Chapter 85: Lexi’s Test Results

Several hours later, Lexi’s eyes blinked open groggily. At first, the paladin had not the faintest idea where she was. She remembered that her party had descended into the labyrinthine underworld, but the futanari struggled to think of a good reason why she was lying completely naked on a pile of pillows, snuggled up against the incredibly soft furry backside of her new mothkin follower, Luella. However, a glance at the enormous black panther paw casually draped over her hip sent a lightening bolt of recollection through Lexi’s mind, and the evening’s events all came flooding back to her, right up until the end when she and Luella had mind-broken each other in an intense simultaneous pair of orgasms and drifted off to sleep alongside the sphinx whom they had only just defeated in sexual combat.

Jesus Christ! the paladin thought to herself, sniffing the air and getting a huge whiff of dried cum and pussy juice. This place fucking REEKS of sex now, yeesh.

Feeling the soft pads of the large panther paw move slightly against the bare skin of her hip, Lexi looked back over her shoulder to see that Valeria was also awake. The sphinx’s glowing red eyes locked onto Lexi’s clear blue orbs as Valeria unfolded her black feathered wings, stretching them straight back behind her as she arched her spine and flexed her paws, revealing the knife-sized hooked claws concealed within the velvety black fur. After an exaggerated yawn, the sphinx casually lifted her paw from Lexi’s hip, giving the fur a few licks like any house cat waking up from a long nap.

“My, my,” she purred. “You actually proved quite true to your word, my brave paladin. And not only that, but you certainly went — shall we say — above and beyond to pass my test.”

Lexi chuckled sheepishly, a flush of mild embarrassment spreading across the lightly freckled white skin of her breasts and face. “Yeah…I may have gotten a little carried away after ‘passing’ the test at first…”

“You’ll hear no complaints from me about multiple orgasms,” Valeria said jovially. “Particularly given that I was allowed to briefly experience sex the way that you do, having both a pussy and a cock.”

The exchange between Lexi and Valeria served to rouse the rest of the paladin’s party, the three girls variously yawning and stretching as they all woke from their respective orgasmically induced slumbering. Seeing that her party was all once again conscious, Lexi hopped to her feet and began dressing herself. And while she was not terribly keen about putting fresh clothes over a body caked in dried cum and pussy juice, she was grateful that her clothes themselves were not similarly soiled.

“Rise and shine, girls!” Lexi called out merrily, feeling quite refreshed after the nap.

Luella was the first of the three to rise, all four of her furry arms pushing the mothkin gracefully up into a brief handstand and then into a somersault as she rolled up to her feet like an acrobat. The mothgirl gave Lexi a grin and a wink, waggling her furry antennae slightly as she walked over next to the paladin to begin slipping on her own clothes. From the corner of her eye, Lexi realized that Samantha and Danica had not even bothered to doff their clothes before tearing into each other’s pussies. So crazed with lust had they been from the effects of Lexi’s spell that the two girls had merely pulled their clothes aside and started going at it — leaving the pair already fully dressed as they rose to their feet.

“Is…it m-morning?” Danica yawned.

“Actually,” Luella said, closing her eyes and waggling her antennae slightly. “I think it is morning up above. Not that it means much to us down here though.”

“So,” Lexi asked the sphinx, seeing that her party was now all dressed and re-equipped. “We’re all good to go?”

“Yes, my young futanari,” Valeria purred, once again seated in the typically feline position, with all four of her enormous panther paws lined up beneath her. “Having succeeded so admirably against my challenge, you and your party are free to pass through the portal.” It was only then that Lexi noticed a large arched doorway behind the sphinx — something she did not think had even been there before Valeria mentioned it. “Fare thee well, adventurers.”

“Bye!” Danica said, covertly reaching out a hand to ‘pet’ Valeria’s black fur as she skipped by. “Sooo soooft!” the elf whispered, loud enough that everyone in the room clearly heard.

Samantha rolled her eyes and gave the elf maid a firm, but playful, smack on the ass as she came up behind her. “Move it along,” the monk said sternly. Danica initially looked back with mingled indignation and embarrassment, but all that melted away when she saw the hints of a smile tugging at the corners of Samantha’s mouth.

As soon as the party passed through the stone archway, Lexi looked back out of curiosity to see what the sphinx would do after her party had gone. However, to her shock, not only did she see no sphinx, but neither did was there even a portal leading into the chamber from which they had just come. Instead, the paladin was face to face with a smoothly wrought wall of stone blocks, with the corridor into which the disappearing doorway had led them now looking like the end of a cul-de-sac.

“Wait, what the fuck?!” Lexi gasped, starting in shock.

“Hahaha, oh yeah!” Luella laughed. “I should’ve mentioned this earlier, I guess. Sorry about that! Anyway, it’s pretty common down here for passages with assigned guardians to seal themselves up once the challenge has been passed.”

