Drell grumbled faintly at some invisible menace or other and slouched in the saddle, thoroughly unenthused as to the prospect of a vague amount of hours left to ride. She stared out into the rocks and sand of the dunesea with tired eyes, regret already at the forefront of her mind. One hand rubbed her sore throat, the other kept a death grip on the reins of her rambunctious steed. 

“You look positively joyful,” Veska remarked from her own mount alongside the miserable adventuress. “Bursting with life and energy. Positively radiant.”

A baleful glare was all she deigned to spare in return. Upon her mother’s honour, she could have sworn the daemon was snickering somewhere under her hooded robe. 

“Spare me the tribulations of witty conversation.” She grumbled, jostled in the saddle once more as the massive pack-horse turned to bare its teeth at Drell’s steed. With a growl and a yank of the reins, she forced it back on track. The listening post was still endless boring hours away, and she had no intention of delaying it further by letting the brutes fight and spill the supply sleds they dragged behind. 

The beast protested, but was made to obey, however unwilling it might be. 

“One might go so far as to comment that you perhaps do not strictly enjoy our current task.” Veska grinned. 

Drell groaned and rolled her eyes at the obvious, pleading with the thrones above for some form of distraction from this horrific torture. 

“I will physically perish from the sheer undulating weight of this boredom.” She pleaded. “I was not made to sit upon the back of some beast of labor and quietly toil away, hard at work doing fuck all. My purpose is to fight, drink, fuck. Anything but do nothing.” 

“You are bored,” The succubus remarked with a shrug. “We all are, sooner or later.”

The half-orc sighed and slouched forward in the saddle, bracing her elbow against her stead's neck and propping up her jaw with one fist. 

“You do not understand, wise as you supposedly are. I am made to fight, to act, to run. To do anything other than stagnate. Orc’s cannot bear boredom. It physically pains us as a race. Look around, Veska. Have you seen a successful orcish nation of cities, towns, roads, history, supply chains and all that other mortal skullduggery?”

“Perhaps only because I am a stranger to this world.” The succubus returned, hooded form turned towards her companion. 

“There is  one.” Drell stated bluntly. “There never will be, save by some divine intervention. Unless the thrones above should descend from the stars and change us wholly as a race, orcs will never know prosperity in the way other mortals think of it.”

“Our blood is the blood of warriors, and naught else. The thrill of the combat satiates all needs, save for endless lust. There is no soil for which any other need can grow. To sit, to ponder, to write, to read, to do anything boring is anathema itself to orckind. We are the children of conquerors, with the blood of a thousand warriors within our veins.”

“This,” She waved her free hand about in a vague gesture.”Is torture.”

“And yet you chose to accept it.”

Drell shrugged. “I am not a full orc. As preposterous as it sounds, being half a minotaur has significant advantages other than physical stature. My birth blessed me with some degree of patience that other orcs will never know. Stamina and endurance are natural strengths of the Kathosian bull-men.”

“You seemed to lack any endurance last night.” Veska inserted, a wicked grin upon her shadowed face. 

Drell groaned, the conversation now steered wholly off-track by Veska’s sheer relentless horniness. 

“A lack of air tends to have that effect on every mortal race, succubus.” She growled. 

“A weakness I do not share.” Her lover all but preened. 

“We shall find a way to put that boast to the test, sometime.” Drell promised in return. 

A knowing smile has her only reply. 

Drell groaned as they lapsed back into a deafening silence. Quiet's domain now only intruded upon by the hot breeze and hooves ground upon hardened sand. She could endure no more. With a growl, Drell swung over and lept from her steed. Veska’s curiosity she ignored and began to walk beside her mount. Unbearable as the heat may be, it was preferable to the silent torture of inaction. 

“I have wondered,” Veska shattered the pensive silence after a time. “Exactly how mortalkind has adapted these past few centuries since the emergence of the cores. I must admit, it all seems rather different than back when I roamed these lands. Before my banishment right down to the middle pits of the infinite hells.”

Drell cracked a sardonic smile at that and whistled in awe.

