1 comments/ 11585 views/ 1 favorites Sorceress By: Falcinator Author's Note: This started out as an idea for a situation, influenced by "erotic art" and it evolved from there. This is the WRONG way to write, people: Start with a reasonably well mapped story, THEN start writing it. This evolved as it went along, and I had to back-track and rewrite a couple of times. I also did the entire thing using DEdit and T9 predictive text on my new Nokia N95, which helps to explain the sparseness and economy of language in some of the scenes. Although that may improve things. I'm offering this in the hopes that you enjoy it, but I don't think that it's my most effective piece. I may use the scenario or characters in a more effective story some other time. ================== The Travelling Sword was, unapologetically and blatantly, a meeting place of brigands, blades for hire, hirers of blades and bastards of every stripe. The scarred and charred walls had been built to take pitched battle and very nearly had, over the years. There were axe marks, sword and spear and arrow and fire marks all over the walls, reaching up to the tall ceiling where there were no chandeliers to swing from or come crashing down. The tavern was bounced by a pack of the biggest and roughest thugs ever to settle down and take a steady, if not particularly honest, job, and wenched by formidable women who could crack most men's heads with their fists. Most trouble, however, was averted simply by the sullen, unspoken agreement that starting trouble would be bad for business. Anyone who started trouble because they didn't care for business found themselves facing everyone who did. When the bouncers heaved open the tavern door, the woman who walked through into the roar of noise carried herself with such assurance and pantherine awareness that the magnificent breasts which were clearly hiding beneath her cloak, the athletic calves her boots were shaped around and the rich cascade of black hair held back off her prominent cheekbones became instantly secondary to the obvious and indisputable fact that she was there to do business. The mood in the tavern subtly shifted as the pack mind of those who were there to sell themselves sensed a new buyer and turned to take her measure, and the slightly sharper and even more mercenary pack mind of those who were there to buy, subtly withdrew into the shadows to take her other measure. She swept the room with her eyes, noting the patterns of whole groups, the slightly scattered clumps of single hires, the tight huddles of negotiations taking place. She strode to the bar, and the Valkyrie-scaled woman serving behind it. "Ale laced with white wine," she said in a voice that carried a little too clearly, "And a single swordsman for a guard." "Other side of the fire," the wench said with a jerk of her head, thumping a full tankard down onto the deeply pitted counter top. Money changed hands and the woman turned, wasting no time in weaving through the crowd with a fighter's balance and long strides that spread her cloak behind her and revealed fitted riding boots going up nearly to her knees, and sturdy but soft black leather pants, equally well fitted, above them. More than one face in the crowd wore a frown as she passed. Something about this new buyer didn't ring true - didn't gel between her outfit and the way she carried herself. If she came alone, she had to pass through robber-infested country, and would have been a tempting target. If she came with guards, the usual practice was to involve them in the negotiations. Either way, she looked unlike any woman to ever before need the services of anyone who set up shop in the tavern. The single swordsmen kept to themselves by tacit contempt of anyone who was not one of them, but stayed carefully separated by equally mutual distrust of each other, and each one had a hand casually near at least one hilt, and at least three escape routes planned. She scanned them as she approached, looking for a particular body plan she needed, a particular attitude and mentality expressing itself through eyes and the set of the head and shoulders, a particular pattern of weather-beaten armour and clothing. The one she settled on watched her approach with cool appraisal and self-confidence that managed to avoid cocky through maturity. He had one sword very visible but, she could sense, at least one shorter sword and a couple of knives carefully out of sight. His fingers, resting lightly next to his carefully rationed tankard, showed that he was also no stranger to a bow. She set her own tankard across the table from him and, without sitting down, said "Let's talk terms." When she said that she could look after herself, he believed her: when she sat down, her cloak fell open to reveal a leather jerkin stained by the road, innumerable applications of oil and probably more than a little blood. More importantly, over it she wore a mail shirt that betrayed dwarven workmanship through its fineness and craftsmanship, but even so showed the hint