Seeking Sherwood Chapter 1 (Patreon)

With the prologue out of the way, Chapter One of Seeking Sherwood kicks off! Contains chemically induced hunger/digestion, stuffing, suggestion, embarrassment 

Written by the wonderful Rabidbadger writing, illustrated by me!  

Characters/Owners:

Garth - Nackvixen 

Veronicas - Veronacus 

Temperance - Paris  

- - - 

  The bat fidgeted a bit in her chambers. Nothing about them was comfortable, which was precisely because they were a monument to an excess of comfort. The room itself was larger than her quarters at The Rendering Pit had been, but you had to look closely to tell on account of the way there was something up against every square centimeter of wall. Something fancy and expensive, like the antique dresser carved from what appeared to be actual dead trees, or the generous Queen-sized bed Temperance barely occupied any of when she climbed in it to sleep. The whole area was saturated with luxury and that, to her, was a problem she was trying to work on.

It was the proximity that did it, all she would have to do to get some ludicrous meal sent up was call for it – and they’d bring her wine or bourbon if she asked. Heck they might bring her significantly more exotic and questionable things if she asked, which left the bat fidgeting harder. A significant part of why she had fled the university was a desperate need to get out of a place where she could destroy herself with her own questionable willpower. There was a very real chance, Temperance realized, that by accepting the Vice Regent’s offer of shelter she might have wandered into an ever more dangerous place.

Temperance was holding the catering pad in her hands, staring at an order full of decadence and potently abusable substances, fighting the good fight against herself when the message from the Vice Regent arrived and took over the majority of the screen.

VR-A: Going to need you to come meet me somewhere. Head down to the main hall and follow the aide, he’ll drive you to me.

Exhaling and shutting her eyes, Temperance was relieved more than anything. It got her out of the room like she wanted to do this and got her out of her own head. The bat practically ran from herself, from the luxury, taking only the comms device and the bag she’d always carried since entering the university. The one that had her notes, her handful of self-made tools, the things that were probably the reason someone was going to come for her someday. Unless the Vice-Regent really could protect her from them, assuming ‘they’ were the greater threat. Which was, at this point, questionable.

*** 

The ride proved uncomfortable for more common reasons, as Temperance found the vehicle a bit too large and too empty for just her and the driver to be using. While she wasn’t unused to quality transportation, she remembered it always being a family affair. It would be her father driving his own property and the whole family present to handle all their errands at once. Spare them some fuel, get things over with in one day, manage some quality time in the process. Now there was this massive black beast, polished and sleek, spilling her somewhat plump (far too much so for her mother’s tastes, or most ‘sensible’ folk) frame out onto the deck of a commercial hub near the ass-end of the same space dock she’d arrived at to go into hiding in the first place.

From there, Temperance was briefly confused about where to go. It wasn’t a state that lasted long, she heard the Vice-Regent’s voice calling her name and leaving her wincing in paranoid anxiety about it from somewhere behind her.

“Tempy! Over here!”

Turning, the bat found her benefactor lounging back in a patio dining area with a table entirely covered with food, mostly greasy piles of carbs and fat next to sweet drinks, a lot of it half-eaten. The bird dining on it all looked immaculate, however. Her violet and indigo clothing was pristine, outlining ebon feathers and looking more suited to some sort of high society soiree. The dark hues stood out rather badly, cool colors and elegance, broke only by the gold of the Vice-Regent’s beak and the greenish patina accents lacing its edges, a kind of painted on makeup of sorts that Temperance had never seen stay the same two days in a row.

“Come along, don’t just gawk dear. You need to sit down and join me, and that’s not a request.”

It seemed, to Temperance, that there was a risk in even that simple act. Yet, as her benefactor said, it wasn’t a request. While there wasn’t anything like the legal, binding contracts with the two individuals she knew were linked to the other end of that collar around the Vice-Regent’s neck, its blue gemstone centerpiece shining faintly with each swallow, Temperance was still at the Vice-Regent’s mercy one way or another. Not without hesitation did she join the dark feathered bird at the table, already swallowing hard as she took in the immense spread of food before her – the scents, colors – Temperance found her hand hovering near a basket of mozzarella sticks almost the instant she sat down.

“I, y-yes, Vice-Regent? I uh, I know you didn’t just call me here to-”

There was a finger held up there, pointing at her face, then at the table.

“Don’t presume to know my intentions, Tempy. I would much rather see you develop a fried cheese and chocolate cake habit than to get the servants to start bringing you booze and drugs. So yes, I called you hear to stuff your face, for your own good. Do it.”

