Knight of Darkness, continues, part five...

For those who wish to read the earlier parts, they can be found here: One, Two, Three, Four.
Chapter four...

"Are you ready, chit?"

We're back to Merewyn and her attempts to seduce the unsuspecting Varian to the side of evil in exchange for her freedom.

The only part that gave her pause was the fact that she'd never been touched by any man. Her father had kept her carefully sequestered as a child, and once Narishka had turned her ugly, her father had cast her out, and no man would look at her, never mind touch her.
(The Chronicler notes the pure virginal heroine.)

But that didn't matter. Her virginity was a small price to pay for freedom.
(The Chronicler: "Yes, it is. You're trading it for freedom. So get bloody over it.")

Narishka tells her to get Varian food. Merewyn is confused...
When Narishka had said "seduce," she'd naturally assumed intercourse. This bargain was looking better and better.
(The Chronicler worries for the intelligence of the heroine who can stay for centuries in the darkened vale of Camelot and not learn a trick or two.)

...bowels of the dungeon...
(The Chronicler notes that the author likes this phrase far, far too much.)

Foolish question that. She'd lived here long enough to know that they didn't think of kindness. Ever. It was all but alien to them.
(The Chronicler: "They did. Which is why they're using you, silly bint. You're there to play good cop. Honestly.")

His long, black hair fell forward, obscuring the handsome face she'd seen in the abbey. His black armor was dented and twisted, but what disturbed her most was the blood that was pooled at his feet. As she watched, more blood dripped at sickening intervals...
Lady Miriam: "What, like his blood drips in 7-4?"

And all thoughts of herself fled as she slowly approached him.
The Anthropologist: "She's losing her self-identity again... Though that doesn't usually happen for a few pages. This book is breaking records for how fast the heroine loses her sense of self."

Varian heard the soft rustle of a woman's gait. Assuming it was his mother come to ask him again to convert, he didn't bother looking up. Honestly, he hurt too much to breathe, never mind move.
Lady Miriam: "A real medical complication for a change."
The Balance: "More of a medical inconvenience."

At least not unless it was while he was choking the life out of her treacherous body.
The Anthropologist: "She can't really be traitor to the cause, when you're metaphysically evil. You know this person is evil so if you're surprised, it's just your stupid fault now."

He wanted to lie down so badly that he could taste it,
The Balance: "So what does lying down taste like?"
Cathed: "Chicken."

In spite of the bracelet, he'd discovered that he had enough magick to remove the armor, but that would have been stupid beyond stupid...
Cathed: "Stupid beyond stupid.... Well, I'm glad we have a term for it now."

He felt a gentle hand on his head an instant before it brushed the hair back from his face. It was so tender that for a moment it actually weakened him. It was the kind of caress he'd ached for all his life...
Cathed: "He still thinks that it's his mother..."
The Balance: "Oedipus?"
The Chronicler: "It's remarkable that this whole love-tenderness thing really does physically sap him of strength."

But no one ever touched him like that.
Pillywiggin: "Except for Merlin a few chapters ago."

Instead, it was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen. Her long, dark brown hair fell in soft ringlets all the way to her waist. Her face was small and oval,...
The Anthropologist: "Small and oval compared to what?"
Azrael: "Compared to the ridiculous amount of her hair she has."

"They told me to feed you," she breathed in a soft, dulcet tone that was tinged by an old Anglo-Saxon accent.
(The Chronicler rages and rages and rages. As if they didn't speak a different language.)

"So they can torture me more? Forgive me if I'd rather die of starvation." Merewyn was surprised by his dark humor.
Azrael: "It's not a very good joke. In fact, I'm not even sure it is one."

His lips swollen and purple...
Pillywiggin (who adores the colour purple): "Purple!"

There was no trace left of his handsomeness. Indeed, he looked more like her when she'd been a crone.
Cathed: "Oh the irony!"

She couldn't imagine how much pain he'd have to be in. Her own beatings had hurt so badly at times that she hadn't even been able to move afterward, and none of them had left her this bloodied or swollen.
The Chronicler: "Because you hadn't been hit by sledgehammers!"

During her centuries at Camelot, she'd seen a great deal of horror and numerous atrocities, but never anything like this, and the fact that it was his own mother who had done such was incomprehensible to her.
The Anthropologist: "Those must have been some really boring centuries of atrocities if the worst you've seen is a man being beaten by sledgehammers."

