Candra 

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Candra

By Strega

Ruhollah Rushiadah, known as Alias or as the Maker, wasn't usually alone in a room. There was almost always at least one Gul guard and a Praka taking notes for the mage's records. Often there'd be a fox-person -- his familiar Chula or Chula's wife or, lacking those two, another fox to assist him. The only time you'd normally find this short, bald, tattooed mage alone was in his bed. Assuming of course that his often-denied urges hadn't led him to accept one of the many offers from his female creations. A three-foot-tall Praka-femme or five-foot Volpafemme were close enough to his height when lying down.

But now he dismissed his guards, waved off the Praka and told Chula to shut the doors. Only when he was alone did he draw a clear gem from his robes and speak. "Candra, please come to my study."

He leaned back in his armless chair and waited. Perhaps a minute later the side door opened and Candra entered.

A late-30s, blond human woman, she was dressed modestly in a maroon dress that covered her from throat to ankles. Ruffles at the shoulder left her arms bare, and while she had bracelets on her upper arms her hands and wrists were free of ornamentation. About five foot four, she was nicely curved with a large (and dress-accentuated) bosom, though some of her curves were there because she was slightly heavy.

He waved her to a chair. 'Candra, you know how much I appreciate your help around the castle. When I first hired you I had no idea you were so skilled in the healing arts. With your knowledge and the healing magics a few of the Volpa have developed we've been able to do without hiring a priest."

She nodded, smiling. "But?"

He sighed. "But. Lately I've been noticing how much time you spend with my creations. I'm not saying you are lax in your duties. If anything, you are working more than I expect. For example, recently you let it be known you would provide counseling to any of the castle residents who wanted to talk to someone. About anything. I understand you saw Sweetpaws yesterday…."

Sweetpaws was one of the castle's Praka raccoon-people. He was, as his name suggested, a cook. "Yes, lord. He was depressed that his ladyfriend didn't seem interested in him any more. He was lonely. We talked a bit, and I sucked on his dick until he felt better."

It was the way he said it. There was no pause, no change in her tone of voice, no blush. Completely without embarrassment, as though she were discussing the weather.

"Mm. And then Chula was by your room, and after that, who was it, Serault? The Volpa who makes the crossbow bolts for the Gul?"

"Yes, Lord. As you know, Chula's wife Miesa is away visiting her family, and Serault's lover left him recently. He arrived while I was with Chula, so I helped them feel better."

"By sucking on their dicks?"

"Chula was behind me when Serault arrived, so I sucked Serault's dick while Chula humped."

"Mmm." H pressed two fingers to his temple. "And then Khaul was by your room. I expect he was depressed, too."

Khaul was one of the smaller Gul warriors. Hardly more than six feet tall and three hundred pounds, he was scarcely larger than most Gul females and small indeed next to Gul males up to a foot taller.

"No, Lord. He just wanted to fuck me."

He realized he had his fingers pressed to each temple now, and that he was squinting. "And the cook tells me that the day before yesterday you didn't come to the kitchen at all."

She nodded. "Captain Tahul and his patrol were back from the mountains, and they are all good friends so I spent the day with them."

A Gul patrol was eight strong, plus two Praka scouts and two Volpa -- a mage and a priest. As it happened, he knew that none of the few female Gul warriors were in that particular patrol, and that both Praka and both Volpa were males. "And you did not eat?"

"Oh, I ate, lord. They had been in the mountains for a week and were most tense. They had much seed to feed me."

He slumped. "Candra, I am so very sorry. I had no idea this would happen when I…"

"Enspelled me so I would want to lie with animals and beastmen?"

The other hand dropped from his temple. "You knew?"

Her smile had never left, and now it widened. "Of course I knew. When you interviewed me and explained how you needed someone to gather seed from various animals and beastmen, I thought it was a tolerable job. Then suddenly when you were putting the other enchantments on me, it was more than tolerable. When I realized how arousing it was to even think about gathering seed from, say, those big bears you used to have I knew you had made it so."

He fingered the pouch at his side, the magical one full of spell components. "It was supposed to fade with time. The experiments I needed the semen for only lasted a few months. Six months at the outside and the spell was to be gone. But it interacted with the other spells…."

