Aithne's story part 81 - Twisted Memories
Entry posted by jfraser in Aithne's story
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The teleportation incantation was wrong.
Aithne felt it the moment Merks began the teleportation incantation -- not in the magic itself, but in its density. The spell folded inward on itself, syllables stacking where there should have been release. Teleportation was a bridge, not a knot; a direction, a destination, a letting‑go.
This one closed like a fist.
Her attention snapped fully into focus. “Merks…” she began, already turning toward him, already reaching to interrupt…
The spell snapped shut.
The world twisted violently sideways. Sound flattened into pressure, light smeared, and then Aithne gasped as gravity reclaimed her with violent intention. Chains bit into her wrists, cold and unforgiving, halting her fall with a teeth‑jarring jerk that wrenched breath from her lungs. Her arms were yanked overhead, spread wide. Her legs followed a heartbeat later, ankles caught and dragged down until her body was stretched taut between ceiling and floor. Pain erupted, white and immediate, fire racing along pulled muscle and stretched joints. Her breath came out in a broken gasp she couldn’t finish.
She blinked through the blur of her vision; as if in compensation, her ears starting ringing.
The cave was cramped and dark, lit only by an ancient brazier that flared in front of her, otherwise filled with shadows and secrets. The chains were not bolted on after the fact; they vanished into the rock itself, old and fused, part of the cave’s original construction.
This wasn’t restraint; it was presentation.
“Merks.” Her voice came out raw, lungs struggling against the pull of the chains to give her a full breath. “What did you do?”
The air cracked and he appeared a few paces in front of her.
He was wearing the mask. It sat wrong on his face -- too complete, as if it had always belonged there. The metal caught the cave light and gave nothing back. The artifact hummed faintly, resonating with the chains, with the stone, with something deep inside her chest that recoiled on instinct.
Then Merks laughed. It wasn’t controlled, wasn’t measured. He threw his head back and howled, the muffled sound adding an otherworldly cast that echoed off the stone and came back layered and multiplied. It scraped across Aithne’s nerves and she found herself shaking.
“Oh,” he gasped, laughter breaking into breath. “You lied to me. Gods, you lied so well.”
Aithne swallowed hard as her heart hammered in pained staccato beats. “Take it off. Merks, that mask is…”
His laughter cut off like it had smashed against a wall. “…the only honest thing you've ever given me.” He stepped closer, eyes wide and crazed through the thick holes in the mask. His gaze fixed on her, bright with a fevered kind of clarity. “It gave my memories back.”
Her stomach dropped and it took her a moment to wheeze out, “What memories?”
“All of them. I remember exactly what you were – a slave who thought too highly of herself. Who thought she was better than her master!”
This was accompanied by a sharp slap across Aithne’s face, and she could not hold back a yelp; not from the pain so much as the fear that finally found the crevasses in her confusion and came pouring out like ants toward a picnic.
“You belonged to Urag.” Merks’ voice had turned conversational. “He got bored of you. Gave you away.” His head tilted, studying her. “To me.”
A familiar and long-since-buried darkness stirred. That was true. Sort of. The fact was there, if not the meaning.
“No." She gasped the words through pained lips. "You don’t get to say it like that.”
“I get to say it however I like, bitch.” He slapped her again as her breath stuttered. “You were very good at following instructions. But also very good at pretending you were above it.” His voice dripped with remembered amusement. “An act that fooled no one -- you always flinched when you thought I wasn’t looking.”
Her vision tunneled. Fragments surged up unbidden – the days in the Arcaneum, looking with pity upon the boys pretending to be men. Why had she pushed them? How had she been so bold? She swallowed hard.
“You didn’t own me. You borrowed me.”
Merks laughed again, delighted. “Listen to you! Even now, with your lies laid bare, you’re still rewriting.” He gestured broadly at the chains. “You really hate those, don’t you? You always did.” His voice softened into mock sympathy. “But they did keep you still.”
Her pulse roared in her ears.
“I remember your rebellions. First the shelves.”
Aithne went very still.
“Yes,” he said, head tilting to the side. It would have looked bizarrely hilarious if it wasn’t so altogether frightening. “You snapped. That was the word I used at the time. One moment you were pretending to behave, the next the entire room came down on me.”
Her breath hitched. Bookshelves crashing. Stone cracking. The terrible satisfaction of letting go.
“And then you smashed in my head. That’s how I really died. Not from falling. How stupid was I to believe that? I could fly! I was the best at flying! There is no way I would have died that way. No.” Merks leaned forward, eyes wide and bloodshot. “Hit in the heady by MY OWN TROPHY by a rebellious slave who never…”
He reached out with a hand and grabbed the front of Aithne’s robe and yanked. Aithne yelped as her shoulders screamed in protest at the movement, but the material held.
Merks growled as he yanked again. “…learned…”
She squeezed her eyes shut as another yelp escaped her. The material held once again.
Merks made a strangled sound and stepped back. “…her place! Lyon!”
With a swipe of his hand, Aithne’s robe and the underthings below split away. Merks stepped forward with another growl, frustrated because his ploy to dramatically strip her had not gone the way he expected and, even after using lyon, her body was still mostly covered and now he was going to have to very undramatically remove the rest in sections because the chains were in the way and this was all making him feel somehow embarrassed in front of a slave, which was not the way things should be and she was going to pay for every moment of it.
Aithne knew all this because the spell also neatly removed the necklace that had been holding back his thoughts. After a few moments of hearing his increasingly annoyed upper thoughts as he circled around her, zapping away her clothes from every angle, mixed with the deep carnal hunger that lay buried within, she longed for the amulet back.
The darkness surged. It crawled up her spine, thick and suffocating, dragging old instincts with it. Don’t argue. Don’t escalate. Don’t remind them you think. Her thoughts fractured, breath shortening as the cave pressed in around her. Borkul’s voice spoke from what felt like the bedrock of her existence: “You are a slave. You have always been a slave. You will always be a slave.”
She found her head shaking as the last of her clothes slipped away, leaving her bare and spread before Merks, who stripped himself of everything but the mask and approached her with a hunger that rose as rapidly as his cock.
“No.” She whispered the word. She had been through so much, had fought and scrambled to get away from exactly this. She would NOT let it happen again! She had beaten Borkul, had beaten Merks before! She was NOT THE WEAK WOMAN WHO HAD SUCCUMED!! Fire raged in her and she felt magic flow. She didn’t need her hands to cast spells – just like at Korvanjund, she just needed to WILL it to…
“Oh no,” Merks said pleasantly. “No spellcasting.”
He gestured.
The silver collar snapped into place, tight and immediate, the enchantment biting hard as it locked around Aithne’s neck. In an instant, the mana was gone; not even a hint of it hovered nearby. The sound that tore out of her was raw and helpless, cut short as the spell sealed.
And then, despite her protests, despite all she had done, despite all she had become, despite all her victories, a moment later she was just a slave getting fucked by her master, and there was nothing she could do but weep.
Edited by jfraser
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