Varian wasn't sure why he was allowing her to feed him at all as the salty meat burned the cuts on his lips and his loosened teeth [...]No one had ever been so kind to him, especially not when he was weak like this.
The Anthropologist: "If you're here feeding me food, it's because the people hitting me sledgehammers want you to, therefore your ultimate motive could not be to my advantage. Is it really that difficult logic?"

All the people he'd known, including his father and brother, had only attacked him more whenever he was down...
The Balance: "The mother I never knew is so hawt!"

But what surprised him most was the fact that she wasn't a miren, mandrake, Adoni, or sharoc. There was no magick to this woman whatsoever. No power.
Pillywiggin: "It's world of darkness!"
The Anthropologist: "That would explain the emo."
The Balance: "And the stupid werewolves."
The Chronicler: "Wrong book for stupid werewolves."

"No," he said quietly. "How can a human be here in Camelot?" Her eyes turned dark and sad. "By great foolishness on my part."
The Anthropologist: "EMO!"

And when she met his searching gaze, he knew exactly what had happened to her.
Cathed: "The gaze is searching her... I've got a mental image of his Gaze like a shark circling now..."

To his shock, Varian actually felt for her and whatever stupidity had possessed her to make her bargain. The Adoni never fulfilled their promises, unless they involved pain and torture. No human should ever be at their mercy.
Azrael: "Why isn't he thinking of idiot tax?!"

Varian carefully chewed and swallowed before he spoke again. "Do you have a name, lass?"
"Merewyn." It was a beautiful name that fit her ethereal grace. In the fey Adoni language, a merewyn was a sea witch.
The Chronicler: "Otherwise known as Welsh. Literally meaning, Sea-White."
The Chronicler also marvels at the fact that an Anglo Saxon King would name their child something in the Adoni language (which sounds like Welsh).

A tempting mer-creature that would grab unsuspecting sailors from their boats and drag them down to the bottom of the sea and trap them there to serve them until they grew tired of the man's presence or form. Then the merewyns would feed them to the sharks.
Perhaps that was a fitting name for a woman like her.
Cathed: "Ah sea-witch, it suits you..."
Azrael: "Is he subtly accusing her of being a slut like his mother?"

Even through the agony of his body her touch soothed him. How could he feel anything other than the pain of his beating? It didn't make sense, and yet somehow he did.
Pillywiggin: "No, no it doesn't."

As she fed him a piece of bread, he caught a whiff of her sweet skin. She smelled of rosewater and lilac...
The Chronicler: "You mean like your grandmother..."
Cathed: "Nothing new. We've already seen the twisted family dynamics!"

Conceived by deception and sold for one woman's vanity. It wasn't for him to have a human. He didn't deserve such comfort. All he deserved was hatred and scorn.
Cathed: "Emo!"
The Chronicler notices that this book has a similar hierarchy of awesomeness with humans at the top of it again. Much like Come to Me.

She flinched at the sound of his mother's voice. She didn't want to leave him alone to their cruelty again. How could she? No one deserved this.
The Anthropologist: "And yet it's been heavily implying that he's spent lots of time pulling fingernails off his enemies. So it's really just tit for tat."

Weakness was death to a creature like him. Strength. Solitude. Those were what he needed to live and thrive.
The Balance: "I live off angst!"
Pillywiggin: "He's a wraith!"

Closing his eyes, he let the pain take him away from any solace. Let it seep through him until it was all he felt. It allowed his magick to grow in strength...
The Anthropologist: "He's powered by emo. This system is so very broken!"

Merewyn felt a single tear slide down her cheek...
Azrael: "Single tears!"
The Balance: "That's an Eragonism!"

...as Varian dipped his head again so that he was looking at the floor while his dark hair hid his features from her.
Cathed: "He even has an emo fringe!"

"I wonder why it is that my spell didn't remove all of his powers? Perhaps I should have made it stronger...
The Anthropologist: "Why do the villains always, always suck?"

... Although I gave it enough of a charge that it should have depleted even the Kerrigan."
(The Chronicler notes that Kerrigan was the hero of the pervious book. What she's saying is that Varian is even harder and more flangey and more sexy than Kerrigan.)

