A pair of—demons? probably demons—appear out of nowhere. There's a man and a woman, tall and winged and cherry-coloured, with black horns and golden talons. Both of them seem kind of startled and off-balance, like they weren't expecting to be here.

The woman reacts first, lunging for Elodea with a hiss.

--She was not expecting that! The demons were startling, although not really surprising in retrospect, but the woman lunging first is a new one on her.

She was teleported here sans spellbook and currently has no offensive spells. This is probably a good thing, because attempting one against a woman would have worked and that would probably just have pissed the both of them off more. Instead she ducks and rolls out of the way.

The demoness's tail snags Elodea's ankle and pulls, hauling her within reach of a grasping hand. As soon as the golden talons pierce through her clothes and into the flesh beneath, she is abruptly overtaken by sleep.

This is extra surprising! She is normally immune to sleep magic, but there she goes, out like a light. 

When she wakes, she is naked, lying on her back in the grass with her hands and feet encased in stone, and the male demon is sitting between her spread thighs and digging into her midsection with both hands. He is also naked. He's no minotaur, but that still looks like an uncomfortable prospect. At least it's likely to hurt less than being eviscerated, so, in that sense it'll be a step up.

This is the worst wakeup call she's had in well over a century. 

She screams. 

He laughs, and licks blood from his talons, and asks a question in a language she's never heard before.

She does still have a few language-related spells prepared but she's reluctant to use them when she can't prepare any new ones. Instead she says, "I can't understand you," hoping that he will either understand her or get the gist from the fact that he can't. 

He shrugs, in a so-much-for-that sort of way, and leans down to put his mouth between her legs.

His teeth are very sharp.

That's a new one.

She shrieks and attempts to kick him. 

The rock encasing her foot doesn't budge an inch; it's rooted to the ground. The demon makes an amused noise and continues his novel activities.

She swears at him in a variety of languages living and dead. 

This seems to entertain him!

He takes his time, but eventually stops biting sensitive areas and starts fucking her instead. It does not, actually, hurt any less than being eviscerated.

She is honestly kind of impressed under all the pissed-off and in pain. She hopes these two aren't going to go off and terrorize people who aren't cursed to have this shit happen to them anyway, since she's currently impaired by things other than the curse and so will be hindered in thwarting them even after he's done with her. 

Meanwhile she starts crying. 

Oh, he likes the crying. He likes the crying so much.

Her hips crack under the force of his thrusts, and demonic fluids sting her open wounds, and he doesn't stop. He keeps fucking her, until she heals from all her injuries and he has to supply new ones, until the puddle of blood and semen that spreads between her sticky thighs has grown large enough to touch all four of the encircling stones that hold her down. He seems to have an instinctive understanding of all the worst possible places to put his claws.

When he gets bored of ripping her open, he switches to burning her with magic, and when he gets bored of that he switches to using small jolts of lightning, and by that point he's ready to revisit the possibilities of teeth. A full day and night pass like this; he doesn't seem to need to eat, or sleep, or in fact do anything at all other than rape her. He has some favourite tricks: suddenly raising the temperature of his skin to a blistering heat, slashing his claws across her chest and then licking the wounds, casually breaking her bones by being intentionally careless with his immense strength.

Eventually, around midmorning after the second consecutive sunrise that has gone by while he's been fucking her, he disengages and sprawls on the ground outside the range of her puddle.

His companion makes some sort of affectionately chiding remark - clean your toys when you're done with them, perhaps - and approaches within view to turn the assorted messes all over Elodea into pure water with a wave of her hand. She has somehow managed to turn up a change of clothes in this wilderness, probably by magic, and is looking very regal in a long black dress that fastens behind her neck and leaves her back entirely bare.

This is, without a doubt, the worst thing she's experienced since Elexarin.

She does not want this to happen again. 

She restrains herself not at all to reacting negatively to what he's doing to her, and when he's done, she allows herself a few minutes before pulling herself together.

She considers the situation, and casts Comprehend Languages.

"I don't suppose," she says, "that I could be let go to stretch my legs for a bit while you're done with me for the moment?"

"Oh, now she speaks," he says, amused.

"I don't currently have a way to get new spells, I was a little reluctant to burn my penultimate casting of Comprehend Languages!"

"...What?" he says blankly.

"I got stranded without a spellbook."

"That's not—ugh," he says, giving up on the conversation and flopping a wing over his face to block out the sun.

His companion studies Elodea thoughtfully. "Originally we thought you must have brought us here, but that's not true at all, is it?"

"--No, I don't usually solicit my own rapists."

She raises her eyebrows. "Oh?"

"Everyone has at least one asshole ex in their life. I was lucky enough to get mine out of the way early but unlucky enough to get an actual god."

"...Go on," she says slowly.

"...Aaaaaand now I'm cursed to run into rapists a lot. I went without for three months so far so I'm not surprised to encounter this level of violence, although I am impressed, well done, I think you're the second-worst I've ever had after the asshole ex himself," she says, addressing this latter part to her erstwhile rapist. 

"...How does the curse manage to provide them so reliably?"

"It has a rather obnoxiously broad repertoire. Nudging me into the paths of rapists, nudging rapists into the paths of me, manipulation of seemingly-random factors like where a teleport lands me, crippling my ability to fight back or get away, low-key mind control..."

"That is obnoxious," she says. "Is the curse also the reason why you heal so quickly, or is that separate?"

"I don't know if they're magically the same thing but basically. My last escape attempt from him was trying to kill myself, after which I woke up out of his grasp but cursed and immortal and with his explicit ill-wishes."

"I do not think I like this curse," she remarks. "My brother will like it even less once he starts paying attention again. At home, if someone were unwise enough to manipulate him like that - even if they made it this rewarding - we would kill them slowly, in public, as an example to others."

"Well, no offense, but you do kind of appear to be demons. That kind of thing is only to be expected."

"Oh? What do you expect of demons?"

"Oh, you know, mayhem, violence, rape, although probably less of that last one when you're not me."

"I have a strong suspicion that we are not any sort of demon you have encountered before."

