FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

[b][u][center]The Bonds of Need

Chapter 3

For a-lycotonum

By Draconicon[/center][/u][/b]

A day and night passed. They managed to keep up a decent pace on the road, but even Vitus knew that they were falling behind, and his worries and concerns for Robin continued to mount the longer that she didn’t appear on the horizon. He’d known, deep down, that there was almost no chance of catching them before the Hellknights reached the capitol with their captives, but at the same time, there had been a vain hope that they might get lucky.

They did not.

According to Katya and Neena, they were still two days out from Egorian, and there was no way to speed that up without killing their mounts. He could only imagine how much slower they’d be without something to actually pull the wagon, but that didn’t stop him from having the urge to command them to move faster than they already were.

“Shall we practice?” Katya asked.

“Practice what?”

“More of your magic.”

“What’s the point?” he muttered, turning to look at Piers’s back. The one-armed man was driving the wagon well, but –

“The point would be doing something useful for your time. I believe that you would be better suited to that than whatever is going through your mind right now.”

Vitus grumbled, rubbing his forehead.

“You’re sure that we can’t go any faster?”

“You will have to think of other things; we’re already doing everything that we can do to get to Egorian not too far behind the Hellknights, but they have the advantage of terrain, clearance, and magical mounts. They can do things that we can’t to move faster.”

“Ugh!”

“And what’s more, you know this. You are tormenting yourself about what-ifs that aren’t going to change anything. I suggest that you stop trying before you make me distract you with something else.”

“…Fine…Fine. But no lessons. Not yet.”

“Not unless you force it, Vitus. Of course.”

Or unless she thought that he had forced her. Or just felt that she knew best. For all that the former professor had been more helpful and cooperative than he had entirely expected out of his former enemy, she was still someone that followed her own ideals and her own perspective of what they needed over anything else. Whatever regrets she had about serving Melchiresa didn’t stop her from fighting on the Demon Lord’s side, nor from her taking control of him (and likely others in the group) if it suited her purposes.

He took a deep breath, leaning his head back against the side of the wagon. Shereeza hadn’t woken yet from the long night of sleep, curled up in the back of the wagon near the little flap at the rear. She covered herself with a blanket, but her legs stuck out from under it, the deep brands on the back of her thighs and down her calves visible. He knew for a fact that she had more, so many more that he had considered healing at one point, but he had held back from that.

He had held back from too many things, not wanting to make a wrong choice. And not making a choice, as Katya had said, was making a choice in and of itself.

Rubbing his forehead, he reached out for the first distraction he could think of.

“What’s waiting at Egorian?” he muttered.

“Dangers beyond counting,” Katya said, the older woman crossing her legs and getting comfortable. “And many of them go beyond the power of the devils that rule the families that run the city.”

“Like?”

“The torture houses, to start. Some are merely an outlet for the masochistic tendencies of many in the city, but I would wager good gold that all of them make half their money with genuine torture, either at the command of ruling families or minor devils that want information on their rivals’ mortal servants. Strangers, in particular, can go missing in these houses, and there is no reason for the locals to find them and save them.”

“So much for the rule of law,” Piers said from the front of the wagon.

“That is the problem, is it not?” Katya said. “The rule of law is dependent on just what the law is.”

“The law…” He shook his head. “There’s something wrong with that. If a law is wrong, it shouldn’t be a law in the first place.”

“So say many that disagree with the system. I’m sure that the criminals of Absalom would have said the same, considering their positions of poverty and difficulty that drove them to break the law in the first place.”

“Not all of them…”

“But enough. There is no system that fits all mortals, so it seems pointless to debate the failings of this one when we cannot change it,” Katya said, turning back to Vitus. “But the torture houses are the least of our problems.”

“Great. So, what is the worst of it?”

“That depends on if you want to talk about the mortal problems, or the immortal ones,” Neena said, poking her head out from beneath her own blanket. “We’re moving again?”

Vitus nodded.

“And you’re still dead-set on chasing this Robin?”

He nodded again.