Merewyn was aghast at Narishka's coldness, but she made sure she didn't show it.
The Anthropologist: "You shouldn't really be, you have been there for centuries."

Narishka was evil to the center of her dark soul. She didn't care for anyone. Really. If Morgen were to fall from power tomorrow, Narishka would just as easily serve another. So long as she could spew her venomous cruelty, she was happy.
(The Chronicler: "Why not work for Merlin then? Since she's perfectly happy for Mr.ITortureMyEnemiesForFun work for her?")

"Yes. To look as you do now is to invite nothing but trouble from the others. And the fact that you're a virgin…too tempting. There are many dark spells that call for the sacrifice of beautiful virgins. [...]And it would take me too long to replace you with another human."
Pillywiggin: "Because humans are rare."
Azrael: "Hot humans are rare."
The Balance: "Hot human virgins are rare?"


Anything. But it was hopeless. Narishka had left her with nothing. That lying bitch!
The Anthropologist: "Again you seem surprised by this."
The Chronicler: "How has she lied? She hasn't completed her mission of bringing Varian over in three weeks yet?"

Merewyn slid to the floor as her ragged emotions tore through her.
Lady Miriam: "Medical complication."

Anger, hurt, hopelessness. Yet underneath that, she realized that as bad as this was, she was still better off than Varian.
(The Chronicler notes that this will be the first of many times the heroine thinks the hero has it worse than her.)

And with that came a wave of despair so large that it rolled over her and left her breathless.
Luca: "I'm despairing, too."

"There's no way out," she whispered, her chest aching with the truth.
Lady Miriam: "She's asthmatic. Allergic to the truth is terribly inconvenient."

She was smarter now than she'd been as a girl in Mercia.
The Anthropologist: "No you're not! Or if you are that really makes me worried as to your original mental condition."
Cathed: "If she was smarter she'd have gotten their agreement in written form."

Having lived with Narishka all these centuries, she'd learned much from her mistress. She knew this game, and by all that was holy, or not, she was going to win her freedom. No matter what it took, she would leave this place and never look back. She didn't care who she had to sacrifice or what she had to do.
"I won't ever be a fool again."
The Anthropologist: "That is such a doomed concept right there."
The Chronicler: "What she means is: she'll sacrifice anything and anyone but the hero."

The Loinfire Club, really quite sick of all this passes the book to The Anthropologist to skim...
Pillywiggin: "Use your laser eyes."

Chapter 5 ...Two days later
She coldcocked the mandrake ...
The Anthropologist: "I understand that she's using the word according to its definition but it's just so very dodgy..."

...before she raked her nails down Varian's swollen cheek.
(The Chronicler: "What sort of torture is that? She's an evil minion not a bloody dominatrix!"
The Balance: "Clearly they're going to the psychological pain... this could be a gentle mother's touch but no! It is an evil dominatrix scratch!")

Her eyes snapping fire, she turned on the other mandrake, who cringed in fear of what she'd do to him...
The Anthropologist: "Right...they still haven't gotten the armour off him."
Cathed: "How does he pee?"
Azrael: "There's an Ancient Roman torture technique similar to that..."
The Balance: "Maybe he has diarrhoea so it just drips out."

Conversation diverges into execution methods in other cultures, including the Greek method of apparently putting the prisoner in a canoe on stagnant pond, after covering him in honey and feeding him lots of milk. He'll be sick: that and honey would attract insects. So he'll either die of diarrhoea, insects or starvation.

Which only made her angrier. "Fetch a crowbar, jaws of life, can opener, I don't care what you have to do, I want that armor off him!" she ordered the one standing mandrake.
Azrael: "They have no imagination."
Pillywiggin: "If they had a can-opener made of adamantine..."

She grabbed the sledgehammer from the floor where the immobilized mandrake had dropped it and slammed it into his stomach with enough force to lift him off his feet. Varian felt the blow all the way to his bones as his body was jarred by it.
The Anthropologist: "You'd think it was more painful, given he's not passing out yet."
Azrael: "That's pretty good armour."

