Klipyl Short Story - Rejected - Chapter 2

Faisal stopped at the tower’s lip with the toes of his boots hanging over the edge. With no obstructions, the view of the woodlands and the buildings nestled among them stretched out into the distance. What she had taken for greenery growing in random spots showed a repeated placement of matching plants, though she was unsure of the pattern’s purpose. The language that Faisal had implanted allowed her to recognise the concept of trees, groves, and the names of smaller surrounding shrubs and other plants.

Disinterested in using the local terms, Klipyl pointed to the nearest grove. “You want me to wander around those green things and listen to thoughts?”

The local history that she’d gained from the neural implant showed the dome stretched across most of a continent. The two-thousand-kilometre diameter might be impressive to the elves, but she’d heard of bigger palaces in the abyss.

“You’ll receive assignments to linger in various globes as the investigation proceeds. Other servants live in the central districts; do not travel with them. They only come among the glades if they are fulfilling a shift out here.” Faisal tugged the hem of her sleeve. “Anyone wearing solid grey is a servant.”

“And servants form a general pool in service to the houses. Only a select few are personal favourites and have the house crest on their lapels,” Klipyl tapped the side of her forehead. “You vomited stuff into my brain, remember?”

“Reviewing the material helps you assimilate it better.” Faisal eyed her critically. “You’ll need training in comportment, diplomacy, and how to blend into your surroundings. Follow me.”

He retraced their path down through the hatch and descended four levels before landing on a platform that was on the dome side of the tower. A gentle warmth came from the amulet he’d given her as the door swung open. Beyond the door was a small room with a desk that had another transparent slate atop it. Klipyl fingered the metal.

“Does it offer any other sensations?’ Klipyl cooed.

“Try any door you’re not permitted to enter, and it will grow cold instead,” Faisal noted. “I’ll show you how this works. I expect you to spend all your time on the training simulator until you pass all the courses.”

He stepped around the desk and tapped away at the slate, words in the local script appearing upside down on the display.

“You’ll be using Caithel Oradrin as your system identity. If anyone greets you while out whom I’ve not introduced you to or you’ve not received an introduction to on previous excursions, look at them blankly.”

“Why?”

“Caithel Oradrin received a full memory wipe because of subversive activities. She isn’t capable of recognising anyone from her past.”

“And if she shows up at the same place?”

“She won’t.” Faisal continued to tap at the slate, and the script changed faster than Klipyl could decipher it.

Klipyl smiled teasingly. “Did you cut her throat? Or toss her beyond the dome and let the locals squish her into pulp?”

He pulled his attention from the slate and stared at her coldly. “No, she’s in stasis and will remain there while you’re on the material plane.”

“You don’t exactly come across as the evil summoner that I expected,” Klipyl pouted. “Aren’t you supposed to be embarking on world conquest or seeking to gloat over the piles of dead rivals?”

“Why do you say that?”

Klipyl shrugged. “That’s how most of the customers’ tales in the brothel went. I served this wizard with an enormous staff, and he shoved it in so many places. At least that is the way tales involving mortal summoners went.”

“I believe what you expect is of no interest to me. Concern yourself with fulfilling the tasks I set, not pointless speculations.”

“But!”

“No buts, focus on your duties.”

Klipyl slapped her right cheek and winked as she flexed her fingers into her buttock. “I’ve got a butt.”

“Enter the chamber,” Faisal commanded coldly, waving her in. “Follow all system instructions. You won’t get out of the tower until it passes you. When you complete all the planned courses, I expect you to receive a class vision granting various infiltration classes, depending on how that manifests for demons.”

“I’ve had one,” Klipyl admitted.

“Tell me what you saw.”

Klipyl considered ignoring the question, yet a prickle of pain warned her about an ignored condition. “I appeared in the foyer of my mother’s brothel, but I could only open the door to my room. There were two versions of myself in the room, but I picked only one.”

“I had expected a demon to receive visions of torture fields, not a brothel.”