“That this place re-arranges its architecture is mildly disconcerting,” Samantha said in her typical deadpan fashion, belying the intense oddness of a dungeon which could apparently open and close passageways on its own, which implied some kind of intelligence guiding the entire subterranean world. And, although Lexi knew that this was likely another manifestation of the system administration’s invisible hand, the intense realism of this world left the paladin with a creepy feeling in the pit of her stomach.

Danica, on the other hand, reacted in a manner more in line with what Lexi would have expected from a small child whose sense of wonder and excitement continually drowned out any potential feelings of fear or dread. As soon as Luella mentioned the disappearing doorway, the elf jumped up, doing a complete one-hundred and eighty degree spin in the air. Landing nimbly, the ranger slapped both hands to her cheeks, her mouth hanging open and eyes spread wide — an expression which immediately recalled the famous aftershave scene in Home Alone to Lexi.

“What!? How!?” the elf gasped. “Oh man, that’s so cool! I mean, I knew it was going to be pretty weird down here, but to think that the dungeon itself is, like, alive is just so weird — but, like, weird in a neat way!”

“I guess you’re right,” Lexi said, mussing the small elf’s hair affectionately. “But it’s still kinda…I dunno, spooky to me.”

The sense of unease did not wholly depart from Lexi as Luella proceeded to guide the party onward through the network of corridors which had appeared after their successful encounter with the sphinx. The passageways which greeted them on this side of the guardian’s chamber were far from the uniform corridor through which the party had initially traveled. Lexi was at once again strongly reminded of being inside a castle, or some other medieval fortification, with this identification being even more strongly reinforced by the fact that instead of a single straight passageway, the party now wended their way — with Luella’s guidance — through a myriad network of small chambers of all different shapes and sizes, each one interlinked by yet more stone passageways.

In short, it was exactly like something Lexi would have expected in a classic dungeon crawler, like the old Tomb of Horrors AD&D module.

At first, Lexi tried to keep some kind of mental map of the route they were taking. However, after the first dozen twists and turns, the paladin realized that she was hopelessly lost, or at least would have been if not for their mothkin guide. Somehow, Luella was not only able to keep her bearings amid this utterly bizarre and convoluted labyrinthine geography, but the mothkin gave off the clear impression that she was directing them with clear intent towards wherever it was that they needed to be in order to complete this quest. Lexi guessed that it was some quirk of the mothkin biology that they would navigate underground, and was extraordinarily grateful that Anya had been able and willing to procure them such a guide — particularly one as sexy as Luella had ended up being.

Not now! Lexi mentally yelled at her cock, feeling the very beginnings of it stirring to life beneath her tabard as she replayed some the the mental “footage” captured during her threesome with Luella and Valeria.

“Freeze!” the mothkin hissed from the front of the column.

The command snapped the paladin out of her increasingly erotic reverie, jerking the whole of her focus back to reality. Her pulse quickened as her warrior’s body was flooded with adrenaline, readying Lexi’s reflexes with the fine edge of watchfulness needed to immediately trigger her fight-or-flight reflex, as the situation might demand. Her feet frozen in place, the paladin’s arms crept slowly and silently up to the hilt of her huge broadsword — not yet drawing the blade, but placing herself in a position that it could be done at the drop of a pin.

Peering as deeply as she could into the recesses of the large chamber on whose precipice the party now stood, Lexi strained her eyes looking for any signs of a potential enemy that might have raised Luella’s instinctive alarm, but did not immediately see anything notable. Nonetheless, there was a definite sensation of unease that began to spread over the paladin as her eyes roamed over the large chamber, whose vaulted ceiling was supported by so many stone pillars, that it almost reminded Lexi of a granite representation of a forest, tucked away deep in the bowels of this subterranean dungeon world.

Glancing over at her companions, Lexi saw that Luella’s antennae were methodically sweeping over the room, like a pair of little radar dishes, and the paladin again wondered what kinds of extrasensory abilities the mothkin might possess to aid in her navigation of this strange underground region. Did her kind possess something akin to the echolocation used by dolphins, or was there some other strange sense associated with the fluffy white appendages. It was clear to the paladin that Samantha saw as little as did Lexi herself, but that — like her — the monk was completely on edge, her own gut telling the huge muscled warrior woman that something was amiss.

Danica, on the other hand, had apparently taken Luella as literally as possible. The small elf had completely frozen mid-step, with one foot off the ground, her adorable little face locked in what almost looked like a caricature of surprise. It was entirely something Lexi would expect a child to do when told to freeze, but coming from the elf — who was in terms of years — almost three-times as old as Lexi, the gag seemed the height of absurdity. And yet, the goofy reaction fit Danica to a tee, and only served to endear the zany little elf to Lexi even more, especially when she momentarily broke the statue-like rigor to flash the paladin a quick and eminently mischievous grin before snapping back to her initial frozen pose.

It was only when Luella once again broke the silence that the mirth evaporated from Lexi’s heart as surely as a droplet of water drying up beneath the desert sun. Her mind did not immediately comprehend the full ramifications of the word uttered by the mothkin. But, the harshly whispered tone alone was enough to fill the paladin with gut-churning dread.

“Wraith!”