of a repair on the right shoulder. Her belt also was the belt of someone who dressed for utility rather than show, and was most likely older than her jerkin. "You are being paid for your silence as well as your blade," she said as an opener, "And you will be paid twice market rate, and be expected to earn it. Do we understand each other?" He indicated that they did. Her words for "Market rate" were understood wherever hires gathered. "Two weeks, and when my work is finished you can leave me back here. I will be passing this way again." "Agreed," he said in a voice only slightly scarred by a life spent in the elements. "And what of the duties?" "I will need an extra sword at times, in certain negotiations that I must undertake, including a dispute over property, and the rest of the time I need visible muscle to deter thugs from the tiresome idea that a woman alone is a tempting target." The word thug is a crude insult in the circles in which they were now sitting, and the casual, contemptuous way in which she used it, pitched for his ears alone, dispelled any doubts he may have had about her genuineness. They spat in their palms and sealed the deal. In the stables, he saddled his horse while she, working swiftly, unrolled a dirty, untidy-seeming bundle to reveal better quality weapons - two swords of different length and a sturdy belt knife that nearly qualified as a hanger - than the unexpectedly impressed swordsman had seen in many a year. He began to wonder if he had perhaps heard stories about this woman, but there had not been any mysterious female blades for a century or more. As they walked their horses to the inn entrance and saddled up outside - the standing rule of the management - he realised that there had been no introductions. "Movarl," he said as they gathered reins to ride off. She acknowledged this with the merest incline of her head. "Serena," she offered before kicking her mount into a canter. Now where does a name like that come from? he wondered as he spurred his horse after her. She set a hard pace, letting his mount warm up before pushing onwards at the fastest pace that two such horses could maintain over the miles. She led them straight into the least lawless region of the world, on the border of which the Travelling Sword sat like a last chance waypoint. The new show of force felt slightly uneasy as they pushed towards those regions that made the business of being a guard for hire so lucrative, with their pace and her obvious assets - in a slave or a gang wench - tempting to the hot blooded and small minded inhabitants of these parts. He was beginning to think that he should never have traded his last bow for food, when a turn in the gradually climbing road revealed, holstered at her saddle, a short but thick, many-curved bow of the barbarians even further west of their present course. How the hell had he failed to spot that earlier, and how the hell did she draw it? He had met those bows before, and they needed the broad shoulders of their makers to use at all well. They continued the remaining two hours until the mid-summer late evening closed upon them, and for a good ten minutes before that he had spotted her scanning the forest on either side of them for, as he guessed, a good entrance. His surmise was proven sound when she abruptly plunged off the road and, their horses stepping lightly, the two riders bent low under passing branches, continued some way until she lead them unerringly to a stream in the woods, and enough flat ground for two to lie down in moderate comfort. She had clearly been here before, but he kept the thought to himself. She sent him in search of firewood while her saddlebags disgorged the makings of a good and filling supper. They kept the fire low, but not so low that from where he sat opposite her the little light it provided failed to flatter the way that the curves of her jerkin and mail fit her like a glove. Once again he wondered who she was - such a woman could hardly escape notice even - especially! - out here, but he was being paid to not ask questions, and survival had taught him discipline. They took turns on watch that night, him first. When she woke up at midnight just as he was judging it time to shake her out of bed for her watch, it left him slightly disconcerted but didn't trouble his sleep. The next morning he awoke from the sleep of the dead to the sounds of her building the fire and preparing breakfast. He almost came awake fighting, nearly panicking at how deeply he had been sleeping and how unaware it had made him, but her casual movements made him feel, just as quickly, silly. He blinked rapidly, trying to centre himself, then was up and moving with no lack of skill or efficiency, but betraying his annoyance with himself by moving too quickly and abruptly. Her ghost of a smile was lost to him, and she kept her voice carefully neutral. He had to grit his teeth at the pace she once again set, as soon as they had wolfed down breakfast and gone behind their respective trees, but he was