“You’ve never worked in an abyssal brothel. I have seen little of the abyss. I was in my room being screwed and then healing afterwards, or the picking room, for over five hundred years. Along the way, I lost count of the number of body parts I’ve regrown. Do you get out much?”

“Go into the room,” Faisal instructed firmly. “The system will issue instructions when you stop moving.”

The next door swung open, and beyond it was a cube chamber twenty metres across, its walls a glossy white, and she strode to the middle.

As the door clicked shut, words in crimson script hung at eye level before her. Before she adjusted to the flowing lines of the local script, a dry metallic voice like the golem had used repeated them.

“Stealth introductory training module: social blending. The practice of stealth can take many forms. Its two primary categories are hiding from an observer’s senses or blending into a situation. This module will focus on the latter. You will receive instruction in the fundamentals expected of a servant to avoid lessening the pleasure of the nobles you serve.”

Klipyl rolled her eyes.

Faceless black figures appeared around the chamber, then pale flesh and clothing enclosed each before they gained sharp features and dull eyes. A few sat at a table, or in reclining chairs wearing clothing in a variety of hues, similar to those she’d seen from the platform. Those around the edges wore attire in muted grey or deep purple, pants and shirts along with black boots. All the guards wore flak vests with an energy weave to disperse spells and carried stun rods the length of her forearm. The walls and the chamber’s ceiling seemed to disappear, the chamber becoming a forested glade.

Despite the shift in appearance there was no sensation of mana within the scenery shift or the figures. Curious Klipyl stepped forward and grew a claw to poke one, only for it to slide harmlessly along the figure’s skin.

“Please remain stationary during each scenario’s requirements presentation. Return to your position for the demonstration. You are to observe servant conduct. You’ll be assigned a role to fill after the first pass.”

When she stepped back to where she’d started, the figures began moving. The colourful nobles prattled about politics and shifting alliances, gesturing expansively while servants kept still, and guards roamed through the glade. Whenever a noble’s glass ran low, a servant out of the noble’s line of sight refilled it from their right side. It set her various positions, and in each one she failed, until the system clicked disapprovingly.

“Default comportment training module activated. Ensure you copy the model’s posture.”

A mirror image of her form appeared before her: arms at the sides, shoulders back, chin raised, but gaze lowered not to look anyone in the eye.

Klipyl got to work mimicking. It was hours before she squeaked through the first exercise and started failing the second. The first dawn caught her by surprise, heralded by a rush of warmth through the pact Faisal had formed with her. It swam through her stomach, and internal fireworks exploded. Klipyl grabbed her crotch as secondary orgasms hammered her inside, and she mewed happily.

“Oh, Faisal, you’re the best,” Klipyl screamed.

The system disapprovingly announced a failed module and reset the exercise. It was several days later, shortly after dawn, that she successfully completed the last of the service exercises, and the system beeped approvingly. The outer door opened to reveal Faisal, his pale features drawn, with a sheen of sweat covering his brow and cheeks. His attire looked pressed and pristine, but a faint hint of the sour metallic odour from the endless ocean tickled Klipyl’s nose.

“You look like someone poured water over you, and you smell funny,” Klipyl offered. “Whatever your problem is, orgasms at dawn are the best reward.”

Faisal cut her off with a raised finger. “Have you achieved a class vision?”

“Nope.”

He moved over to the slate on the desk in the outer room and tapped a bunch before the door closed.

“Security breach introductory training module: magnetic locks.”

A metal plate with five rings attached to it by flexible cords appeared on the ground, next to a freestanding door. An image displayed the plate against a palm and a thumb and fingers sliding through the rings. Klipyl copied the instructions. It turned out the controls on the plate allowed her to activate magnetic fields that let her manipulate pins inside the door’s lock. With each set of lessons, the complexity of the lock grew, and the time allowed to bypass them shrank. After each set, he’d asked the same question, offering no other conversation. Weeks later, she had just completed a ridiculously complex scenario that required her to move through a security complex with a flawless servant’s demeanour. The scenario had needed her to steal a security device undetected and pick a dozen locks. When the scenario shut down, a vision struck.