"Oh?"

"You are not any sort of creature I have encountered before, and I make it my business to know these things."

"Huh. That is suggestive, elves are pretty standard most places. Not quite as ubiquitous as humans, of course, but then who is."

She turns to address her brother.

"Wake up, dear, we've got a god to kill."

"What?" he says, lifting his wing off his face. "Why? Can't someone else do it?"

"This girl is cursed with an eternity of rape, and in pursuit of its goal the curse is willing to manipulate fate, magic, and minds," she explains. "The god is the author of the curse and her ex-lover."

"What." He sits up abruptly, furious. "Fuck that. Where is he, I'm going to eat him."

"...The gods tend to live in the Divine Realms, which is a separate plane of existence...on the other hand, he does show up occasionally to be a creep at me."

"Ugh, and you're the only person around for miles and it's not as though I'm going to keep torturing you..." He scowls.

"I appreciate that. Does that mean I could have some clothes and/or freedom of movement?"

"That depends. Are you going to use them to annoy us?"

"I still don't have a spellbook, so I'm not sure what you expect me to be able to do. I'm a wizard, not a sorcerer, and even if I were all it would take would be Still Spell to cast even with my hands enshackled, and while I'm not as squishy as the wizard stereotypes would suggest I think we've proven that I'm not match for you physically. I suppose you might find it annoying if I tried to run but given the complete lack of anywhere to run to I'm not currently so inclined."

"Everything you've ever said about how magic works for you has sounded completely insane."

"If you don't know what a wizard is I suppose the complete lack of books on my person might be less than perfectly reassuring but I promise you I need a spellbook to get my spells every morning." She considers. "And that I need to prepare spells to cast them."

"Why? That's stupid! Where do spellbooks come from, then?"

"You...write...them? Out of notes? After doing research? Spells are complicated, you can't fit enough to be useful into your head at once without magic."

He growls.

"If you don't feel like being helpful, we can always leave you there," Nesifra says dryly.

"I would love to help you kill my asshole ex-boyfriend, I just have no control whatever over when he shows up to creep on me. And have no way to initiate contact with him. And have neither the ability nor the inclination to find civilization at the moment. I could probably be more helpful about describing the local magic system, if that's what you mean, but I wasn't previously prioritizing anything other than explaining the extent to which I am helpless to inconvenience you in ways other than not being capable of dying if you feel like killing me."

"You certainly asserted that you're helpless to inconvenience us. I'm not sure you managed to explain it."

"Right now the spells I have available to me are another casting of the spell I'm using to communicate with you and a couple of spells that produce light. I suppose if light is harmful to you that could make me non-helpless. One is Dancing Lights, which allows me to create four lights of approximately lantern intensity that I could manipulate the position of. They would last for sixty seconds. The other is simply Light, which makes a single targeted object shine like a torch for, for a wizard of my tier, two hours and fifty minutes. In order to prepare any other spells, I would need a written record thereof, which conventionally come in the form of spellbooks but can be written on individual sheets of paper just fine, or even tattooed on my person. As you can see, I have no tattoos. In addition to my spellcasting abilities and my divinely inflicted attributes, I have a racial immunity to magical sleep. I can't think of how to prove any of this to you. I can expand on how wizardry works if you like but I'm seventeenth-tier and people who are advanced in a craft and haven't specialized in teaching are notoriously bad at explaining things to beginners so you're going to have to ask specific questions."

"It does seem... unlikely, from our perspective, to have a form of magic so obscure that no one knows how to do it without a book in front of them," she says. "And even if that much is true, it's hard to imagine that you would be genuinely unable to recreate any of the books from memory, given a little time unsupervised to experiment."

"Excuse me, it's complexity, not obscurity. I'm a perfectly competent wizard! I could, in fact, recreate some of the spells--but nothing high-level, not from near-scratch. I suppose I could throw a ball of acid at you if I really wanted to but honestly I don't see that going well for me. Also? I would need writing materials. And even if you're not willing to let me go yet can I please have some clothes or something I'm fucking cold."

"If I were going to give you clothes I would have to create them by magic," she says. "And our magic is fueled by pain."

"And you complain that my magic is crazy!?"

"If you have complaints, you can take them up with our god," she says, amused. "I don't recommend it."

"I have complaints with you having complaints with my nice non-torture-powered magic system! 

--I guess that puts the comment about how you're not going to torture me any more because of the curse into a new context," she adds to the male one, whose name she still doesn't know. 

"Oh, I'd still want to torture you for fun either way," he says. "You cry very nicely. But it's going to be really annoying trying to murder a god without a good source of power. You would've been perfect, too, with that immortality thing."

"Somehow, I don't think I'm going to be able to take that compliment to heart."

He snorts.

She's quiet for a moment.

"What makes you think you can kill a god?"

He laughs.

"I'm the King of Shadow Mountain. I can kill anything."

"I don't know what that means. And attempts on the lives of gods are usually committed by people who believe they're going to succeed, and they usually fail."

"It's our ancestral duty to conquer the world and restore our banished creator to his rightful place," says the king's sister. "A god as petty as yours sounds like trivial prey in comparison."

"I mean, I admit his personality isn't very impressive, but there's not actually a correlation between personality and power level as far as gods go. Also, can I just register an objection to the idea of restoring a god who'd invent a torture-based magic system, I can't imagine you'd actually take it into consideration but if I'm going to be cooperating with you to kill Elexarin I want it firmly on record that I am opposed to torturemagicgods."

She smiles slightly. "Your objection is noted."

"Thank you."

She sighs.

"The curse...doesn't acknowledge women. If you torture me it won't interact at all. I am not happy to admit this but I really want that asshole dead."

"I was in any case planning to be the one to torture you if it came up; unlike some people," she glances fondly at her brother, "I'm capable of separating torture from sex."

"Shadow Mountain must be a fun place."

"It is!" he says brightly.

"Well, welcome to the land of Not Fun, where the only rapeable humanoid within a what-the-fuck-ever radius has an inconvenient curse."

