This entry covers part of the eleventh volume of the original “Re:Zero” novels.
In the previous entry, our unlucky protagonist got to enjoy a break with some cute little bunnies.
You are looking down at grass so green as if it came out of a painting. None of the fingers of your right hand are missing. In fact, you still have arms. You check what you can see of the rest of your body, but you are as healthy as you have ever been. Even more than that, you are calm as if you just came out of an operation where they pumped you full of morphine, and yet you feel completely lucid. You remember everything. A horde of monstrous rabbits devoured you to the last drop of your blood, and you lost your mind. There wasn’t the hint of a commanding center that could steer your consciousness away from insanity. Would that have been the end? No matter how many lives you live, how many times you die and get reborn, what use is it if you lose your mind? And how were you saved?
You lift your gaze and you see her. Echidna. The Witch of Greed is sitting on her chair in the shade of the parasol. She has prepared two teacups and a steaming teapot, and she waits for you to join her. You keep staring at the witch while an indescribable gratitude fills you. She’s as pale as the snow you waded through, but still not as white as her long, silky hair. She’s wearing an elegant funeral dress that only exposes her flesh from the neck up, as well as her hands. She holds your gaze knowingly with her intelligent black eyes that have vertical, white pupils, and her smile welcomes you genuinely, as if she had wanted nothing more than to receive you again.
“That death was unimaginably awful, wasn’t it?”, Echidna asks calmly. “You were quite lucky that you just happened to end up in a room where I could help.”
You swallow, and try to clear the images from your mind.
“I was… I had lost it, hadn’t I?”
“Oh, don’t worry about it, I’ve been there. Dying and seeing my corpse decay before my very eyes left an impression on me. It was such a beautiful, elegant body, too. What a waste. At least you don’t stay around for that part. But you’re here now, safe and sound, thanks to my mercy.”
Echidna gathers her long white hair in one hand. She lifts it slightly as she tilts her head, and lets the hair slide through her fingers.
“Unless my eyes deceive me,” you say with a deep voice, as your heartbeat quickens, “you haven’t lost any of that beauty.”
Echidna laughs, and her black eyes shine. She smiles displaying her pretty teeth.
“You jump so quick to praising the women you are attracted to, Subaru. Not everyone likes a flatterer.”
“I’m serious. Seeing your pale face fills me with such joy that I could take your hand and dance for hours in this fake world of grass.”
Echidna closes one eye to look at you coyly with her other one.
“Hmmm… That’s quite the declaration. But you have seduced with similarly buttery words all those other women who prevented your mind from breaking, haven’t you?”
“None other could have. That’s what you wanted me to understand from the beginning, right? There is only one Echidna, the Witch of Greed, now or ever.”
Echidna hums, her eyes narrowing. She moves her hair to one side with both hands, leaning her head forward and exposing her long, slender neck. Her head cocked to the side, she lets out a mischievous little grin.
“You always did have a one-track mind, didn’t you?”
“One when it comes to the best.”
“In all that praise, I haven’t yet heard a ‘thank you’, Subaru. As in ‘thank you from stopping my mind from breaking permanently after being consumed by the Great Rabbit’. I wouldn’t do that for just anybody.”
“That’s right, you wouldn’t. You are a witch of old. You have better things to do.”
“But I’m doing it for you. Why is that?”
As she speaks, her voice becomes lower, the sultriness of it washing over you. You are short on breath, even though you intend to speak normally.
“Because I’m the first guy whose memories you have taken full possession of who happens to be able to return to the past whenever he dies, I’m guessing.”
Echidna smiles, and puts her hand on her chest.
“You know me so well.”
You walk up to the tea table. As you stand between the empty chair and Echidna’s, she looks up at you with a wavering smile, as if she didn’t predict you approaching her this way. You put your hand on the table and lean towards her.
“Why would you erase yourself from my memories whenever I exit this grass world of yours, Echidna?”
“Does it really matter? Besides, it’s not like I erased everything. I still left you with some… experiences.”
You put your hand on Echidna’s, which she’s resting on the table next to her filled teacup. She opens her eyes wide for a split second, and separates her lips. Her hand is warm. You’d gladly hold it for the entire time you spend here.
“It matters because I don’t want to forget you, Echidna. I want to keep you in my thoughts, that I was able to look at your beautiful face, that I had great conversations with you, and that you saved my life.”
Echidna’s lips curl into a smile, and even though she looks as if she’s containing it, she blushes slightly.
“In my case, I’d love it if you could come back to me whenever you die, again and again.” She slowly lifts her finger, and touches your chest. “It’s done. I have rewritten the pact so you will never forget me.”