Candra numbered them on her fingers. "I do not catch diseases. I heal very quickly -- scratches and bruises left by anxious lovers fade in an hour or so. I smell good to animal males and beastmen (and -women). I smell arousing. They have a tendency to like me, and even the violent ones don't hurt me when I take their dick in my hand. I could lie in a den of lions and except for the ones anxious to mount me, they would leave me be. I could go to Lord Vrassry, who has never mated with anything but a strong Gul femme, and he would probably not only let me rub his sheath, but also carefully not break my jaw when he came in my mouth."

He had heard all this from other sources since he became aware of this problem, but Candra was so earnest about it. And just talking about her interests brought warmth to her eyes. Unconsciously she glanced around, looking for some furry male.

"Candra, I apologize most abjectly. When I accepted you as my permanent assistant here after that first six months I did not know the spell was lingering. I am retroactively doubling your pay back to the first day you worked for me, and I will not rest until I determine how to remove this spells."

"Please don't, Lord."

"I know it's hard to think clearly, but --"

"Lord, I am thinking clearly. Before I worked for you I was a barmaid. My face is plain. I am not as slender as most men like. Only drunk and desperate men ever invited me to their beds, and they simply wanted to fuck. I was given no respect. I had no future.

"Your beastmen love me. Gul will fight over me, and even if I don't suck on the winner's dick or let him pull me into his furry lap he will stay by my side, happy to brush my hair. A Gul! Brushing my hair! Praka will come to me and ask in that charming sign language of theirs, 'May I please stick my dick up your ass, lady Candra?' Volpa compose poems about me and dream about being in my arms. And let me tell you, for whatever reason, you made your creations great lovers. Even the little Praka are hung as well as men and Gul are a…broadening experience. Women -- and men -- of all three races come to me and ask for advice on how to please their lovers. And there's more."

"Candra, it's the magic making you say this."

"Lord, when I began working for you, what were the Gul like?"

He frowned as he thought back. "In a word…violent."

"Homicidal is more like it. It was hard to keep a staff here when the slightest insult (even an imagined one) could get a Praka's or Volpa's head torn off. Even Chula had to stay invisible most of the time. The Gul were fantastic warriors, but intolerable houseguests. And when that generation was wiped out by that band of adventurers when you were incapacitated, you almost didn't make more Gul."

That had been during his brief period of insanity. He'd acquired the ancient Heart of Gold, and on placing it on -- in -- his chest had become, if not immortal, then close enough. He'd challenged one of his captive specimens, a red dragon stripling hardly larger than a horse, to hurt him. And indeed, it had been unable to…until, with a jaw-straining effort, the young drake had swallowed him whole. Trapped in its gut, digesting and regenerating for months, his pain had afflicted the magical copies of himself who at that time had helped run the castle. The simulacrums had run wild, guests had been murdered and the Gul had gone completely out of control, raiding caravans and attacking the local dwarves.

By the time he'd been freed by a band of adventurers dispatched from Greyston almost all the Gul were dead at the hands of those selfsame adventurers. It'd have been easy to let the species die.

"But you convinced me to make more and to make this new generation have lustful urges throughout the year, instead of just their mating season. I didn't understand why at the time."

"Yes, Lord. Soon after you made the first ones of that new generation, I lay with one in my bed. Those first ones were a challenge to seduce, by the way. I told him, 'If you so like the feel of my lips on your member, you should talk to a Praka- or Volpafemme. Imagine how that narrow muzzle would feel around your cock!

"And he did. And I lay with other Gul, and told them the same thing. 'Imagine a lithe, muscular Volpafemme in your lap, stretched around your thickness….' I told another, and another, as I lay with them.

"Some of them did ask a Praka- or Volpafemme. Those that did were very successful, partly because I had talked to a number of the females earlier. The lucky Gul males began exchanging stories about how nice it was to be able to lie back and let a female do all the work. And how nice it was to be able to grip a Volpafemme's hips and move her up and down in their lap as though she were a living sex toy. And how even some of the little Prakafemmes were all too happy to try to stretch themselves over a lusty Gul's cock.

"There were problems, of course. Violence. Some Praka and Volpa were killed, sometimes in fights between rival Gul males, and other Gul tried to make slaves of their lovers."