"It's very inconvenient!" he agrees.

"I suspect if what-the-fuck-ever doesn't turn out to be large enough to keep you away from not-me persons you're going to get lots of agreement with the thing where it's inconvenient that you're not there anymore."

"We're under no orders to conquer this world," says Nesifra. "I'm nearly certain it isn't the same one."

"I'm glad to hear that but I don't think most people who end up involuntarily enabling your brother's rape habit are going to be quite as thrilled."

"Does that bother you?" she asks curiously.

"...Yes? Being raped is No Fun, I have over a millenium of experience on the matter."

"So wouldn't you rather them than you, then?"

"I'm used to it. They're not."

"Caring about that many people sounds exhausting."

"It's different from personally caring about someone. I'm sure it's less personally convenient to not care. But it's a lot more convenient to live in a society where everyone cares, or at least has social pressure acting on them to pay lip service to caring, as long as you don't have strong reasons to want to rape and torture people."

"How does your civilzation even function?" he wonders.

"More smoothly than ours, overall," says Nesifra.

"And I'm not an anthropologist, just a wizard who spends disproportionate amounts of time in the wilderness anyway."

"Why would you spend disproportionate amounts of time in the wilderness if this is the sort of thing that happens when you do?"

"Because it happens whether or not I'm in random wilderness and this way insofar as I have a reputation it's as a powerful but nomadic wizard and not. As a constant. Victim. Which I am not. Ninety percent of the people who have ever raped me died by my hand for it."

"Well, that's not very friendly," says Sovarith, somewhere between amused and puzzled.

"Neither is rape."

"—ah," says Nesifra. "She doesn't mean she's killed half her lovers—right?—she means she's killed most of the people who have been driven to interrupt her by the curse."

"Still!"

"--I have not killed half my lovers! I have not killed any of my lovers! Random assholes who think they have the right to force me to to have sex I don't want do not qualify as lovers!"

"Among the Endarkened they would," says Nesifra. "More or less. Very few people can get away without ever being on the losing side of sex; even royalty mostly doesn't manage it."

"...Okay, well, here, we have this novel thing called consensual sex. Most sex is not rape! Not here! I have never raped anyone! I have had tons of sex that was not rape on either side!"

"That doesn't even make any sense," says Sovarith.

"I so wish I had my illusions--look, here's how it works, in an oversimplified case. I see a pretty man. I walk up to him, and say, 'I think you're hot, do you want to have sex with me?' He says yes. We go somewhere private. Sex happens. Or maybe he asks me if I want to have sex and I say yes and we go somewhere private and have sex. Or, one of us says no, and no sex happens. Either way, no rape. Rape is sex where one of the parties does not consent."

"You're using words very strangely," says Nesifra. "I understand you because I've spent time among the sunlit folk, but - to use an analogy, you are trying to explain gifts in a language where 'I stole that from him' and 'he gave it to me' have only a slight difference in connotation."

"Well that's horrifying but not surprising. I swear I make more sense in a language I actually speak than when using magical translation."

"I believe you!" she says.

"Is anyone going to explain to me what she actually means," wonders Sovarith.

"When the sunlit folk have sex, they do it cooperatively. No one yields, no one conquers. You probably wouldn't like it very much."

He glances up at her and laughs. "I don't know, it sounds interesting."

She smiles slightly and makes a shooing motion at him. "Go find out what's for dinner. I assume our guest won't be pleased if we eat her."

"It sounds uncomfortable! And I don't regenerate from the loss of major fractions of my body mass fast enough to feed two comfortably for long."

He stands up and stretches, spreading his wings to a truly impressive span, then leaps into the sky and flies away.

"Oh, we don't need to eat very often."

"Sounds convenient."

"Many things about being Endarkened are convenient."

"Pity it comes with all the horrible."

She shrugs. "I find it worthwhile, personally. Though if I weren't the Queen of Shadow Mountain, perhaps I'd feel differently."

"I mean, if even royalty doesn't generally manage to avoid 'being on the losing side of sex' I think I still prefer to be, what did you call it, sunlit folk. I'm rather an aberration in that regard. Besides, inconvenient though it may be, I find the idea of not having my empathy aversive."

"Oh, we killed our father a long time ago and haven't had any trouble since," she says, as though this is a completely reasonable answer to that concern. "And what do you mean, 'not having your empathy'...?"

She is rather distracted by the first part of what she said. "Your father?"

"Hmm? Yes," she says. "Is that surprising? He was the King; he could have anyone he liked."

"Yes! It's surprising! That's--you don't do that to your children!"

"It's not to everyone's taste, but it does happen," she says. "I wouldn't, because I've discovered that if you want to avoid having someone betray you, not harming them unnecessarily is a good first step. But I'm not planning to have children anyway."

"People are supposed to care about their children," she says, quietly but fiercely.

"Endarkened aren't supposed to care about anyone."

"How and why would that even work."

"Hmm?"

"I--I can imagine not giving a shit what happens to anyone except your very own personal loved ones. I can imagine not happening to be in a position where you don't have any personal loved ones. I can't imagine not giving a shit about anyone except the hypothetical loved ones you don't have and not being harmed by the absence of having any personal loved ones."

She shrugs, and sits a little closer and drapes a wing over Elodea to keep off the cold.

"Well, I have my brother. Most Endarkened would consider that a weakness, but I find that an unbreakable alliance is very much a strength."

She super appreciates the wingdraping.

"I noticed you have your brother. I'm glad for the both of you. I just feel bad for literally everyone else in your civilization. Which is silly, I know that just because I can't imagine being a way doesn't mean that the way doesn't exist." She sighs. "The not caring about your children thing is still pretty confusing, though. Why even have children if you're immortal enough not to need heirs but not so immortal that any heirs you have anyway might successfully usurp you, and there's no bond of love to prevent that, and raising a child isn't rewarding in the way it is for us, which definitely involves caring about them?"

"We could hardly take over the world if no one we lost in war could be replaced," she points out. "But I don't know why anyone finds it rewarding to have children."

