Talla's Fallen Temple Ch. 27

The temperature shock reinvigorated Zhair'lo enough he managed to stay on his feet to exchange hygienic favours and nothing more. The rush inspired by their orders meant a quick and official cleaning on their way to whatever came next.

Every now and then, through the soap and water, he would catch the weary eyes of another Recruit.

'We did this,' they seemed to say to each other, and a wry grin would come to both their faces.

The Veterans, meanwhile, kept up a loud and raucous chorus accompanied by a lot more ass-slapping than he would have expected, but he'd never showered with them until today.

'And nine gods, the women ...'

The cold water, contrary to his expectations, was re-energizing him in more ways than one.

It was Aloe who caught Zhair'lo looking, his eyes lingering somewhere in the vicinity of the light fuzz of hair she kept in a neat triangular patch between her legs. Realizing her gaze was upon him, he twitched to look up at her face, but she only winked and grinned before turning smoothly away like a wet statue on a rotating pedestal.

'Nine gods. How can I be turned on after a day like this?'

The answer came to him instantly, even as Zia drenched him with another blast of soap clearing water: they'd trained him for this, just like everything else.

They towelled off quickly and starting getting dressed again. Zhair'lo found a clean pair of underwear and his leather shorts, which he laced up quickly. The laundry attendants had provided a clean, white undershirt too, but he could find no sign of his leather top.

"You got a top?" Zhair'lo asked Zia.

"Doesn't look like it," she searched the clothing rack. "Just a shirt, same as you."

Always in a rush, she had put her shirt on before she'd completely dried herself. The white fabric clung to her breasts and abdomen, wrinkling against her skin until she yanked on the hem and straightened the shirt out.

"I'm sure it'll dry off once we're out of here," she swore confidently.

As they stepped out into a world of red clouds and streaming horizontal beams of sunlight, Zhair'lo nodded in a way he hoped indicated sage agreement. Any embarrassment Zia might have felt about the moist prominence of her nipples in the cooling evening air was immediately assuaged by a combination of the evening's darkness and the sudden exodus of the other Recruits from the showers.

A brief discussion ensued about the missing halves of their armour before they headed to the mess. Copious amounts of water greeted their loud entrance and Zhair'lo noticed that, for once, their boisterousness matched any group of Veteran Fighters that had ever gathered in the mess. The thought fled his mind, however, as a low part of his brain directed him straight to the table covered in pitchers of water.

The Recruits grabbed several pitchers and cups and immediately claimed a table for themselves as more and more Veterans started filing in. Some of them had come from the showers, the same who had been patrolling with Zhair'lo and his comrades, while others were coming from elsewhere. Though just as loud as the Recruits, they moved to the water table in a decidedly more patient manner. Zhair'lo shrugged off a nagging feeling of inferiority, reminding himself that he had plenty of time and room to grow.

Besides, they were having a party of sorts, weren't they?

The room filled quickly and it soon seemed the gathering had attracted every Fighter Zhair'lo had ever met, except possibly the Rangers. He tried to imagine the blonde Ranger Hera, or her darker complexioned companion Seh-tin, hanging out with this crowd. Did Rangers ever do this sort of thing? Naturally quiet and careful, such loners didn't belong here.

His thoughts cut off abruptly as a loud voice bellowed for attention. Benches slid out and voices silenced as the entire room came to its feet.

"Master Kendrik, sir," a female voice called out.

The sturdy, grizzled man walked down the centre aisle of the mess, turning to look back at all those gathered only when he reached the single step between floor and dais.

"As you were," he growled.

They quickly took their seats and Kendrik surveyed the room. Someone from the kitchen quickly lit the three wall-mounted torches behind the dais. Another brought a small, folding table, about hip height, up onto the dais a step to the right of the Master Fighter.

"Ji'ann?" Kendrick waved his left hand at the table beside him.

"Sir," the tall dark woman walked the same aisle, carrying a stack of neatly folded leather in her arms.

"Thank you," Kendrick gave a pleasant half smile when she laid the garments down on the table.

As Ji'ann slipped off to the side of the stage, Kendrick hooked his thumbs in his belt.

"When I came to this town - he Gods know how many years ago -" there was some deep, quiet laughter at this, "I was intent on making this unit Serve the Temple better than it ever had."

"We made a lot of changes," he stared directly at the Recruits. "We broke a lot of rules. A few were even broken in a rather spectacular manner, you may have noticed."

