Monthly story - reader x ... interdimensional eldritch... being...(?) - nsfw (Patreon)

I've wanted to write this one for a while, and in a poll a while back, a number of you voted for some kind of interdimensional entity which lives in the mines of Starfall Springs, so here it is! As this is your monthly story reward, it will not be going up on Tumblr, so this one is all yours to enjoy! Let me know your thoughts in the comments or by dropping a click on the heart button if you liked it. 

Contents: mention of vague nightmares, getting lost as a child in a mine, tentacles, shapeshifting creature, polyphonic voices, eyes, general eldritch weirdness... gender neutral reader, and some sexy times.Wordcount: 4006

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The dreams still lingered. Despite moving away from Starfall Springs, despite years of therapy that had only half worked, you still had the dreams. They weren’t nightmares as such, but they were hardly fluffy bunnies, rainbows, and unicorns either. 

Starting awake from yet another one, sweat sheening your forehead and chest, heartbeat hammering in your ears, you gasped for breath as the darkness retreated in your mind but not in your room. Outside, the noises of the un-sleeping city rumbled away, but inside all was quiet. Not so inside your own mind though. Tunnels, dripping water on algae-slick rock, breath clouding like ghosts in barely-lit tunnels, echoing shadows and scratching claws and rising panic. All manner of things lurked in the depths of the Starfall silver mines, and not all of them were as friendly as the teams of goblins and hobgoblins who worked the silver veins. One of those less friendly creatures had come looking for you. 

That school trip to visit the main shaft of the mines, to see how silver was extracted through a mix of goblin technology and ancient magic, had ended with you separated from the group, lost, disorientated, wandering alone, somehow going deeper without realising it. Eyes in the dark; a breath on your shoulder; turning to find paralysing darkness on all sides and no way out: it had fuelled these dreams for years. 

But that had not been the end of your experience. 

The creature that had hunted you, toyed with you in the blackness of the cold tunnels, had been afraid of something too. Your friend, Ki’ik, had quoted Qui-Gon Jinn at you when you’d tried to tell her about it afterwards, saying something about bigger fish, but it hadn’t been much of a comfort. There, in the endless dark of the mines, lived something more terrifying and somehow more abstract than the unseen predator who had stalked you. All you could really remember was a slick tentacle turning you around, and another appendage, perhaps clawed, wrapping around your wrist with impossible delicacy, and tugging you back along the tunnel. Meek and limp with horror, you had obeyed. An eye had blinked at you in the gloom, the walls lit everywhere by the speckles of algae that barely threw off enough light to create the illusion of a starry sky. The only reason you’d even noticed the light to begin with was when the minuscule points had been blotted out in places by whatever it was that had appeared to guide you out. 

“This… way,” a voice like boiling tar had whispered, appearing to come from inside your own skull. It had sounded thick and dark, and as though it tried to articulate a language too crude for its physical form. But still, it had tried. 

From all sorts of impossible angles and places, the creature had led you through the tunnels until you heard voices calling. You’d turned, glimpsing a patch of glittering light high up near the barrel vaults of the rough-hewn tunnel that blinked and shimmered before disappearing completely, only to be replaced by a broiling mess of tentacles near the passageway’s floor. Your young mind had gone blank with the impossibility of it, and you’d passed out. 

Waking a few days later in the small clinic at the edge of Starfall Springs, you’d tried to explain what you’d seen but you didn’t have the words. It was like your mind was trying to cup water and it was pouring through the gaps as quickly as you tried to hold onto it. 

“Yeah, the Dark will do that,” Ki’ik’s older brother had said casually when you’d gone over to their house a month later. He, like most of the goblins who’d moved to the area, was a miner, and he just shrugged. 

“The Dark?”

He gave another twitch of his bony shoulder and tucked into the dinner that his father had made for you all. 

You’d looked from one face to the next, but it was their father who had chuckled and said, “The ‘Dark’ is what we affectionately name the entity which lives down in the deeper areas of the mine.” He nudged a bowl of vegetables your way and continued speaking. “We don’t know what it is or where it came from, and no one likes to linger long enough to find out, but anyone who’s ever got into trouble down there has been hauled out by it. Reports vary - here, have some more potato, please - but we know it has to be the same creature.”