"The idea that it would be advantageous to have a larger population had occurred to me. The idea of being ordered to have children makes sense, it's mostly your father's decision-making I question, what with presumably no one being able to order him to do anything as well as being the most tempting-to-usurp person around."

She raises her eyebrows. "That's exactly why royalty should have children; it discourages everyone else from trying, because if they killed you then they'd have to fight your heir for the title."

"I guess that makes sense. My encounters with royalty mostly amount to 'this one person I know with a really great library is technically the Empress of an Empire that hadn't existed for over a century before I met her.' Also occasional encounters with princes of wherever of the more typical-for-me variety."

"Well, now you've been raped by a king," she says, with a hint of amusement. "You could say you're moving up in the world."

"I consider myself to be moving up in the world when I advance a tier in wizardry. Out of all the ways I could measure my place in the world the social status of my rapists seems like a bad one."

"Fair enough."

"For the record, if I didn't have this curse and did have an antagonistic sexual system like yours I would be 'losing at sex' considerably less than half the time. I don't usually get caught without a spellbook and a seventeenth-tier wizard is nothing to scoff at."

"I believe you," she says. "Part of the reason I'm being so friendly is that you're plausibly impossible to kill and poised to make an enormous nuisance of yourself if we leave you with a grudge."

"Oh, I'd been wondering. Well, if it makes you feel better, I tend to hold grudges based on different criterion than most people. What happened to me was going to happen in some way, I'm more pissed off at Elexarin than your brother about it, and you're not doing it for stupid reasons, so honestly, you two are way ahead of the curve as far as people the curse have thrown at me go." She yawns. 

She laughs softly. "That's good to know."

"Funnily enough, people who do this kind of thing in cultures that frown upon it tend to be annoying in other ways."

"Yes, that does seem to follow," she agrees.

"Honestly, sometimes the most annoying part of the curse is the way it inhibits me from fighting back instead of throwing me at people who could take me anyway. There's a kind of dignity to being overcome by a demon king or a powerful sorcerer-dragon that's just completely fucking absent from being set upon by a random tribe of Minotaurs."

"Oh, certainly. I expect I'd feel the same way in your situation."

"Yeah. It's part of why I don't want people to know about my curse, if I have a reputation as a seventeenth-tier wizard then people who don't know about the curse are significantly less likely to try anything if they're not the kind of person who expects they can take a seventeenth-tier wizard."

"That's very much my kind of logic," she says approvingly.

"Unfortunately it does very little about random tribes of minotaurs because minotaurs live in tiny little tribes and don't keep up with international gossip about incredibly powerful immortal elves. And I think the curse likes to throw them at me because they're like half again as hung as your brother and that's no fun."

—she laughs. "If you tell him that, he'll want to watch."

"If it's going to happen anyway I don't object to any watching he wants to do, my privacy instincts died a violent death a long time ago."

"Well, then, feel free to mention it when he returns." She pauses. "Oh—what's your name? I realize we never introduced ourselves."

--giggle. "Oh. It's Elodea. Elodea Crescentlake."

"Nesifra. And my brother is Sovarith."

"Pretty. I guess what your people lack in morality you make up for in aesthetics."

"I can't say I've ever thought to balance the two."

"I wasn't seriously attempting to do so either. It's just a way of commenting on the pretty. I suppose it's an idiom that wouldn't translate." She yawns again, and her eyelids half-close.

"Do you want to sleep?"

"Yeah, kinda...hey, how'd you do that when we first met, anyway, elves're supposed to be immune."

"I'm sure my magic works very differently from the kinds you know about. And I've spent thousands of years developing the skill. It's marvelously useful to be able to end a fight instantly without constraining what can later be done with one's opponent."

"Fair enough."

"Would you like me to do it again?"

"Sure, thanks."

So Elodea falls gently and comfortably asleep, tucked under Nesifra's wing.

Meanwhile, Sovarith isn't having much luck finding dinner. There's got to be some sort of large animal around here somewhere, right?

Presumably! Except for the fact that this wilderness is lightly mageblasted, maybe. Wait, what's that sound?

What is that sound?

Pretty human woman examining a piece of wood, looks like!

Not food - well, not with humans so scarce in these parts - but, in his opinion, even better than food.

He drops out the sky and lands on her, pinning her to the ground. A couple of ribs crack with the impact.

She screams in surprise and pain. 

He laughs, and shreds her clothes from her body with his talons, not taking any particular care to avoid shredding her skin along with them.

Some skin definitely gets shredded. She shrieks and struggles fruitlessly to get away. 

He holds her down effortlessly, licks an open wound on her shoulder, and then starts fucking her. He doesn't break any more bones in the process, yet, but also doesn't bother healing her cracked ribs first.

Her struggles grow weaker, and she breaks down crying.

(If anything, she cries even more prettily than Elodea did.)

(The struggling and the tears are genuine. But she is also rapidly growing wet around him.)

Oh, she's lovely. What a good random otherworldly wilderness this is, that offers such delicious treats.

She has no idea what's going on or why a gorgeous probably-demon decided to fall out of the sky and rape her and this is extremely alarming and she's probably going to die but fuck there is nothing about this that isn't super hot. She is not sure she's ever been this turned on in her life and her chest hurts and breathing hurts and crying definitely hurts and, and, and...

She comes with a screaming wail that trails back down to violent sobbing. 

The gorgeous probably-demon makes a sound not unlike a purr, and kisses the side of her neck, and slows down to savour the moment.

Oh wow she would not have guessed that it was possible for this situation to get even hotter but there you go, it's not like this encounter wasn't already plenty of different kinds of surprising as-is.

He trails his claws across her chest, adding a few more shallow scratches to the collection, and wraps his hand around her neck and gives it a playful squeeze that leaves her dizzy and breathless, and murmurs something affectionate-sounding in a language she doesn't speak. Even when he's being comparatively gentle, it still hurts.

