This Game We Play by theeventualwinner

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Chapter 2: A Plaything of Gods

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Light filters slowly through the small, high windows, smeared in grime and soot, sending weird shadows crawling across the obsidian floor. The air hangs heavy, stiflingly hot from the glowering braziers bracketed to the walls, wrought iron smouldering in the gloom. Stones scrape bare and polished across the room, unfurnished but for an ornate bed; ivory posts curving into the darkness, black silken sheets glimmering; and an imposing wooden chair, warped carvings grim and glowing malevolent in the firelight. 

The silence is broken by a whimper. A noise miniscule, half-swallowed, yet reverberated to shock clarity by the smooth glassy walls. Half suspended, his toes just brush the cold floor, each ankle fettered by thick chains riveted into the floor. Manacles encircle his wrists, biting iron cutting into tender skin, bolted each to a metal ring lost in the vaulted ceiling, swallowed by the lurking darkness. Crucified, he dangles helpless, naked chest stirring with each laboured breath, doeskin trousers sticking tight and sweaty to his legs. His arms scream their protest, muscles cramping and ligature ablaze, taught and strained to breaking point. Knots of agony coil in his shoulders, as each tiny movement jostles stressed tendons, striae stretched beyond discomfort, bolts of pain lancing down his sides with each inhalation. A livid scratch curves across his neck, from jaw to clavicle, as he shifts clotted maroon flakes exposing raw flesh underneath, pink and glistening. Rivulets of dried crimson snake down his chest; such gentle marks of his master’s affection.

His master lounges across the chair, one leg draped catlike across its carved, oaken arm. One golden eye flicks open as he lazily appraises his servant. A sickening smile contorts his handsome features, all sneering carnassials and twisted lips, and with languid grace he shifts upright, eyes never leaving his servant’s body splayed so beautiful, so tempting before him. A knife lies across his lap; the thin blade of tempered steel flashes cold, distorted mirages flit across its icy veneer. From a leather-wrapped handle it sings, tapering to a wicked point forged in the black smithies of Angband to pierce armour, to rupture organs. Spells of breaking, of unmaking inscribe its length, delicate Tengwar corrupted by foul and secret languages, hoarse whispers of malice. His master grasps the handle, holding the knife left-handed in a fighter’s stance; poised, feral. Shadows dance down its length, thrown to frantic motion in the guttering light, dead metal coaxed to life. His master steps forward, a leer distorting his face, the curl of his lip belying something sadistic, and gold burns in those brilliant eyes. 

He watches his master, sees the dread blade in his hand, that awful smile. Instantly, he feels his breath quicken, throat constricts as panic floods through him, tendons jumping bold under his skin. He thrashes in his bonds, squirming, desperately trying to twist away, wrench but one wrist free of its biting shackle, find something, anything to cover himself, to protect himself from what is surely coming.

“No, no my lord, please, please don’t do this…”

The words pour from his mouth, such a useless mewling plea.

But his master’s trap is well laid, the iron clasps vice-like around him, arms pulled taught, exposing him utterly to what merciless designs await. He can only hang, a fresh canvas for the next tapestry of his master’s cruelty. And he whimpers, soft and low, freezing still as terror grips him, the tremulous anticipation of pain paralyzing, overwhelming.

Faster than his eye can follow, his master lunges forward. Something primal flinches and he screws his eyes shut, expecting at any moment that slicing piercing breaking agony ((just get it over with)), but the flat of the blade merely taps his lips, parting them ever so slightly.  It hovers, steel ghosting across his flesh, light but cold, chill puissance screaming from the icy metal. His breath steams ragged across the blade, mottling its shine in short bursts of clouded white. His master smiles, tilts the knife so its tip presses into his upper lip, hard enough to hurt, watches the muscles clench in his jaw as he chokes down his surprise, his fear.  The knife drags downwards, over his chin, tracing his jugular, the point teasing the edge of the bloody scratch arching across his neck. He hisses as the sting shoots through him, air drawn sharp through gritted teeth.

The knife plays ever lower, slicing intricate curlicues across his breastbone. White filigree lines bloom in its wake, his blood fleeing capillaries behind its scoring tip, a visceral procession marked pale over his skin. At the base of his sternum its wandering pauses, a sudden moment of horrid anticipation. Then it slowly trails left, circling his pectoral muscle, diameter wide at first but narrowing, spiraling languidly inwards towards his nipple, such an unwilling epicenter. His flesh prickles under its passing, such brutal tenderness exquisite, raw carnality flooding through him, a boiling crush of emotions unleashed. 

The blade finds its apex, tip digging sharp and cold into his nipple. A noise indecipherable, caught between a sigh and a moan tears from his lips, and he arcs his head back, hair plastered sweaty across his cheeks. His chest thrusts forward, pressing the knife harder into him. Droplets of blood well under its edge; the realms of pain and pleasure collide.

His master laughs, a deep and throaty chuckle <oh you like this> but moves the knife further down, scoring pink furrows across his flat stomach, curving through the gentle slopes and valleys of his abdomen, muscles flexing and roiling beneath his skin. With his right hand, his master strokes his hip, fingers lingering soft across its swell, toying with the waistband of his trousers, moving one sharp nail in lascivious circles over his pelvis, trailing down his thigh. The knife wanders lower, his muscles tense reflexively as it skates his hips; thrills of delight, of humiliation, of enjoyment, of helplessness crushed together and molded anew, a nameless feeling powerful and bestial races through him.

<You hate this.
You love this.
You’re mine, little lover.
I can make you dance make you sing make you scream and you can do nothing.
You can only hang there and take it>

His master’s hand moves lower, gripping the back of his leg, tight and urgent, forcing him to thrust his hips forward, some small relief from that painful hold. Nails tap his inner thigh, tenderly stroking sensitive skin, sending ripples of arousal running up his spine. The knife’s tip catches the lowest point of his abdomen, pushing rigid into his skin, agonizingly balanced between his hip bones, tempted further downwards by their tantalizing slope. And he shivers, desire crawling like insects across his skin.