Zhair'lo felt those cold eyes boring into his skull and had to wonder if this man had been told about his interaction with Talla. As the evening had turned to night, the darkness in the mess had deepened. Master Kendrick stood silhouetted in a pool of torchlight on the dais while the rest of the room faded away.

"We eat together. We drink together. We sleep together. And for all that, we work together far better than we did when I first arrived."

"After tonight, you eight will be Fighters. Not just that, you will be the sorts of Fighters who can win battles and - this is the important bit - survive battles. I have no desire to train your replacements, understand?"

This was funny, at least to the Veterans, who gave it a rousing cheer.

"Yeah, yeah," Kendrick politely waved them to silence. His eyes focused again on the Recruits. "You will fight. You will defend this Temple. You will survive. And you will do all of that because you are never afraid to learn more. There is no one in this room who knows everything. No one here is perfect. The battlefield will cure any woman or man of that delusion very quickly. Always be ready for a lesson."

For a moment, he pulled his shoulders back so he was addressing the entire room.

"Do you understand?!" he shouted.

"Yes, sir!" they shouted back, Recruits and Veterans alike.

"Good," he nodded and cleared his throat. "Good. Ji'ann?"

There was some bustling over in the darkness beside the stage. Zhair'lo had the vague sense that there were people over there, arranging themselves. Master Kendrick was watching them, waiting patiently, until they settled down.

"Renzi, Zhair'lo, Kit, Z'rus," Kendrick waved his right hand toward the empty left half of the stage. "Up here."

The four boys took their places facing the audience of Fighters. They lined up, thoughtlessly, as they always did when they went marching.

"Their uniforms," Master Kendrick announced.

Ji'ann stepped up to the little table and began handing out the leather tops, one after the other, to women who slipped out of the darkness. Each of the women took a place in front of the one of the Recruits, one step down. Zhair'lo decided the stage was a convenient height, for it put Aloe's eyes level with his.

"Dress them."

Smiling, Aloe leaned forward and helped Zhair'lo into his armour, tying the laces for him.

"May your sword always be sharp, Soldier," she leaned in to whisper. "And your wits sharper."

She cinched up the last lace snugly and firmly before winking and backing away.

"Soldiers," the Master Fighter ordered. "One step back."

Kendrick then called out the names of the female Recruits and repeated the procedure. Zhair'lo found himself too busy admiring the single white chevron on his uniform to make out what the women whispered into their sisters' ears as they tied their armour on.

Finally, the Veteran women walked off the side of the stage, clearing the view of those assembled.

"Barbarians are at your gates!" Kendrick cried out.

This time the new Soldiers, having repeated these words every day, knew the drill and joined their sisters and brothers.

"Stand on the wall! Or the City falls!"

"Fighters?" he asked.

"To the Fore!"

"Fighters?"

"To the Fore!"

The repeated roars shook the walls and the pounding of fists on tables rattled the tin pitchers of water.

Silence came, sudden and sharp in contrast to primal rage that preceded it.

"Never forget," Kendrick hissed into the silence. "Never forget who you are. Never forget your duty."

The silence became a deep and thoughtful meditation as a strange tension filled the room. Kendrick let this linger for a handful of heartbeats before a rare, light grin broke across his face.

"Now let's welcome these girls and boys in."

A round of applause broke out and everyone in the room began moving. Before Zhair'lo knew it, reams of people shook his hand and patted him on the back. A few more torches were lit, not enough to brighten the room, but just to make sure no one tripped over anything. From somewhere, a woman pushed a wooden mug into his hand.

Zhair'lo coughed after taking a sip. "What is this?"

"Ambrosia, Soldier," Sergeant Yung appeared at this side. "Nectar of the gods. Mead, if you'd rather."

"It smells like honey."

"It's made from honey. Drink up."

"Sir," Zhair'lo forced down another sip. It wasn't unpleasant in flavour, but it was powerfully sweet and deeply alcoholic.

Fighters still took turns to shake his hand and he slowly drifted along with the well wishes which slowly separated him from the other Recruits until a female Fighter gently bumped him into a seat. Veterans chatted with him, asking him about his last run and reminiscing about their own training. Some of them had enough years to remember times before Master Kendrick had come. These old Fighters proudly regaled him with little snippets of such ancient stories.