If this doesn't end with her dead it's plausibly the best thing that's ever happened to her. She gasps when he claws her chest and tips her head back and whines when he strangles her and sobs in heartfelt pleasure and pain when he murmurs who knows what. It's amazing and awful and she doesn't know which one is better and he's still fucking her and she hurts and it's good--

He comes inside her once, and keeps going - and again, a few minutes later, and still keeps going - and after the third he finally withdraws, and nuzzles her blood-smeared breasts, and sprawls on the ground next to her with an arm tucked possessively around her waist and one wing flung over her like a blanket.

Ohhhhhh gosh that's nice.

She came again before he decided he was done, but that's not so surprising, with her parts, but then she supposes the rules are probably different when you're probably a demon. And then! He cuddles her! That is so good and she snuggles up with a happy sigh. Her everything still hurts but cuddles are far more important. 

He giggles, an alarmingly adorable sound, and hugs her a little closer in a way that produces a sharp reminder that her ribs are still cracked.

She hisses and tenses at the jolt of pain but after a moment relaxes into the cuddle again. 

He lets out a deep sigh of contentment and starts petting her hair, careful of his claws.

Mmmmm yes good so good.

"Havalya?" a voice calls from somewhere nearbyish. 

He makes an intrigued noise and lifts his head to look around for the source of the voice.

--And then a fairly pretty man stumbles into the clearing and stops dead in his tracks and stares at the two of them.

...He laughs.

He says something in a language unfamiliar to Sovarith, in a tone of voice suggesting it translates approximately to "What the fuck."

He sits up, scooping Havalya into his lap, and wraps his wings around her and kisses the top of her head and heals her cracked ribs but leaves all the surface damage alone; and then he sets her gently on the ground and stands up and reaches for Khesanai.

...He backs away slowly.

This is probably a good thing for him to do. Havalya has no idea what to say, he's looking at her like she might have an explanation and she doesn't--she sits there, frozen, indecisive, what the hell can she actually say she has NO FUCKING IDEA--

The demon-or-whatever is very tall. In only a few strides, he overtakes Khesanai and scoops him up near-effortlessly.

Then he pauses, glancing indecisively back at Havalya.

...The thing she should be doing here is obviously projecting "I am a much better rape victim than he is" but she has no idea how to do that--hm. Maybe she does. She traces one of her cuts with a finger and licks the blood off.

He grins at her, displaying sharp fangs, then leaps into the air and flies off with Khesanai.

...Well.

That was the most fun thing that ever happened to her and now it's probably never going to happen again and she might have gotten her only friend into a similar situation he's not likely to enjoy at all. And she still hurts and there are no more cuddles. 

She draws her knees up against her chest and puts her head between them and tries not to cry.

He's been flying for a while, but slowly and aimlessly; flying straight back to his sister in a hurry, it only takes a couple of minutes before he's landing and holding out an armful of cute boy.

...She laughs delightedly, standing up to collect this gift.

"Where did you find him—?"

"Over thataway," he says with a vague wave of his arm. "There was a girl with him, she's incredible, I'm going back for her."

"Oh good. Enjoy."

He takes off.

"What is going on?" he demands, which would have been more helpful if he shared a language with her. 

"I'm afraid you'll have to wait until Elodea wakes up before she can translate," she says, smiling at him. "Which may be a while, because I don't intend to let her interrupt us."

She carries him a short distance away from the naked elf shackled to the ground, sets him down on a patch of soft grass, and starts taking off his clothes.

...He is still extremely confused, but...Havalya didn't seem that upset with her situation until he got grabbed, so...he's going to be tentatively optimistic?

This vaguely demonic complete stranger is very pretty and seems to find him incredibly charming! Once she has all his clothes in a tidy pile, she wraps him in her wings so he won't get cold and kisses him. Her fangs draw a few drops of blood from his lip.

...Well. This definitely seems like cause for optimism. He kisses back; he's pretty good at it. Not, like, world-class, but quite decent. 

She, on the other hand, could probably demand a king's ransom for an hour in her bed. She kisses him with exquisite precision, stroking her hands down his back just so, sucking the blood from his lip and then indulging in a leisurely exploration of his mouth. Most people, when kissing someone new for the first time, have to try out variations in approach to see what works best; she seems like she already knows, and is just taking her time going down the list of his favourites.

He still has no fucking clue what's going on but at least for the moment he is so extremely in favor. 

Her claws scratch lightly across the back of his neck; the sensation is almost more pleasant than painful, although definitely some of both.

That is a really great sensation and he is going to make some noises that he might be embarrassed by if he were paying more attention to things other than that sensation. 

He's so cute.

She continues to kiss him while her hands explore his body, stroking and scratching in all the right ways in all the right places. Here and there, her claws dig deep enough to draw blood, but it's never enough pain to overwhelm the pleasure.

He really likes it when she draws blood. 

Oh, better and better.

She shifts focus, subtly and gradually, until the pain of her claws raking over his skin is the central sensation and the pleasure is just icing on the cake.

He should probably be concerned about blood loss and scarring and infection but right now he is way to distracted to be thinking about any of those things and his opinion is an unambiguous yes, good. 

Next she wanders his body with her mouth, kissing every place she made him bleed. She can do amazing things with her tongue - her control over exactly how much pain and pleasure he feels at any given moment is incredible.

With her moving around too much to keep him wrapped up cozily in her wings, he's starting to get a bit cold, especially where his skin is wet with blood; but everywhere she touches him is still wonderfully warm. And at some point the ground beneath them has become covered by a thick blanket, so when she nudges him out of her lap to lay him down and put her mouth all over him, he doesn't have to worry about getting dirt or grass in his cuts.

He has by this point lost all self-consciousness about making noises. He makes a lot of them. Some of them are words. His language is totally unfamiliar but through sheer context and repetition she may be able to figure out which one is "please."

He is so good and she is going to keep him.

Her mouth keeps getting hotter: first just a pleasant contrast to the chill of the air, then leaving behind a lingering heat for several seconds after each kiss, then the temperature of a hot bath just on the edge of tolerance.

--He thinks he can see where this is going. He--thinks he's going to like it. But he's not sure, and there's definitely some trepidation mixed in with the anticipation. 