“But… what is it?” you’d asked and he’d only insisted that no one knew, and that it was best forgotten. You were safe now, and that was that. 

So, finding yourself back in Starfall Springs ten years later for Ki’ik’s wedding to some human that she’d fallen completely head over heels for, dredged up mixed memories to say the least. When she’d told you that it was happening at the mine itself, you’d grouched that that was hardly a romantic location, but when you’d driven up to the site through the seemingly endless pines, the forest floor carpeted with spongy moss, bright cyclamen poking their colourful heads through it, you’d had to admit that it was pretty. 

More than a few cars were dotted around the edges of the parking area, but as you stepped out and smoothed your new, fancy clothes down, you avoided looking at the square entrance to the mines, set into the cliffs above like a bezel-set piece of jet. A screech to your left made you jump, and seconds later you found yourself almost flattened to the ground by an Appaloosa centaur. 

“Derek!” you wheezed, rubbing your ribs as he put you down. “Good to see you too!”

“It’s been almost a year since I came to visit you,” he grinned. “Can you believe it?”

“Has it really been that long? I’m sorry.”

He shrugged. He looked stunning in his black jacket with the tails of the coat spilling over his withers and shoulders, blending human torso with equine body. The round dots of chocolate brown colouring that spattered over the entirety of his white-coated body were as adorable and mesmerising as you’d always thought, and he laughed bashfully when he caught you staring. “Come on,” he snorted, stamping a hoof. “Let’s see if we can’t set you up with someone too - isn’t that what weddings are for?”

“Oh gods, please don’t,” you groaned but you let him lead you towards the festivities. In fact, Ki’ik was having her wedding between the trees in a small clearing not far from the tower that you’d known as children as ‘the Enchanter’s Tower’, or the ‘Lich’s Tower’. “Is Rhae officiating then?” you asked as you neared the rising hubbub of other gathered guests, and Derek nodded. 

The lich had surprisingly never given you the creeps, with his bare, pewter-dark bones, etched and tarnished over the centuries by his constant magic, and his eyes that glowed like foxfire in his empty eye sockets. The goblins all called him ‘uncle’, a mark of deep respect, so it was no surprise that he was going to be the one marrying Ki’ik and her wife-to-be. 

It wasn’t nearly as difficult or as awkward as you’d expected, being back amongst the people you’d gone to school with, and most were pretty keen to hear all about your life away in the city, but once the ceremony was over - gods, but they looked stunning in their respective outfits - and the drinking and dancing had begun, you started to feel on the outside of things again. Derek was asked to dance by a sweet, shy looking human, and you glimpsed the tiefling, Killy, dancing with a guy, both of them looking somewhere between lovestruck youths and horny teenagers. Even Rhae appeared to have found someone in the years that you’d been away, and while you leaned your back against the rough bark of a pine tree, you felt an aching in your chest that threatened to tear you in two. 

As the shadows deepened and the flames in the fae torches danced all the brighter for it, you heard a whisper and jolted, sloshing your drink over the rim of your glass and onto your hand in surprise. No one else around you reacted, but you shivered, suddenly cold. Once again, wordless whispers sussurated in your ears, and as you froze this time, you realised with a thrill of horror that the voice had come from inside your own mind. 

Looking over your shoulder, your eyes were drawn down the little path made of bark chippings which led back to the car park. Did the shadows stretch longer, darker, there than anywhere else? As if by some trick of camera perspective, the path seemed to stretch further away from you, as if extending for miles not metres and you swayed as if drunk, though you couldn’t have been. There was a lot of alcohol on offer,  but you’d not exactly indulged. With a shaking hand, you set your glass down and tried to breathe. 

