by Loki Renard
“…and the terrible stench of a thousand farts,” Vitomir interrupted impatiently. “It is foolishness and it is superstition. And even if it were not, the legend does not fit. Our flight forms have dual colors because we inherit one color from the mother, the other from the father. She had only her father to draw from and so she has a black flight form. She is not a natural obsidian dragoness, she is not even a full-blooded dragoness. She is not an object of veneration. She is a silly little girl who was used by her now passed exile father to try to harm the king we all serve, and she is being punished for that. It would do her no good at all to be surrounded by fawning old men making her believe she should make more chaos.”
“Perhaps this is what the legends truly meant when they prophesied an obsidian female.”
“Yes, perhaps they meant it was to be the half-blooded daughter of an exile and they simply forgot to mention it,” Vitomir sneered sarcastically. “I am a busy man. I do not have time for these tales.”
“We are old men, and we have nothing but tales,” the priest said, sounding weak and pathetic. “Please, Lord Vitomir, if we might but cast our eyes on this creature and satisfy ourselves that she is not the obsidian one of prophecy, we might be able to put our hearts to rest on the matter.”
Vitomir’s first impulse was to refuse and throw them out of his house, but he knew that they would return if they were not thoroughly dissuaded. Removing one of their heads might be the most effective way to do that, but far crueler than he was inclined to be to these doddering fools who had only old tales to cling to.
“One moment.” Vitomir held up his finger and left the room. He returned a few minutes later and announced, “You want to see your obsidian dragoness? Here!”
With that, he walked back into the room. Lilly crawled behind him, the tail in her bottom, her head lowered. Her nipples were clamped with little dark clips from which light chains ran down to the vibrating plug that filled her pussy. Her eyes were blindfolded, her lips wrapped around the thick black leather of a gag tied around the back of her head. Around her neck, the silver collar gleamed with the old inscriptions.
She had no choice but to follow him, unable to see her own way. She pressed close to him, her cheek against his calf as she came to a stop beside him. He was pleased with her behavior; it had not been easy getting her to the point where she would seem obedient for even brief stretches of time. If not for the gag preventing her sharp tongue from lashing all present with vicious comments, and the vibrator keeping her sex full and her mind distracted, she would have been trouble.
“Does this look like the high priestess of your cult?”
The shock on their faces was almost enough to make him laugh. Whatever they had been expecting, he was certain it was not this.
The priests shook their heads. Some averted their eyes. It was not common practice for priests to look at women, even fully dressed ones without tails in their rear, harnessed and plugged for sexual purposes.
“No, High Lord. It does not,” the spokes-priest admitted, his face falling along with the rest of his demeanor. “We have wasted enough of your time and our own. But we have flown far, and at our advanced ages, we tire easily. May we impose upon you for your hospitality? A room for the night?”
“You will have a room, a bed, and as many hot meals as you desire before you leave,” Vitomir promised, pleased by their total capitulation. “I am sorry you have come all this way to be disappointed. I will have you shown to a comfortable chamber where you may rest until a meal is prepared.”
* * *
Blindfolded and disoriented, Lilly had no idea what was going on. She had been dozing lightly when Vitomir had appeared and made her present herself for his plug and the vibrator and the harness and everything else. Unlike previous occasions, where he had clearly wanted to make an impression on her through such devices, it was very clear that on this occasion, the impression was for the benefit of those who stood beyond the blindfold. She could hear their voices, they sounded masculine and sort of old. How many of them were there? What did they want? What was going on?
None of her questions were answered. Something about her not being a priestess, which made no sense to her. As the men filed out, Lilly remained where she was, shifting uncomfortably from knee to knee. She hated when he made her crawl. It was always uncomfortable and she knew he did it to humiliate her. At least she had not had to look at those who he paraded her before.
Finally, Vitomir shed a little light on the situation by removing her blindfold.
“Good girl,” he praised, next removing her gag.
“What’s going on? What was that about?”
“Nothing you need to worry about,” he chuckled.
“You just made me crawl around in front of a lot of old men,” she scowled. “I worry about that… ohh!”
She gasped as he eased the tail from her bottom and the vibrator from her pussy. The clips were slipped from her nipples next, then the chains were removed and the harness and everything else that had kept her trussed in sexuality.
“All you need to worry about is whether you pleased me. You did.”
She looked into his eyes and saw genuine praise there. She had been getting more and more confused about Vitomir and her feelings toward him. Sometimes she wanted to be near him so badly it ached. At other times, she hated him with the full force of her body. This was tending toward one of the latter times.
She hated how he had made her body his own, how he thought nothing of snapping his fingers and making her present herself for those toys and torture devices—and then to make her do it in front of a crowd of perfect strangers, for no reason at all? When would the humiliation end? Was this to be the rest of her life, nothing but an object to be used and fucked and shown?
She had so many reasons to be angry, and yet when he smiled at her as he was now, she felt heat suffuse every part of her body and she could not help but feel a very odd sense of pride.