She spends a while at the hot-bath level, giving him time to get used to it, before she finds a spot in the middle of his chest that doesn't have any preexisting marks and gives it a long slow lick with her tongue hot enough to raise blisters.

He screams. 

She waits a few seconds, until the pain fades to a dull ache, and then presses a warm and very deliberate kiss to the mark, drawing out new and interesting sensations.

His head is thrown back, teeth gritted, and tears are trickling from the corners of his eyes.

Every other piece of available evidence suggests that he is very much enjoying what she's doing to him. 

Perfect.

She trails more kisses over his chest, verying in temperature from 'pleasant lingering warmth' up to 'hot enough to sting', but never outright burning him again. Her focus now is on weaving a tapestry of pain and pleasure, wrapping him in enough sensation to get well and truly lost in. Here and there she adds a stroke of her fingertips or a scratch of her claws.

She is very good at what she does. She already knew that, of course, but given how weird this world is, it's probably nice to confirm that some important things work the same way. 

It is, it is very nice!

When her work has had a good long while to develop, she makes her leisurely way down to his groin, and for the first time takes his cock in her mouth. She is as slow and methodical about this as about everything else.

Oh, look, it's the reccurence of the word that probably means "please!"

What a good word. She appreciates that word very much.

It does not inspire her to move any faster, of course.

He is going to feel everything she wants him to feel, and that is going to take some time.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!yes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!good!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!ahhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Eventually, she lets him come.

And in the exact moment when he crests the wave of pleasure, she digs her claws into the burn on his chest and rips through it, creating a bright flare of pain and a ragged messy mark in the otherwise perfect symmetry of all his carefully drawn injuries.

His throat gives out halfway mid-scream. 

She lifts her mouth away with a small satisfied noise, and curls up next to him on the blanket and runs her fingers gently through his hair.

His mouth moves in what would probably be a contented sound if his vocal cords still worked. 

She chuckles, and presses a kiss to his cheek.

And meanwhile:

As soon as he leaves his sister, Sovarith heads straight back to his pretty girl.

His pretty girl is curled up in a little ball looking sad. 

He lands and scoops her into his lap and nuzzles her face affectionately.

...She leans against him and makes a vague inquisitive noise but does not stop looking sad. 

Although he knows she can't understand him, he pets her hair and says, "I gave your friend to my sister. She's probably going to fuck him for hours. Don't worry, we're keeping you both even if she doesn't like him as much as I like you."

She makes a vague acknowledging noise and nuzzles him slightly. 

Pet pet pet. "You're so pretty," he says. "I like you. I like the way you cry. I like that you like to be taken by force."

"Mmmmm..."

Mmm she's soft. Very pettable. He wraps his wings around her and pets her some more.

After a little while she starts crying softly. 

He makes a pleased sound and snuggles her.

She's going to keep crying for a while. 

She's such a treasure.

Eventually she trails off and just snuggles him. 

Snuggle snuggle.

"Nesifra's probably finished with your friend for now," he says, petting her some more. "We could go see them."

"I wish I knew what you were saying," she murmurs. 

"You're so pretty. My treasure." Pet pet. "Mm—d'you want to go see your friend—?" A vague wave in the direction he took Khesanai, and an inquiring noise.

She considers the gesture, and purses her lips, and nods her head. 

He kisses her forehead and scoops her up and - hm - looks around for any things she might want to take along. Besides her clothes which he kind of destroyed.

If she has any possessions, they aren't close enough by for him to see them. 

Eh, whatever then. He launches into the air and flies back to where he left Nesifra.

There she is, curled up on her blanket with Khesanai. There's another blanket draped over Elodea.

It probably says something about her that at this point the most surprising thing is the naked elf shackled to the ground. 

Nesifra lifts her head when she hears Sovarith approach. She smiles and waves.

He lands, laughing.

"Isn't she pretty?" he says, nuzzling Havalya. "She's a treasure. How's yours?"

"He's delightful," she says, petting him.

"Do you have any idea what's going on."

"Not really, no. I'm glad you're okay, I was worried about that when he flew off with you."

Shrug. "I mean, getting ravished by demons usually doesn't end well...not much point in worrying about it beforehand, though."

"True. This whole situation is very...something. Flabbergasting. Inexplicable. What the actual fuck. Something like that."

"Trust me, I noticed."

"Hm. Perhaps it's time for all of us to have a conversation," says Nesifra, and she wakes Elodea.

"What," she says when she wakes suddenly and unexpectedly, and, "What," when she sees the two humans. 

"We found friends!" says Sovarith, nuzzling Havalya some more.

...Elodea looks at Nesifra.

"My brother found that girl wandering the wilderness and she seemed to like it when he introduced himself by ripping all her clothes off and fucking her into the ground," she says. "Then he found this one and brought him to me," she pets Khesanai, "and he liked it very much when I hurt him a little. Remarkably convenient, all in all. I made you a blanket."

"Thank you for the blanket. I don't suppose your brother also found dinner?"

"Now that we have a source of power, we can manage dinner. Though I assume these two also had some source of food, which you could ask them about if you liked."

Sigh.

"I'm sorry about them," she tells the humans. 

"We're...okay? So far? But would really like an explanation."

"I can imagine. Okay, so good news: they're from some kind of weird plane not previously in contact with ours, are not, as far as I can tell, our kind of demon, and have no ability to do anything whatsoever to your souls."

"Oh thank all loving gods," Khesanai says, letting out a great breath of relief. 

"Is there, um, a reason you're shackled to the ground?"

"They're from far enough away that the fact that I don't have a spellbook on me wouldn't tell them I was helpless even if they knew a wizard from a sorcerer from a hen's tooth."

"Would being shackled to the ground stop you if you did have spells?"

She gives as much of a shrug as she can in her position. "No, but they don't know that."

"Mm. Still."

"What are your names?"

"I'm Khesanai and she's Havalya."

To the demons: "The girl's name is Havalya and for what it's worth she thinks you're being silly for still having me restrained like this."

