Private Tales Where Even the Stones Scream

[Keres]

Keres flinched at the whip’s crack, her chest tightening in dread as the air seemed to split with its song. “I took him to bed… because you told me to,” she bit out, teeth clenched, eyes glistening as she stared up at him, defiance and fear tangled in her gaze.

Her words died on her lips as the leather tore through air and flesh, slashing across her back with a sting that made her whole body seize. A sharp, involuntary cry ripped free from her throat, ragged and raw. Hot blood trickled down her spine, soaking the silk of her top, and she shivered violently.

Yet even through the pain, a thrill laced her senses, electrifying and maddening. “More… please,” she hissed, her breath trembling as she fought to steady her shaking hands. Her voice was a mixture of challenge and surrender, daring and need all at once.

“Don’t be a tease,”

 

[Shrike]

“I gave you a choice.”

The Shrike’s lips curled in a sneer at her impudence, masking the sudden spike of desire that drove through him.

This woman.

“Again,” he hissed.

The whip whirled through the air.

Crack.

“Again.”

Crack.

But the Anirian thrall did not have the skill, or the precision. Angrily, Alarak snatched the whip away from him.

“Tell me what it is you want, wretch.”

He let the whip fly with the shallowest of cuts.

“If I gave you your freedom in this instant, where would you go? You are hunted in every land. You are worthless.”

Crack.

“You are discarded trash that washed up on my shores.”

Crack.

He savored her screams and the shuddering of her form and the way her silks flayed open before his whip.

Alarak coiled the length of bloodied whip in his hand and stepped forward, pressing the worn, braided, and stained leather to her lips and smearing her own blood across them with a smack.

“You have nothing. You have no one. Save me. And you crave my attentions, do you not? Even the attention of the whip.”

Keres

 

[Keres]

The bite of the whip was too much to ignore. Each strike tore a ragged cry from her throat, her body twisting as though trying to flee the pain though she had nowhere to go. The chains rattled above her, holding her upright when her legs could no longer bear her weight. Blood ran down her form and spattered and dripped on the floor beneath her.

Fuck you.
Fuck you.
Fuck... you.

The mantra thudded through her mind with every searing lash, half curse, half prayer.

Her breath came in gasps, trembling and wet. She could taste copper when she finally dared to lift her head. A low, rasping laugh clawed its way out of her chest, broken and wild.

“Look at you,” she breathed, voice hoarse but edged with venom, “doing your own dirty work for a change…” Her mouth curved into a blood-smeared smirk. “Looks like I got that attention I wanted after all.”

She spat on the floor at his feet, defiance glinting faintly through the haze of agony.

“Come on, love,” she rasped, barely above a whisper. “Don’t stop on my account.”

"What I want, is to repay every ounce of pain you inflict upon me, ten-fold. I'm keeping note."

 

[Shrike]

"Is that so?"

The words ground from his lips. Only she could defy him so and escape alive. He still had need of her talents. Worse yet, the way she rebelled excited a fire in him that he had not felt in seventy years. His teeth grit together and he bared them in a mirthless smile.

The Shrike shoved the handle of the lash in her open mouth, gagging whatever invective she sought next to hurl.

"You swore obedience. And I promised rewards for success. Punishment for failure. You think your display out there was a success?"

A snort of venomous derision hissed from him and he jammed the handle further in.

"You forget I have seen what you crave."

Shadows contorted and lengthened, coming alive. They slithered across the ground and wrapped ethereal fingers around her bare ankles, presence cold as morning fog on her skin.

"I think you enjoy the pain. You think you deserve it."

His eyes narrowed on her and he plunged a shard of his mind into hers, delving to rip into her thoughts and see the very essence of her.

Keres

 

[Keres]

Pain muddled her senses, casting a haze over her mind as she struggled to focus on him. Her chest heaved with each ragged breath, black eyes blazing at him despite the drowsy weight in her limbs. When he shoved the handle of the whip into her mouth, gagging her, she let out a choked sound, growling low as she bit down on it, tasting leather and blood.

The bitter truth pressed against her mind, that she had thought herself triumphant. She had stolen the souls of three victims, harnessed them. And yet, to him, it wasn't enough. He had expected her to take to it effortlessly, to treat murder as if it were as natural as breathing. He had expected her to succeed without hesitation, without faltering, and when she stumbled, when she had to struggle, it had displeased him. Her success had been imperfect in his eyes.

Her feet slid in the blood slicking the floor as the shadows coiled around her ankles, cold and alive. Her heart thundered, and her stomach churned with a mix of exhaustion and terror. She had reached too far again. The ache of power, the weight of three borrowed souls, and the lingering dread of his scrutiny pressed down on her.