professional and skilled enough for it to not impair his judgement and so he spotted the ambush almost as soon as she did. They turned a corner in the road, and saw a glint of sunlight on steel from a thicker cluster of trees up ahead, and Serena had her bow out almost before she spurred her horse into a gallop. Movarl, who had spent part of the previous night fashioning a spare piece of leather into a sling and finding a pouchful of smooth river rocks to use with it, bent low over his horse's neck and whirled the sling by his side. With a shout, a small group of bandits poured onto the road from both sides, armed with spears. Two of them fell with arrows through their skulls before they realised that their surprise had not been complete, and Movarl dropped another with a badly dented pate before Serena, her horse at a gallop, was upon them. They made a clumsy effort to stop her with their spears, one dropping to another arrow at point blank range before they belatedly, and acting now out of a desire for revenge rather than profit, turned their attention to Movarl. His loaded sling dropped another while his boot fended off an awkwardly delivered spear thrust, and then he was through and galloping hard, bent low over his horse's neck, chasing Serena who had a handy lead on him. They reined in a mile up the road and listened carefully, but could hear no signs of pursuit following them. "Hard to believe them having horses," Movarl said to break the silence when he saw Serena almost imperceptibly relax. She nodded her agreement. "There are better thieves than that in these parts." With that, she spurred her horse into a walk, letting it rest for a few miles before pushing it back up to the former urgent pace. Even so, they made that night's camp in good time before sunset, Serena spearing off the road with less searching this time, leading them to another riverside camp, the river this time colder, narrower and faster flowing, with a sheltered pool right by their campsite. "Build a fire," she said abruptly as he was swinging himself off his horse. "I'm going to bathe." She efficiently divested herself of boots, cloak, belt, jerkin and pants almost before Movarl had recovered from the surprise of that announcement, and walked into the icy water in her white - now grimy with sweat and road dirt - linen undergarments. She did not spend long in the river, but even so he had a fire established and a hare, which had by miraculous fortune put itself in the way of his sling, roasting over it. She did not get dressed when she emerged from the water, with both skin and cloth looking noticeably cleaner, but sat down directly opposite the fire from him, throwing her cloak on the ground first and letting fire and body heat dry her. Her shift was still clinging to every curve of her magnificent breasts, and the light from the fire was throwing long shadows off her nipples. With iron will he kept his attention on his food, and so he didn't see the satisfied smile she allowed herself. The night rapidly cooled and even Movarl, as fully dressed as he was, began to feel the bite, but Serena left her clothes off, with not even a goosebump beyond her nipples. She took first shift. He didn't really notice falling asleep, but suddenly she was shaking him awake for his turn on guard. Once again, he nearly came up fighting but something checked him in time. He spent a large part of the rest of the might until morning stewing at how soundly he had slept. Plus, a pebble had managed to work its way inside his jerkin and had to be chased out. But, he did feel refreshed. The next morning, the road began to climb out of the now dwindling forest and into the rocky and near barren foothills of the imposing mountain range that marked the edge of the even scantily known world. The trees diminished until there was only rock, the soil here so poor that the persistent, occasionally violent wind kept even most shrubs down. For a while the land stretched out on either side, visible for miles, before the rocks and loose shale became deeply rooted boulders that loomed on either side of a path that became gradually twistier in an attempt to find the easiest route between the occasional stone monolith. By now it was past midday, but she waited until they had reached one of the few vantage points where a traveller could stop with enough visibility to feel safe, before they dismounted to stretch legs and eat a cold lunch. Then they were on the move again, their horses moving steadily over the smooth portions of the track, but picking their way carefully when shale and other rubble littered the path. At such times, and even more when they had to dismount and lead their horses, they went with naked blades and ears straining for the slightest hint of ambush. The sun was very close to the horizon when they came to a section where, off to one side, a horse could be lead between one stone monolith and a tall pile of boulders. "We'll need to dismount," she said curtly, suiting actions to words and swinging down off