Arne was honestly just a bit unsettled when Nyssa took the large purple cactus berry from his hand and happily bit into it. It was, however, downright erotic watching the effect on her, subtle but clearly there. Her skin seemed to glow with vitality and her hazel eyes almost took on a golden hue. If it had been any other kind of situation, he would have found it difficult not to kiss the juice off her lips, but he did have a hope of still being alive when roughly six hours had passed.

The ambition behind her willingness to meet in secret to happily take sweets from strangers… He was glad she hadn’t decided to murder him, because that kind of single-minded determination oftentimes succeeded. He hoped that would be the case today.

o-0-o

Knowing what would happen was perhaps the reason why Arne managed to stay aware for as long as he did. He fought the chanting song that stirred his blood and did his best not to give in to the madness of the sensations around him. Touches, hot skin, moans, lustful screams… and suddenly, finally, Nyssa was taken from him. Up. Away. Her smile seemed possessed of an otherworldly beauty and for a brief, icy second, he realised he had stupidly put himself in danger of being picked, too. A few more seconds of thought asserted itself to his consciousness, telling him that if he had died here, at least the other two would potentially have had one humdinger of a problem getting his corpse back to the Queen.

Laughing happily, he turned where he kneeled, found a warm body next to him and gave himself over to the mindless pleasure.

o-0-o

Dark. That was all his thoughts were willing to supply him with for a while. Then dark became ceiling and he realised he was looking into the arched rafters of the… the ritual hall… because something had happened… someone had done…

A warm, wet cloth impacted with his face and it took him a few seconds to realise he couldn’t really breathe. Then he reached up and removed the cloth with uncertain hands. A pair of lower legs were in his field of vision. They turned into a white robe when he looked up and then turned into Dia, arms crossed, looking down on him with a strange kind of angry smirk, like she was both pissed off and satisfied with herself.

“Consent…” Arne just muttered, holding up the cloth.

Dia left and he slowly picked himself up.

o-0-o

Last time he had felt this miserably exhausted had been after the war with the Laughing Vipers three years ago. Arne had started off buying the death of their leader via external assassin. Their second in command had been quite a decisive woman, unfortunately, and the ensuing battle had been vicious, brutal and spilled into the streets to claim several civilian lives. He remembered finally finding the damned woman and managing to take her out. That he had her pinned under him in the street and just couldn’t stop stabbing her until some inconsiderate oik from her gang had wounded him, shaking him from his madness.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

The crushing exhaustion and sense of having achieved something he was rather displeased with having been forced to achieve was the exact same now as then.

They sat on a bench around the corner from the Family’s house in a small park between the fashionable estates in the area. Wooden trellises fastened to the trees held climbing vine plants that gave shade to the benches.

“…all bossy, I hate it! And just because I took a little–“

“Dia?”

“What!”

“Can you condense the story?” Arne asked, sharing a tired sideways look with Toog.

“Fine!” Dia snapped. “Short version. The berry is in there,” she pointed in the direction of the Family’s house just on the other side of the broad street. And one of the Officiants started the whole thing off with threatening me because I used the shield yesterday!”

“Threatening you how?” Toog asked.

“He said I would be asked to leave if I did it again. I have a feeling asked to leave means I will have to blast the lean meat from his bones.”

“But he didn’t actually tell you to leave?” Arne asked, forcing his thoughts in line.

“No.”

“Right, so what does it mean?”

“That they can detect Dia’s magic. Unless he saw you do stuff yesterday?” Toog asked.

“I don’t know. But I’m not sensing anyone working against me right now and nobody has dispelled it. We have about two hours left of it before your lady snuffs it.”

“Ehh, not my lady. Especially not in about two hours. But what has happened? Where is the berry? Can you tell what’s going on?”

“Well, thanks to Toog’s drugs, I saw her go up on the podium. The Officiants put a mask on her that looked like a squid-crab-thingy, then they took her to the altar, which began to glow. It stayed glowing for a while and then it vanished, and she was gone. A few moments later, she reappeared to my senses behind the door where the Officiants came from and she’s been there ever since. Unmoving, as far as I can tell.”

“Concise and condensed. Thank you,” Arne said.

“At least don’t sound surprised! I can add, that thanks to Toog’s drugs, I was pretty coherent but also see orange. I still see orange. Everywhere.”

“Well, since I live there, I think I will just go and ask,” Toog stated.

“Ask? What, exactly?” Dia demanded. “Where’s the life-ensorcelled woman you just hauled away in the altar light?”

“Wait, I feel like that should be my question,” Arne commented.

“Well, they invited me to come hug some criminals tomorrow, so it’s natural I have a need to talk to a priest and look for a place to meditate on the joyful union,” Toog said calmly, nodding wisely all the while.

“Hug some crimin…” Dia's voice faded and she wrinkled her brows.

The others looked expectantly at her.

“She just vanished,” Dia said. “Just now. Vitality girl. Completely. Not as in her organs reached a bursting point and she drowned in her own fluids, but as in stopped existing. And before you ask, I don’t know why.”

“Alright.” Arne shrugged. “I don’t fully know what to do with that information.”

“Could they have unmagicked your magic?” Toog asked.

“Nope. I don’t know how they would do that. The hostile vitality would be all over her. So unless they instantly scattered her into her component parts or… I don’t know, bodily shoved her into another plane of existence, I don’t know how it could be done.”

“Could they have healed her?” Arne asked.

“Healing someone of their vitality? There’s nothing wrong. I never knew a healer that could remove life… Alright, maybe another life mage could do it. But the energy would still need to go somewhere.”

“So, the quick and dirty assumption for tomorrow’s fun and games is that we are dealing with another life mage? A death cult?” Arne asked, curiously relieved.

Toog frowned. “They really don’t seem like a death cult. Not even one in disguise. I have some experience.”

“Really?” Dia asked, clearly interested.

“Yeah, I mean, I like working with people, but I rarely work with people, you know? I just sort of freelance for different groups from time to time when it works with my studies.”

They fell silent for a moment.

Arne suppressed a yawn. “I’m orgied out. Unless you have a better idea, I will use tomorrow to look into the money trail and we will meet at Dia's tavern at sunset to compare notes. Maybe something will become clear when we’ve slept on it.”