His mother shrieked again. "Why won't you bend?" Because it was what everyone expected of him. His father, his brother, every warrior in Avalon. Hell, even Arthur had expected him to side with his mother and Morgen at some point. There were times when Merlin, too, looked at him as if she were waiting for him to turn.
(The Chronicler has no words. Centuries of loyalty and they expect him to betray them still? Oh, and unending teenage rebellion!)

Varian hissed as he felt something biting into his back as a grayling tried to pry the armor free. "It's like it's skin or something, my lady."
The Balance: "It's grafted on."
Pillywiggin: "Just use flange to take it off..."

"Why would you rather I beat you than simply do what I ask?"
He gave her a taunting smile. "Because it is ever my goal to piss you off."
Lady Miriam: "Stop being so fucking twelve about it?"

The Anthropologist: "Shouldn't he have lost all circulation in his arms by now?"
The Balance: "He has his Magic-with-a-k to pump blood."

The Anthropologist: "Skipping ahead. The next scene is just a repeat of previous scene. He's in pain and she's all sympathy."

He snorted at that, then grimaced as if a sharp pain had gone through him. "Would you sell out someone for your freedom?"
The Anthropologist: "Give it another century."

"You don't know, and yet you bleed for it?"
He gave her a gimlet stare that froze her to the spot. "Is there not something you would bleed for?"
"No," she said fervently. "Nothing. Why should I? No one would ever bleed for me."
Lady Miriam: "Has she not started her period yet?"

"Because I won't be what my father was. I won't turn against my oath. Not for anything." She didn't agree with him, but at least that made some sense. "Then you bleed for honor."
Cathed: "Bleed for honour? Hands to foreheads!"

The Anthropologist: "More blood-related semantics. She is asked to loosen the laces..."

"No. But I can't loosen it myself and I know better than to ask my mother for help."
The Anthropologist: "Which isn't really an explanation given he knows she's working for his mother."

The Anthropologist: "She angsts on and on about whether or not she should take the armour off him."

They would be even more merciless, and he would have no protection from them at all. None.
Azrael: "Nothing means something in this book."

Do it! Narishka would be pleased beyond measure.
Pillywiggin: "Just do it. He asked for it. Quite literally."

She saw herself as she'd been in Mercia…dressed in a beautiful gown with noblemen vying for a smile from her.
The Chronicler: "I thought she hated that?"

In her mind, she imagined the world she'd left behind. The beauty. The warmth. The color. Here the only color to be found was bloodred. And eyes so green, they practically glowed...
The Balance: "His eyes are so flangey they glow green in monochrome world."


"Why not?" [...] "Because I might remove it if I did." And with that, she left the room.
The Anthropologist: "You vowed never to be stupid again. Oathbreaker!"

The Anthropologist: "He angsts about whether or not he can trust chick, fantasises about her..."
More than that, he could feel the gentle touch of a woman's hand on his cheek. She'd always been faceless and formless in the past, but not this time.

Azrael: "I've dreamed it... and blogged about it."
Lady Miriam: "He is thirteen."
The Chronicler: "Wait... didn't his mother use Merewyn's beauty as her own for centuries? Is he just in fact dreaming about having sex with someone who looks like his mother?"

The Anthropologist: "Angst.Angst.Angst... Several days later. Still standing. We're looking at serious medical problems. And no, he hasn't pissed yet."
Pillywiggin: "He'll have gangrene by this point."

"So you've returned," he said dryly. She gestured toward her tray at his feet. "I forgot my things."
He raised a doubting brow that all but called her a liar.
Cathed: "Things... He doesn't buy that either."

The Anthropologist: "He's guess that she's the deformed woman. Because...
"Of course you do. I'm not a fool, Merewyn. I knew the moment I saw your eyes who and what you were. My mother changed everything about you except for that. Your eyes will always give you away."
Lady Miriam: "Colour contacts > Magic."
Pillywiggin: "Doesn't she have really lazy eye in ugly crone form?"
The Anthropologist: "Clearly she has lazy eye now, but he hasn't noticed."

"I know my mother, lass..."
The Balance: "Where is he getting this Scottish accent from?"

That was her worst fear, and it held her throat in an iron grip that radiated through her entire body. She didn't want to be ugly anymore. She didn't want to be spat at, despised, and mocked for ugliness.
The Chronicler is marvelling that she cares more about being beautiful than being kept as an abused slave, that she cares more about being beautiful than say, not being ancient and uncomfortable in a frail arthritis-torn hunchbacked body.