her saddle with her usual cat-like grace. He followed suit, less gracefully but with equal competence, before following her, leading his horse, between the towering rocks. It did not escape his notice that she had one hand casually on her sword hilt, and followed her example there as well. As they continued between rock chasms that varied in width and height but never dropped below head height, her caution increased until she was placing each foot with care and had her sword in hand. Every nerve thrumming, he had followed her every step and dearly wished to know why. It did not surprise him much when she tied her reins to an old steel rod projecting from the rock and motioned for him to do the same - there was another rod next to where he had stopped - and join her. Together they crept another bowshot's distance and then, crouched, edged forwards to where the mountain finished and plunged precipitately downwards. Wordlessly, she pointed down into the valley. He could barely believe his eyes. There below them sprawled the compact and aggressive bulk of a stone fort. It had been built to blend into the valley and command an approach which climbed steadily, and at all points exposed, for nearly a mile up the mountainside. There was little doubt that a small band of defenders could, if well stocked, not only hold out indefinitely but inflict serious casualties on any attacking force, no matter how large. A quick scan of the mountainside around them confirmed that the only possible other access was from where they currently were, and that that would only be visible from above, not below. His quick and suspicious glance was answered calmly. "That is my family's property," she began in a whisper. "But it has been many years since the service we provided to travellers through these mountains made us enough of a profit to man this fort, and my grandparents abandoned it before my father was born. It has since been used as a place of refuge by a band of brigands who discovered it a year ago and have moved in, but not yet understood the building nor how to guard it. I came to take it back, and I have brought you with me to secure that. Understand, Movarl, that I can not let this squatting upon my property continue, and understand as well that I could do this alone, but do not take unnecessary chances." "How many?" he demanded, taking the argument over her competence as stated and wishing to get down to practical matters. The smile she gave him was as predatory as a wolf's, and nearly as toothy. "It was ten men and three trulls, the last time I came to check, before returning to enlist your help. Their discipline is slack, their habits slovenly and they know little about what lies within this fort, having not bothered to open seized doors when it was so clearly cleaned out when it was abandoned." "How, then, are we going to move through this abandoned fort?" "By knowing where the door-handles are. We have just enough light to descend and establish ourselves. My family planned for this when they designed this place." And with that, she was gone, nearly straight down the mountain. They entered through the kitchens, passing through doors that Serena had greased thoroughly on her previous visit, with enough dim light still seeping in for even Movarl to navigate with confidence. The kitchens lead to a corridor that would, in a larger fort or a castle, have fenced in the servant's quarters - the laundry, a rough dining room and a door through to the stables that, in this pragmatic building, were in the middle leading onto a square that lay behind the gates. They reached an area of corridor dustier than the rest - Movarl had already realised that Serena had made a considerable reconnaissance on her last visit here - and at the same time became aware of sounds filtering through from further inside. Even when they were only indistinct murmurs, the character of drunken revelry was already apparent, and both raiders smiled in satisfaction. When they stopped to make their final selection of weapons and to take a final breath before the fray, the door in front of them opened as effortlessly and as noiselessly as any that Movarl had ever encountered. He spared a glance behind him as he passed - the other side was as old and dusty as the door of a centuries-sealed crypt. They took as much care as if they were robbing the storehouse of a king, yet the brigands were as lax as she had promised him. They caught one with his trousers down using a corner of the corridor as a piss-pot, and she dispatched him as quickly as a striking viper and before he could draw breath. The next one was leaning drunkenly further along, and Movarl slit his throat neatly and cleanly. There were six in the dining hall along with two huddled and petrified women, and they were still staggering drunkenly to their feet when the first two died. Sorceress The other four were not incompetent swordsmen - they had after all survived this long - but when pushed by two who were not only better than them but sober, they did