It was no use. Feeling hot and flushed under your clothes, you eventually stepped away from the restless, ceaseless patterns of dancing behind you and made your way along that path, back towards the empty expanse of silent car park. The instant that the music faded behind you in the trees, the whispers started up again. You shook your head, as if you could shake the sounds from your ears, and as you moved your head, your eyes fell on the square entranceway to the mines. 

Darkness poured out of it in great smoking tendrils, coiling lazily like ink in water before the whole thing glitched like a bad connection and you blinked. Everything was normal. 

“Did someone drug my drink?” you asked aloud, swallowing thickly. 

“You… returned…” a voice rumbled. Actually, it sounded like about four voices all speaking at once, but this time it didn’t seem like it was coming from inside your own skull. 

Blinking stupidly, you stared at the mines. “Is this real?” you asked breathlessly. 

“Yes.”

“Are you the… the…” you hesitated to use the word ‘thing’ but you couldn’t summon anything else to mind. “The, uh… the one who saved me… as a kid? What they call ‘the Dark’…?”

A single tentacle of darkness snaked out of the mine’s entrance and began to extend across the car park towards you. You took a jerky step back. It was still a good fifty yards off, and then it writhed, coiling in on itself before vanishing in the blink of an eye. 

“Am I going mad?”

“No,” you heard the voice growl. “I would not… endanger you…”

“Why? What do you want?”

Nothing happened for a long time; no shadows, no flickering eerie tentacles, no darkness. Just as you’d turned to go back to the party, goosebumps rippling up your arms, the voice piped up again. “You…” was all it said. 

“I what?”

“You… asked me… what I… wanted…” the voice said. It was dark, rich, and it bubbled slightly, the polyphonic nature causing harmonics to ring in your ears in a way that wasn’t entirely unpleasant. 

With a deep breath, you asked, “You want me? What does that mean? What do you want me for?”

The silence stretched again and you almost turned around and left when a chorus of hissing whisperers filled your head. Pleasure sparked down your spine and you gasped, staggering. 

“What the-?” you choked. 

“That. That is what… I want…” the creature said. “You are not afraid. All these years… you are still not afraid. I want…” Its voice dipped at the end, becoming a desperate, ragged rasp that seemed to shred your brain to bits before it all slid back together again of its own accord. 

And, unthinkingly, you found your body accepting the offer. You walked across the car park. “You won’t hurt me,” you said softly. It was not a question. 

“Never.”

The gaping square of the mine entrance loomed before you and your footfalls faltered. 

“I wish only… If you will allow… to taste of your pleasure…” the creature said and you got the feeling that it was waiting for you just beyond the last stretch of light that filtered through the trees behind you. One pace into the tunnel, all light died, as though consumed. It was waiting for you. 

“You’re the creature they call ‘the Dark’ aren’t you?” you blurted, suddenly nervous and seeking reassurance. 

“Yes.” A black, taloned hand like a crow’s foot, dripping with viscous oil that shimmered a million colours as it splashed to the floor, extended from the blackness beyond. You stared, horrified and fascinated in equal measures at the effect. It was like engine oil on wet tarmac one minute, and then, as the drops fell, they became hard crystals like bismuth, which shattered into nonexistence when they hit the rock. 

“What are you?” you whispered, fixated. 

“I…” the creature faltered and the extended hand blinked out of being. One minute it had been there, drooling viscous liquid that sublimated almost instantly, and the next there was nothing but empty space. A movement drew your eye and you looked up to see a cluster of eyes blinking at you in the upper corner of the mine’s entrance. You swayed slightly, and all of them blinked before also vanishing. “You should return,” the voices said as one. “It is not… right for you to… be here.”

In a moment of courage or stupidity, you stepped into the tunnel. “Tell me what you are,” you demanded as blackness washed in around you, embracing you. There was no exit behind you, nothing but roiling, inky darkness. It caressed your skin and you felt it ripple as you moved your hands through it. “You’re beautiful,” you breathed, unbidden. 

The soft darkness snapped then and became solid. Like a fly encased in amber, you couldn’t move. There was no air. Terror overwhelmed you and you struggled. Flailing, a second later, you fell backwards as whatever that was released you instantly. 