The Anthropologist: "He's worked out that she's there to seduce him. He tells her that his mother will screw her over and kill her. And he won't be there to save her."

Surely she hadn't come this far and survived so much cruelty to die as he said. Not even Damé Fortune would be that mean.
The Chronicler: "What has the blue guy got to do with this?"

She'd damned herself the moment she'd sought out the old hag in the Mercian woods and paid her to summon an Adoni for her so that she wouldn't be forced to marry a man who couldn't see anything more than her beauty.
Pillywiggin: "Everyone knows that lazy eyes are really hot!"

The Anthropologist: "She angsts about how she sold her soul and how many men died for her beauty. How she was selfish and vain and..."

All her life in Mercia, she'd been spoiled and vain. Stupid. A young girl so caught up in her own world that she'd thrown her entire life away rather than marry the man her father had chosen. She'd foolishly dreamed of love and happiness. At that time, she'd thought herself worthy of it.
The Chronicler marvels that back in way-back Mercia you had the ideas of marriage for love. Anglo-Norman concept, at best.

And now, instead of bargaining herself, she'd sold out another person for her own selfish gain
The Chronicler: "Humanity = altruism to the hero."

"Will you be able to look in the mirror knowing your beauty was bought in blood?"
The Chronicler: "Beauty = freedom."

He met her gaze levelly, and the ice in his eyes chilled her. "You get me out of here, and I will make sure that no Adoni ever lays a hand to you again. Ever."
The Anthropologist: "And so the plan is formed."

Pillywiggin is by this point trying very hard to summon Voldie and meeping frantically.
Lady Miriam: "That arm is not sufficiently evil!"


The Anthropologist: "Merewyn is in a different room. She remembers the plot of the last book. She meets Blaise the Mandrake who is really good looking. White hair albino with tanned skin, apparently. Now that she's hot, he's hitting on her."

The Anthropologist: "He's shown kindness, so she trusts him. She's also seen him secretly touching his shoulder blade."
She reached to touch his left shoulder blade and pressed her hand against a spot she knew had meaning for him. "You have always been counted as a friend. For many, many years."

The Anthropologist: "He's secretly a knight. She convinces him to save Val..."

The Anthropologist: "They both burst in. He uses flange to break the handcuffs.
Here," Blaise said, setting him back on his feet. He moved to cup Varian's face between his hands as he whispered quietly in Mandrake. "Asklas gardala varra deya."

Blaise hesitated before he dropped the cuff to the floor. "Are you okay, V?"
The Chronicler: "Why? Why must they always be shortened to V?"

The Anthropologist: "He, too, is struck by Valrian's features. They can't teleport away...."
Cathed: "It's like those collars in Night Play all over again..."
The Balance: "They could always chop off his hand. He's got enough power to reform it.... Blaise is a PC. He'll figure it out."

The Anthropologist: "Blaise and V are having an bitchfest about whose fault is it that they're about to get killed..."
"Not as close as you did. What the hell's wrong with you?" "Me? You're the one who's half-Adoni. Why didn't you get out of there when I left?" "Remember what I said? My mother is still restricting my powers. I can't travel anywhere with my magick so long as I have this on."

Merewyn held her hand to her head...
The Loinfire Club hold their respective hands to their foreheads.

Her eyes snapped fire at him, and it singed him to the deepest part of his manhood.
Cathed: "At least it's not his manroot."

"Of course it is. Where are we to go that they won't find us?" He glanced out the small window that overlooked the valley at the far end of Camelot. "Val Sans Retour."
Azrael mumbles something about bad French.

In case you haven't noticed, simpkin. No one, and I mean,no one returns from that godforsaken place...
The Anthropologist: "Now we know she's really angry... She's using simpkin... the ultimate insult."

The Anthropologist: "Essentially, the Valley of No Return joins up Camelot and Avalon. Or so the hero hopes..."
"And it backs up to Avalon. I'm willing to bet that if you make it through the valley, much like Glastonbury, you can walk through to our side."

Merewyn's face turned pale at his words. "I can't go there." "Yes, you can. The barrier is only to keep out evil. You're not evil, Merewyn. You're just foolish."
(The Chronicler: "The barrier is going to act as the great arbitrator of good and evil. Maybe it is like D&D and you can metaphysically detect good and evil.")