“You have earned a reward.”
“A reward? Awesome. Let me go.”
“Not that large a reward,” he chuckled. “You have not earned that.”
“Ah, then maybe it will be one of your normal rewards. Maybe I’ll get the supreme pleasure of sucking your dick or something.”
His brows lifted at her, and some of the happiness left his eyes. “Careful, pet, don’t let your temper spoil this moment.”
“What moment? What’s going on?”
“All you need to know is that you were called to behave yourself and you did, and as a result, you will sleep in my bed tonight.”
Sleeping in his bed. She had dreamed of that. She had laid night after night curled up in her cage, wishing she could stay by his side. She had begged to be allowed to stay and sleep next to him on more than one occasion, but now he was offering it, she suddenly didn’t want to take it.
“No, thanks,” she said, her eyes welling with tears of internal frustration.
“You prefer your cage and its blankets?”
“I prefer anywhere that isn’t with you!” She spat the words at him, felt the full force of her anger rising all the more powerfully for coming in the wake of some soft, tender feeling for him. She would not let herself love this man. He was holding her prisoner in the cruelest of ways, and she would not let him think, even for a second, that she cared for him or his praise or any pleasure he might give her.
“Very well, then you shall sleep in your cage as normal, and that shall be your reward.”
“Good,” she said, lowering her head to hide the way tears were threatening to spill down her cheeks. She desperately needed comfort, but not from him. And not from anyone else either.
Vitomir took her back to the cage, put her inside and shut the door behind her, leaving her to curl up on the blankets. When she was absolutely sure he was gone and no longer listening, she let herself cry.
* * *
Hours later, in the very middle of the night, something woke her. She felt a rush of hope that
it might be Vitomir, and a rush of fear at the same thought. After a second or two of wakefulness, she realized that it was not him. It was quite a lot of people, bumbling about in the dark, whispering to one another. She couldn’t hear what they were saying, but they were getting closer.
There was a bump and a hissed curse as someone banged into the corner of her cage. Then more whispers, a bright blue light in the direction of the lock, and the door of her cage swung open.
“Hush,” someone she did not recognize whispered at her. She pulled the blankets around her body, as she was stared at by a group of old men.
“Who are you?”
“We are the priests of the ancient stone. We are here to rescue you.”
“Really? Why?”
She could hardly believe her luck. Now that she heard a little more, she did recognize the voices as belonging to the men Vitomir had displayed her to.
“We know how special you are. We know you deserve to be worshiped.”
Stunned, but pleased, Lilly crept forward a little, wrapping her blankets around her for modesty. “You want to worship me?”
“We want to free you. You are being treated terribly here. Vitomir does not know how awfully he is sinning. He understands not what he does. But we do. We know how you should be revered.”
Revered. Worshiped. That sounded a lot better than being stuck in a fucking cage.
“Come with us and be sure to make no sound,” the priest whispered. “We will cut that collar from you soon.”
That did it. The prospect of being free of the damnable silver disc around her neck was all it took for Lilly to decide to go with the men. She did not understand what they were saying about prophecy and such, but she knew an opportunity when she saw one.
They helped her out of the cage, her blankets remaining wrapped tight around her body, giving her the modesty Vitomir inevitably denied her. Moving silently, they escorted her through the halls and out a side door. There they took their dragon form and one of them plucked her up in his talons, carefully wrapped around the blankets that held her warm against the night air and, as if in a dream, they rose out of Vitomir’s estate and into the starry sky.
Lilly could hardly believe what was happening. She was half afraid that she would wake up and find herself back in the cage, more miserable than ever, but even when she risked pinching herself she remained flying in the dragon’s claws, a pretty dark landscape laid out before her. Cool air rushed past her face, giving her a sense of freedom she had not felt in a very long time. The flight was a relatively long one, toward a small mountain range.
She was enjoying herself immensely, imagining the look on Vitomir’s face when he realized that she had escaped as they landed in a narrow gully, where a dirt track led to the mouth of a carved cave entrance.
“This is our church,” one of the priests explained as they took their walking forms.
Lilly tried not to laugh at suddenly being surrounded by droopy naked old men. They had hung robes on the rocks nearby and dressed themselves relatively quickly to spare her further embarrassment. Another thing Vitomir had never done, though in his case his naked body was nothing to be embarrassed about…
She chased the thought and the resulting tingle away. She was free of him now. Free of being treated like an animal. Free of the embarrassment and the humiliation. Free of punishment. Just… free.
“Come, obsidian one,” they said, surrounding her as they led her through the cleft in the rock. It was indeed, a lot like a church. Vast spaces had been carved out inside the mountain, and the smoothness of the descending steps told her that at one time, if not now, many feet had walked this way.
When they reached the main chamber she was surprised at how much like a human church it was. An altar at the far end, lit by rows and rows of candles. There were rocky pews facing toward it, not carved from wood, but out of the very same material as the rest of the church. It must have taken master craftsmen a very long time to transform this mountain into a space for worship, so this must have been a powerful religion at one time. It didn’t have that feeling anymore though, it felt empty and sort of dusty, as if the old men had not quite kept up with the cleaning.