The brothel’s foyer showed a glimpse into the past, a sliver of time she’d wanted to flee. There in her succubus form, she wanted to return to flying over that endless ocean of blood.

Ghostly images of her sisters hung from their collars in the nearby picking room. Among them were washed-out ghosts of customers who fondled, pawed, and clawed at them as they decided which suited their desires. A phantom of her mother demanded payment from a dretch who had torn open a much younger version of herself. The memory of being thrashed about, as the dretch bellowed and the chains clinked, had Klipyl draw her wings in tight. Her hands clamped to her ears as her mother snarled for coins, payment that Klipyl had never seen. Those memories quashed the faded afterglow of the recent explosive orgasms from the demonic pact.

She heard multiple locks snapping open along the corridor that led deeper into the brothel, and behind her, the front door creaked open. The hot wind from outside paradoxically caused the cold hollowness that had been her constant companion—except during intercourse—to turn wintery until her bones creaked from the frost.

Voices she didn’t recognise called out her name from the doorway, and she fled for the corridor. A dozen doors were open; she skipped the first where she knew the classes of whore and succubus waited. She’d already picked the second, and the first had mocked her with the aching hollowness experienced by her species.

The second open door revealed six options crammed into the room in ragged clothing, with hollow eyes and furtive motions: pickpockets, lifters, and similar ilk. Each survived by snatching what others left exposed on their person. She moved on, wanting more than the scraps of those only one step higher than herself. Within the next few rooms were variations of spy and scout, yet one look at each showed her the same flaw. They prospered only by reporting back to someone who gained even more from their risk. The last open room presented the thief class, specialising in breaking into places to get information and valuables, either for hire or for her own gain. The desire to profit for herself alone led Klipyl to pick it, while rejecting the other choices, where her existence would be driven by desperation or always serving others.

From further down the corridor, the familiar screech of her room’s door sounded, and a voice whispered. “Come back to your mother. You’ll only ever be a cheap whore.”

“No,” Klipyl spat.

The vision cracked apart around her, returning her to the white room; with the latest set completed, she could only wait for Faisal to show up. Klipyl paced about in the elven form that saved her from being in the same form as the vision, yet the hollowness of her cravings clawed at her.

I could use a dick in every hole right now. Why did he make no sex a condition? I need to learn faster and gather the information he wants.

When Faisal showed up, Klipyl called out the moment the door opened. “I got the thief class. Can we move on to the next step?”

“What are you suddenly in a rush about?”

Klipyl groaned. “I don’t suppose you have any sort of device to cause orgasms?”

Faisal wrinkled his nose. “No, I don’t.”

“Prude,” Klipyl hissed in disappointment. “The morning fix you give me is sweet, but I need more. Your classification of sex involves a dick in an orifice, so lend me a construct.”

“What?! Why?” Faisal spluttered.

“Because their hands look a fine size to stretch my cunt, and I’m sure they can pump their arms just fine. You don’t know what it’s like for a succubus to go without sex. Can you go without your magic? I’m constantly distracted, yet I got a class that fits your purpose, so can’t I get a reward?” Klipyl lowered her gaze with precisely the proper deference and cupped her hands before her. “Oh great and wondrous master, since you’ve denied me the pleasure of sucking your cock, please have your golem fist me to bliss.”

The silvery golem appeared before her, and Klipyl squealed with glee.

“Follow her instructions for an extensive cavity search of her personage, no one else’s, then sanitise yourself and the room afterwards. Once that is done, escort her to my study,” Faisal instructed before he strode from the room. “Three hours maximum.”

Klipyl had scrambled out of her clothing before Faisal reached the outer door, and had a leg raised to allow the golem’s metallic fingers access as the door clicked open.

When the time passed, the golem showed her downstairs. She didn’t make the next platform before the hollowness had consumed even the faintest afterglow of her body-shuddering orgasms.

