by Lucas, Naomi
His hands were raw from the work.
Prayer was a small settlement, at least what remained of it. Each of the houses and buildings that still stood were built on raised islands in the swamps, keeping most of the stone foundations from crumbling away. Knowing it must have been well over a hundred years, possibly several hundred, since Prayer was swallowed up by the labyrinth, it surprised him how much of the original village was left.
Astegur tested the stake in his grip, found it sound, and placed it aside before starting on the next. If the hag has been here since it fell, then she has done well in preserving and protecting what she could of her land. Stranger things had happened in the mists.
But if Calavia had been here since Prayer’s death, then how old was she really? Humans could live much longer lives on this side of the wall if they were safe, but all alone? It didn’t add up.
He didn’t know the extent of her powers, or how strong her affinity was for wax, but in his short time in her element, he realized several things…
Nothing in the swamp produced wax which meant her supply was limited. It would not account for her power weakening like she had mentioned, but it may be a part of the problem. If he had to guess, Calavia needed the wax as a crutch, especially if all she knew of her own powers were mostly self-taught. But then again, nearly everything in his world that had magic was self-taught. There were no instructors here.
Another thing was her courage, especially when it came to him.
No single being in the labyrinth would dare seek to control or fight him the way she had, which meant up until now, she had never had a reason to fear, to truly fear death and torture at the hands of another.
She has been safe for far too long in a dangerous and unforgiving land. The thought of losing that safety would incite a crazed fear in itself. He had seen it, had been there himself when he was but a calf in his mother’s arms.
Astegur set down the wood in his hand and sheathed his axe. The green orbs of light in the distance seemed to pierce brighter through the fog as the sky darkened. The thralls around him continued as if the descent of night meant nothing to them.
He watched them for a while as their pallid, limp skin shone like beacons in the darkness. If Calavia has been here since the beginning, then why isn’t she a thrall as well?
Questions needled his thoughts, and the more time he spent caught up in her world, the more he wanted to rip her open and unearth her answers.
Astegur snarled. He would rather fight to the death than become a thrall himself. Even if his master was a beautiful female.
His hand tightened into a fist as his cock twitched. It was raw from rubbing out his seed after he had left Calavia bound and naked.
He had wanted to rut her and exert his dominance. He had been so close to doing it when her tit had grown taut between his fingers. He’d wanted to press her into her wax and suckle her breasts as he forced his prick between her pretty, pale thighs. He knew why he wanted his prick inside her but not why he felt such dark satisfaction at the thought. She could not empower him like a real human could…but perhaps he would keep her anyway. The hag could take his brutality until the day he went to the barrier lands and captured a pure blood.
It would be delicious punishment.
Astegur grunted, his cock solidifying even further, pushing his loincloth aside again. He reached down to palm himself as another thrall trailed by him, dragging a rotting beam of wood through the muck behind it. He needed Calavia to give them another order. He had tried himself, but they ignored him.
He squeezed his shaft once more and turned to the temple corridor, heading toward her.
He expected to see her furious and mostly free from her bonds by now, ready to throw a bowl of molten wax in his face, but that was not what greeted him. His nostrils flared and his muscles popped as he came to an abrupt stop at the front of her altar room.
She sat slumped on the ground before her altar, vines tangled around her belly. Her head was tipped to one side, her eyes were hooded, and her hair hung around her naked body in waves, its thick, black strands framing the moonlit skin of her body. The hag was stunning, nothing like a hag at all. Why would anyone call her such a thing?
His hands twitched at his sides as his gaze roamed over her bound form. His mouth watered. Her position was enough to stop any male in his tracks, but it was her partially spread legs that ensnared him.
All thoughts of the thralls left his skull. He took a hesitant step toward her, uncertain if this was a trick, but the sound startled her eyes up to his, and she moaned his suspicions away. His vision tunneled as a need burned like abyssal flame in his gut.
Calavia moaned again softly, shifting her position just enough to reveal her clutching her cunt and the wetness glistening across her thighs. Shadows threatened to obscure it, and he crossed the remaining distance between them to tower over her.
“You have had a day to free yourself.” He searched the vines that bound her and found no tears, only some fibrous shreds around her wrists. “I did not expect…”
She lifted her face and shifted slightly to bring her legs inward. He wanted to snatch her ankle and open her up.
“My body is leaking,” she said.
His gaze dropped back down to where she clutched herself. His nostrils flared again, as he filled himself with the thickly potent scent of musk and arousal. “You have coaxed it from your cunt.”
Calavia nodded. “Yes, but not at first. I was wet when you left, and now…” Her voice lowered to a whine. “Now it will not stop.”
Astegur tsked. “You have never lubricated yourself before?”
“No.”
Stumbling, heavy, wet footfalls of the thralls sounded behind him, breaking the curiously delicious moment. Calavia stiffened, rising up as much as she could, hiding her desire from him. Astegur spun and snarled at the undead humans behind him. They did not flinch or look his way, their vacant eyes focused fully upon Calavia.