Echidna gives you a small wink while she blows on her tea, as if to tell you it’s ready.
You stand there overwhelmed. You haven’t lifted your hand from Echidna’s, although she doesn’t acknowledge it. She is a witch who has been dead for hundreds of years, but she has seen every single memory you have stored and she can likely revisit them with perfect recollection. Instead of fleeing from you in a panic, she rescues you from insanity and then welcomes you lovingly in her dream. Your heart is beating as hard as you want this woman, and you fear that if she offered you to stay with her in her death-dream forever, you would jump for joy.
Echidna has lowered her head and is glancing at you shily while bending a corner of her mouth in a smile.
“What will I do with you, Subaru, when you just stand there staring at me so intensely?”
“I was just thinking of how beautiful you are.”
Echidna puts her hand on her mouth as she giggles, then she lifts that hand to touch your cheek.
“Well, I suppose I am. But we share something more meaningful than beauty, wouldn’t you agree?”, Echidna says.
Against your will, merely to make it less awkward, you nod, pull your hand away from hers and sit slowly on the chair across the Witch of Greed. A thin vapor rises from the tea she has poured for you.
She rests her elbows on the table, which displays the vertical strips on the sleeves of her black dress, and she rests her face on her palms while her black eyes glisten.
“I prepared my tea just how you like it. You didn’t remember me outside of my death-dream, but I wondered if you would have missed sitting in front of me, lifting a warm teacup to your lips and tasting my special tea.”
“Well, it depends. Did you add your special ingredient?”
“Oh, you don’t have to doubt that I will always prepare your tea with special attention. I put some more of that special ingredient this time, just for you.”
Her black eyes shining, she lifts her teacup to her lips and takes a sip.
“In that case, Echidna…”
You lift the warm teacup to your lips and you drink from it slowly, without stopping, tilting the teacup until only the sludge at the bottom remains. When you put your teacup down and lick your lips, Echidna’s eyes are watery, her white pupils have dilated horizontally, she’s breathing harder through her mouth, and her cheeks have reddened.
“Delicious”, you say with a throaty voice. “I’ll have some more.” You grab the steaming teapot and fill your teacup carefully. “But you will grant me some more time to enjoy my second cup more leisurely, won’t you?”
She plays with a strand of hair to avoid holding your gaze.
“Y-Yes, you may take all the time you need…”
“Still, why go through the theatrics of salivating on the tea you so lovingly prepare for me, Echidna? I would go straight to the source of your bodily fluids.”
The witch gulps.
“You know how to make the heart of a long-dead maiden race, Subaru. Would you clarify what you are proposing to me?”
“Isn’t it obvious? You do know more than anyone in this world, don’t you, Echidna? Then say what I meant.”
Even though she can’t push her blush down, she smiles mischievously at you.
“Why, you want to drink my blood, of course… Though it would be simpler if you just said so.”
“Ah, I see how it is. You know how much I have enjoyed all that blood-sucking business. But I wasn’t going for that. So would you care to guess again?”
She looks away from you and her face becomes one big frown, though she’s also trying not to laugh.
“You… You want… To taste my blood…”
“I want to taste something of yours, for sure.”
“Then… Then you want… But we both know what you want, Subaru.”
You lift your ass off the chair, then reach with your hand to hold her chin and make her look deep into your eyes.
“Echidna. I want to taste your blood, your sweat, your saliva, your tears… I want to taste every single liquid and fluid in your body. I want to feel your pain and your pleasure. I want you to lie on the grass, pull your panties down and open your legs. I will eat out the cobwebs from your dried up pussy. I will lap up your witchy cum to the last drop. And I’ll want to do it over and over.”
You can feel her emotions leaking into your mind. The sensation of a small droplet of water rolling down your cheeks. She shakes her head, and you feel the pulsating pain coming from her through your link. She takes your hand that was holding her chin, and slowly lowers it down to the table, although she doesn’t stop touching it.
“You use some dangerous words, especially with someone who has been alone for far too long… Far too long…”
“I’m glad that I am able to stimulate you, and I would stimulate you much more.”
Echidna lifts her free hand to her breast, that her funeral dress hugs tightly, and swallows. Her rosy lips are wet.
“You must get such pleasure of saying bold things, don’t you, Subaru?”, she asks with a low voice.
“For sure! Being weird is one of the best pleasures of life. As for other pleasures, lie down gently on the grass and open your legs for me so I can make you live again.”
A bead of saliva is about to run down her lip, but she licks it and closes her mouth. She looks down at your hand that she’s holding, and she strokes it slowly with her thumb.
“You are saying some very bold things right now.”