not last long. The two trulls, who had clearly not been trulls until their guards had failed them, only stared at them dully. Movarl knew their type, and wasted neither words nor time on talking to them. Holding the bloody tip of his sword under the chin of one of them, he asked "We killed two in the corridor, where are the rest?" Numbly, she pointed through another door, and Serena followed the finger without making a sound or even seeming to disturb the air she passed through. Movarl followed her, but only as far as the doorway, keeping one eye behind them but ready to jump to her aid if needed. She did not need. There were two men sharing one sobbing, abject woman who already bore the marks of numerous beatings on her back and flanks, and she stepped forward with the tip of her sword whistling, the head of the first leaving his shoulders while he was thrusting into the slave's quim from behind. The girl, perhaps because she was desperate for any distraction from her plight, noticed the intrusion first and panicked even before Serena's sword first bit home, biting down, unconsciously, on the cock being forced down her throat. The man's holler of pain was so sweet in Serena's ears that she let him live for a little bit longer, moving to skewer him through the eye only when he made a compulsive punch at the girl's head. He dropped without collecting, leaving the girl huddled on the floor retching, desperately trying to get the taste of blood and man out of her mouth. Serena kicked the two bodies out of the way to give the girl some room, then turned around to shout for assistance. Movarl, whose attitude to forced body slaves had contributed to him being a blade for hire and not a brigand, had already bullied the two remaining women into action, thrust a pile of the cleaner blankets at them and bundled them through the door to help their fellow captive. Serena, more delighted than ever with her choice of hire, pulled the door closed and left them alone with what seemed to be a bucket of clean water while she made a quick but thorough search of the bodies, stripping them in case anything could be remotely worthwhile, and dragging them against the door at the other side of the room. Movarl had - still moving cautiously - gone to collect the two they had dispatched in the corridor, dragging them both in by their collars. He stripped them and, the bodies now considerably lighter, they carried all eight out of the hall, through a short and defensible corridor, through the stables which held, now, the poor beasts which the brigands had acquired, and dumped them in the middle of the courtyard. On the first trip, carrying one body each - Movarl was now more accustomed to the easy and startling strength which his employer displayed, but was no nearer to accepting it without wonder - they made sure that the gates were fast and secure. After the last, they saw to the horses and, a lifetime's experience allowing Movarl to win the trust of the suspicious and slightly crazed beasts, he remained while Serena went back to check on the women and, by force of personality if necessary, move them into another room and let them lock the door. Serena, equipped with an unlit torch and her flint and steel, went back up the cliff to fetch the horses, coaxing them down the path that Movarl had sworn was not passable to any four-footed creature other than a goat. She bought them straight through the fort into the stables, where Movarl had now befriended the other horses and left them in much better condition. Working on their own steeds they were quickly done and back in the dining hall where Serena, for the first time, stood still and allowed a wide smile to sweep across her face. Neither of them felt secure enough yet to open any more of the harsh brandy that the brigands had with them - although the women in their room were working their way steadily through two bottles - but there was passable food still to be had without cooking anything more. Looking around at the mess that the brigands had left, it almost felt anticlimactic to Movarl that they had just successfully invaded a fort. Setting traps to wake them with noise if anybody moved in the night, they took a bedroom each and turned in, although it took the swordsman, who could drop asleep in an instant, many minutes of carefully metred heartbeats before he was happy doing so. In the middle of the night, he was awake from one heartbeat to the next. He lay frozen, eyes open but unfocused, trying to work out what had disturbed him. There was no sound, no change in the faint moonlight that glimmered in one corner of the room. And his heart was beating normally. So what had awoken him? He slid to his feet noiselessly, waited for a dozen heartbeats to see if the world reacted to his presence, and stepped slowly and carefully to the door. The room he had taken for the night was only a few doors down from the main hall, but his instincts took him in the other direction. It took him mere seconds to glide along the wall towards where a