Gentle coils caught you and you lay back into them, breathing hard, heartbeat skipping wildly. “That the hell was that?” you demanded. 

“Apologies,” the darkness said. Something brushed the back of your neck and you moaned quietly into the touch. No one had ever touched you like that. “You… surprised me.”

“There’s only one of you then?” you asked. “Don’t stop,” you added as the grip around your neck and halfway down your collarbones retreated. 

“Yes… Does that voice… disturb you?”

You were finding it hard to think as something began to wind around your leg. Somehow it had got effortlessly underneath the fabric of your clothes and was pressing against your skin, winding higher and higher up your thigh, seeking.

“Uh…” you gasped, tipping your head back as whatever was supporting you adjusted to your new position with ease. It reminded you of the coils of a naga, but there was too much of it, touching you in too many places, to be just one tail. You thought of the writhing mass of tentacles you’d glimpsed back when you’d first looked over at the mines and realised that the creature could take on whatever shape it wanted. It could also be in multiple places at once. 

“You are… still not afraid…” the being murmured, its small choir of voices chanting in your head again. 

“How do you do that?” you panted. Something slick and blunt was nudging at your entrance and you bucked suddenly. 

“This?” the creature asked playfully, nudging a lot further in. 

“No,” you growled, trying to hold together the fraying threads of your mind as pleasure surged inside you and your spine arched again. “The voices… you’re everywhere all at once… oh!” and something else, ridged this time, accompanied the first tendril inside you. “Oh gods,” you whimpered. 

“I am not of this world,” it breathed softly. “And so I am not bound by it. Do… Do you enjoy that… human?”

“Yes!” you screamed, your voice muted by the physical darkness around you. Your clothes were then gently, almost reverently removed, and you found yourself lying back against the cool, malleable nest of tentacles behind you once again. 

“Where are you?” you panted. 

“Here,” a single voice whispered inside your head, right at the nape of your neck.

“Here,” another said, as the sharp prick of teeth or claws on your shoulder drew another throaty moan from you. 

“Here,” a third whispered, its breath ghosting over your skin right before something sucked a bruise on your left buttock. 

It was almost too much to bear, but the seething mass around you never revealed too much of itself at once, never driving you beyond the edge of thoughtless madness, holding you carefully in that suspended blankness of pleasure. Just a taste here and there, a touch, a tongue, a talon… Shivering so hard you were almost seizing, you let yourself be enjoyed. Twin tentacles grabbed around your thighs and parted your legs further, pulling you open, giving itself access to you, only for something else to near you, radiating heat, slick and dripping all over your torso and down on more sensitive areas like hot wax. 

“Wonderful,” all the voices chorused as you reacted. 

Colours flashed across your eyes as you squeezed them shut. It made no difference if you kept them open or not - the darkness was on all sides now, and probably inside you too from the feel of what was going on between your legs. More and more of the thick, glassy liquid spilled slowly over your thighs and down between your legs. It tingled where it touched, and left you writhing, slippery and gasping in the clutches of the creature as it took its time enjoying you. 

“I wish I could see you,” you hissed. 

“No,” came the instant reply; a gently given rebuke. The pressure inside you eased and left you empty. “No,” it said again, more gently this time. 

“Please!” you managed to gasp. 

In answer, something nudged back inside you, thick, ridged, and impossibly slick. It filled you until you thought you might die from how good it felt. Slowly, it fucked itself on you, overwhelming you with the slight prick of claws or teeth, or both, alleviating any pain with gentle caresses that left you tingling all over, until your back arched and you came with a scream. The creature swallowed the scream, feeding off the pleasure it had given you, pressing something suspiciously like a maw against your mouth and neck, engulfing you as you spasmed beneath its touch. 

Mind blank with pleasure, you didn’t know how long you lay there in its gentle embrace. Gradually, feeling returned to your limbs and your heartbeat slowed. The liquid which had covered your body began to evaporate, leaving little upward trails of tiny sparks as it vanished. You blinked, realising that there was light now, if only faintly. 

