Security - an illustrated short story (Patreon)

Illustration by OldNorthridge

prose by Dan Standing, 2,200+ words

SECURITY

When Regina asked the other women in the harem why the treasury wasn’t locked or guarded, they responded with laughter and giggles about how new she was. They told her not to worry about it - and especially not to explore it. That the treasury was safe enough on its own.

Was it the castle’s outer walls and lookouts that were enough to keep everyone within them complacent about the gold and treasures stored in the open room?

Regina could not help herself. Her curiosity burned as bright as her cheeks as she was teased about her naivety. But something burned even hotter.

Her greed.

It was true that the women selected from the harem’s yearly auditions got a fair stipend - more than any career outside the walls would offer. It was monthly pay. None had to do more than lounge and look beautiful, and you could leave at your leisure or remain as long as you wished. The only catch was that once you left you could not return to this life of admired luxury.

Regina had thought she could be satisfied laying beside the tiled pool in scarves and silks, dabbling in her performative Sapphic passions, but the coin delivered to her at the conclusion of the last two months just did not satisfy her. She wanted more. She wanted security.

And she did not desire to wait for it.

It was well into the afternoon when Regina decided to make her move - the castle’s nightlife was too active. As the sun moved beyond noon the harem and its welcomed revelers mostly napped. Regina had allowed one of the women selected alongside her for the harem to lap at her nethers after lunch, and as the lady’s glistening face dozed upon her thigh Regina carefully removed herself from the ratan lounge.

She padded on bare feet out of the pool grotto, pert rear and smooth cleft bare. A tiny vest adorned her shoulders, much too small to cover breasts that put cantaloupes to shame. The long tresses of her red hair practically covered the little top. Silk connected from her upper and lower arms was all else that she wore.

The dipping sun cast her elongating shadow into the treasury as Regina approached it. The plotting woman could not keep her eye from following her shade, looking past piles of gold and gemstones and silver figures. It led to a brass oil lamp resting on a wooden pedestal. Regina followed the path of her shadow and examined the fairly mundane object. It had some detailing that would have made it moderately expensive in the public marketplace for the common person, but nothing about it made clear why a common oil lamp would have such a prominent placement in the treasury.

In fact, Regina felt something about its brass commonness, so out of place and practically a blemish on the riches surrounding it, disgusted her. She flared her nose and spat at the lamp, then turned her naked rear at it to examine a pile of nearby wealth. She did not see her spit begin to move across the surface, eventually pulled into the spout.

As Regina considered how many coins and gems she could risk taking back to her room - given so little options to hide them on her person - she felt a tingle in her toes. She dismissed it, believing it was simply the cold marble which was beyond the warming reach of the sun. Regina took a selection of gold coins in her hand and examined them. They were a mix of pressings from various ancient kingdoms long gone. She ran her thumb over the relief of one particularly large coin, hefting the gold. She grinned, flicked it into the air end over end, and then caught it in her fist.

Regina was about to turn and grab more coins when she felt an itch within her clenched fingers. Opening her hand her eyes went wide. Regina watched the gold coin slowly sink into her flesh as if she was cast of clay. It was a bloodless process, and in a few moments the metal disc had passed through her palm and fallen to the floor out the other side of her hand.

Bringing her palm up to her face Regina looked her skin over. It appeared normal, the only odd sensation having been the itch of the coin passing through her. It felt similar to the tingling in her feet, and the sensation had since shifted up her arches and heels and seeped into her ankles.

Her feet!

Glancing down over her chest Regina saw that her toes were no more! What had once been little bits of flesh and bone had turned into a thick mist, stretching around themselves. Ten digits on two separate feet had twisted into a single pointed tendril snaking away from Regina towards the center of the treasury. She remained impossibly upright, even though the flesh up to her ankles was no longer supporting her upon the marble. Now aware of what was happening Regina realized she felt lighter.

Because all of her body had already transformed from flesh and bone to something ethereal. Her clothing was not yet heavy enough to pass through her new matter, but the coin had been.

Panic started to grip Regina, but she pushed it back - she dared not yell out and alert the guards. In such a state there was no way she could escape. Her legs had merged midway up her calves, and she began to stretch and bow her thighs trying to undo the braid of thick mist her lower limbs were surrendering to. All she managed to do was stretch her legs as if they were made of dough, and then watched as they bound together like a fork twirling spaghetti. Once the self-binding of her shifting body made it to her knees Regina felt her thighs snap together, pressing in on her groin.

Regina had been trying to ignore the secondary sensations that she’d been experiencing as more and more of her changed. She could still feel the parts of her that had coiled together, and the only sensation they were sending back to her mind was pleasure. It was as if the very concept of pain had been wiped away - the parts of her form stretching away from her could now only send pulses of bliss through her body.

And her body was reacting. Regina’s logical mind, aware she was caught in some sort of trap that eliminated the need for guards, realized this was the security that the older members of the harem had kept a secret from her. She did not want to give into the erotic throbbing. But her nipples had already plumped and hardened, and her labia had fattened and flushed. She panted, pushing back the haze of arousal as Regina considered what possible means of escape she might still have.