And to his horror, he saw several of the male thrall’s pricks rise and lengthen. Much like his own had done by the sight of her alone. He moved between them and Calavia, ready to fight for the right of being near her in such a state.
He was not one to share.
He heard Calavia whimper at his back.
“Leave,” she commanded.
Astegur turned back toward her to see if it was he she spoke to. But her eyes were on her thralls. His own widened at the realization that she would choose to remain alone with him in such a state.
Even if she didn’t want to be alone with him, it wasn’t like she had a choice in the matter. If she hadn’t made the thralls leave, he would have with his blade, even if the pain in hurting them was excruciating and would render him immobile, if not kill him.
He heard the thralls turn away.
“Wait,” he growled, making sure he remained between them and Calavia’s deliriously wanton state. Images of their cocks still lingered in his skull.
“Why?” she asked.
“I cannot mate you knowing there’s a hundred horse cocks coming straight for you here. We will not waste precious time. Order them to make stakes out of the wood they had gathered then tell them to stay away from you tonight no matter what they may hear.”
She trembled under his gaze. “Do you plan to hurt me?”
“Tell them, or I will finish this in front of them.”
She looked past him and toward the thralls he shielded her from and gave them the order he directed of her. They left them alone soon after, cooling his need to rip off their erections.
Fiercely satisfied, he knelt at her side on one knee and breathed his smoke over the skin of her neck, her collarbone, and rubbed his nose and face into her breasts as she tensed beneath him, shying away. “Good female, you can trust me,” he cooed suddenly, startling her further.
“Astegur?”
He pushed his hoof between her knees and shoved one of her legs away. More sounds escaped her—his name on her lips—and he f
elt his cock tighten painfully. She clutched her bound wrist with her other hand.
“Never felt your essence gush before, female?” he cackled, low and pleased. “Not once, late at night, while your thoughts were wandering? You have never grown damp from the act or the thought of sex?”
She shook her head. “I have been damp before, after a long day of work.”
“That is not the same.”
“Please make it stop,” she whispered.
He tsked, disliking the command, but at the same time, wanting to roar with pride from her begging. His eyes fixated on her thick, feminine curls that caught her dew. “How old are you?”
“I don’t know, does that matter?”
“You said you have never been aroused.” His fingers inched up her legs. “You look young, and yet I have been told Prayer has always had a hag.”
She pressed her bound hands to her stomach. “Yes.”
“You?”
“Yes.”
He slid his hands up farther; they were large and scarred upon her clear skin, exciting him. The tips of his fingers brushed over the closest of her cunt hair. Astegur squeezed her flesh, and another wave of terrible possession filled him. “How?”
If Calavia was truly untouched, his horrid soul wanted to know before he ruined her innocence.
“I was conceived the day the town fell,” she whimpered, still shaking. “My mother was a witch. Her need to keep me safe protected the village from the hordes, but it did not protect us from the mist.”
“A black spot.” They were uncommon, but there were other places like Prayer. “Is that how you survived?” If he had been alive he could have helped her. Astegur groped her flesh again. If I had been here when it fell, she may still be fully human…
“I survived because of her and because I possess her same powers. When the townsfolk succumbed to hysteria, some fled, others killed themselves, many just...died, and everyone who remained became thralls. But I lived, having taken my first breath of the world filled with the curse and my mother’s protection.”
He reached up and pushed her hair out of her face. “And your mother?” He thought back to the woman he saw when he first arrived at Prayer. The one that looked exactly like Calavia, but deader and more haunted.
She frowned, and her eyes dropped briefly. “She became a thrall when I was still young. I don’t know what had kept her human for so long when everyone else was lost. Maybe it was her magic, maybe it was me, but she lived years longer than the rest while I watched her remaining humanity slip away...” She shivered despite her desire
Astegur grunted. It explained a lot. Why Calavia had such tired eyes, why she was naïve in some ways, yet knowledgeable in others. Why she was here at all… Why she cared so much for a place that had nothing to offer. She had never known anything else, at least nothing that had not been taught to her when she was still young, or viewed through her wax.
It could also be why she did not fully understand her sex.
He inhaled the scent of her, relishing the moment and the gift the gods had given him. Perhaps he was meant to come here after all.
Astegur pushed her now-limp leg out even further as a tightness banded his abdomen. “Show me where you are empty.”
Calavia slowly lifted her hand away from her core and the smell of her arousal erupted like smoke through the air. He was on his knees in the next moment, gripping her thighs and spreading her legs apart. The thick, delicious scent of her was enough to steal his mind and go berserk.
He pulled her hair over her shoulder, then tore the vines that wrapped around her middle that kept her trapped. She whimpered and adjusted herself but he stopped her from closing her legs. His voice darkened. “Do you know why you are wet now, hag?”
She peered up at him. The shadows of his horns fell across her face from the fading light. “No.”
Astegur grinned. “I have made you this way.” There was no other possibility, at least he was certain he was the only viable male in leagues. “Look what you've done to me.” He pushed his leathers aside and showed her his fully engorged cock. Shadows hovered around it, but it was still visible. Her narrowed eyes and sudden focus on his member told him as much.