"I stopped that right away. Even today there are occasional problems, but not like then." The main problem these days was Gul who ate their lovers, and that didn't happen too often because he invariably punished the predatory Gul harshly. And, when he had prisoners or traitors who needed disposing of, those same Gul could be rewarded for their good behavior.

She continued. "But unable to completely dominate their smaller lovers, the Gul began to see them not as objects -- things to be exploited -- but as people. A Gul male couldn't just grab a Praka's head and shove it into his lap. He might get bitten, and if he killed her he would get in trouble. Yes, he could thoroughly dominate the ones who liked to be pushed around, but that didn't mean they weren't people. And that was the critical thing."

He leaned back. "So that is how it happened. Even today they are hardly a mellow people, but they certainly get along better with the Praka and Volpa…and even with humans, elves, and others."

"That's right, Lord. The need to seduce lovers made them think. There was a time when you didn't dare send them to town. Remember Lord Vrassry killing the son of that prince? There's still a price on his head. But now you can send Gul to Greyston as guards on a supply train, and while they still get into bar-fights they are more interested in getting a barmaid into their lap than they are in killing everyone they see."

"It was all my fault, you know." He grimaced. "I selected the largest, most violent wolverines I could find to change into Gul. I didn’t know then as I do now that there are family groups of them that are playful and even gentle with each other. Had I taken a dozen families, rather than all those rival males…."

"It is not too late, Lord. They are still a violent people, and they still have terrible habits. Looking at a passing female as something to bend over a bed the moment they can seduce her…this is not the mark of a noble race. But it's far better than seeing every non-Gul as an inferior, as something to push around or kill at a whim.

"In the castle now there are Gul with Praka lovers, Gul with Volpa lovers, Gul who come to my bed. It's been almost a year since anyone was killed, unless you count those raiders you gave to the Gul. Volpa and Gul get along fabulously now, with some female Gul -- who had previously just viewed these sexual adventures as a way to get the randy Gul males off their backs, as it were -- even taking foxish lovers. Some male Gul are broad-minded enough that even male Praka or Volpa find themselves welcome in their larger lover's beds.

"There's still a clique of Gul who won't couple outside their species, but it’s a small clique now. If I had to describe them with one word now, yes, it'd still be violent. Or dominant. But if I could use three words, I would say 'Violent but tolerant.' You wanted strong, trustworthy soldiers when you created them. You didn't get that -- that's why you hired those falan for a while -- but you have that now. In another five years, I think I might even be able to get them to bathe."

That brought a smile to his face. Gul had an oil in their fur that was rank enough by itself, but combined with perspiration and fermented in their armor they became truly foul smelling. Yes, they would occasionally bathe, but not nearly often enough for his taste.

"So you're saying that when a Gul or Volpa or Praka comes to you and says -- maybe in words, maybe in sign language -- 'Would you suck my dick?', that's a good thing."

"It’s a very good thing, Lord. Good for them, good for me. You can take the spell off me if you really want. But I have been doing this for you for fifteen years. I expect my longing for a furry belly against my back, for a well-hung Gul or Praka or Volpa in me, will not change. Now, if you will excuse me, there is a very large Gul and a very small Praka in my room who want to do things to me that I think I will very much enjoy."

He dismissed her with a gesture, and sat alone in his study, thinking. Only recently had he begun to pay close attention to his creations' habits. That they had obeyed him had always been enough. Now….

He had created something unexpected. They were no longer just his minions, the clever if voiceless Praka, the slender Volpa and the dominant Gul. They were, for lack of a better term, a society.

He realized now that they would outlast him. There would come a time when he was no more, and while there were villages of Praka in many countries now, and a few of Volpa, the only Gul were here with him. And even the less threatening raccoon- and foxpeople might find it hard to survive if humans continued to expand their populations.

Perhaps it was time to find them a world of their own. It would take much planeswalking, and beyond that, much forethought to help them develop a culture that wouldn't disintegrate when he died. One that no tyrant could destroy should some Gul or too-clever Volpa muscle his way into control.

He drew the clear gem from his robe once more. "Shianel, please come to my room, if you are free." He rose and left for his bedchamber. Half an hour's talk with Candra with her frank revelations had left him with a yen for his sometime foxish ladylove. And, he considered, while he hadn't used the spell for years, he still knew how to transform himself into a burly Gul….

The End