Blaise's face was doubtful. "That's easier said than done. If they see us, I'm through as a double agent. They'll know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I'm working with Merlin. No offense, but I've spent too many centuries spying in Camelot to just throw that away now."
(The Chronicler wonders what good has he done or not done in all the years as a double agent, considering how centuries of conflict seem to have passed them by without leaving anything memorable to recount.)

"Don't you think they're going to know you're on our side when they find us in your room? They're not dumb enough to think Merewyn brought me here, and they know I couldn't have freed myself."
The Anthropologist: "You'll be surprised."

Varian closed his eyes and summoned what magick he could. [...] whispered the words that would unleash the breath of the dragons who'd once made Camelot home...
The Anthropologist: "I understand that you can't tell us these things all at once, but some warning would be nice... I thought all that was under Camelot was the MODs and rotten limes."

They were the forefathers of the mandrake people. A stronger, more primitive race, the dragons had lacked the magical abilities of their progeny...
The Balance: "That makes little sense. Neither humans nor dragons are magical, where are they getting it from?"
Pillywiggin: "Ah, half biscuits..."
Lady Miriam: "They have to shag on a ley nexus to infuse it with magic."

A magick that had come as a result of the dragons breeding with the fey until the last of their pure breed had died and left the half-breeds such as Blaise and the rest.
The Balance: "Wait... why were the hybrids fertile? And why exactly does the parent species dying out cause magic-with-a-k to occur in the hybrid?"

It was said that the elders of their breed slumbered in the ground beneath the castle. And one of the first tricks any sorcerer learned was how to awaken the dragons for a brief time.
Pillywiggin: "And no one has done this before because..."
The Anthropologist: "You'd think they'd have gotten rid of them by now."

"All right," Blaise said as he shifted from human into his...
Pillywiggin: "Into an appropriately shaped key?"

The Anthropologist: "No, into a dragon. But this other dragon, not his own dragon form, even though we've established that he's going to get ratted out as the most rubbish undercover agent ever. They climb on top of him... he angsts about her hands and her sitting close to him on armour..."

She wrapped her slender arms around his waist and slid herself close to his spine. The delicate pallor of her arms struck him.
Pillywiggin: "Living in perpetual twilight does that to you."

But not nearly as much as her hands, which were ill kempt and raw. She wasn't a lady. She was a servant who his mother hadn't hesitated to abuse, and for that he felt a strange pang of guilt.
The Chronicler wonders why he feel responsible for his mother's actions. And why her hands are all calloused since her body has returned to it's pre-Camelot state of beauty.

For one thing, mandrakes could be unpredictable. For another, it meant relying on someone else for his safety, and trust had never come easily to Varian.
(The Chronicler notes that incidentally, the author is once more pissing all over mythology. A mandrake is traditionally either a plant or a familiar demon which animates little fetish-like dolls. At no point are they were-dragons.)

The Anthropologist: "Gargoyles are chasing them...."

Varian sighed in aggravation. A sword was useless against the gargoyles…as was Blaise's dragon-fyre.
The Anthropologist: "Dragon fyre is spelt with a y!"
Pillywiggin: "DO NOT WANT!"
Lady Miriam: "Waynt!"


Feint left, then dodge right and swoop toward the trees," Merewyn called.
"What?" Varian asked.
"Trust me. Gargoyles can't distinguish color, only movement. If Blaise flies around the dark gray trees, the color of his scales will blend in, and so long as the breeze is moving the leaves, they won't be able to tell which is Blaise and which is the forest."
The Balance: "Just like t-rexes."

The Anthropologist: "But the mandrakes can see you. And mandrakes can also breath fire, or rather fyre. There really is no disadvantage to shagging outside your species, is there?"

The Anthropologist: "They land. To protect here, V grabs her as he ducks and rolls. She lands on top of him in comedy fashion. Breathing faster. Extremely sexy..."

She looked extremely sexy with her hair and clothes mussed. Her lips parted.
The Anthropologist: "He gets hard on. He's embarrassed by this..."

Still dazed by the heat in his groin...
Lady Miriam: "Does it have a y in it too?"

