by A. J. Markam
Or Alaria.
I felt nauseated at the thought of Saykir doing to her what he’d done to me.
I pressed my ear to the cold iron door and listened intently, trying to pick out any screams or wails of agony, but I heard nothing.
I checked my action bar. Her icon was still bright and colorful, meaning she was alive. Same with Stig. They still had the ‘unsummonable’ red outline around their icons, as did all the pirates in my submenu – but that was to be expected. Not only because of Saykir’s shield around the city, but because I couldn’t summon a demon who was already alive.
The next few hours felt like an eternity. I don’t actually know how long I was in there, because time passes differently when you’re alone in darkness and silence. But I put the time to good use, going through my bags and powers, trying anything and everything I could think of.
I cast Darkfire on the door, Darkbolts on the door, Doomsday on the door.
No go.
I tried hitting the door with my ivory scepter, but that did nothing but hurt my ears with all the clanging.
I tried yelling out “Hello?” every so often, but no one ever answered.
The one thing I did that helped was to go into my menu and turn down my sensory settings. I usually kept them at 100% because of all the sex I’d been having with Alaria, but that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon. And such a high setting had an incredible downside when you’re being waterboarded with black goo.
Once I was at 10%, the coldness and the discomfort of the hard floor dropped away to almost nothing. I still had some tactile sensation, but not much.
I started wondering whether I should log out and try to get help when the door finally opened.
I squinted against the light, hoping it might be Eluun –
No such luck.
“So,” Saykir sneered as he stood silhouetted against the hallway. “You finally covered up your disgusting nudity.”
I stumbled to my feet, ready for a showdown, even if it wouldn’t last long –
“Don’t. I have no qualms torturing you again. You thought this was uncomfortable last time?” he asked as the black goop stretched out a foot from his hand. “Imagine eight hours straight.”
Oh shit…
My reduced pain settings would go a long way towards mitigating the horror, but still…
“What do you want?” I asked.
He chuckled. “Want? I don’t ‘want’ anything, except to make an example out of you.”
“I didn’t know you didn’t want me to sleep with anybody!” I protested. “First you sent me off to that damn temple where everybody was fucking like bunnies, and then those three came on to me! What did you think was going to happen?”
“SILENCE!” he screamed. “Are you truly as moronic as you seem? You asked me before why there were no men in this kingdom. You think I did away with them purely because I hate my own kind? Fool!”
Oh yeah…
“It was only three of them,” I protested.
I immediately realized how stupid that was. It’s never a good idea to argue with a cult leader by saying Come onnnn, I only slept with THREE of your private harem.
On the other hand, it was kind of awesome. If you’d asked me two days ago if I would be having a foursome with three hot chicks anytime soon, I would have laughed my ass off. I mean, all those kinky ménages à trois with Alaria and Tarka had nearly blown my mind. Anything beyond that was in The Matrix ‘There is no spoon’ territory.
It was a little harder to see Saykir’s face in the dim light of my cell, but I could tell that my It was only three of them comment had made one of his eyes bug out again.
We stood there for several moments in complete silence. All we needed was Stig around to say Awkward to make it complete.
Partly to break the silence, and partly because I was really curious, I asked, “So… you and them… all the women… you… uh…”
“OF COURSE WE DO!” he screamed.
Silence.
“Oh,” I murmured.
Double awkward.
I mean, I’d figured back in the temple that I’d stumbled onto a harem. I just thought it was a lesbian harem, not the secret playground of a maniacal warlock.
“And now you have defiled all three of them,” Saykir snarled. “I should flay them alive as an example to the others.”
My stomach twisted with fear.
“Look, please – don’t. It was my fault, not theirs, okay?” In an effort to try to save Exa, Kel, and Sela, I started to lie. (Probably laughably.) “I was the one who seduced them – ”
“You?” Saykir laughed, regaining his composure. “YOU are pathetic. You stutter and bumble your way through life, a doormat of a man-child. You couldn’t seduce one of my followers if your life depended on it.”
Okay, that pissed me off.
“I got Alaria,” I snapped. “ And I didn’t have to use a goddamn collar on her to get her to sleep with me.”
Saykir smirked. “That whore will sleep with anyone.”
“No,” I said, “not really. She definitely would have never been with you if she’d had a choice.”
Saykir’s upper lip began to twitch, and his eye popped out a little again.
He looked absolutely insane.
In retrospect, if I had been smart, that was the time to stop talking.
“You are nothing but a loser,” he hissed. “A loser at the beginning, and a loser at the end as well.”
“At least I’m not a rapist,” I spat.
He smirked. “So murder is fine, but forcing a demon to act against its will is not? How virtuous. How enlightened. Your ethics and morality are nothing but a façade to cover your complete and utter inferiority. In the end, we both know what you are.”
That was my last chance to shut the hell up and walk away unscathed.
But I was furious.
Look, I know I’m not some great catch.
I’m not an alpha male, I’m not handsome, I’m not cool.
I’m a geek, pure and simple.