Zhair'lo couldn't keep up with the thread of what he heard, but tried to answer any question put to him as coherently as possible. Between the exhaustion of the run and strength of his beverage, which was getting an automatic refill every time he took a sip, his confidence in his responses reached a deep low.

Who spoke to him now? Zhair'lo tried to recall the older man's name. Cal? Callian? Callus? No, a callus resembled a blister. He tried to shake his head clear and focus his eyes. Over the man's shoulder, he saw Aloe, the sweet talking Soldier, sitting on a table and looking directly into his eyes.

He'd been embarrassed, earlier, when she'd caught him looking at her naked body in the showers, but in his drunken state he could dismiss such feelings as foolishness. Their eyes held steady contact for a few heartbeats before her gaze lowered to indicate her legs. Zhair'lo followed her down and saw that she was sitting with her legs slightly apart, her feet planted on a bench between two Fighters who faced away. Where had her armour gone? She wore the double sashes and the kind of ribbon skirt appropriate for the rank of Adept II. Most significantly, she parted the long strands of her skirt and opened her legs in his direction.

Zhair'lo gulped. Forgetting his manners and catching a glimpse of her in the showers marked him discourteous enough, but here? What about the rules? Hadn't Talla warned him about those? He felt dizzy as he tried to pull up a memory involving stars over doorways and safe places for nudity.

A sudden thought gripped him.

What had Master Kendrick said?

'We broke a lot of rules.'

Aloe's eyes drifted back up to meet his, her skirt still out of place, and he felt himself stiffen inside his shorts and armour. Zhair'lo made the sudden inference that the rule breaking had not been a single event in the past, but instead a permanent change of affairs. A goofy grin broke over his face and he felt the alcohol take hold. Across the room, Aloe slid down to the floor, the strands of her skirt falling back into place. Her eyes, not her body, held Zhair'lo in a trance as she wended her way around tables and chairs until she stood towering over him. The space between his bench and the one behind her was so small that her knees necessarily brushed against his.

"Hello, Soldier," she smiled down at him. "Feeling the strength of our nectar, are we?"

"It's good stuff," he leaned back against the table and tilted his cup up toward her in acknowledgement.

The stony old Fighter, the man whose name Zhair'lo hadn't remembered, had vacated his place on the bench. With all the dangerous intent of a venomous snake, she settled down into the empty place, somehow arranging her legs so that only one narrow strand of her yellow skirt settled between her tightly closed thighs.

Zhair'lo might have had the good sense then to gulp, or react in some other astonished way, but the power of his mead had taken him and he felt no emotion other than lust, sensed no other person in the crowded room but the smooth, muscular woman who slowly parted her legs. If a thought about rules and differences in age flitted across his brain, his lust banished it to the same place it had exiled his ability to subtract eighteen from Aloe's age.

Aloe's eyes held his as her knees touched the inside of his thighs and the yellow strand of fabric fell to hang past the light fuzz of her freshly washed mound.

With her eyes, she invited him to look down at her so she could see that the thumb-wide piece of fabric concealed only the cleavage of her lips.

"Is this what you do here?" he asked.

"It's what we do," she grabbed his collar and gently pulled him forward until their cheeks almost touched. "You're one of us now."

"What we do," he acknowledged, but had to add, "With everyone watching?"

"You've done it every night since you got here, haven't you?" her breath warmed his neck.

"In our quarters," he protested weakly. "With the other Recruits."

"You aren't Recruits anymore," she pointed out. "And it's not going to stop you now."

"It isn't?"

"It's not as dark in this room for me as it is for you," Aloe snaked a hand along his bare knee and under his leathers. "I can see what your body is telling me."

Zhair'lo exhaled as she touched him, a light tingling graze along the top of the base of his burgeoning erection.

"See?" she hissed in his ear. "You'll be fine. And you're mine, at least at first. I saw you looking in the shower."

So Aloe had claimed him, then? Zhair'lo wondered how that had been worked out with the other women. While he wondered, she loosened the ties on his leather pants.

"I saw you first, when we found Merelda," he said suddenly.

"I don't remember being naked then," she paused in her efforts.

"No," Zhair'lo shook his head to clear his thoughts as a gleam came to his eyes. "I saw you running, then, moving so fast with your bow notched and ready."

"Ah."

She laid aside his leathers.

"You gave me a place in the firing line," he looked as deeply into her eyes as he could manage in his drunken state. "Why?"