“Don’t know much about banishments, even less in the Dark Times before the Thrones Above returned to this plane. I’d wager good odds you happened to incite great anger into someone very powerful to be smoten down that far.”

“A safe bet, on your part.” Veska sighed heavily.

“Perhaps then myself and this story you are no doubt eager to share could become acquainted?”

“Welllll,” Veska purred. “The method of how, you are already overly familiar with. The who just so happened to be the avatar of one of the Living Gods at the time. Wrath.”

“I take this involved copious amounts of fornication?”

“Much to my immense pleasure, it did indeed.” The succubus sighed fondly. “I recall that I fucked my way through that particular Avatar of Wrath’s entire family tree. Several times. She was….rather busy at the time. The emergence was happening at that very time, you see. Dungeons and cores and monsters and false gods all appearing at once. Very chaotic time, so I’m told.”

“Not chaotic enough to stop her from pursuing me across an entire continent. I was promptly smited right down to the underdark.  The last several hundred years have been…abject misery and hunger, right until I was summoned by the core you shattered and offered a choice between a forcible return to the darkness or my servitude.”

“A hard choice for a prideful demon?” Drell asked, arms pumped as she paced across the sand.

“Not particularly.” Veska shrugged. “One sends me back to the darkness, to an existence where I am the bottom rung of a very high food chain, and the other lets me feed after centuries of starvation. I accepted before the core had even finished its invitation.”

“Foolish.” Drell commented. “Cores are notorious about contract for the domain guardians.”

Veska smiled thinly at Drell’s form. 

“Perhaps you do not understand the full extent of my hunger, Drell’Akosha.” Came the dry reply. “My very being is made to slake an unquenchable thirst for lust. The pain you feel when bored? Amplify that hundredfold. Now image centuries of complete and utter inability to sate my own lusts. Even now, we have taken but the smallest edge off that hunger.”

“You seem rather well-composed for someone so in need.”

 Veska turned and looked Drell right in the eyes, her voice flat. 

“Were it wholly up to me I would have you bent over, being fucked senseless right now. I would dick you down beyond anything you have ever experienced. We would not need bother with this trifling errand, find some stable shelter where I could pound you until the sun falls from heaven itself. I could fuck you without pause to weeks and still remain unsatiated. Bulge your belly and still ride you every second of every day. Forget the status of being the succubus who tamed the Demonsbane, I would annihilate every hole you posses in ways you can only dream of and still never be satisfied. My creation and nature were seared into this form. Nothing can change it.”

“That is a rather…vivid idea.” Drell admitted, her mouth dry and flutters inside her. “Perhaps another time.”

“I believe I had asked about the emergence and how this world has fared since, before you lured me off topic.” Veska purred, charm having returned to her words.

Drell sighed and began to repeat what little she had bothered to learn of the times long ago. Morning began to pass into noon as she explained the clashes between the Living Gods and the newly arrived Thrones Above, the stalemate and eventual begrudging dual rule over the world. The ages of exploration into the newly discovered dungeons, the warped corruption found within, and the age of strife that followed. 

Empires and kingdoms rose and fell in speeds unforeseen, dungeons themselves attempted to conquer lands, death cults to ancient primordial gods came, mortal ascended into demi-godhood, new races were formed, and the eventual settling of chaos into the current order.

Halfway through an explanation of why exactly the Inquisitors of Shas -now renamed the Crimson Fist- practiced their demonhunting by summoning demons and smiting them as they formed, fate delivered a mercy unto the half-orc. 

A small, scaled form crested a dune, saw the two and immediately retreated. It’s barks filled the dunesea as Drell grinned, poweraxe already in hand.

“Kobolds!” She roared over her shoulder to Veska. The succubus sighed and watched her charge off. Her gaze dipped to those tight leather pants and a forked tongue licked over crimson lips. She hated to see Drell go, but she loved to watch her leave. 

Demonsbane roared as she burst over the hill to find her prey as it scampered away, en route to alert its pack of the foolish wanderer in their lands. Axe about to throw, she paused mid throw and decided to let it run. After all, she had endured the boredom of this place long enough to deserve a good, proper horde fight.