Disclaimer: these stories are a work of fiction.
Back: Chapter Four
The Illusti walked north with Alyssa in his arms, the city’s gate tower lying in rubble behind them.
Although the Illusti maintained a steady pace, each step took them a farther and farther distance, until the world was flashing by… as if the Illusti was wearing seven league boots from a fairy tale.
Before long they reached a snowy mountain in the far north, and the Illusti slipped inside a hidden cave. He put Alyssa down on a bear skin. A fire provided warmth and light.
Alyssa had been held captive before, and it wasn’t her habit to engage in futile protests. She preferred to bide her time and then deliver her complaint lethally with the sharp end of a sword.
Still, her usual captors were of a more mundane and stupider sort, easily manipulated. The arm binder was especially fiendish, since it completely enclosed both her arms and her hands behind her back, so there was no possibility of wiggling out or untying herself as she might be able to do with rope.
She made her first move with a bit of sarcasm, as a way of scouting the territory, to see what kind of reaction she might get.
In the city the Illusti had proclaimed her a queen.
“Queen?” she asked, “Queen of a cave?”
“Well,” said the Illusti with a small smile, “that was more in the nature of a prediction. You would need to make your marriage vows to actually become my queen.”
Alyssa shuddered.
“Until then,” the Illusti continued, “you‘re technically my slave.”
“So,” she said, “what do you plan to do with me? As your ‘slave’?”
Any information might be useful. Even if the Illusti lied, that itself could be useful information, that the Illusti had something to lie about.
“For the time being, willing or unwilling, you are my only source of energy. I must recharge until I regain my strength.”
“And then?”
“You opened my sarcophagus with full knowledge of what you risked, and I would be within my rights to keep you forever.
“Yet I am very favorably disposed towards you, Alyssa. Of all the women in the world, across all these uncounted centuries, only you had the courage to break my prison. And although your motive was nothing but thievery and plunder, it still was your courage that freed me.
“When I no longer must keep you, I’ll be happy to let you go, with a prize of mortal riches if that’s something you desire.”
Well. The Illusti could be lying. If he was lying, it would be for a purpose such as to lull her into complacency, which she could use to her advantage.
She couldn’t do anything with her arms locked in the arm binder, but it would become painful and torturous if her arms were left locked behind her back for a great length of time… and since the Illusti had more direct ways of torturing her if he wished, it stood to reason that eventually he’d shift her arms into a different position. That might be an opportunity.
And if the Illusti was telling the truth, well, in her time she’d certainly been paid a lot less for worse.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“My name is not pronounceable in your tongue, yet that does not matter. Your kind will give me your own names: Kali, the destroyer of worlds, the Firebringer, Cataclysm, Downfall.”
Hmm. In Alyssa’s experience, the weakness of megalomaniacs was that they could pay so much attention to their vision of how the world would soon be trembling before them that they could forget to pay enough attention to the here and now.
A here and now which could cause that glorious future to be abruptly cut short at the end of a dagger. Alyssa smiled.
As the Illusti gained power from Alyssa’s sexual pleasure, and obtained more power the greater her pleasure, the Illusti had the most selfish of reasons to create for Alyssa the greatest pleasure possible.
Which was what the most powerful magic item in the world enclosing Alyssa’s privates had been designed to do.
Alyssa had had good sex before, but nothing like what she had experienced in the city when the Illusti had first activated the device.
Which in turn was nothing but a shadow compared to what the Illusti could do now when he took his time.
The pleasure was oceanic, overwhelming, more than Alyssa could stand and yet she had no choice but to endure. It felt like hours without end, though she was incapable of telling how long it actually lasted. She would have given anything, done anything to stop; she would have given anything, done anything to continue. The world no longer existed, she no longer existed, there was only pleasure.
And finally, exhausted, sobbing, it was over.
Alyssa glared at the Illusti. “Two months? Two months of denial?!”
“When you freed me, I only had enough power left to give you the Desire Armor, nothing more. You came that close to defeating me. Having the Desire Armor do nothing takes no energy, and I had none to spare to have it do anything else. I needed to travel your land in secret, learning your tongue, while the energy of your sexual frustration recharged me.”
Alyssa noticed that her arms were no longer held behind her. She was now lying on her back on the bear skin, her arms and hands still enclosed in arm binders, but more comfortably tied down by her side.
“Not fair,” grumbled Alyssa.
“Oh?“ The Illusti raised an eyebrow. “And what part of ‘Herein lies your slavery, the doom of the world’ mentioned ‘fair’?”
Alyssa tried to come up with a reply, but exhaustion overtook her and she slept.
In the morning Alyssa felt a jolt of fear when she saw that her armor underwear had expanded, and now covered a portion of her thighs and her stomach.
As an adventurer she faced death daily, and didn’t particularly expect to live to see old age. Alyssa preferred a fast and exciting life. Slowly being consumed by eldritch magic was a different matter however.
The Illusti knelt beside her. She noticed that he never touched her or crowded her personal space unless it was necessary. She could feel the furnace heat of his body at this distance, as if a fire burned within him.
“Do not be concerned, Alyssa. There will be other women who desire invulnerability and sexual pleasure beyond the ability of mortal man to create for them. No harm will come to you, and you’ll be free soon enough.”
Alyssa didn’t know whether to believe him, but allowed herself to be comforted anyway.
Within a week the black armor had grown to cover Alyssa from head to toe.
It appeared to be of infinitesimal thickness: Alyssa could see the shape of her nipples, her fingertips, the outline of individual hairs on her head.
No force or sensation penetrated the armor. She could hit herself with a rock on any part of her body and not feel a thing.
The Illusti claimed that there was no power left in the world that could affect her while she wore the armor.
Alyssa was no longer restrained by the arm binders, and indeed they couldn’t have held her. The armor gave her inhuman strength. She could crush a rock into sand, and could have ripped apart the arm binders without effort.
She was also even more securely a prisoner than she had been before.
The Illusti could instantaneously freeze the armor in place, turning her into a living statue. He could cause overwhelming pleasure to wash over her, leaving her unable to take any coherent action. And Alyssa imagined the armor would be as easily able to cause her pain as well, though that wasn’t something she had asked about, not wanting to turn his thoughts in that direction.
“So what now?” she asked.
“You are, as I understand the morals of your culture, considered ‘good’? For my part, I need nothing more than to find women who wish to be my Queen-Consorts.”
Alyssa shuddered at the thought of being part of a harem for an energy feeding monster.
The Illusti continued, “Where to find such women could be up to you, if you wished it, in accordance to your moral leanings.”
Alyssa’s mind flashed to Slaver Town, and the women held there waiting to be sold into slavery. She had daydreamed of assaulting the place, but it was far too much of a fortress for her own small raiding party.
“Are you good?” she asked curiously, “Or evil?”
Alyssa of course had him marked down firmly in the “evil” column for assault, abduction, involuntary sexual repression, rape, destruction of property, and for being an ancient energy feeding abomination… but she wanted to know how he perceived himself. That information could be useful leverage.
“Mortal moral fashions change from century to century too fast for me to pay attention to. Such details I leave to my Queen-Consorts. If they’re ‘good’ by your estimation, they’ll use my power for ‘good’; if they’re ‘evil’, they likewise will use my power for ‘evil’.”
Next: Chapter Six
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