“Have I said too much already? My feelings for you are no secret, certainly not for a being of such immense power. At this point you must almost be able to read my mind and know what I think of you.”
“Subaru, you have a girlfriend, who is in a coma. And you have a girlfriend, who is lying on the antechamber’s floor, and who has shared passionate moments with you even if her current self doesn’t know it.”
“You wouldn’t be jealous of Emilia or Rem, would you?”
She makes a pouting face, and shuts one of her eyes. She turns her head to the side. You laugh at her childishly cute reaction.
“That’s even bolder, laughing at someone who can crush you with a snap of her finger”, she says nonchalantly.
“But at this point I would be glad to be crushed by you, Echidna. Surely you understand that.”
“You do have such a concept as cheating in your world. That much I have seen.”
“Yeah, it’s not good.”
Echidna looks up at you with her cheeks still red, but frowns in amused disbelief.
“But that’s what you are proposing by wanting to take care of this maiden’s long-buried longings, aren’t you?”
You don’t want to pull away from the warmth of Echidna’s hand, but you rub your chin with your free hand and think about it.
“Yeah, I don’t know why it doesn’t feel like cheating to me. It might be a complicated matter. The reality is that I want you to melt in my mouth as a gesture of genuine love and gratitude, instead of something sexual.”
Echidna’s cheeks blush even harder, and she hides her face with her free hand.
“I don’t believe there’s a world in which licking someone’s genitals to give them an orgasm wouldn’t be considered a sexual act. And you say it so calmly… You’re not at all hesitant like you were with the other two.”
“Well, in any case, have that in mind. If you ever want to get your pussy eaten, give me a call.”
She lowers her palm along her face, and her fingers linger on her lips for a moment. She can’t bring herself to look you in the eye.
“I hold all of your memories, Subaru, and I still can’t tell if you are serious. That’s how much of an enigma you are for me. And it just happens that mysteries make my heart race…”
You lean towards her blushed face, and you get to see those beautiful, delicate features that much closer.
“I don’t know either if I’m serious or not. So how about you lie on the grass, pull down your panties and we find out?”
She remains in silence for long seconds as she breathes heavily through her nose, and her heartbeats pound loudly in the artificial silence.
“Alright.”
With an immediate and decisive answer, she releases your hand, stands up and walks away from the tea table. With a snap of her fingers she materializes a fluffy, very comfortable looking rug which covers a patch of grass. She sits down on it, facing you, and leans back against the rug. She lifts the side slit of her funeral dress so she reveals her long, thin and snow white legs, befitting a princess locked in a tower.
You bite your lower lip while your heart jumps on your chest. You have no clue how you can have an erection in a death-dream, and although you are glad, the crotch of your pants is complaining about it.
Echidna slides her black lace panties down to her ankles, and then parts her legs a bit. You can’t see her pussy from your position, but you can’t wait to taste it. The open skirt of her black dress flows along with the wind, almost as if it’s a bridal gown. Echidna holds your gaze with her glistening black eyes, beckoning you to get closer.
“Come on over here, let’s get started.”
“Sorry, I can’t hear you. My raging erection is giving me tunnel vision.”
Echidna giggles quietly, taking one hand out of the slit of her dress to cover her mouth while her shoulders bounce lightly.
“I’m the only thing that matters in front of you, am I not?”
“I can’t think of anything else that would matter now.”
With a mischievous smile, Echidna parts her legs a bit more. She holds her black dress to her stomach with her other hand, giving you a full view of her damp pussy and beautiful legs. As you walk slowly towards the devil without moving your gaze away from that delicious meal, for a moment you are a bit disappointed that it didn’t turn out that Echidna had some weird pussy like a horizontal one or something crazier, but it doesn’t matter. Those rosy lips hugging that welcoming button on top are all you need in the world. You aren’t surprised that her pubic hair, which she hasn’t trimmed for a long time, but that still doesn’t suggest four hundred years of growth, is white as well.
“Come on, Subaru”, Echidna says with a sultry voice. “Do we have all night?”
Crouching down, you are now face to face with Echidna’s womanhood. Her overwhelming scent fills your nostrils, and you feel the heat coming from her, so hot as if it intended to scorch your skin. You stare into her vaginal opening, which from this angle and position it looks like a flesh version of the witch’s pupils. You won’t be able to hold her gaze the same way again.
You swallow before you start drooling, and then with both hands you caress the interior of her thighs slowly and lovingly, as if kneading her flesh. Echidna closes her eyes and lets out a sigh of pleasure.
“How bad do you want it, witch?”, you ask with a low, hungry voice. “How much do you want me to take care of that delicious pussy of yours over and over?”