"Can't you flash us to the valley like you did from the dungeon to your room?" Merewyn asked. Varian answered for him. "He's a mandrake, Merewyn, not a sorcerer..."
The Anthropologist: "This system is completely arbitrary. It's telling me that as though these concepts mean things."

Her touch was featherlight and delicate—like the brush of a fairy's wing...
The Chronicler wonders if fairies exist in this worldsetting, since fae and dragons do.
Pillywiggin: "Bug wings!"
The Anthropologist: "He probably has some sort of hand fetish considering how often it comes up."
Pillywiggin: "I'm presuming he feels the brush of fairy wings as he bites them off fairies."

But the Adoni in him was fascinated by her. It was the curse of his mother's race that they were part incubus. There had never been an Adoni born who didn't have a hefty sexual appetite. One that was hard to satiate. Though Varian tried to leash that part of himself, it wasn't always easy.
(The Chronicler notes that this is the beginning of the idea of uncontrollable Male Urges, which the hero being more manly than the rest can reign in, but lesser men are crushed by it and we shouldn't think worse of them... it's all here.)

He was the son of her worst enemy, and he bore a reputation for cruelty that was only surpassed by his mother and Morgen...
The Anthropologist: "I thought we've already established he wasn't willing to work for them on pain sitting in his own excrement-sodden clothes for week. Why is it an issue?"
The Chronicler: "Evil is hereditary."

I am the greatest idiot ever born.
Cathed: "Yes, yes you are."

The Anthropologist: "The valley is full of Morgen's exes."
She rolled her eyes at his acerbic tone. It was a well-known fact that Morgen banished all of her old lovers to the valley once they ceased to please her.

He paused to look at her. "I don't think Morgen truly fears anything, do you?"
"No. She is a bit arrogant that way."
The Anthropologist: "You say it like it's a bad thing."

The Anthropologist: "He has some backstory angst about the grail. Apparently he didn't get to go for it because he wasn't pure of heart enough and had to protect the kingdom instead. She asks if they were all that and apparently they weren't..."

"I liked Percival a lot more before he touched the grail and was changed by it."
(The Chronicler: "She's going for the shiny-knights-are-really-arrogant-cocks theme, but tragically her non-shiny hero is even more of a cock, so it just doesn't work out.")

Even though she was a virgin, she'd been in Camelot long enough to know every sexual position ever invented. The men and women there didn't really care who watched them while they sought to please themselves.
The Balance: "Explaining the sexual knowledge of the heroine in a way that doesn't make her a slut... check."

Sometimes, they didn't even bother to find a partner. Rather, they'd touch themselves and smile wickedly while others watched.
The Anthropologist: "Because everyone knows masturbation is more controversial and edgy than actual sex itself."

It was something she'd only tried once, but like everyone else, her twisted body had repelled her so much that she'd figured either it was overrated or she was too inexperienced to understand how she was supposed to touch herself for pleasure.
The Anthropologist: "That's really incompetent."
Cathed: "Surely she'd learn from watching all those people masturbating all over the place in Camelot."
Pillywiggin: "Did she just fail to find her clit?"

Biting her lip, it was all she could do not to rub herself against him.
Cathed: "But his skin is made of armour?"
Azrael: "All of his skin? That's just not going to end well."

The Anthropologist: "She starts moaning as he brushes against her by accident. She falls over because she's so embarrassed... And then there are stun darts!"

They'd only taken two steps when something very soft grazed against her cheek. It was as if something had kissed her. She'd never felt anything like it before.
Cathed: "WHAT?!"

The Anthropologist: "She gets hit in the arm, both go numb. She's worried about her lungs..."

The Anthropologist: "Kobolds show up. They use the word 'ye' a lot."
There was a short, round kobold eyeing them through the trees. A cursed race of fey, the kobolds were more akin to trolls than their more fair cousins...

The Anthropologist: "She's drooling. And is quite upset about this. Quite disgusted."

The valley was only probable death. Panting from his sprinting, he could feel the sweat streaming down his back and face. Taste it on his lips
Cathed: "He likes tasting things. I wonder what does the valley of bad French and exes taste like."
Azrael: "French taste like bad aftershave..."

The Anthropologist: "Dragons also chasing them. Or flange mandrakes. I really don't care... Ah new chapter..."