Halfway down the tower, the golem led her through a corridor to the outer wall. Sensory panels lining the wall showed the nearby groves, one of which was hosting a group of nobles who looked to be amid a drunken party. She spotted stimulant ampules discarded amid bottles, and a servant with a bloody face from a shattered bottle they’d ‘caught’. The golem ignored the view, leading her around the curve to a door with a cross-hatched pattern on the frosted panel. The room beyond was a calm green hue, with furnishings carved from a deep orange stone and padded hide cushions. Seated behind a desk, Faisal looked up from a map displaying a rugged coastline, with various mineral symbols marked along it. Lines showed the slope of the terrain, and multiple regions were tagged with question marks. In one corner of the room is a small cupboard of shelves, most of which are filled with books bound in some smooth hide. However, on one shelf is an image of a male beside a one-armed boy; attired in noble garb, and Klipyl notes the crest on the old male’s lapels.

“Are you feeling distracted now?” Faisal asked.

“No.”

Faisal glared flatly. “Stop lying. I know the look of an addict in need of a fix, and I was sure your request wouldn’t alleviate your condition for long.”

“Then why did you grant the request?”

“In case I was wrong.” Faisal dismissed the map from the table and tapped away on text displayed in its place. “I’ve placed you on the roster as a grove assistant. You’re to take instructions from the senior servant at each site to which you’re assigned.”

Klipyl tossed her mussed hair back. “What am I supposed to be listening for?”

“Nobles gossip, but they often seed conversation to draw others out. I want you to pick up more information about anything salacious they’re gossiping about in their minds, and report it to me.”

A word from her new vocabulary came to mind. “Blackmail? You’ve got this fancy post and you’re resorting to blackmail?”

“I need leverage over key people to keep this post, and for another purpose.” Faisal blanked the table display. “If I can pull the right string, I might find something to provide it.”

“Don’t they have mind protections?”

“How to gain the mental affinity for spells was lost to us, and telepathy became the stuff of fiction and myth.”

“You have mind protections,” Klipyl noted.

“The process for the enchantment was in the same old records as how to summon demons.”

“Are those tales why you’re not allowing me to have sex?”

“Not the tales. Our scientific records say your kind leaves energy signatures from sexual congress that parallel certain types of radiation damage. Hence, no sex, or they’ll come looking for where the leak occurred.”

Klipyl grabbed her crotch with both hands and cooed. “I leaked and squirted all over your golem.”

Faisal’s expression went flat, and his gaze locked on hers. “And I don’t need to know. Remember, if you betray your actual species to someone ignorant, that breaches multiple conditions. I won’t stop the punishment, and even when you’re back in the abyss the pain will continue. As for the golem, it had orders to sanitise itself.”

Amid a shiver at the thought of such pain, the wording of his prior answer caught her attention.

Records?

“Wait. Do you mean you’d never summoned a demon before me?”

“I had not, and the daily purification process is unpleasant, so I will not be doing so again.”

“You seemed very precise about it, which I thought stemmed from experience despite all the blushing.”

His gaze didn’t shift away at her dig. “The records are comprehensive. I set an engineering unit to engrave the circle and then energised the alchemical silver for the pour. That part took a day.”

Klipyl sighed. “What do I do before my first shift?”

“I’ve set the next series up, so continue with the training simulators,” Faisal ordered. “You’ve been learning with strange slowness, but some people find they can achieve considerable skill growth using it. I’ll have a golem show you an exit and provide a guide token to mark the way to your duty assignment.”

With no mention of a reward, Klipyl’s shoulders slumped. “No golem time?”

“No, be on your way.”

Klipyl huffed and flew straight up the centre of the shaft, aware of his gaze following her.

When she entered the room, the illusions on the wall turned the small cube into an expansive banquet hall. Experimenting to reach the far end, she felt the floor shifting direction beneath her feet. Flight bypassed that and let her touch the metal, but beyond her hand, it appeared as if she was touching an invisible barrier.