"Well, that's interesting information if true," says Nesifra with a raised eyebrow and a slight smile. "It's going to be inconvenient not knowing the local languages ourselves."

"How immortal are you?" wonders Sovarith. "Eh, you probably don't want us to try taking your languages even if it wouldn't kill you, never mind."

"I am extremely immortal and very curious!"

"There's a way for Endarkened to learn languages pemanently by magic but it involves... a sacrifice, I suppose you could say... of someone who speaks the language or languages, once per Endarkened who needs to learn them, and it's not very pleasant for the person being sacrificed," says Nesifra.

"Not very pleasant like serrated knives or like metaphorical serrated knives to the soul?"

Slight smile. "Oh, the knives aren't serrated."

"Huh. Heated? Coated in bullet ant venom?"

She shakes her head. "Plain obsidian. And I don't have my notes with me so it might take me an extra try to work out the details; it's not something we often had use for at home."

"Huh. Well. I'm very immortal, very curious, and, unfortunately, very used to shit happening to me, so if you want to try it, I'm game."

She shrugs. "It would be convenient. If you don't mind trying then I think I will."

"I'll try nearly anything once."

"Twice, I hope, in case the first one doesn't work out."

"Well you see after the first time I'll be able to make an informed decision instead of running off of curiosity and flippancy."

"Fair enough."

"--Oh, hey, can you ask if they've got anything contraceptive going on, I had a birth control charm but I'm pretty sure it came off with the rest of what I was wearing."

"Havalya wants to know what the odds are that you carelessly got her pregnant," Elodea informs Sovarith. 

...He snorts. "Wouldn't that be fun. No, Endarkened don't work that way. If I want to get a mortal girl pregnant I have to do it on purpose by magic."

"--What, really?"

"...Is it that surprising?"

"Yes! I've never heard of a pair of humanoid species that couldn't casually interbreed. I mean, some of them are less cross-fertile than they are fertile within their own species, but a dragon could have gotten Havalya pregnant by accident, and those aren't humanoid at all except when they shapeshift."

"Endarkened can only have children on purpose," says Nesifra. "And we're... very different from you. You and these humans are the same sort of thing in a way that you and I are very much not. We need not only magic but skill to bridge that gap."

"Huh. That's peculiar. Now I'm curious how dragons fit into this...it's really weird that you look so much more like us than a dragon does if you're so much more a different thing. I mean. Aside from the whole 'evil outsider' thing, I guess. Oh, that reminds me, you can't do anything more to someone after they're dead, right?"

"Hmm? Not usually," she says. "Though if they're fresh enough sometimes they can still be healed."

"No, no, I'm talking about souls, our kind of demon can mess with those sometimes and Havalya and Khesanai wanted some reassurance on that point."

"It isn't possible to reach a person's mind after they die, in our world."

She starts to say something, stops, and looks thoughtful.

"What do you mean by 'reach'?"

"Interact with in any way."

"--Huh. That's--kinda disturbing."

"What do you mean?"

"--Because there's a lot of ways to interact with dead people here and I'm not sure what the difference is between our planes but I wouldn't bet it was a positive one?"

"Something interesting happens when a mortal dies, and I don't have any reason to think it isn't their minds passing on to wherever it is mortals go. But no one knows where that is or what it's like there."

"Yeah...and that's concerning. Well. Maybe I can figure something out later."

"Figure something out? Such as what?"

"I mean the obvious thing to do would be to travel to your plane and try casting Speak With Dead."

"If returning there is possible. Although, if returning there is possible, it would be most convenient to do it either very soon or never."

"Well, Plane Shift is a spell, but it's not one I happen to have even if I did have my spellbook. On the other hand, that's a fixable problem. I'm not sure how fast, though, and it would require trusting me to cast the spell in the first place."

"Hmm."

She looks consideringly at Elodea.

"How urgently do we need to test my ability to extract languages from you?"

"Well I am getting really tired of being stuck to the ground like this and my translation spell's going to run out in--actually I'm not sure it depends on how long I was unconscious--and I can only cast it once more until I get access to my spellbook again, so sooner seems better than later to me, but I don't know what kind of timeframe you have before it's better not to go back again."

"I might like to experiment now, but I'm concerned that our other guests might be upset." She pets Khesanai some more. He's very pettable.

She switches languages. "Good news: they cannot as far as I can tell do anything to your souls. Bad news: they might end up torturing me because that's how their magic works for some reason and it would be way more convenient for everyone if they spoke Common."

"And you're...okay with this?" Havalya asks dubiously. 

Sigh. "I'm divinely cursed, no I won't tell you how, I don't like it but I'm used to shit like this happening to me."

"...Okay."

"Uh. Is this. Really necessary."

"It is almost certainly better than being chained to the damn ground for a minute more than necessary."

"Okay! Fair!"

"Your choice, I guess."

Back to the Endarkened tongue: "I've explained, they're not thrilled but they're not going to throw a fit."

"All right. Just a moment, then."

She pets Khesanai and kisses his forehead and disentangles herself from him and smooths out her dress and picks up a rock from the ground and hands it to Sovarith.

The rock shifts gradually in shape and colour until it's a black glass knife, short and sharp. He hands it back to her.

This is probably magically important and thus Not To Be Interrupted but Havalya makes a mental note for later that a random rock getting turned into an obsidian knife is, apparently, hot. 

As soon as he's finished transforming the rock, he goes back to snuggling Havalya.

Oh good. She snuggles him back delightedly.

And Nesifra approaches Elodea with the knife, muttering to herself about magical theory.

"Language—first station—the heart yields the mind—" She pulls down the blanket to reveal Elodea's chest and abdomen. "This is going to hurt quite a bit," she warns, and starts opening quick cuts along Elodea's shoulders and ribs, in some sort of elaborate pattern whose purpose is not clear.

The knife is sharp enough that although there is a lot of blood, it doesn't actually hurt all that much until half a minute later when she cracks open Elodea's chest, digs in her fingers, pulls the ribcage apart, cuts out her heart, and eats it.