Then he invaded her mind. The shard of his will struck deep, tearing into her memories, her thoughts. Her head fell back, a scream muffled by leather tearing from her lips. Pain, frustration, rage, and desperation ignited inside her. He'd see it all; the misery and loneliness of her life, the quiet hours spent practicing blood magic, the first trembling steps she took to animate a corpse, the fire consuming her hometown, the mobs hunting her, the pyres she had been bound to. He'd see her first time she had found comfort in someone, in Roul, that it'd been him she'd thought of when she'd clung to that fucking thrall in her bed.

Every tear she had shed, every silent wish for a normal life, every whispered prayer for mercy that had gone unanswered. Every spirit she'd ever seen, heard, the voices that whispered, shouted, screamed...

And then.. he'd hear her voice - the dead words she whispered in her mind as she bled her offering onto the floor, trying to claw back what he had invaded. Her power, raw and undiluted, surged through the three souls she still held, a wave of death and life and desperation colliding in a single, unbearable thrum.

She lashed at him with her mind, fury and anguish burning through her, a desperate fight to reclaim even a fraction of herself. Her blood, her stolen power, her soul, all of it rose against him in a storm of noise and energy, testing the limits of what she could endure and what he could bend.

 

[Shrike]

An explosion of mental strength struck Shrike's mind in an instant, like a sudden gale springing upon an unready ship. He found his sails shredded and the vessel of his thoughts sent spinning without direction, cast out of her mind in an instant.

Alarak took a physical step back and blinked twice as his thoughts returned to his own mind. He stared at her in wonderment, his veneer of disdain and disregard cracking for an instant.

She is powerful.

More than he'd thought.

But she was still a novice to these abilities. He had prowled through the depths of her mind and seen her history in but a moment. She'd been unable to shield her deepest fears and her most intimate moments. But one day... one day she might pose a challenge.

Carmine eyes narrowed on her and he loomed forward, ripping the handle of the lash from her mouth and seizing her jaw with his other hand in a taloned grip, fingertips stippling her skin, nails long and sharp.

"Well, well. You are full of surprises, aren't you?"

His face hovered close as he bent down until their faces were a mere inch apart. He stared into her eyes, those twin pools of darkest onyx full of hate and fury and defiance.

"You've finally done something interesting," he crooned, his high tenor that odd, archaic lilt. "You will never lead a normal life, nightingale. Give up that fool notion."

He traced the outline of her lips with his thumbnail.

"Tell me..." the shadows lengthened, whispering from ankle to calf to thigh like twisting serpents that wound around her legs, then up and about her torso and higher, caressing every part of her at once with hands of mist and darkness that soothed away the sting of the lash, "what would you have as a reward?"

Keres

 

[Keres]

Satisfaction burned through her like fire in her veins. The shock that had flickered just briefly across his face filled her with a dark, dangerous delight. She had caught him off guard. The Shrike. The untouchable, unshakable tyrant. Her lips curved faintly despite the leather in her mouth, her chest still heaving with the remnants of effort.

Power still thrummed inside her, restless and alive, begging to be used. She could feel it pulsing through every nerve, clawing at her insides, promising she could do so much more.

When he tore the leather from her mouth, she drew a slow breath through her teeth, eyes like pits of black flame as he seized her jaw. His nails bit into her skin, but she did not flinch away. Her defiance was a living, breathing thing between them, a heartbeat that refused to still.

If she was afraid, she buried it deep beneath that fury. Only her heart betrayed her, a pounding, feverish rhythm that filled the small, cold space between them.

Then came his shadows. They coiled up her legs, cool and weightless, and she trembled, not in fear this time, but in spite of herself. The tendrils wound higher, soothing the torn flesh of her back, and her breath hitched. It was too much. Too cruel, too intimate, too confusing. A shudder rippled through her, her lips parting on an unsteady breath.

What would you have as a reward?

Keres’ eyes narrowed. “I want…” she began softly, leaning forward, the chains clinking, her face so close that her lips almost brushed his. “I want to be strong enough that when you look at me, you remember what fear feels like.”

She tilted her head slightly, eyes catching the faint red glint of his own. “Give me that, Shrike. Make me powerful enough that even the gods regret ever turning their eyes from me.”

Her voice dropped to a whisper, “Or… kill me trying.”

 

[Shrike]

“Oh, I will.”

He drank in her seething hate and spite like a venomous tonic, rejuvenating to one such as he.

The Shrike did not draw away, he pressed the handle of the lash against her cheek, dragging it down the length of her throat and across her chest, letting the length of rope uncoil and drape about her.

“But why do you want so much power?”
Slowly, he looped the whip once around her neck, the stained, corded leather made oddly soft and smooth by years of use. “Now that I’ve seen inside you I think you’re quite empty, Keres.”

Leather rasped and drew taut.

“Is that why? You want to spit in the eyes of those who made you this way? Who left you this utterly alone?”

The shadows around her became as cold as ice.

