He expected to be done in a few more days, and then he could return to Her.
A sudden shift in the light wind preceded the arrival of an airship, made of dark wood and flying without sails it dropped down suddenly from overhead. The force of its displacement in the air pushed alarmingly at his sail, almost tipping the entire shell over. But he was saved by a second one that dropped down at an angle to the first, while two more descended sharply together to cover another two sides.
Looking up Fenix could see hundreds of archers in each magical boat, all with glinting silver arrowheads directed at him.
**
They had wanted to kill him, he saw it in their faces, their every move, but they were stopped from doing so. Likely the bravest of their kind were out battling the forces of Emerentia since Morgana and the other witch hag were now locked in conflict and aggressively attempting to gain dominance. By the looks, he could see his actions were successful, only a haggard and beaten race would want to get back to saving as many as they could.
There would be no cure, they asked him, tortured him for it but even if he had known he would not have revealed it. Who he worked for was also kept from them, even as they disparaged him for the thousands of their women and children who sickened and withered away daily from his foul deed.
It bothered him not at all, he had done as instructed and the effect, although not complete, unfortunately, was what his mistress wanted.
So he held his tongue, gave them words minced with truth and lies, led them around and eventually forced them to give up on ever gleaning anything useful from him. That was when they turned him over to higher authorities, vindictive pleasure in their expressions that they could find some measure of satisfaction that he would see justice.
And it was meant to be justice, a tribunal of beings as higher powers in the cosmos, a trial, and evidence given in voluminous amounts.
Fenix didn’t bother trying for much of a defense, there wasn’t any. They judged him guilty and remanded him for sentencing, for an act such as he had performed, whether for his own desires or another’s—and they could not get him to say—it was apt to properly punish such a crime.
They returned him to a dull stone cell lined in magical wards and glyphs of containment; they lashed his arms and legs to the walls with enchanted chains and set him there spread-eagled. His hands and forearms were covered with hollow metal cylinders bolted to the walls; his neck got a choker that was also linked to the stone.
They took no chances at all, he could barely move, and what was left of his magical prowess under the armlet of Aurelian was further diminished to a faint spark.
**
During the second day of ,his confinement, She came to him.
How She got in, he did not know, whether it was officially known that She visited or not he was elated to see Her.
Aurelian, in her pale skinned body and light shift, barefoot on the cold stone of the cell now lit only by Her unique radiance. The red highlights of Her hair where it spilled past the beatific face limned the dark pools of Her eyes.
“How do you fare my love?” She whispered the words into the silence, even the clink of chains as he moved was subsumed by the sound of Her.
He gritted his teeth and moistened his tongue; they had provided no food or water for some days now.
“I endure, mistress.”
That was as far as his pride would allow him to go. His body was beaten and bloodied, the starvation his kind could weather for weeks, the lack of water for some time as well. That he was even still alive attested to his willpower considering the torture.
But to admit any of that would be useless and ultimately show he had fallen below the high standards required by Her. And he had not, Fenix knew how far he was and that he could endure more, and if necessary, he would.
All for Her.
She stepped closer, the dainty hands reached out to stroke light fingertips down his bloodied chest. He could smell Her flowery scent up close, it brought back memories of other times, of other delightful endurance.
She licked her lips as her fingers slid through a patch of his blood.
“My poor dear man, how you suffer so. Did you fail me?” She asked.
“I did not, mistress.” It wasn’t a lie, nor was it a wail of apology.
It was simple fact.
They had not known he was there, of that, he was certain. Only blind chance would have led them to find him.
“Of course not,” She whispered, Her voice sultry and low.
The fingers of Her hands delved down, under the hem of the sackcloth pants, where they found his genitals and stroked them just so.
She looked up at him, his head held back by the neck choker he could not move it any further forward. But She could see into his eyes, looking up like that, he couldn’t tell what She was thinking, aside from the glint of desire.
It pushed into him, stoking the flames he felt whenever they lay together; he went instantly rigid in Her grasp, every part of him.
“Hmmmm, not so beaten that you cannot serve me even now my love.” Her voice carried into his ear, where She brought Her lips to nip at the lobe.
With the extra height, She must have stood up on her toes, She also lifted the hem of Her light dress and after delving within his pants, lowered herself onto him.
Fenix strained against his bounds as the satin smoothness of Her wrapped around him, the ecstasy of the feeling as potent now as the first time She had done it. Aurelian hooked a long pale leg around behind one of his own.
She settled against him in a way he could not see, but he could feel Her grip him inside herself. Her eyes stared into his, he gritted his teeth in a lustful smile, his wounds aching and his body sorely pressed but wantonly eager to feel this once more.
“I brought you to this point,” She said, still softly but in a tone demanding his attention even as She slid up and down on him, Her hips swaying forward and backward.