“Mmmm, so much… You don’t even know how much I wish for that, Subaru”, she replies, her legs a bit shaking from the pleasure.
You lie on your chest and scoot closer to the warmth emanating from her insides. You caress along the sides of her waist, sliding your hands under her dress. You kiss and lick the pale skin of her inner thigh as you trace a slow path towards her pussy.
“Tell me”, you whisper.
“I want… I want you to need me… to love me… to be mine forever.”
You spread the lips of her pussy and move closer still, breathing in and out while feeling the intense heat of her core warming up your face. Her scent is making you light-headed.
“Forever, huh?”, you murmur. “As your personal slave…?”
“Nnhh… We’ll see… we’ll see.”
Threading your fingers through her pubic hair with one hand, with the other you wet your fingers with her warm juice, and slowly move in for a lick. Echidna arches her back and grabs your head with both hands, pulling you into her as her feet curl up.
Echidna sighs deeply, but as the tip of your tongue is about to touch her clit, you cannot move your face any closer. It’s as if an invisible barrier was holding you in place. You look up, thinking that Echidna has moved her hands to your forehead to push you, although you would have noticed, but she’s still holding your head as if to pull you closer. Still, you can’t reach further. A drop of your saliva falls from your tongue on her drenched insides, and Echidna lets out a soft moan.
“Ah… We have learned so much, Subaru”, she purrs.
You retract your tongue. Even though Echidna is running her fingers through your hair, you don’t like one bit that finality in her voice.
“We still have plenty to learn, Echidna”, you say almost out of breath.
The witch’s eyes glow with pleasure as she stares down at you with trust and love. She’s smiling as if she just came, even though she prevented you from even trying.
“I know we do. And our experiment was such a success. I have learned so much from myself, and from you. Despite my reservations and pretensions, plenty of them born because I have been trapped for hundreds of years, I yearn for this intimate touch with someone who would love to please me. I am a woman, I am alive. I am so grateful that you showed me that, Subaru.”
“I-I can show you much more than that! I will eat you out so good that it will send your spirit straight to heaven! I will make you see the light!”
“Ah… That interests me. The act of sex is to reproduce, but even without that, we humans find so much joy in it.”
“Just let me get a little bit closer, for the love of God.”
Echidna chuckles softly, then lets out a long sigh. She moves her hands to your cheeks, then caresses them lovingly as her gaze moves on your features.
“No, no… The love of the gods has abandoned us both.”
You frown, wondering what she means. Her pussy is still warming your face, her rousing smell filling your nostrils. Your dick hasn’t gone down a bit, and it must be leaking pre-cum. The blue balls for this one are going to kill you.
“Echidna… Is this another one of your trials?”
“In a way, everything is a trial, just not one as formal or as purposeful as the ones that lift the barrier of Sanctuary. Please, Subaru, tell me. I’m very curious to know how come I saw you hesitate so much in getting involved romantically with Rem and Emilia, and yet since you entered my death-dream I have seen nothing in your eyes but the wish to please me entirely.”
Echidna sits up, her calves still resting on your shoulders as she looks down at you. Her eyes analyzing your every thought.
You close your eyes, then you lower your hands to her thighs and use the inner part of one as your pillow. Your dick is squeezed against the ground.
“You know, back when I only thought about loving my Rem forever, I punished myself for every thought about touching other women, even if my subconscious produced them by itself. And my subconscious produced them by the hundreds, believe me. I thought that if due to some horrible lapse of judgement I let myself cheat on her, I wouldn’t be able to survive psychologically. My mental stability has always been precarious, and to keep going I have to be able to stand on platforms such as ‘I’m not the kind of man who would cheat on the love of his life’, or ‘I won’t eat human remains’, or ‘I will never have sex with the precocious trainee despite her skimpy outfit and that in my mind I keep confusing her name with Lolita’. We need those kinds of maxims to survive in society, even though the society I have ended up living in is nuts. But… unfortunately I discovered that I can survive, remain sane, after committing the worst sin in the world, and carrying on regardless doesn’t seem so bad anymore. Does that make me stronger, Echidna?”
Echidna combs her waist-long hair with her hand while looking up at the clouds, deep in thought.
“I don’t know. I’ve never thought of myself as strong, just lucky. I’m just a girl that was given powers beyond imagination and a broken brain to use them.”
You hide your face with the witch’s thigh.
“You remain coherent even in the midst of your overwhelming compulsions, so that alone makes you a role model for me.”
Echidna giggles as she runs her fingers through your hair.
You sigh deeply.