faint glow spilled from the edges of a door. He paused a moment, listening, and heard a low murmur that he strained, unsuccessfully, to decipher. When he stepped forwards through the heavy wooden door, it almost took him by surprise. He descended the staircase, his brain almost distracting him from wondering what the hell he was doing by idly thinking that he hadn't realised that the fort had a lower level. What he saw when he stepped through the door at the bottom rooted him to the floor with shock. The glow came from a fire that had been built in a pit in the middle of a room that was at least as big around as the fort's main hall. Above it, a large cauldron hung from three chains that were each attached to a curved horn of metal rising from the edge of the pit. Standing with her back to it was a tall figure with long hair and a cape obscuring most of its form. When it turned around, he had difficulty in recognising it as Serena. The cape was fastened at her neck by a large, slightly tarnished metal clasp, the details of which he could not quite make out. Her hair, which she had always previously held in a tight braid, was loose and held off her face by a metal circlet that appeared to be the same design as the clasp at her throat, and was mirrored by a torc about her neck. She was holding the cape about her, and her feet and ankles showing beneath it were bare save for bracelets about her ankles that appeared to hold pieces of uncut jewels and rough pieces of metal. Even as he stared at her in disbelief, his brain registered that she was clearly naked or nearly so beneath the cape. Then she smiled warmly at him and said "You came promptly. Good pet," and let the cape swing open. Above the waist, she was naked save for jewellery which consisted of tarnished, jewel-encrusted metal bands around her upper arms and a length of chain that descended from the torc at her throat and then separated, passed tightly under each breast, lifting them slightly, before wrapping around her flanks and behind her. Where the chain separated into two, there was a metal plate in the crude shape of a bat. Around her waist, she wore a fur that descended to her knees and was slung low on her surprisingly feminine hips, below her slender waist, by another tarnished chain. Movarl instinctively swung his sword up, and then found himself staring in dumb surprise at his hand where there was no sword to be swung. Serena said, with a smile in her voice, "Oh, we don't need to worry about that," and gestured in his direction, her fingers flickering quickly. Movarl felt something give way behind his eyes, and his arm dropped lifelessly back to his side. At the same time, he felt his eyes irresistibly drawn downwards to where her breasts, never really hidden by anything she had worn previously, were now swelling proudly from her chest more firmly than any trull he had ever met, with large halos surrounding each nipple. She walked slowly towards him, the prominent flesh of her breasts, so firm that they did not even rest on the chains that ran under them, dominating his vision while her soft, amused voice slid gently into his mind. He did not notice when two blank-faced women came forwards and undressed him with unthinking and wooden efficiency. He did not notice when they took an arm each and walked him forwards to where they could shackle his wrists and ankles to a sturdy cross-shaped frame that stood to one side of the fire. He did notice when they had finished, for that was when he felt his mind at least partly returned to him and some control return to his securely bound limbs. Waking up in that situation was so far outside his sphere of experience that his self control deserted him and he shouted with rage, convulsing against the frame, which didn't even creak. "Spare us," she snapped, suddenly as womanly and seductive as an enraged tigress, shutting him up by shock this time, not magic. "I have returned your mind to you, and unlike these nearly useless girls those pathetic bandits managed to get, you'll get to keep it when I'm done with you. I had to prepare you in our little campfire chats, not break you, or you would have been useless to me as a sword or as a man." Her mental blocks, fragile and temporary things, fell away from him and the return of memory crashed over him. He say her lying asleep, open her eyes and give him a look from under her lids that pulled him in until he drowned in the warm hollow between her thighs. He saw her kneeling over him, naked, her heavy breasts nearly crushing his chest as she gently but surely undressed him, stroking his nipples and sending sharp, agonising spurts of pleasure straight to his groin as she lowered herself over him. The memories gave him an erection painful in its suddenness and severity. She wheeled away from him, pacing around the fire like a caged wolf. "Look at me!" She shouted, gesturing wildly at herself and her garments and jewellery. "Tarnished! Rusted! Dirty! Having to make do with servants culled from the dregs of second-rate