One could, if they were listening closely (and Vice-Regent Amourres was), hear Temperance’s train of thought violently derail itself. The bat ran a gray furred hand through violent hair and laughed nervously, desperately hoping that was some kind of joke. Amourres didn’t laugh, she just raised an eyebrow slowly and waited.

“Either you indulge yourself, or you sit there while I feed you. I saw what you did with that room service list.”

An onslaught of anxiety and fear hit Temperance at that, it was the kind of tone her mother used to use when she looked at anything sweet the wrong way, but it was the polar opposite of the words her mother had used. Shaking, she picked up a pair of the breaded cheese sticks and held them close to her face, but not inside it just yet.

“I – but – I didn’t-!”

Amourres’ eyes narrowed a bit, the coloring on her beak shining as she shifted in her seat and it caught the light.

“Exactly – you stared at the list for thirty minutes and then I had to call you to get something going. This is going to be a problem. You’re in some half-assed state, telling yourself you have to abstain from everything nice and not having the willpower to do it.”

Shuddering, fingers clenching around the treats in her hand until hot juices dribbled in and stung them, Temperance shook her head at that. It was a quick, violent thing. One rooted in denial of her own state. One that she hid behind her hands, only end up with a face full of molten mozzarella that she then stuffed into her lips and froze up around. The Vice-Regent watched this and rolled her eyes sharply while she seized a fistful of cake.

“See? This is the problem. You cave under pressure, which you’re creating inside yourself. I can’t have that while we’re traveling, and since you can’t reliably resist your own desires? I have to insist you surrender to them. As often as it takes.”

 For the first few seconds Temperance wasn’t exactly paying attention, she was just savoring the juices around her fingers. It burned a little, but she was fine with that. A couple of moments of flavored bliss, and then they were gone. Sliding down her throat and into an otherwise empty belly, leaving the strange demands and the urge to have more. Luckily, there was plenty more to be had.

Even after Temperance started, reaching for everything that caught her eye, she felt that same reluctance rising up again. Heard all the admonition of her past, heard her own voice repeating things her parents had said about how all that weight was a sign of weakness and low class, and that had been the lighter end of the scale. That had been before her father had caught her sneaking the occasional tray of baked goods in on her way home from classes.

Now, though, the only person shouting at her about the consequences of indulgence was herself. Mostly – there was the Vice-Regent’s voice in the mix after all – but her benefactor wasn’t shouting. She was logically, reasonably advocating for Temperance to stuff her face without guilt or restraint, because apparently the woman had stumbled onto some logical workaround that made gluttony a virtue in these extremely specific circumstances. 

The question that remained wasn’t so much whether or not that logic checked out – because it did – but rather why Temperance was trying so hard to argue against it. Her head just couldn’t seem to stop fighting that ‘good fight’ about the matter while her mouth and stomach seized power of attorney during the ruckus. Every greasy, savory bite she told herself to stop, and then did nothing of the sort. Her own failed denials adding a special spice to each bite. All of it fed into itself, made sure that each time she swallowed and reached for whatever was closest and caught her eye – whatever her mostly slim belly demanded – it was with a bit less hesitation than last time.

“That’s better, dear. I imagine it will take some time before you’re legitimately comfortable with the matter, but we’ll have plenty of opportunity to work on it while we’re on the ‘road’ so to speak.”

Blinking a bit, Temperance had donuts clenched in each fist hard enough to set the filling leaking a little. She felt uncomfortably full already, but no small part of her was clamoring for more. It was just no longer the loudest voice inside her, at least not for the moment.

“Wh-mnghf-what do you mean, Vice-Regent?”

Amourres wasn’t sparing any time when it came to the food either, nor was she getting full, but Temperance knew why. She was the reason why. It had been a delicate thing, really, and probably why their arrangement now existed. Not many people outside of The Rendering Pit could build and maintain devices capable of teleporting matter safely, even in relatively small quantities and over short-ish distances. The collar the Vice-Regent wore could cover a couple of miles as long as it was paired with a destination device, and it was currently paired with two, wrapped snugly around the throats of a couple of her other employees as Temperance understood it. It left the Vice-Regent free to gorge herself to capacity and then keep going, all the indulge and none of the limitations.

It had left Temperance a bit uncomfortable when she built it, but at the time she hadn’t been able to place why and had just blamed it using her skills from the university she’d fled out in public. No part of her at the time would have admitted that it had anything to do with being a little jealous of the idea, with wanting to try something herself. Even now, Temperance was valiantly telling herself that was ridiculous. The assessment didn’t hold together terribly well when the Vice-Regent gestured behind her to the ship loading bays and singled out one in particular. A smallish luxury ship, designed for a handful of people at most but with a lot of room for supplies, meant to keep a few people happy away from civilization for a fairly long time. A bit like a yacht. 