Inhaling deeply, you realised how heavy your limbs felt, how wrung-out your whole body felt. As you came fully to your senses, you realised that you were sitting on the cold stone of the tunnel’s entrance, your clothes abandoned in a pile beside you, and the early light of dawn was washing in around you. 

You were alone.

Panic hit you and you scrabbled to dress yourself, but as you stood, you saw that your body was covered with marks like bruises. They didn’t hurt to touch though, and unless you’d looked down at yourself, you wouldn’t have noticed them at all. Still, once you’d got some clothes on, you swallowed and looked down the tunnel into the darkness. Nightmare thoughts about allowing strange deities and entities to use a human’s body for their pleasure crowded into your mind, but as you let the terror rise, a voice echoed quietly in the back of your head. It was not your voice. 

“I will not hurt you.”

“It was real,” you sighed, unsure if you were relieved or unnerved. “How long was I out?” you added, looking over at the car park beyond as the first hints of dawn began to make the shadows retreat. 

“How do you feel?” the creature asked instead. This time the voices didn’t sound in your head but in your ears and you turned to find the tunnel blocked by a cloud of shifting smoke. 

“Is that you?” you asked, stepping closer. The darkness rippled like the surface of a lake disturbed. “Take that as a yes…” you grinned. “I feel…” You flexed your back and shifted your hips. “Amazing, actually,” you said. All the tension you’d been unwittingly carrying had been leeched out of you, drawn out like lingering poison from a wound. “You?”

The smoke filling the shaft solidified into a thousand prismatic shards, scattering darkness and light around the entrance in an impossible mixture. 

“That a good reaction or a bad one?” you asked, reaching a fingertip for a nearby crystal of what looked like bismuth again. At your touch, it relaxed, becoming viscous, and a tentacle coiled up your hand, over your knuckles, and around your wrist. The gesture carried the shy affection of a house cat, and you smiled. “Good one,” you said. 

“Mmm,” the darkness rumbled. 

“I never got to thank you,” you said quietly. “You saved my life as a child, and I never said thank you. I mean, I’ve still got all the nightmares about it, but I’m alive…”

Thorns grew from the tentacle, but none pricked your skin. They drifted off into smoke as the tentacle vanished and a series of eyes blinked at you from the darkness. Each one was a different colour, but somehow you couldn’t have said what colour any one of them actually was. 

“You… You will not suffer now…” the voices hissed. “You took part of me with you… that day. I was… unwilling to let you go. Because of that… you kept your memories of me.”

“But how come everyone else knows who you are?” you fired back, confused. “The goblins even have a name for you.”

“The Dark,” the creature laughed. “Yes. But you are the only one who has seen me and can remember exactly what you saw.”

“Oh.” 

“No more nightmares,” the creature smiled. You couldn’t see the smile, but the voices were gentle, warm as a caress. 

“Will I still remember you now though?” you asked. 

“No.”

“Oh.”

Something caressed your chin, tilting your face up momentarily before the sinking feeling in your chest could really take hold. 

“Here,” the creature said, and that crow’s foot hand extended from the darkness, palm up, offering something to you. A glimmering pearl sat there, constantly changing colours in the light. It had a hole in the top, as if waiting to be strung and worn as a pendant. 

You stared at it without taking it. “I thought I took a piece of you away last time,” you said eventually. “Isn’t this the same thing?”

“No. Before, you carried me in your mind. It is better this way.”

“Good job you can be in more than one place at once, eh?” you snickered, taking the pearl and clutching it tightly in your hand. It was warm. 

When you looked up, the tunnel was completely empty. The rock walls, braced at regular intervals with girders, stretched away before vanishing into the natural shadows. Your only company now was your own shadow, and you turned away, the little pearl in your hand. 

You dangled the pearl of iridescent darkness from your rear view mirror, and talked to it all the way home. It never responded, but it was always faintly warm, and now the only dreams you have of the creature in the mines are of tingling pleasure and coiling limbs, and you don’t mind those dreams nearly so much. Not at all, in fact. 

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