And he feels his master’s hand slide across his groin, slyly stroking, and he whines, wanton lust ripping up through him. He throws his hips forward, grinding hard against his master’s palm, face a grimace of drunken abandonment, such flagrant debasement; and a part of him is disgusted, wants to curl up and hide where no one can ever touch him again, but it is drowned in the dark passion throbbing within him, overwhelming, consuming. The need to please, the need to control, the need to be controlled tear through him, and his master sneers, incisors flash predatory as he feels his servant stiffen against his teasing palm, crude desire manifested in flesh. His breath comes quicker now, panting heavy with mounting excitement, and a groan escapes his lips, reckless emotion escaping any semblance of bounds, nothing but the primal beast left slavering below.

His master smiles again, feels his servant’s growing arousal, hardness so poorly concealed by trousers now slick with sweat, senses the movements of his hips angling for his touch, taken utterly in the vicious seething sublime throes of temptation, such careless animal abandon

 “Oh Mairon, when was it that you lost your grace?” 

The abrupt words chill him to the bone, echoes cold and mocking in his ears, and instantly he freezes, blood running suddenly cold within him. And for a split second he remembers, he remembers what he was; once a proud Maia, fair and pure under the dappled light of Valinor but brought now so low, he realizes what he is, what he has become.  Trapped in dungeons of his own designs, where gods and demons play their fickle games, perverse desires carved into flesh, drenched in torment and bloodstained ecstasy. Of his own choice he was corrupted, evil strangling all glimmers of purity, tainting everything in ashen grey. And where he sought freedom he was forever enslaved, forever beholden to the sick demands of his master, abhorred and loved, infernal and divine. But he never asked for this.

And swiftly he recoils, hips arching away from his master’s agonizing touch, shame flooding through him, loathing grapples with the dying shreds of lust, hounding them like mist driven from the raging fire. And he writhes, arms still clenched immobile in those grasping manacles, but he tries, struggles to rock himself away from his master, stop the terrible climax inexorably building, slow and deliberate and inescapable.

“I don’t want this, please, my lord, please I beg of you I can’t…I can’t do this. Just please, please don’t do this to me...”

Time seemed to slow as his master pauses, punctuated only by the dark beating of his heart, rhythm thumping weird and muted through his head. His master regards him, a smug, cloying grin affixed across his face. An eyebrow quirks in comical surprise; lazy and sinister, but molten gold burns livid in his eyes.

“Come, come, little one. Doubts? Misgivings?”

His breath stops in his throat.

“It is much too late for that.”

And with those fatal words still hanging in the air, his master cuts him down, snapping the thick iron chains like they were naught but hollow bones, the sound of rent metal ringing horribly, echoing wild across the walls. He collapses sprawling across the stones, nerves howling as feeling shoots back into his arms, and he whimpers anew at the fresh assault of pain, blazing tendrils seeming to lick beneath his skin. Before he has the chance to rise, his master grabs him, one hand twining through his blonde hair, dragging him bodily across the room, throwing him roughly backwards onto the bed, his hands scrabbling for purchase amongst the silken sheets. He twists, another attempt to rise, but his master flips him over, hands of unyielding steel pushing him mercilessly down, one forcing his head face down into a black pillow, still twisted in his disheveled hair, the other riding the swell of his hips, knife still balanced in slender fingertips. The blade slashes down his left leg, his leather trousers parting under its tip, a raw scratch darting down the length of his thigh, blood seeping through his skin. He moans, shock warring with the last remnants of hot desire still running through his veins. His protesting cries are gagged by the pillow, and he shakes, desperately twisting and bucking beneath his master, some last hopeless stand against the crushing inevitable, futile rebellion so easily stamped out.

It will always be useless in the end. 

He feels his trousers ripped off, flung aside, himself suddenly, painfully naked, pinioned under his master. He hears the knife clatter to the floor. His heart races, he knows what is coming, and he writhes again, but it is gentler, less purposeful, pointlessness of resistance numbly setting in. He knows, with dread certainty he knows his master’s intent, iron grip forcing him to submit, nails biting into his skin. He feels his master unclasp his own robe, arousal plain, left hand slamming his servant’s face and chest further into the bed-sheets, hips raised slightly as his back arcs in reflex, while his right strokes himself harder. He feels his master shift slightly, position himself, and the muscles in his back knot in horrid anticipation, so weak, so deliciously helpless under the raw power of his master.  

Time seems to congeal, what gasping breath he can draw heavy, thick, caught in some nightmare viscosity, trying to run but he’s stuck, he’s trapped. And the monster behind him growls, senses the prey weakening, but it waits, and it watches.

It has all the time in the world.

One hand caresses his neck; the other firmly grasps his hip, pulling him closer.

“You can scream if you want, little one. No one will hear you. No one’s coming to save you. No one will care.”

He shuts his eyes, teeth gritted tight, fingers tense grabbing handfuls of sheets and he waits for the first strike, cold nausea clawing through his innards, shudders coursing through his spine.

“And this is going to hurt.”

And with that, his master slams his entire length into him, one savage thrust that punches the air from his lungs.

And he screams, pain exploding through him. And he sobs muffled into the pillow, tears rolling down his cheeks as his master slakes his lust, violent and ripping within him. Feared lieutenant he is no more, commander of armies, betrayer of worlds. He is but a toy, something common, something debased, to be used, abused at the whim of a faithless god. Not an angel, not a person, just a thing. 

Just a thing for humiliation.

For pain.

Endless, exquisite pain.