“How did you manage to get me out without Vitomir waking?” She asked the question as they led her around the side of the church space and down a small passageway that descended on the left hand side. “He sleeps lighter than anyone I’ve ever known. A flea could wake him.”
“His wine was dosed with a sleeping powder which will keep him in slumber,” the priest told her.
“You can do that? You can just drug him. Isn’t he kind of a big deal?”
“He is a high lord, but we have divine right on our side. We are old and many have forgotten us, but that does not change our power or our knowledge.”
She felt a little guilty at the fact Vitomir had been drugged, but then wondered why. He was the one punishing her, treating her like an animal. Why should she feel anything for him?
They took her to a small room, which had obviously been appointed as best they could with the little they had. It was largely bare, but there was a bed with white linen sheets, and it had been stuffed with feathers or some other soft thing so when she sat on it she sank down into it.
“Oh, this is lovely,” she said with a broad smile.
They smiled back at her, pleased with her approval.
“We will make your time here with us as comfortable as possible, obsidian one.”
“Thank you,” she smiled. Finally. She was getting a bit of respect and a bit of care. But she was still naked underneath the scratchy blankets from her cage and she wanted to be rid of them as soon as possible.
“Do you have anything for me to wear?”
The old men exchanged glances. “We will search something out for you, obsidian one.”
“You can call me Lilly,” she said. “I don’t know what all this obsidian stuff is about.”
“It is a term of high honor,” the priest intoned, bowing low.
“Oh, high honor? Okay, well, I guess… I guess you can call me that.”
“Thank you, obsidian one. We will see what we can bring you in the way of clothing.”
They left, closing the door behind them.
Lilly sat on the bed and smiled to herself. Sure, seen through cynical eyes, she was now deep inside a mountain in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of weirdos who called her something that made ‘pet’ sound sane. More positively, she wasn’t locked inside a little cage and entirely at the mercy of a man who thought she needed to be punished every moment of the day.
Minutes passed by and nobody came for her. She got up and went to the door to see what was happening. When she tried to open it, it remained steadfastly closed. She was locked in. With a curse of frustration, she realized that she had changed one cage for another. Arguably this one was worse, being controlled by a random group of old dragons with strange designs on her.
She looked around, but there was no way out of the room. There were no windows. There was just the door and the door was far too heavy to break through.
“Oh, fuck,” she swore to herself miserably. “This is not good.”
Lilly went back and sat on the bed, wondering what to do. There wasn’t anything she could do. She was totally helpless until they came back. It took what felt like hours for that to happen, but she was alert the entire time. There was no way she was going to allow herself to fall asleep in the custody of these priests.
The door creaked open, spiking her adrenaline. Her eyes snapped to the priest who entered and she bounded off the bed, her blankets clutched tight about her body as she drew herself erect and prepared to curse him out thoroughly.
“Obsidian one…” the priest said as he opened the door. “Forgive an old man his tardiness. There has been so much excitement, so many preparations to make.”
“You locked me in!”
“It was for your own protection.”
“From what?”
He did not answer that question. Instead he held up a glass goblet filled with red wine-smelling liquid.
“Drink this.”
She remembered what they’d said about drugging Vitomir. How much of that same drug was in this goblet?
“I’m not thirsty,” she said, shaking her head. “When are you going to take this collar off? I want to get out of here. I don’t like being locked up.”
“In a bit, in a bit,” the old man lied as if she were a fool who could not tell when she was being deceived. “Drink this first. You are thirsty.”
“I don’t want to drink it. Let me out.”
She tried to push past him, but he was surprisingly strong. He pushed her back toward the bed with no effort at all and shut the door again, locking her inside.
“Assholes!” She ran up and started banging on the door with her fists, cursing and swearing up a storm. All it achieved was to make her sweat. The room seemed to be getting hotter. Even when she stopped and sat down, perspiration kept beading on her skin. Her mouth began to feel dry, though she did not know whether that was from fear or thirst. What was clear was that they were going to make her thirsty with the heat until she drank whatever was in that vessel.
More determined than ever not to give in, she found herself fantasizing about cool springs and rushing waterfalls. A stream of clean water falling from a tap, a showerhead. Even a dirty puddle would have been enough.
When the old man returned with crafty eyes and another offer at sipping from the chalice, her lips were cracked and her voice hoarse.
“No, thank you.”
“Drink, obsidian one,” he said, his voice a reptilian rattle. “The horrors of dehydration will make you too weak to survive what is to come.”
“Bring me water.”
“Why? If you do not trust the wine, you should not drink the water.”
“Wine makes my head spin.”
“Drink,” he insisted. “All will be well. You are panicking because of how poorly you have been treated, but you must trust us. This brew we have prepared will transport you free of all shackles. Your collar will trouble you no more…”