Said space-yacht was currently being loaded with food, both fresh and otherwise, from a monstrous heap of storage containers that looked to be half the size of the ship itself.

“I finally have a lead, Temperance. I’m going after my prince, and you’re coming with me. I’m going to need someone who can maintain the collars for starters, and you’re going to whip up something on the way that we can use to keep ourselves safe when we have to deal with less than savory ports en route.”

Blinking slowly (and swallowing a face full of fried dough, chocolate frosting, and custard), Temperance tilted her head a bit and eventually eased out her first of many questions.

“Your… Prince?”

One of the Vice-Regent’s eyebrows slid upward slowly while she sucked on a straw embedded in what appeared to be a large greenish purple fruit.

“We’re going to have to work on your eavesdropping too. I thought those ears picked up everything?”

Another bubbling, sucking noise followed – accented by the Vice-Regent plucking up a plate of small sandwich triangles and depositing them into her beak one by one, every couple of words.

“I have found. Gnf. My Prince. Mngh. His fleet was spotted near a- Mmnfg -refueling depot after some spat or other with raiders near the rim.”

Temperance was torn between rapt fascination and mild horror as she watched the Vice-Regent stuff half the plate into her face after that, causing the gem at her neck to glow brightly for a moment. The bat was, briefly, worried it might overload the collar, but it was an anxiety rooted in nothing – her work was solid. Intellectually she knew that, but anxiety rarely had any care for reason.

“So, whether you make a weapon, or an escape device, or whatever – just have a trick or two up your techno-mage sleeves for us by the time we arrive, alright? And no working yourself to death and skipping meals, you’ll be dining with me at least five times a day, we really need to get to know each-other a little better considering how long we’re going to be around one another.”

Now the anxiety had a logical cause, Temperance thought in a curiously calm state of mind. One that she was well aware was a temporary situation. Her benefactor wanted her out, in the black, for possibly weeks – eating like this – and further putting her skills to work? Even the collars worried her, Amourres wasn’t exactly subtle in public (a fact emphasized by the bird letting out a decidedly un-ladylike belch amid her rampant feeding), and this? This sounded like being ordered to design a flare gun for her pursuers. Unless they’d given up on her, but Temperance did not think herself near that lucky.

The first question that got loose of Temperance was, accordingly, a small one able to squeeze around the edges of her flirtation with madness – and the mouthful of fried chicken.

“Whf… W-when do, uh, do we leave?”

Amourres let out a little trill of pleasure, either at the answer or the mouthful of tarts she’d just consumed, her dress miraculously shedding the grease and crumbs it ought to be collecting by now and leaving itself oddly pristine next to her feathers, which were more than dark enough to show off every bit of food-born detritus still scattered on her.

“As soon as the ship is finished loading, and the slaves arrive.”

Another blink in a long list of them followed that. Slavery was not a thing, not in the Ashen Expanse anyway. Her confusion wrapped snugly around a bowl of soup she was drinking from (there was always room for soup) clearly caught her benefactor’s attention. The Vice-Regent laughed at the concern, then waved a feathered hand toward the loading bay. Over by the maglev lifts Temperance saw two people dressed not quite as finely as the Vice-Regent, a grandly obese chocolate furred bunny being walked in by a vixen in an outdated but rather stylish flight suit, then shortly behind them emerged a third. Dark fur with red accents, a pair of curved horns, not nearly so much blubber wrapped around her body as the rabbit, and also significantly more visibly uncomfortable than the bunny was. The vixen in the flight suit walked into the ship ahead of them, leaving both lingering near the cargo bay doors, faint red lights from around their necks gleaming as she heard the Vice-Regent swallow again.

“Not actual slaves, clearly, but damned if it doesn’t amuse me to call them that. They squirm so much more for it – well, the skinny one does. That rabbit doesn’t seem terribly fazed by anything, it’s impressive – and a bit boring.”

Temperance felt the anxieties and worries in her mind congealing a bit, separating from the mélange they’d formed. Her benefactor’s motivations, intentions, the risk of being noticed – and yet she knew Amourres could just turn her in at a moment’s notice, too. On the contrasting side, she was asking her to do… not much, in the grand scheme of things. To come up with something useful in case trouble finds them, and to join her for meals.

It wasn’t that outrageous, was it? Apart from the scale of the meal, anyway. Perhaps, she thought, she could sneak a tablet into the meals and work while the Vice-Regent ate. Only one of them lacked the capacity to get full after all.

A brief chill passed through Temperance’s skin when she found her next thought after that to be ‘you could fix that, you know’. 

“I ah, I… I’ll think of something, Vice-Regent. Don’t worry. And I won’t forget to eat.”