“They left you alone because you’re worthless. Isn’t that why. Isn’t that why they all leave you eventually… assuming they don’t try to kill you first. It’s because you are a vile, wicked girl.”

His thumb pressed inside her mouth, tugging against the inside of her cheek.

“Who deserves to be punished.”

Keres

 

[Keres]

Keres held his gaze, refusing to look away even as the whip slid like a serpent over her skin. The handle’s path down her throat left fire in its wake, and when he looped the cord about her neck, the rasp of leather made her pulse stutter. It wasn’t fear, it was rage, raw and shaking, fighting for a way out.

Each word he spoke landed like a blade, carving into every scar she thought had already healed. Empty. Alone. Worthless. The truths she buried so deeply he had unearthed with ease. And he enjoyed it, knowing the places that hurt.

Her breathing grew ragged as the whip pulled tighter. She could feel her pulse thrumming beneath the leather, her world narrowing to the pressure against her throat, the icy coil of his shadows and the sound of his voice.

She wanted to scream, to deny it, but she couldn’t, not when every word he spoke was true. So instead, her fury sparked through the cracks in her composure. Her eyes burned with a hatred that shimmered like heat off steel.

And when his thumb pressed into her mouth, tugging at her cheek, she didn’t pull back. She let her lips part, slowly, defiantly, staring up at him all the while.

Then she sank her teeth into him, hard. The coppery tang of blood filled her mouth as she bit down, harder still, until she felt flesh give beneath her teeth. Her jaw clenched like iron as she met his gaze, her muffled growl vibrating against his skin.

 

[Shrike]

A sharp and pained hiss escaped from between the Shrike’s clenched teeth as her own bit down. Hard. They cut deeply into his thumb and his blood poured into her mouth. The familiar coppery tang, yes, but also a sickly-sweet, euphoria inducing after taste that somehow left a longing for more.

“Wretch,” he sneered. Her growl against his broken flesh stirred up a vile lust within him for her to lap up every trickle of his spilled blood with that locked stare.

“Well?” He spat, eyes red and slitted and gleaming with derision and a flash of pain and something else, sick and twisted within those depths. “Do you like the taste?”

Some intoxicant in his blood stream. Ah, but if only she knew.

There was a reason he could no longer take to sea.

“Tell me.”

The shadows became even colder still around her form, leeching warmth and giving forth a blissful numbness even as his hot blood trickled around her teeth and flooded her mouth.

Keres

 

[Keres]

The moment his blood touched her tongue, she knew she had erred. The pain she’d drawn from him was satisfying, yes, but the blood itself was not mortal. It burned. Sweet, metallic, and wrong, and the moment she swallowed, it flooded through her like liquid heat. Her pupils dilated, swallowing the light.

The world tilted. Every heartbeat thundered through her ears until she could no longer tell if it was her pulse or his. Shadows rippled against her skin, cold and electric, while her body trembled under the sudden, dizzying rush of euphoria.

The sensation was like Shade, that drug from Teth she’d once stolen from a merchant caravan, but this was purer, sharper. Divine and poisonous in equal measure. Her breath caught as her body betrayed her, muscles slackening, limbs trembling with an overwhelming, hazy heat.

Her eyes found his through the fog. Defiant still, but slow now, unfocused. Her tongue laved the ragged pad of his thumb and she pulled another mouthful of blood from it. A deep, ragged breath left her as her body grew heavy, her back still bleeding but her nerves dead to pain.

The last of her control slipped through her fingers like sand. Her head tilted back, a lazy smirk twitching at the corners of her blood-streaked mouth as she met his gaze through half-lidded eyes.

She managed only a small nod, slow and hazy, surrendering not in will, but in the grip of the toxin that now coursed through her blood.

 

[Shrike]

A simple gesture, that nod. But it spoke far more. She was hungry for what came next. Ravenous, the Shrike thought, watching as her breath stuttered and her eyes fluttered and her body relaxed under the euphoric effects of his blood and the cloying shadows.

“Good.”

He withdrew his hand, holding it, and examined the gash her teeth had carved. There would be a form of revenge exacted for that. But not in the manner she thought. Not with a harsh blow. Not this moment. Alarak was a patient elf when he wanted to be.

In the meantime… she still hung bound by those shackles and utterly at his mercy. Her silks were tattered where the lash had bit her, but the shadows would see to that. Alarak narrowed his eyes and the chains rattled beneath his attentive Will, drawing her hands up further, the manacles cold and stiff.

The pirate king waved his good hand casually.

“Thrall, see to her reward.”

Dutifully, the bronze haired Anirian man with the kind green eyes moved, features somber, and came to stand behind her. He adjusted his belt. Then the Anirian began to see to her needs.

Those she so desperately desired.

Alarak watched for a moment, then turned away to look out a slitted window. If she wanted his attentions, she would beg for them. Until then he would listen.

Keres