He didn’t understand what She was saying, but perhaps it was a test.
To focus beyond the condition of his body and Her actions. It would not be unusual for Her to test him so, even in these circumstances. A hand came up to grip the back of his neck, allowing Her more leverage to lift and pull at him and angle Her motion of how She caressed her insides with him.
“I am your downfall Fenix. Me, your great and powerful teacher. Tell me, my love, do you worship me as you should?”
He tried to nod, the limited movement allowed by the chains didn’t give, but She got the impression anyway. She smiled delightfully as She stroked him further, insistent and urgent, tilting Her head, Her eyelids fluttered in pleasure as She pulled him up deep inside her.
“All to the better.” It was a bare whisper, enticed within Her gasps.
“Your adoration, your loyalty, your complete devotion to my cause will be the greatest impetus to how you will feel. One of your final lessons my love.”
He could feel Her tighten around him, he knew that She was enhancing the sensation, driving him beyond his rational self-control but he was unable to stop it. His own magic suppressed, he could not fight back the impending release.
He couldn’t even enhance Her pleasure, although She didn’t seem to need it. Her amorous movements betrayed how much She was enjoying this, in some small part of his mind he could only wonder what it was that excited Her so.
What final lesson?
He wondered, it echoed in his mind as the mounting wave crashed over them both.
The chains clinked and shuddered as his body rolled in spasm even as She gave a low cry of sheer pleasure and clutched at him, Her own body shaking into Her impalement. It went on for several moments, leaving Her breathing in short gasps, lying against his chest while he sucked breath in and out; the sheer release had been overwhelming.
“Mmmmmm, our last time together I think.” Her tone had a hint of sadness, but also expectation.
He didn’t know what to say in response, Her words confused him.
<
br /> She looked up, and as She moved to slide him out of Her and rearranged Her dress into modesty, said more.
“You are here because I deemed it so. I have rewarded you Fenix with the next of my gifts, I have betrayed you.” Her smile widened at his confusion.
“Good, I can see that you did not expect it. I brought you joy and love; I took you to those heights. Now I will bring you low so that you can experience every dark emotion there is. I called them to capture you Fenix, I wanted you caught, and you will be sentenced and delivered into a place of penance.”
He didn’t manage to get a question in over Her words.
“I want you to feel the betrayal, let it consume you, let the feeling move into hatred. You have never hated anything, always dispassionate, always ready to perform deeds of such a dark nature but never because you were driven to. Those dark emotions, those desires fed by my actions, I want you to have them as a gift, to fuel your rampage. And all for you to wallow and suffer in as you realize just how low you have been brought.”
He couldn’t believe it, the ploy, the strategy, it was not to be of greater use to Her, it was to drive him down and send him away. The logic She spoke was rational, the feeling it brought was not, and he had trouble believing that She would break all of Her promises.
But, that also seemed to be the point.
She was deadly earnest; She was going to toss him away.
“You will not die from the sentencing, well, likely not immediately. But you will have to fight to survive, and in all of that struggle, I want you to remember that I am the one throwing you aside. There will be no reprieve, no escape by anyone’s hand. I have declared you outlaw among the cosmos, you are anathema to every being for your crimes. I made sure that they all know of your deeds, each and every foul act against their laws.”
She did not step closer; She stood there as She whispered to him, haughty, standing tall, every inch the mistress who commanded him. No hint that a moment ago She had delivered them both through rapture, no sign that She had any sympathy or feeling for him at all.
“My precious tool, you have outlived your usefulness, your time is done. This is your final use, my twisted desire to use you one last time while you are chained to a wall. We will not see each other again; I will not come for you. You will die, lost and alone, I just hope you remember enough to know that you are of no more use to me before you meet your final end.”
He was shocked to his core, that She would dismiss him so went against every facet of his life to that point. How could so much effort go into him to be just tossed aside?
He was not some blunted chisel or a worn down sword. He was supremely capable, he had yet to achieve his most considerable powers, and yet he was now useless?
He couldn’t find the words to say anything, Her look of pleasure at his suffering spoke volumes, and it told him how much She now enjoyed his wasting away, his final fate that She prescribed for him. He had to face the fact that She had lied to him, about every goal and opportunity, that he had been merely a pawn for Her service.
Fenix was stunned into silence by the sheer realization that She had never wanted to show him how to grow and survive to be strong in his own right.
She had manipulated him and his goals into serving Her own.
“You see it don’t you?” She purred, malice and enjoyment underlying the words, She sounded almost as pleasured by his realization as She had a moment ago from his physical form.
“Goodbye, my dearly useless lover. May you rot away amid this new understanding, which is my last gift to you. Everyone is a tool.”
She turned to go and then stopped as if just remembering something. She turned and dazzled Fenix with a smile.