He would often boast that his prick was the largest of the Bathyr. It was long and roped, thick with muscle, with a bulge right at its tip and a similar bulge at its base, where his testicles hung. He released one of Calavia’s legs to handle his shaft, rubbing out one long thread of precum from its tip.
“I feel empty,” she said, staring at it.
He stroked his length again. “As you should. Your body is responding to me. A heat that festers and forms in your gut that makes your sex ache, much like I ache to fill something up. Let me show you.” Astegur tugged her away from the altar enough for her to lie back. Another cry tore from her throat as he pushed her knees up to spread her sex wide. Her vaginal hole opened up, pulled apart from the slickness it created. As he looked down upon the hag and her submissive beauty, the fire in his belly demanded to release with a roar and blow right over her.
She let him move her, not once shying back from his aggressive advance as he pressed his calloused thumb to her opening.
She jumped at the contact, but it wasn’t vixen eyes that met his but curious ones, almost trusting, as if she had no idea that her cunt was about to be used by him.
That sex was not something she had ever been taught to be afraid of…
“Are you going to fill me now, minotaur?” she asked.
“If you’ll allow it.”
She nodded.
He pushed his thumb into her opening, eliciting another gasp from her, and a movement of all her limbs at once. He watched her pinkened folds as he pushed even farther in, half aware that her hands had come up to clutch his forearms.
And then he felt it.
A thin membrane of skin, wet, hot, protected so perfectly deep within her cunt, right there for his thumb to tease. Calavia’s body shook as he played with her virginal flesh, toying it with his fingers. He knew then, that no matter how old she was, no matter what enigma she presented in his skull, he would be the first. Virgins were unheard of in the labyrinth, and yet, one had summoned him right between her legs.
Astegur continued to caress and touch her membrane, and watched her strain and tense on the hard ground, as he palmed his length. He was nearly twice her size, and knew he could not rut her with abandon like he wanted.
He popped his thumb out of her with a groan and released his shaft to part her curls. “Hold onto my horns if you need something to grip.”
Flushed, she nodded, a sigh on her lips. “I may not have done this before, but I know what to expect.”
Her words meant nothing to him. “What is that?”
“You putting your cock inside me.”
He found her nub and pinched it between his fingers. Her body jerked, her legs came down to press hard into his sides.
He pinched her again. “A bull’s cock.”
She laid back, her long hair haloing her body on the stone floor. He eyed her peaked tits, her slightly concaved stomach, and her moonbright skin. When she responded with an exhalation, he moved his face between her legs and dove into her with his tongue. His hooves scraped back across the stone, her hands shot up to grab his horns. He made a monstrous noise as he licked and pulled her nether hair with his teeth, and then his tongue found her opening and lapped her arousal.
All rational thought fled.
His teeth tore into her, feasting, biting her hair and tugging, his tongue licking and jabbing everywhere it could, always aiming for her opening. His member dragged over the stone as his knees spread and he ground his hips. Steam poured out of his nostrils, flavoring her flesh with the smell of his smoke.
Gushing essence met his mouth with each swipe, and he opened his mouth wide to clamp his teeth around her cunt without breaking skin. He bit just a little harder and shook his head. Her hands gripped him, and Calavia lifted her pelvis, as if she could
not get enough. He could not get enough. Her taste was delectable.
When a bestial male goes too long without a rut, they fall to bloodlust, and he had killed more monsters in result than he would care to admit.
When he pushed his tongue and teeth around the area of her nub, Calavia arched up into his face. He pressed her back to the floor, and she squirmed as he deprived her of his mouth.
He couldn’t wait much longer, he probed her sex with his fingers and pushed two of them into her slightly. Calavia’s body jerked beneath his.
He chuckled into her nether hair. “Do you feel full now, hag?”
A moaned yes met his ears.
He laughed louder, the sound foreign to him but filled with satisfaction regardless. Astegur pressed one hand, palm down, to the side of her waist and stroked her cunt with the other. It was his to do what he wanted to it, and he reveled in the soft heat that embraced his fingers.
Soon to comfort my prick.
* * *
Torture.
The word bloomed in her mind. Rough hands, powerful hands, inhuman hands, were petting her most sensitive, secretive place, coaxing her to relinquish the knots deep within.
Calavia dug her heels into the stone floor and cradled Astegur’s large forearm with her legs. Somewhere far off, the sky had darkened to night and the remaining light had nearly vanished around them. When she peered up at the minotaur, all she could see was a monstrous figure looming over her with horns that pierced the gloom. His head bowed low toward the crux of her parted thighs.
Astegur’s horns were big and thick, much like his member, and if their tips weren’t so pointed, she would imagine riding them to slay the desire deep in her belly.
His fingers slipped out of her.
“Don’t stop, please,” she whined, her hips searching for him, for something that could fill her again.
Another dark cackle was her only answer as he reared up over her, his shadow a blanket of darkness. Something big and blunt pushed against her where his fingers had just been. Excitement and fear constricted her throat, but she knew she would take the pain that came with mating, especially now that the idea of his seed taking root in her had solidified in her head.