bandits! Needing to enslave a swordsman to return the most minor vitality to a fort that once counted the warlords of the north among its vassals!" The ensorcelled women returned, bearing between them a small cauldron. Bending with wooden grace, they put the cauldron down, dipped their hands inside and, straightening up, began to spread oil over his chest. He could hardly believe what was happening, but there was a clarity to every sensation that gave it veracity, even in the middle of what should be an impossible nightmare. Despite the attentions of the naked women on his naked skin as they massaged oil into his nipples, standing close enough that their breasts crushed against him, his erection rapidly wilted. "My family held this fort for centuries against the world, against the petty warlords and mobility who sought to unseat us! We were feared by all who travelled there passes! They tried to travel the long way around to avoid our taxes, and we made war in the lands in their way! It took an empire to give us battle!" With a sphincter-tightening revelation, Movarl finally understood. "You're a myth!" he gasped before he could stop himself. She was suddenly in front of him, standing only barely beyond touching, mad eyes staring into his. He didn't even feel the women oiling his arms, moving with long caresses up and down his lean muscles. "Myth?" she hissed in his face. "Yes, we made sure that memories of us were repressed when finally we were vanquished and had to run. We made sure that knowledge became story, and story became rumour and a tale to scare the children with. We spent a long time making sure of that, my brother and I." Shock, which had become fear, now became a sense of unreality not just at odds with the vivid clarity of the situation but actually physically jarring with it. She couldn't be! Not after this long! As the women knelt, spreading oil down his legs, Serena whirled away from him, her cape slapping over the backs of the slaves, and strode around the fire the other way. "And I survived! My brother retreated to a tower in the forests and called dark things to him to keep him safe, but I survived! I lived among the accursed rabble who have no idea of my arts, I take the occasional man to keep me powerful and woman to keep me young, and I survived!" As the women reached his feet, the unfocused horror within Movarl's mind crystallised and became starkly specific. What in both hells did this woman who claimed to be over 200 years old mean by "take"? As Serena came around the fire, she undid the clasp holding her cape closed and let it drop behind her. As she came to once more stand in front of Movarl, she hissed "I need you for that purpose," and undid the chain about her waist, letting the fur fall about her feet. She wore nothing under it, save a chain slung on the points of her hips that mirrored the one about her breasts and was equally as tarnished as any of the others. At that moment, with this frightening, mad but potently feminine woman standing close enough for him to see flecks of colour in her pupils and smell her muskiness, Movarl felt hands grasp and oil his sack and flaccid cock, and once more hardened despite himself. The hands, soft of skin and slender of finger, gently massaged the oil into his flesh as his shaft began to throb painfully hard and his sack became exquisitely sensitive. No stranger to orgies, he could only feel this intensely erotic sensation as another edge on his nightmare, trapping him in unreality. His eyes were darting wildly around her body, but the next time he met hers he couldn't, no matter how hard he tried, break away. Her eyes, he suddenly saw, were so green they were almost black, but with red-brown flecks in their depths. They were also huge. In fact, they were getting bigger, seeming to suck him in. His eyes were not only locked in hers, but locked open as well, giving him no way to escape her overwhelming, mad stare. Then, when she seized his cock in one hand and squeezed savagely, giving him an indescribable, searing jolt of mingled pleasure and searing pain, he screamed but even tears squeezed out of his eyes couldn't force him to break contact with hers. She suddenly darted forward and licked the tears off his cheek, and somehow even then she kept his gaze pinned to hers. He sensed rather than say the manic smile that broke across her face. "Pain tastes so sweet," she said in a cracked voice. "I wonder if your life tastes as good as your sweat." She squeezed him hard again, and he screamed again. This time the pain in his cock didn't fade so fast, and it almost blanked out the sensation as she impaled herself upon it, no resistance preventing her from bottoming out on the first thrust. The sensation when she drew back and dropped onto him again was not one of ecstasy, or even pleasure, although it had both of those in it. It felt as though the seed in his balls was being sucked out, dragged through flesh that wasn't ready to give it yet but was willing to cooperate. The sensation curdled