She endures the cuts with few hissed intakes of breath, the opening of her chest with gritted teeth, and when Nesifra digs in and yanks her heart out she arches backwards and lets out a short, sharp shriek.

She collapses, and for a moment she looks like the corpse of any other woman who'd just had her heart torn out. And then her eyes fly open, her heart begins growing back, and her chest snaps closed and all her wounds seal. 

There is a lingering ache, not immediately identifiable with any specific injury; it's a sort of stretched feeling, like having her heart pulled from her chest tugged some things out of place and now they're taking a little time to settle back where they belong. A mild headache, too, with a similar air.

Nesifra sits very still for a few seconds, licking her lips, with her eyes closed and her claw-tips drumming on the handle of the knife.

Then she opens her eyes and says in Common, in a satisfied tone of voice, "There. Got it on the first try."

"Excellent! If you want to take over translation duties that'd be keen but that was pretty far from the worst I've ever had, if your brother wants a go too I'm up for it," she replies in the same tongue. 

"I imagine he will; he doesn't like not being able to talk to people."

She beckons to Sovarith, who puts Havalya down and comes over to receive his own tasty treat. The process goes a little quicker the second time, but the hangover is a little worse.

"Is there any reason to keep her stuck to the ground now—?"

"Technically we haven't verified her information yet," says Nesifra, "but I think I've seen enough shows of good faith."

She sets her claws in the nearest stone shackle and pulls it apart, with a touch of magic to make it crack neatly instead of crushing Elodea's hand.

Sovarith does something similar with the rest of them.

Elodea lets out a sigh of relief, and rubs her wrists, and leaps to her feet and twirls around and falls down again, giggling as she gets up for a second time and retrieves her blanket to wrap around herself in a token show of lip-service to modesty.

"Thanks! --Havalya, can you tell them your feelings about me being chained up?"

"...It wouldn't have been likely to help, if she were able and inclined to make a nuisance of herself. I mean it might have, but lots of wizards can cast without moving their hands."

"I'm still annoyed that I can't fuck you, by the way," he says to Elodea. "Ripping your heart out of your chest was really hot."

He returns to Havalya and scoops her up and nuzzles her some more. "Maybe I'll fuck you instead."

Eee nuzzling. She nuzzles back. 

"You know, if you have a willing victim, I'm not going to feel too sorry for you about having to restrict yourself to her."

He laughs, and wraps his wings around Havalya and kisses the side of her neck and sits on the ground with her in his lap.

"Someday I'm sure I will succeed in bridging this cultural gap, but I doubt today will be the day," says Nesifra. "Do you want me to make you some clothes?"

"Please. Is he really going to--of course he is. I'm going to go look for edible plants or something similarly out of earshot."

She laughs softly. "Reasonable."

Then she returns to Khesanai's blanket, where she sits down next to him and kisses his forehead.

"Hello," she says, petting his hair. "My name is Nesifra. It's lovely to meet you."

(Meanwhile, Sovarith is indeed cheerfully fucking Havalya right there in front of everyone.)

(Elodea flees.)

"My name is Khesanai and I think this is the weirdest thing that has happened to anyone in my family for ten generations."

"If that bothers you," she waves the tip of her tail at her brother, "we can go somewhere else." Pet pet.

"Yes please."

She scoops him up and walks away, sliding the obsidian knife into a sheath attached to her dress that wasn't there a moment ago.

"So, uh--I think Elodea gave us something of an abridged explanation of what's going on..."

"I'd be happy to give you a more complete one if you tell me where you're starting from." Pet pet.

"You're not the kind of demon I'm familiar with, you don't do things with souls and you don't know wizardry from hen's teeth."

She snorts softly. "That's accurate enough."

"And the thing you did with the heart-eating gave you the language somehow."

"Yes."

She finds a comfortable place to sit, out of sight of Sovarith and Havalya - she can still hear them, but she expects Khesanai can't - and arranges him cozily in her lap.

Mm, cozy.

"So why are you here in this random bit of historically-interesting wilderness ravishing pretty humans instead of...wherever you come from?"

"I haven't the least idea," she says cheerfully. "My brother and I were abruptly transported here by magic we had never seen before and still don't understand."

"Well that's bizarre. And the elf--Elodea--she was bound because you thought she might have done it?"

"More or less, yes."

"I guess there might be casters dumb enough to do that without setting up defenses or at least an escape route first."

"Or who knew as little about us as we did about them, and who we could therefore overpower before they got away."

"Summoning someone or something you know that little about without truly phenomenal precautions definitely counts as dumb."

"True enough." Pet pet.

Mmm pets. 

"Of course, wizards are known more for their book-learnin' smarts than for their common sense."

She laughs. "Well, as it turns out, she didn't bring us here and doesn't know who did. But we've become distracted by other concerns. Sovarith is annoyed about her curse and wants to kill the person who gave it to her."

"Really? Why?"

"Because it might have manipulated his mind and he strongly objects to that sort of thing."

"...Huh. Yeah, I can see why."

Pet pet. "So now we're planning to kill a god. Should be interesting."

"A god?"

"You know, for as much as you all react with shock and bafflement when we suggest killing one, I actually suspect gods are scarcer and more powerful at home, and there we were engaged in the project of resurrecting one, which is much trickier than killing them in the first place."

"I don't think I've ever heard of someone successfully resurrecting a god."

She chuckles. "If we'd had any interest in succeeding at the project, we might already have managed it. But the trouble with gods is they tend to want authority, and my brother and I enjoy keeping all of that for ourselves."

"They do at that. Why the pretense?"

"It's been the ancestral duty of the Endarkened to conquer the world for our dead god since he created us tens of thousands of years ago. We would have some trouble ruling our people if they thought we had given up on the task."

"Sounds like kind of a shitty god."

"Well, I don't mind existing. But nor do I plan to dig him up and let him run my life." Pet pet pet. What a good fluffy human.

"Just because you don't mind existing doesn't mean the person who created you wasn't shitty."

"It does, however, mean he's done at least one thing I don't object to."

"True enough." He leans into the pets.