"Because you knew what you were doing," she shrugged. "I could tell."

Her explanation was incomplete, but Zhair'lo couldn't say how or why. Nor could he question her further. She pulled down his underwear far enough to let his erection pop free and brought an end to casual discourse.

"Not shy, then," she remarked, stroking him to hardness.

"We're really going to ... here?"

Zhair'lo looked around the noisy room briefly and realized that almost no one was paying him any attention, though a couple of women sitting at the table behind Aloe looked on with vaguely enthusiastic interest.

"I'm ready," Aloe smiled again. "Aren't you?"

Zhair'lo couldn't deny the fact in his lap, but the look on her face gave him pause.

"Your smile and your voice," he said.

"Yes?"

"Are you Facial?"

"Clever boy," Aloe said. "Yes, I am"

"And a Fighter anyway?"

"A story for another day," she chided gently. "But since you mentioned it ..."

Aloe's head bobbed down into his lap, taking his full size erection completely into her mouth. It shouldn't have fit, but he realized she'd angled her mouth to let the head of his shaft reach into her throat. As quickly as she did it, she came off again, glaring at him with eyes that sparkled green in the torchlight.

"Nine gods."

"Yeah," she nodded. "Now let's get this started."

Aloe stepped over his bench to straddle him. Between her sudden act of oral sex and wetness of her own vagina, it was no trouble to lower herself on to him and let his erection slide inside her.

They both moaned in appreciation.

"No mesh?" Zhair'lo peered at her in sudden worry.

"Your drink," she pointed out, as if it should have been obvious they had slipped him something. "Try not to come right away, alright?"

"Why?" he felt his worry increasing.

Aloe started twisting her hips around in gentle circles. He felt the bones in her legs grinding against his thighs.

"They'd be disappointed," she threw a graceful flick of her hair toward the women behind her.

Zhair'lo did finally gulp. In one respect, he was relieved they hadn't given him the potion for preventing his orgasm. The night running with Rh'ris, Erin and En'tha had been one of the least pleasant in his young life. On the other hand, a performance was still expected of him here.

He wondered if this would be any more difficult than doing Upgrades.

Aloe placed her hands on the table behind Zhair'lo, pushing him back and forcing her chest into his face.

'Yes,' he thought. 'Yes, it's gong to be harder.'

"We see things," she whispered down over his head. "We women of Facial. Things others don't see."

"Like what?"

"You were looking at my pussy in the shower," she said. "An aimless accident, that. You're a breast man, through and through."

Zhair'lo didn't know what to say.

"So undress me already," she hissed at him, shrugging her shoulders to make it easier.

The sashes came off quickly over her lowered shoulders. The bikini top underneath was laced once at the back.

"Abundance and Point," Zhair'lo remarked, since he needed something to say.

"Can you count them?" she murmured, pushing her hips down as hard as he could.

"Two Abundance and one Point," he confirmed, holding off his orgasm with all his effort.

"So clever," she admired, and pushed her left breast into his eager mouth.

Zhair'lo sucked up her nipple, aureola and all and began running his tongue in circles over her flesh.

"Very nice," she pulled her breast away from his mouth. "That really is your thing."

He tried to formulate a response, but she brought her lips to his and he suddenly knew the kiss of a woman of Facial. Six upgrades and all of her enthusiasm went into that gentle, deliberate meeting of flesh and Zhair'lo found himself unable to match her skill.

"Sadly," she said, breaking away with a somber dip of her eyebrows, "my time is up."

"Time?"

Slowly, she lifted herself off his erection. He felt a light but cool breeze easing its way over his cock, working its way toward the tip as he left the warmth of Aloe's tunnel.

With a wince of sorrow rather than pain, she came clear, leaving his shining erection sprouting in the air between them. The strands of her skirt fell back into place and she adjusted her double sashes so they covered her breasts again, though the small top that had been underneath was left aside.

"Enjoy your night," she wished him happily. "See how long you can last."

"How long I can last?" he wondered aloud at her retreating back. "What do you -"

"Zhair'lo."

"Whuh?" his alcohol addled brain struggled to focus on the new person who addressed him.

A black haired woman, dressed in a tiny orange garments both top and bottom, sat on the bench where Aloe had been only a moment before. He recognized her by her dark, slightly slanted eyes, as being from one of the squads he'd patrolled with today. Her name did not come to the fore of his brain and he wondered briefly if they'd ever been introduced.