I know that back in the real world, I would never get to sleep with a woman as beautiful as Alaria – and if I did, I would screw it up immediately, one way or another.
But one thing I wasn’t was an evil fucking bastard.
I did care about other people’s feelings.
I did have morals.
I did have ethics.
I did try to be a decent human being.
And I wasn’t going to apologize for that to a fucking piece of shit like Saykir.
I’d backed down from the goblin king and had been bothered by Krug’s reaction afterwards – and the goblin king wasn’t one tenth the prick that Saykir was.
So I hit him where I knew it would hurt him the most.
“Yeah,” I sneered, “we both know what I am: a guy with a way bigger dick than yours.”
You should have seen the look on his face.
It was like I’d punched him right in the solar plexus. All the rage went out of him and was replaced with shock.
Then there was this look of shame and mortification that lasted for just a split second –
Then the rage came back full force.
He hit me with Darkfire and Soul Suck, which dropped me to my knees.
But Darkfire and Soul Suck at 10% sensory levels? Not nearly as painful.
Still not fun, though.
I’d like to say it was all part of my brilliant plan to get him to kill me, but I really hadn’t thought it out that far. My insult was really just a crude, juvenile way to get back at him.
But now that I was already hovering around 60% health, I figured, Why not. Let’s go for broke.
I forced myself to laugh as I knelt there on the floor. That seemed to take him by surprise.
“What’s so funny?” he snarled.
“You said I couldn’t seduce any of your women if my life depended on it,” I chuckled. “But I figure all I’d have to do is whip it out and they’d all come r
unning.”
Oh, that tore it.
He screamed and hit me in the face with the black pseudopod, which immediately began to squirm its way inside my mouth and nose.
Again, a whole lot easier to deal with at 10% sensory levels – but still no picnic, I can assure you. And it was still just as effective at choking off my breath.
I was hoping that he would get carried away and send me over the edge into death, at which point I could resurrect somewhere far, far away.
No such luck.
“PRIESTESS!” he screamed.
My heart sank. I was expecting Eluun to walk around the corner, and I wasn’t sure I could deal with her watch me be tortured again and not start to hate her.
But it was another frost elf, one without the ceremonial headdress that Eluun wore.
She looked pained to see my distress. But she motioned with her hands and golden light flowed into my body, keeping me just outside death’s door.
That basically went on for the next two hours.
And there was nothing I could do to stop it. Couldn’t log out, couldn’t bail… nothin’.
If I hadn’t had my pain threshold set at 10%, I’m pretty sure I would have gone insane.
When Saykir finally finished, he sneered, “Enjoy your last few hours of existence. After I’m through with you, all this will feel like a lover’s caress.”
Then he slammed the door shut behind me, plunging me back into darkness.
As I lay there on the ground gasping for air, I had a couple of thoughts that surfaced through the pain.
One: at least he’d been torturing me and not Alaria. That was a trade I’d be willing to make every day for the rest of my life.
Two: I was a little concerned about the ‘last few hours of existence’ comment. That and the ‘this will feel like a lover’s caress’ part.
Three: as I reflected on whether my insulting Saykir had actually been worth two hours of torture – even at 10% intensity – I thought back to what Krug had said about the goblin king. That if anyone had talked to him like that, he would have killed them.
I hadn’t been able to kill Saykir, but at least I’d gotten in a shot – and a pretty damn good one, at that. One he wasn’t going to forget anytime soon.
Was it worth going through the last two hours?
I thought about the expression on his face when I’d said it, and grinned.
Fuck yeah, it was worth it.
18
A couple of hours later, a small army of guards arrived to take me out of the cell. Varisa the Mage was with them.
“Don’t try anything, or I will use my powers to crush your manhood. Am I understood?” she hissed.
Okay, that got my attention.
I saw another group of female soldiers pull Alaria out of a cell down the hall. She was wearing shackles around her wrists and ankles with metallic coverings over her hands, probably to prevent her from summoning fireballs.
“Are you okay?” I called out.
“I’m fine – are YOU alright?!” she asked frantically. “I heard the screaming – ”
“I’m fine,” I reassured her. “Everything’s gonna be fine.”
Varisa snorted and muttered under her breath, “I doubt that.”
The soldiers marched us through the prison side-by-side. At least they allowed us a little time to be next to each other and didn’t stop us from talking.
“What happened?” Alaria whispered.
“Oh, Saykir just tortured me for a few hours,” I said, trying to sound as offhand and badass as I could.
I certainly hadn’t been badass while I was getting tortured, that much was true. But after it’s all over, if you can’t use the experience to impress your chick, what good was it?
She looked at me with wide eyes. “Why?! Did you provoke him?”
“Of course.”
“What did you say?!”
“That my dick was bigger than his.”
Alaria gasped, her eyes big as saucers. Then she let out an involuntary laugh that she tried to stifle by clamping her lips shut.
That was exactly the reaction I’d been hoping for.
“You didn’t,” she finally said, almost in awe.
“Yup. And then I paid for it.”