“The next program’s scheduled time is approaching, stand at the start point.” The system’s dry voice intoned after a few minutes, and a location midway down the table glowed.

The role of a private server to a jewellery-covered noble was tedious in the extreme. Without the pointed mental undertones that made the day fun, the scripted conversations were dull in the extreme. Her idle musing on the most efficient ways to incapacitate and kill the female helped her pass the time.

She hadn’t yet decided on the most satisfying death when the pact provided the morning’s orgasmic rush. As she came down from her high, the simulation ended, and the door snapped open. In the entry, a golem held out a bronze bracelet. “Your guide token.”

“What do I do with it?”

“You wear it on your wrist. It will buzz if you are going in the wrong direction for your programmed destination.”

Klipyl slipped her hand through its middle, and the bracelet shrank until it was flush against her skin, changing colour to match.

The golem led her out into the central column, and pointed up the stairs. “Take one step that way.”

When she did the bracelet buzzed strangely and electricity prickled uncomfortably across her skin.

“What is that?”

“The further off course you get the more painful the guide token will make your rebellion.”

“Did Faisal make this just for me?”

“It is a common object to guide servants to their duty assignment.” With that the golem turned and trudged down the stairs. Once they reached the ground floor she was escorted to the outer door. The frosted pane hinted at the greenery beyond before the golem opened it and waved her through.

Klipyl shivered at the blue dome so far out of reach; this third occasion outside was far less pleasant than the first. While the threat of creatures within the bloody water had distracted her, here there was only the vague threat of being sent back to the abyss. The vastness scratched and crawled up her spine and, without sex to distract, Klipyl ground her teeth to stop the snarl. Under that pressure, the pristine white paths that curved in graceful lines between groves seemed to urge Klipyl to sully them. Her thoughts called out to smear them with blood, or anything available, to mess with the ordered look of the place. Every grove had the same exact appearance, the mix of pines, oaks, rocks, furnishings, and the grass trimmed so precisely that there wasn’t a blade out of place. 

The simulation had been bad enough, but here that exactness made her itch painfully. It was a sensation that reminded her of the times her mother had put beetles inside her to fatten on her flesh. The regular beat of their chewing maws had echoed in her ears for years. She mocked the cadence of that remembered sound by moving out of sync with it. When Klipyl arrived at the concealed building near the grove, there was an even mix of genders between her and the five servants already in the drab building hidden away from the glade at the centre of the grove—the interior packed with equipment 

Close to the door were trolleys loaded with food platters and drinks, while at the back were various-sized umbrellas, canopies, and chairs.

Klipyl slipped between two other female servants who had collected trays of glasses and food, while three males unpacked larger items from the racks. With most of the items on the first trolley, she lifted a large polished bucket with bottles and ice packed around them.

“Are you right to hold that for a long time? Some of them don’t let you set the bucket down.” The female to her left whispered.

“I’ll be fine.”

“I’m Markis. I’ve not seen you here before.”

“Caithel Oradrin,” Klipyl replied, remembering the name Faisal had provided.

“You don’t sound so sure about that,” Markis noted curiously.

Klipyl shifted nervously, unsure how to answer servant small talk. “I’m on probation.”

The others all stiffened at the term that signalled a mind-wipe. The closest male took a half step back noting her name with the intent to let any remaining relatives know she was effectively dead.

I’m alive and so is the real Caithel Oradrin. Why do they count memories being gone as death? There are so many clients I’d prefer to forget utterly, along with beetles, borers, and so many of Mother’s toys.

Saying nothing further, the female servants headed for the grove, so Klipyl kept pace with them. As they entered, the servants from the previous shift slipped away. Though the place could cater to twenty, only six nobles sat spread among the grove’s furnishings. Each had a different shade predominant in their clothing, and Klipyl gave them a designation that matched their colour.

Before anyone could order her to keep supporting the bucket, Klipyl placed it on a small table intended for that purpose. Another male, this one in brown, drifted into the clearing and claimed a drink glass before he instructed Klipyl to pour, coldly regarding her while she followed his instructions.