his belly but became gradually less unpleasant with repetition. "This is a pleasure for the men whose lives I claim, she said sweetly when she drew back, "Only because your life is so much sweeter and more powerful when I don't have to drag it out of you. Be grateful for that." She drew her legs up, braced her feet on his thighs strapped to the X, pushed up almost off him and dropped back. He felt as though her rock-hard but hot and satin-smooth thighs were wrapped simultaneously around his waist, balls and heart and squeezing hard. The jolt of pure pleasure that speared straight into him deprived him of speech. "You have a lot to be thankful for," her voice dropped to a hiss as she twisted her hips about him, giving him the feeling that a fist inside his belly was clenched around his life and massaging him even as her cunt was massaging his cock. "You will learn that when I am finished with you!" He could make no answer to that, not even a swordsman's half-instinctive challenge, for as his breath recovered from the earlier sensation, he felt it sucked out as she drew back, his body if not his mind trying to throw itself after her, desperate to remain buried deep between her spread thighs. He was left gasping, so torn between his fear of the sorceress and the never-before-experienced levels of pleasure that were beginning to pool in his loins, that he failed to notice that she had dropped her mental hold on him and his mind should have been his own again. After all, she didn't need his mind at that moment. She had his body. His mind would cum to her after his body had. The truth, however, was that no man in his situation could possibly have kept control of his mind in any case. She no longer needed her talents when her cunt was just as talented. And as her cunt pumped him, he felt it pumping out his breath, his energy and his life. Every time she impaled herself upon him it felt as though she was crushing him within her, and every time she drew back she took his essence with her. It robbed him of the strength in his limbs and the energy in his mind, which was a pity, for it robbed him of the sight of Serena, magnificently statuesque, as, with face and chest flushed down to her swollen breasts, she attacked his body, leaning back with feet braced against his hips and riding him unmercifully, a sight that in any other moment would have driven him wild and given him memories to sustain him for many weeks on the road. She felt him grow close when the gush of his life every time she drew back until his head was at her entrance grew weak and he no longer had the energy to hold back as she had commanded his body to do. He came with a shuddering groan that seemed to be the last breath in his body, not enough energy left for screaming, bucking or even a violent spurt, but that was okay - she didn't need his juice. She let herself go then, her own orgasm prising her open to swallow every last available trace of him, sucking him dry before she collapsed onto him, bright-eyed and gasping hard. Despite the ravages that his body had just been through, he was still hard, and with the help of the angle of the frame, that was enough to support her on him as her legs dropped off his hips and fell to the ground unsupported. After a few seconds she smiled the self-satisfied smile of the cat who has eaten a pheasant, and pushed herself off, a wet sucking sound marking the moment she relinquished her grip upon him. Then she stepped back and examined him. At this point she used to glory in the rush of power, like a discerning drinker feeling a particularly fine brandy slide down her throat. But she had been building power for so long now, fuelling her growing abilities and the fort's needs, that even such a swordsman was no more than a sip of warm summer wine for her now. He was not dead. He hung in his bonds slack of muscle, his face drooping and his eyes vacant, but he still breathed, if shallowly. His mind, however, was effectively dead. She had taken most of the strength of his body, leaving only what his cells needed to survive, but his soul she had swallowed entire. Standing naked before him, only the now less tarnished chains of rank and property about her waist and her breasts hiding her sweat-sheened body, she ran her gaze over his and slowly her smile changed from self-satisfaction to the delight of new ownership. "You're mine now," she said as you would talk to a simple-minded dog. Sorceress He didn't have the strength to answer. She gestured at one of the girls who, since they had finished their tasks with his body, had knelt meekly and obediently in the shadows. "Tend to him," she said. "Give him your energy. I have a mind to enjoy him properly later, and I don't have the patience for him to spend a day recovering." The girl, whose slavery gave her the knowledge her Mistress needed her to have, obediently crawled forwards and took his cock in her mouth as the magic flexed around them. She would need a day or more to recover, but that was not her concern to worry about.