Looking pleased, her feathers fluffing up a bit, the Vice-Regent made that trilling sound again while she finished her current mouthful. After she swallowed, the bird tossed something Temperance’s way. Something the bat managed, barely, to catch without either dropping her soup or having it land in the bowl. It looked to be a tiny glass decanter with a stopper in it, the size of her pinky.

“Drink it, then help me polish all this off. I have a few more of them on the ship already, and we can get more, but you may want to whip something up for this issue as well. Worst case, maybe make yourself a donor collar like mine? That should be easy enough, right?”

It was becoming exhausting to Temperance, being doused in fresh confusion so frequently. 

“What…. Uhm, I don’t understand, Vice-Regent.”

Once more, that stare caught her. The dark-feathered bird’s beak gleamed with luminous green lines tracing its surface, never sitting still, but her eyes were frozen and boring into Temperance. It reminded her of the professors from The Rendering Pit when she didn’t know the answer to a question, complete with the looming threat of her life as she knew it ending if she got it wrong too many times.

“It’s a temporary digestive accelerant. Breaks the food down, processes it into your body, that kind of thing. I don’t enjoy having people at the table sitting and watching me eat, I want them to sit at the table and eat with me. So, drink up.”

The staring continued, leaving Temperance stumbling over her thoughts briefly, until she latched onto the simplest one at the top. One that didn’t actually address any of the deeper issues, just the surface one. If she drinks the little thing, the bird will stop staring at her. So, she drank. 

Temperance’s body wracked itself in a shudder the instant the slightly slimy fluid hit her stomach. She could feel it starting a chain reaction of sorts, a fizzing inside that left her stuffed and taut belly feeling a wash of relief even as her gut began an ominous churning and a curiously greasy sensation began to creep around under her skin. It was a potent, vaguely unpleasant rush all things considered, but it also worked – it left her belly quite empty apart from a small burp that worked loose of her at the end.

A moment later, that belly began screaming for her to address its emptiness as soon as possible. Sharp and painful enough to leave Temperance worrying what might have happened in the long run had she not been sitting at a messy, half-eaten feast already. While she whimpered however, Amourres preened and smiled.

“Excellent! We’re not leaving until this table is clear, and I want to get out of her sooner rather than later. I’ve waited long enough. Vice-Regent. Second authority to a person whose authority is only in place until someone else is old enough to take it away and leave us with nothing. Chrome be merciful, as if I’d ever settle for that.”

The bat’s hands were moving faster, indiscriminately seizing upon everything they could, which left her belly finally starting to calm down. It also left her with time to think, as much as she could anyway. This was, all of it, proper terrifying from the perspective of how many things could go wrong. But it was an adventure, and it was something she had a lot more control over than she had back in The Rendering Pit – and, she reminded herself, she wasn’t being asked to do anything she couldn’t do.

No, she was just being asked to practice her primary skills, and to loosen up a little and eat. That wasn’t so bad. In the meantime, she could solve all those nagging bits of paranoia with practical solutions once she got to whatever engineering tools were on that ship. Which-

“U-oh! Vi-hwooarph-ohmy… uh, Vice-Regent, the work stations I’ll need-”

Amourres giggled a little at the outburst, the bird’s mood already visibly improved for the sight of the bat with food caked around her muzzle and not so much terror and worry in her eyes.

“Dawn has already prepped a laboratory for you. She may have just already had one in fact, strange woman really. But she agreed to let us use her ship, quite amiable about the whole thing really.”

Tilting her head a bit, Temperance asked yet another question, though this one was relaxingly not wrapped up in a knot of emotion. 

“Dawn, ma’am?”

Waving in the ship’s general direction, Amourres didn’t bother looking up just yet. She was, at that point, too busy eating.

“The vixen who owns the ship, pilots it too. She’ll be joining us, obviously. Just stay clear of her quarters and the hydroponics bay, those were her only rules and frankly I’d rather not have to fight about it. She isn’t asking much.”

Temperance nodded, for once in full agreement with the Vice-Regent about something. Twice, she corrected herself, as she messily scooped heavily buttered and cheese drenched mashed potatoes into her face straight from the serving bowl. Internally, she felt herself growing closer to being full again, only for the hissing emptiness to seize the chance to strike once more. It redoubled the odd, creeping sensation under her skin, and left Temperance feeling something unexpected, but too honest to doubt. Disappointment. That tightness in her stomach had felt kind of nice, all that pressure and the satisfaction it represented, the urge to rub it and the short little breaths it forced her to take, but she only had that fleeting moment to experience it. 

It could be worse, Temperance told herself. She could be enduring this without an immense pile of food to gorge herself with. There wasn’t any doubt in her mind about that second point she agreed on either – they were not leaving until the table was empty.