“If I want to be real honest with myself, maybe I don’t even want to pursue the next intriguingly pleasurable shot of pain, nor wear my willpower down to nothing by saving the people I like over and over. Every aspect of my personality is just a symptom of my overpowering need to devour pussy, hence how I ended up hiding my urge to cry against the thigh of a witch that has been dead for four hundred years.”
“I understand”, Echidna whispers.
“Maybe you could help me with that one last compulsion.”
“We cannot do it, Subaru. Not in this place.”
You separate your face from her warm thigh just enough to see Echidna’s expression. She is running her fingers through your hair slowly while she holds your gaze with an expression of unconditional understanding, as if she were your loving mother. Your penis isn’t sure whether it should soften or harden. You swallow.
“There would hardly be a more suited place for us to enjoy some naked romance while rolling on the grass, possibly downhill.”
“I never really thought about having sex in the outdoors before… but then I suppose I never had such a beautiful partner to do so with.”
“You are really not making it any easier that I cannot lick you dry right now.”
Echidna clicks her tongue.
“Ah, I know…”, she says as if she isn’t the one preventing you from eating her out.
Echidna motions for you to lift your head off her thigh, and you are disappointed that you can’t enjoy her warmth any longer, but the witch slides down next to you and puts her arms around you. You hold her waist and put your head against her chest. Her dress smells like an antique shop, but it’s not unpleasant. You sigh, then relax your body. This feels real nice. It’s hard to believe that your body remains in the cold, dark world outside, waiting for you to fly back into it.
“Subaru… We can’t satisfy our sexual needs with each other because you forgot something vital about this place”, Echidna says softly.
“I don’t know what it could be. Your pussy was as real as they come, except that this one wouldn’t come!”
Echidna chuckles.
“I’m very, very serious. Think about it.”
“You mean the witches’ tomb itself?”
“That’s right. It’s in the name, isn’t it?”
“… Sorry. Most of my blood isn’t reaching my brain.”
“It’s fine. The plural in the name isn’t a misnomer, Subaru. The same way my spirit remains restless, so do theirs.”
A cold shiver runs through your body, and before you know it you have sat up. Your current world is an ocean of grass in which the swollen waves are frozen, allowing the lovely Echidna to set on the top of them her tea parties enhanced with saliva. No sign of any voyeur witches.
“Are you suggesting that the other witches of old are here, and I just can’t see them?”, you ask quietly, even though any other witch present would have heard plenty of incriminating stuff.
“Correct. By binding all of our souls into the very tomb, they prevented us from disrupting their notion of how the world ought to be. But we have never ceased to think, to feel, to suffer…”
“That’s… that’s not natural.”
Echidna sighs, and sits up. She touches her fingers to her lips, then touches them to yours. Although you want so bad to kiss her, she wouldn’t allow it.
“But the worst punishment was locking us up for hundreds of years with each other”, Echidna adds. “I’m the only one who can create these realistic simulations, and the others can only enter them as long as I weaken the defenses. But I assure you, they have heard everything, they have seen everything.”
You gulp, and now you feel a bit sick.
“Even Satella…?”
Echidna’s expression sours as if she wished to never be reminded of the witch who killed her. The Witch of Greed sighs, then nods.
“I have special defenses set up for that one.”
You lower your head, trying to take it all in. You are already overwhelmed by the current witch of old. She’s capturing your thoughts and your senses. But a bunch of them you have never met have been looking into the scene as if from a sex shop booth, probably while touching themselves? It’s too much. And that Witch of Gluttony, who created the White Whale, is among them.
Echidna twists around and pushes you down playfully so you lie on your back, and then she lies next to you. You are staring at a perfectly blue sky as if Echidna didn’t add neither red nor green into the equation.
“Subaru, let’s forget about those girls for a while. You must have so many questions that only my knowledge can answer, isn’t that right? And you have spent all your time since you entered my death-dream trying to pleasure me sexually.”
“Which you appreciate, I hope…”
“Of course, but maybe we should focus?”
“I suppose…”
“Good. Ask away, you adorable little thing. Ah… But let’s first set the mood by gazing at the stars.”
You turn your head towards Echidna to figure out if she’s making a joke.
“The day is as clear as th-“
The death-dream goes dark, and the grassy ground ceases to hold your weight. Although you seem to be floating in a void, in practice something like an invisible hammock is holding you in place. Echidna, the Witch of Greed, leans against you from the side. She rests her temple on yours, and after she lifts a hand towards the black void above you and she snaps her fingers, an endless horizon of a myriad of stars, nebulae and galaxies lights up. The both of you are bathed in their distant warmth.
You want to choke up. You are holding on to the closest thing to a goddess you have ever known.
The Domains of the Emperor Owl 