It was already clear to the shifting woman that she was being drawn to the lamp she’d disdained moments ago. She turned herself, looking for something anchored, or at least heavy to grab upon. As she did so her thighs twisted, and she bit her lip as she tightened the pressure on her pussy. It hadn’t turned to the mist yet, but Regina was certain that once it did - if the sensation of her feet and legs was any indication - she might lose her logical faculties.

Time was running out to make a plan.

A large bronze statue of a sphinx sat nearby. Regina swung her arms, attempting to swim through the air to it. She flapped in circles faster and faster, undulating more like an airborne mermaid than a human swimmer. And, tipping to the side, her floating upper body actually moved!

Straight to the marble floor.

Regina’s torso bounced as if made of foam, and her generous breasts phased into the marble briefly before rising back out. The sensation of being inside the cold marble shocked her nipples in a frustratingly enjoyable fashion.

Her hands clawed at the piles of coins around her. Some shifted and clinked down their piles, while she felt the itch of her fingers moving through others. She had just enough purchase to claw her way towards the sphinx, Regina’s right hand just starting to graze the bare breast of the statue when her hips - and everything in between them - was finally gripped by the transmogrification of the trap.

“Oh... oooohhhh… fuuuuuck…” Regina gasped, her eyes rolling back into her head. The tip of one finger had been resting on the sphinx's nipple and her hand fell from it in defeat. Regina’s own nipples were now nearly as stiff as the bronze ones. Her body was rising from the floor like a cloud, and Regina noticed that her shadow - once so well defined - was fading as human flesh gave way to her new supernatural substance.

Hands shot down to dive into her pleasure canal, but it found only twisted misty flesh. Her fingertips were gripped between the rolls of her turned flesh and Regina pulled back her hands before they could be absorbed. The tips remained slightly stretched and flattened for a moment before returning to the normal finger shape.

The coils cycling around her which had swallowed up her pussy glistened from Regina’s juices, squeezed out like water from a twisted sponge. She ran her hands over this and down her sensitive twisting tail. A genie tail. It was a lamp she was being pulled into, after all. And as the tip of her tail connected with the brass Regina felt that her fate was sealed.

Now it wasn’t just her body that was changing. As she connected with the lamp her mind felt new impulses. Her thoughts weren’t being changed, just receiving parameters to work within. The impulse to disobey was being boxed in by a desire to submit. To do as she was told. To be excited by the idea of serving. Part of her fought against this, but eventually she relented - if she’d obeyed she wouldn’t be in this situation now after all, right?

It also became clear to Regina that her corkscrewed flesh was an amalgamation of all that had been turned so far - the sensitivities of her clit not only enhanced but those same sensitivities washing over her tail and blowing her mind with more pleasure. Her thoughts of escape gave in to the bliss racking her form, and the changes became emboldened and quickened. As her belly and ribs swirled towards the lamp Regina finally cried out in an intense orgasm.

Soon her breasts were added to the tornado of flesh being pulled into the cold spout of the lamp. As she lamented not fondling them one last time, even more pleasure battered Regina’s mind as her dark nipples twisted into the mass. She could feel herself being compacted, rubbing up against the limits inside the metal. As the changes moved up into her shoulders and arms the last of Regina’s outfit finally gave way and fell through her misty flesh, clattering gently to the floor.

Simultaneously to losing the adornments she’d chosen for herself, Regina felt a pinch upon each of her wrists. Looking left to right she saw that brass bracers had been clamped around each lower arm. Or, they looked like brass. They didn’t weigh what such adornments should, and they didn’t slip from her like everything else. No, she felt that these were permanent additions to her being, intimately part of her no matter what future form she took. She’d chosen freely to be in the harem, but these now showed that her pending imprisonment was eternal. There was no seam, no hinge, no possible way to remove the metal bands she now wore. They were mystical shackles, evidence of her transgression.

Her arms were now drawn inward, completely outside of Regina’s command. They hugged her coiled form and sank into the soft mass. Regina let out one last gasp of pleasure as her neck and head twisted in on themselves, sealing over her lips and twisting up with her hair. The remaining cyclone of misty mass was no longer recognizable as human, and in short order the entirety of what remained of Regina was drawn into the lamp.

Regina didn’t know how long it had been since the day she’d entered the treasury. She didn’t know her abandoned clothes had long ago been collected, that her place in the harem had been replaced thrice over. Nor had she even realized one of those replacements had also plotted to rob the treasury.

Her mind had finally adjusted to her new situation, and as she regained some semblance of self her body did the same. She couldn’t see, but Regina could feel her dissipated form coming back together, rubbing along not just the metal confines of the lamp but dozens of arms, legs, breasts, butts...women.

Others from the harem who let greed lead them.

Genies, now. Like her. Pressed together, packed like sexy sardines, waiting for the day one of them would be summoned to serve. She tried to speak to the others, but no breath could leave her. She could only shift and rub and cum against her fellow rule breakers. And they did the same back to her, a communication - an assurance - of mutual pleasure.

Despite this realization Regina felt a peace wash over her. She didn’t know when next she’d see the world beyond the lamp, but she did know that she now had a permanent home. One she’d never be alone in, many times over.

And she felt some security in that.

FIN