“Ah yes, I should not leave this with you.”
She stepped closer, her scent filling his nostrils and sending memories swirling within his head, memories now laced with incomprehensible pain, the emotional kind he had never felt before.
The armlet that had prevented him from fighting back was taken from his arm; it unlatched itself with a slight click and folded down to fit into Her white palm.
Within him, the spark of his magic took on a glow and intensity that even the chains and cell could not suppress.
She watched him for a moment as he struggled to bring his power to bear, the fury and hatred that filtered into his features as he failed.
He was helpless, despite the power held right below the surface, he could not lash out at Her while dearly wanting to, and She enjoyed that too.
Emotions warred for dominance within Fenix, but chief among them as Aurelian turned and faded from sight, was the desire for revenge.
Day 152…
Even with teleporting back to the mines run by the Warlock, by using the familiarity of the surroundings at that teleport stone, it took a while to get to where he wanted to go.
Fenix traveled under the mountains, through the tunnels and spent his quiet time memorizing the map he could view through the crystal link.
That was when he wasn’t still practicing, with the return of memories came more good routines and lessons.
He relearned everything he could, practiced it, filed it away within his disciplined mind and went through every step of everything he could remember no matter how tedious the exercise seemed. And he improved because of it, steadily getting stronger, getting better.
As honest as he was with himself, honesty and self-awareness being a good survival practice, he wasn’t yet willing to reconcile how much the latest memories bothered him.
He scaled the cliffs beyond the mountains, south of the range on that land mass and made his way to the lower escarpments. From there, he traversed the floating islands of the area, many small chunks of rock floating around that would have floated free if they weren’t bound by the plant life as they were. Giant vines, creepers strung out between them, linking them and holding them together.
He was able to get across, between the magnificent leaves that were both wider and longer than he was tall.
With fruit bigger than his chest in massive clumps, they were like every other plant just grown much more extensive, like the Primal Tree but so far away, he doubted they were related. Unless some mammoth bird had ingested a seed and deposited it this far north when it defecated.
The long bridges of vines brought him to the land mass covered in abundant plant life and flowing rivers.
From there he had to carefully scrutinize the map in the giants' town for the places where trailing creepers of the large plants reached the next land mass to the south and below. It seemed that the prodigious creepers were steadily eating into the rock and stone of the much larger piece of land. Their evident roots dug in under the rim of the sides and fed from the rivers and abundant water supply.
From his observations of the floating map it seemed like quite a few of the pieces of land were still connected by rock walkways miles wide. Some with crumbling pieces, while there were others whose gaps were crossed without too much trouble, by using the flying bugs or other avian creatures able to handle the air pressure in the short hops.
Most often constructed bridges linked those.
Only by traveling on these landscapes could he reconcile the teleport stone scenes with the correct locations.
Others like this one and the Primal Tree were linked by the plant life itself, and a few more were not linked at all. Unlike the other land masses, which were not joined, this one and the one far to the east looked to have been well traveled at some point.
Broken bridges with their ends still trailing below the sides showed that enough care had been taken and there had been travel to them. This landmass once had a complete bridge joined to the one below it.
A gentle U curve of rope and wood, scaled up for steps much more extensive than his own stature, bowing downward and then back up to the posts set on the far side. The bridge was now broken, with only the main ropes still joined, but at some point, the lower line on the southern side had snapped. Now what r
emained of the rotting wood hung like a long row of convicts waving in the sun from the nooses around their necks.
With the bulk of the land mass beyond linked by such a flimsy connection, the surreal scene was enhanced with the blowing wind, scudding clouds, and gentle flight of winged things in the distance.
Greenery tugged at the eye on both sides of the bridge, an idyllic expanse of verdant growth complementing the feeling this may be the route to some sacred place and not just another brilliant region within the Prison.
Luckily for Fenix, the creepers had run along the ropes and gotten to the other side, enhancing the overall strength that kept the two land masses connected despite the tendency to drift apart. Even though the width of the rope with the added vines of the creepers was barely wider than his foot, it was more than wide enough for one of his skills and experience.
He got over the bridge in one morning, its length still counted as over three miles and it did sway significantly in the middle, a pendulum motion aggravated by the lack of suspension, or any reliable suspension anyway.
On the far side, he found that this land mass was saturated, a veritable bog tending toward swampland, with stagnant pools and flowing streams where hummocks of earth were ruled over by solitary trees covered in rotting bark.
It was in this strangely blighted landscape that he was distracted from his journey down to the Prison beast’s surface.
**
The little girl was quite obviously waiting for him.
She sat on the small rock on one of the swamp’s hummocks quite at ease. Her large golden eyes gave her the semblance of an owl, a semblance that was even more pronounced when she swiveled her head around on her neck to look at him.
Convict Fenix Page 37
