shen, right in the middle.

Zhair'lo's answer to Shen's question echoed back to him: 'Some nonsense about Seal Breaking.'

He hadn't lied after all, except maybe the bit about it being nonsense. Something strange was happening with Shen. They were testing him for more than just his ability to control himself through an upgrade.

What was so special about Shen?

'Shen?'

That was Talla, coming through suddenly.

'What about Shen?'

'He's here, doing an upgrade.'

'He's the one who came in my mouth. No control at all.'

'Apparently he found some.'

Talla revealed to Zhair'lo her interview from the day before.

'So he's changed,' she thought. 'And they're retesting him. Good for him.'

'Not just retesting,' Zhair'lo answered. 'They're letting him try a Sealed Virgin.'

'Whoa.'

Talla disappeared again, one of them or both being distracted by external events.

Zhair'lo's attention returned to Shen.

"How ya feelin'?"

"Good," he said, his voice emotionless.

Zhair'lo nodded amicably, keeping his expression light and relaxed.

"Just try to keep cool," he told the novice. "It's easy stuff."

"I'm sure I can handle it," Shen said, though his nervous swallowing hurt his credibility.

The moment they passed out of the hallway into the little waiting room, Jake was beckoned straight through the door at the opposite end of the room. The other three were left to take seats on the benches with the much larger men who were casually chatting there.

"It's pretty straightforward," Zhair'lo explained to Shen. "Two girls are in that room between here and the Augmentation Chamber. They get you ready – and clean. They really want us to be clean for this, I guess."

Shen nodded. He would know all this already, wouldn't he?

"Anything you're worried about?"

Did it make sense to ask a question like that? Zhair'lo cursed himself.

"Naw," Shen said. "I'm sure I'll be fine this time."

They sat silently for only a short time before the Priming Room door opened and Zo'kar was called for.

It gave Zhair'lo a moment to think. If Shen really was attempting to break a Seal, it meant that there were Sealed Virgins lined up for tonight.

That spoke to a sudden rush, compared to the schedule the Temple had been setting, as well as a certain callousness. Somewhere out there, in another waiting room, were three Sweetness Virgins who had been stuck in the half-life of not-quite-adulthood. They had been denied the right to education and equal treatment with their sisters for weeks, if not months.

And what were the leaders of Sweetness doing? Testing Shen out on one of them? Did they give a gods-damned fuck about anything, high up in those Offices?

Zhair'lo had never actually seen any of the Offices, but he had an idea from impressions stolen out of Talla's brain that 'up' was the right direction.

He remembered Nadine and that Seal of hers that he'd broken so long ago. The anguish came to his mind first, followed closely by her compassion for those similarly trapped and ill treated. The pain and humiliation of that state had come so strongly through the mesh that her demand that he also free her sisters had hardly needed making. She'd merely had to point out the problem to get his assistance.

Through all of that, the path of his thoughts came back to Shen.

"You do look pretty steady."

"Yeah," Shen smiled. "Things have been going really well for me since Talla."

Zhair'lo tried not to twitch.

"Talla?"

Shen nodded.

"Take a deep breath, that's what she taught me."

"Deep breaths are good," Zhair'lo agreed.

"Got me through that weird test," he grinned. "After that, I'm pretty sure I can hold out against anything."

Shen had been tested?

"You planning to join the Hunters?" Zhair'lo asked.

"Huh? No. Why -?"

It was at that point that the door swung open again, smooth on its brass hinges, and the woman in yellow stepped out.

"Shen M'han?"

He nearly jumped off his bench.

"Yes, Mistress."

"Deep breath," Zhair'lo whispered a reminder.

Shen smirked, duly reminded, and calmly walked through the door.

Zhair'lo wondered if he'd done enough. The only oath he really cared about was the one he'd made to Nadine. He didn't feel any particular debt toward Shen, except maybe because the guy was a decent enough human being and decent human beings ought to look out for each other.

So what if the Temple found another Seal Breaker? He didn't see how the Temple gained any benefit from it, besides a slight increase in the throughput of Virgins as they were transformed into useful workers. It was a load off his mind, really, knowing there was Zo'kar and possibly Shen to back him up while he was off with the Fighters. How many Sealed Virgins were left anyway?

No, it couldn't matter, strategically speaking. For all the good that a Seal Breaker could do the Temple, Zhair'lo was willing to do it anyway. Helping Shen calm down, if indeed he had helped at all, had not aided his enemy.

It was, at most, a quarter bell before they called him through, and that was neither here nor there, as far as such things went.

The woman in the yellow skirt waved him in and was already leaving by the side door by the time he got in to the little tiled room.

"You know the Protocol, by now," she tossed over her shoulder, more than a hint of weariness in her voice. "V'shika and Lila will see to you."

It was fortunate, therefore, that he hadn't seen the two girls in white and that she wasn't looking at him when she said their names.

"V'shika?"

"In the flesh," she said. "I've found a job I really like at last."

Her expression turned a bit cold.

"At least for now."

"Lila," Zhair'lo said with a polite nod.

He had never figured out how to be courteous in these situations. It was best left up to the girls, really. Historically, they'd never been shy, and these two came through as well as any others. Their clothes were off in an instant.

V'shika, he knew rather intimately, was Within. With a glance at Lila's crotch, he was able to discern her Discipline as well.

"Pussy," Lila said, helpfully. "It's okay to look."

Rather proud of herself, then, she walked around behind him and led his hand to her patch of light, fuzzy hair while her companion knelt and made quick work of his pants.

"We'll get these back to you later," V'shika promised, throwing them on a bench.

Zhair'lo found that Lila was unlacing his shirt and pulling it over his head. This too was tossed aside. Had this been Form, the two Primers would have made a show of walking over to the bench and folding his clothes so very neatly whilst bent over at the waist. Sweetness didn't have such gifts to display; only Lila's fine hair upon his fingertips.

They nudged him over toward the shower faucet and the three of them were liberally dosed with hot water so they could soap him up and rinse him down again. As always, they were extra careful with his growing erection – both that it was tenderly handled and thoroughly cleaned.

"You never know," V'shika explained to Lila, "what Sorceress he might be rubbing up against tonight."

So V'shika had done this before and was training Lila? Zhair'lo, knowing V'shika as he did, knew that the girl was stroking her own ego just a bit, exaggerating the difference in experience levels. At the same time, Lila clearly was nervous.

"I'll go first," V'shika declared. "You towel him down."

With that, she knelt and took his already quite erect penis in her mouth. She was proud of herself, it seemed, having achieved whatever success she had found in her role as a Primer. At the same time, her shining adoration for Zhair'lo was clear in the devotion that blazed out of her eyes and into his. That, unlike her shameless self-promotion, was sincere and without exaggeration.

Lila was at his back again and he found her crotch with one hand while she wrapped her arms around his chest and nibbled at his ear.