“Poor baby,” she moaned, and not sarcastically. “Once we get out of this, I’ll kiss it and make it all better, I promise.”
“I’m counting on it.”
In reality, though, I didn’t know how we were going to get through this. I was up against somebody a thousand times more powerful than me with no idea how to defeat him.
And that wasn’t even taking into account whatever horror show he had planned for us.
Oh well.
As Alaria had said earlier, something would come up. It always did.
The soldiers marched us out of the prison and through the icy town. I could tell it was daytime by how bright it was, though the overcast sky blotted out the sun and turned everything into a kind of grey twilight.
We entered the Temple of Pleasure and wound our way through the spiral halls, except this time there wasn’t anyone going at it. The scent of sex was still in the air, but the rooms formerly full of Energetics, Sensuals, Sexuals, and kinksters were all deserted.
As we ventured deeper into the compound, I found out why.
The spiral hallway eventually ended in a cathedral of ice almost as big as a sports stadium. Inside were more erotic statues – some out in the main area of worship, others back in shadowy alcoves built into the walls. A 40-foot-tall ice statue of a naked woman with a crown stood at one end. I was guessing it was the goddess Jaiya. She raised one hand up in the air as a blessing, and held a curling whip in the other.
There were the equivalent of stained-glass windows set into the walls, though it was all carved into the ice. An unfamiliar mythology played out in the scenes. Frost elves engaged in battles, built a city, and received a glowing book from a towering naked woman, whom I assumed was Jaiya. After that it was all a bunch of orgies.
A gigantic dome filled with translucent panes of ice towered over us. Religious symbols were carved into the walls. Hundreds of tiny candles were scattered randomly in alcoves and on ledges, turning the entire place into a fairyland of soft light and shimmering crystal.
It was absolutely beautiful, a true work of art.
Except there was something very strange at the center of it all.
An enormous pit sat in the center of the circular cathedral. At least forty feet across and sixty feet deep, its sloped walls of ice led down to a single point like an inverted cone. So far as I could see there wasn’t anything down there, and it looked unsettlingly out of place in such an architectural and artistic marvel.
Eleven massive, spiky crystals jutted at a 45-degree angle over the pit. Big as tree trunks, they were spaced at regular intervals like the five-minute markers on a clock face. The 12 o’clock spot was different: a long, slender ice platform that arched out over the center of the pit like half of a bridge, suspended midair.
Other than the 40 or so soldiers escorting me and Alaria, the rest of the frost elves were gathered around the edge of the pit. There were probably close to a thousand, all of them women, all of them wearing silk robes, and all of them with frightened expressions on their faces.
I wondered if Exa, Kel, and Sela were out there somewhere, and hoped they were alright.
The soldiers marched us over next to the bridge where Eluun stood in glittering vestments, her face a mask of barely contained terror. She glanced at my face, but was either unwilling or unable to hold eye contact for long.
Varisa left the soldiers with me and Alaria and walked over to the high priestess’s side.
Then the man of the hour arrived.
Saykir strode out from the shadows behind the 40-foot statue. He was dressed in menacing black robes with leather straps and spikes everywhere. He was also wearing a large ceremonial headdress with two curved, onyx blades on either side of his head. It
sort of looked like a cross between the xenomorph in Alien and the helmet worn by the Fantastic Four comics’ Galactus, except all black.
If anything, his outfit looked like a more elaborate version of something worn by the kinksters. Specifically the most extreme sadists, the ones who enjoyed viciously beating their partners.
That would actually explain a LOT, I thought.
He glided over to me and Alaria.
“Well,” he asked smugly, “are you ready to meet your end?”
“Do I get to choose?” I asked. “If so, I’d like to have a heart attack while I’m balls-deep in one of your women.”
I don’t know where the bravado came from. If I had to guess, I’d say it came from being tortured for hours. After something like that, you really did not give a fuck anymore. There were no fucks left to be given.
Alaria snorted with laughter, half-delighted and half-shocked. But even she tried to suppress her mirth – which was probably the smarter play in this situation.
Saykir stared at me. A vein pulsed in his forehead, and one of his glowing white eyes began to bug out.
Then he regained control over himself. The pulsing stopped, his eye sunk back into its socket, and he regained his cool exterior.
“You will pay for that, little warlock,” he sneered, then turned and gestured to the soldiers. “Bind them to the ceremonial posts.”
The soldiers marched me and Alaria over to two adjacent crystals about twenty feet away from each other. One unlocked Alaria’s shackles as five spear tips hovered at her throat.
I could see where this was going: they were going to bind us to the crystals and then hang us out over the pit.
Fuck that noise.
I had no idea what was going to happen in the pit, but if Saykir was right and all my previous hours of torture really were going to feel like a lover’s caress by comparison, then I would rather the both of us die right now.
I didn’t think I could goad Saykir into killing us, but I thought I might have a chance with the guards. They might not be expecting resistance.
So I hit one of the warriors with Darkfire.
She yelled in pain – but rather than the guards leaping in and attacking me, they all took five steps backwards.
What the hell?