He leaned closer and stared into her eyes. “It seems your friends didn’t save you in time, Caithel Oradrin. If there is anything left of you in there, it’s probably because they were all wiped or recycled in our sweep. There will not be equal rights for our lesser cousins, and agitators like you once were are all replaceable. Do you have anything to say?”

“I don’t know what you mean, noble one,” Klipyl replied calmly, even as she wanted to shift into something that could bite his face off.

“You might not, but they do.”

The lady in green smiled as the male shifted closer. “The guardians raided an underground den and found gene heretic material.”

His face twisted with distaste, and he set his wineglass down on the table before her before he sat. “How vulgar! Why do you always bring up such subjects?”

She waved expansively. “Because so many people are prepared to turn a blind eye, the council needs to support a proper crackdown on them. They need to sweep all the servant regions and ensure they’re scoured for this material. They’re worse than one like her. Gene heretics are like weeds; if you don’t exterminate them root and branch, they’ll regrow and convert others to their perversion.”

“You’re in the mood for your crusade again. There is no way anyone will go for it.”

“Then we should purge all the servants. Golems and machinery make better servants than these pathetic wretches. They’re spineless morons, unfit for higher duties.”

“If you didn’t have servants, who would you skin?” The question came from a woman in pale blue across the clearing from her. “The guard lineages certainly wouldn’t allow you to injure their blood.”

Klipyl caught thoughts from the servant closest to her. She hid rage beneath her grey clothing and demure expression. She dreamt of cutting the woman’s tongue out and pouring ground glass down her throat.

The nobles chatted as if the guards and the servants were livestock, unable even to understand what was being said. Klipyl caught the thoughts of one guard dwelling on the security around the power cores.

Other nobles came and went, talking about fashion and the latest galas, belittling their kin and the lesser gene stock. The orange lady continually sprinkled remarks about a jade lady’s garments and husband into the conversation, trying to bait her into rage. The jade lady’s polite deflections hid a rage that was fit for so many demonic breeds that Klipyl felt at home. Whenever orange baited her, she possessed a mental image of her target’s bedroom and the jade’s husband lying on the bed. Smugness accompanied that image in the orange female’s mind, and the emotion heightened whenever she dwelt on the energetic thrusts of the male beneath her in the memories.

Klipyl finished her second shift in a similar glade and, upon returning to the tower, found a blood-stained Faisal entering the core from the other side. The passage behind him was a straight run to a solid metal door.

He’s been outside; the other fancy pants all seem to consider that impossible.

“We will go through this in person today, and I’ll show you how I want details recorded.” Faisal took Klipyl through using the slate to bring up a report screen. “Now what information did you gather?”

“A lot of them critiqued each other’s clothing. The only conversation that made everyone else uncomfortable was a guardian raid on gene heretics. There was nothing about them in the neural implant you hit me with,” Klipyl noted. 

“The gene heretics aren’t in the official records, so I can’t include them in an implant. They only exist because those in charge have their heads buried deeper than the dome’s power core.”

“Are they the shame of the colony?” Klipyl sneered, mimicking one especially demonically minded noble. “Oh, the tragedy! Anyway, a female was continually harassing another, but neither left. Yet her outward hostility was the claw tip, so much yummy hate.”

Faisal offered her a slate that showed a seating chart presenting the faces of nobles at the session in their spots with interconnecting lines. 

“You knew everyone who was there?”

“Of course. Now, I want you to indicate the direction of the hostilities. There might be more going on beneath the surface to show why they were getting annoyed with the other person.”

“This is the blackmail you wanted me to gather?”

“No, I’ve got some locations picked to see how well you’ve absorbed your training,” Faisal tapped the slate. “Let’s get started.”

“Are you sure you should put that information into the system? After all, some nobles’ thoughts mirrored those of demons.”

Faisal’s white face turned ashen. “I’ll set up an isolated system in my office. I’m sure I’ll need it to display all the political linkages and favours.”