“Hmmph. I still think that you’re completely insane, but my master said that he would support you, and so I must do the same. You don’t know anything about Egorian yet, do you?”

“I don’t.”

“You haven’t been doing a very good job of teaching him, Professor Orlov. I thought that someone under your ‘tutelage’ would be doing better than this. Have you lost your touch?”

“I have been teaching him many things, Ms. Mattas. And I have been helping him unlearn a number of things that your master tried to force into his head. Shame, excessive subservience, the belief that his obedience is natural rather than earned –”

“My master did not teach any of those things! Master Brundir has made it clear that we all decide how we want to follow his orders.”

“But follow you must. Because to him, you are all naturally beneath him.”

“And that’s different from anything you do, how?”

“Because we chose to be there,” Vitus muttered.

Both women turned to stare at him. He sighed, shaking his head as he stood up.

“I was tricked, manipulated, forced into a number of things, but that was because I was stupid enough to listen. I was stupid enough to listen, and then I was stupid enough to come back and make another deal. But it was still [i]my[/i] choice. I wasn’t made to do it. It wasn’t a good choice, and gods, I wish that there had been a better option, but it was still my choice.

“Brundir doesn’t want to give me a choice. He saw me, and decided that he would have me, no matter what choice I made in the process. Every time that I tried to make a decision of my own, he fucked me over. Every time that I wanted to stay myself, instead of the person that he wanted me to be, he changed me. Warped me. Commanded me. Until I was almost nothing but his personal lapdog.

“Melchiresa might be evil, but at the very least, it’s an evil that I can choose how I interact with. I’m not an equal under her…but there are still [i]some[/i] choices. With Brundir, there was never a choice, just obedience.”

“…Very good, Vitus. Very good.”

He shook off Katya’s praise, starting to pace back and forth.

“Now, what dangers are waiting in Egorian? Starting with the worst mortal ones?”

“Hellknights, to start,” Neena said, even though she didn’t look particularly happy to talk. Probably she would have wished to punish him by holding the information back, but he imagined that she was compelled by her master to speak. “They have almost unlimited power to act in accordance with their oath, considering that the closest that the Archdevils come to a compact is the agreement that the laws the Hellknights enforce [i]need[/i] to be enforced. Certain Archdevils [i]can[/i] be bargained with, and if they have one of the Orders under their thumb, that corruption can be a tool, but by and large, they’re the only ones that can’t be corrupted in the country. Infernal Cheliax operates on the power that the contracts with devils cannot be broken in either way, so the Hellknights ensure that the law is respected.

“Beneath them are the more mundane soldiers, augmented by the magic of the infernal priests. Several orders of soldiers without magic – and without knighthoods – operate within the city, usually devoted to one House or another. They’ll be stronger than any guardsman in Absalom due to the different curses and blessings that they will have received to carry out their duty, so any fight will be more difficult.

“Below that, the imps must be taken into account. Summoned and bound by infernal chains, they operate as the patrols through the city at times of emergency. They have minor magics in comparison to the devils, but they still have some power that you have to take into account, I suppose.”

With every new threat, Vitus’s heart sank. He had hoped that they could have a chance to push forward, that with the power that he had, and that Melchiresa had at her disposal, that they had a chance in a fight. If all else failed, he had hoped that getting past the walls would at least give them the chance to storm whatever place that Robin was being kept at and get out alive.

But with that much to contend with…

“It’s a mission doomed to failure,” Neena said, the redheaded woman leaning in. “Can’t you see that? You might as well give up on the rat and take the offer of my master to return. If he can forgive you, why would you turn that down? It’s the chance of a lifetime, and you’d be a fool to –”

“Sleep,” Katya muttered.

The dark-skinned woman wobbled, her eyes wide as she fought the older woman’s spell. She bit her lips, trying to summon pain to keep herself awake, but Katya’s powers were sufficient to send her tumbling over. Vitus caught her before she could bash her head against the bottom of the wagon, then laid her back against her blankets.

“She is a zealot of the first order…but she’s not wrong,” Katya said, shaking her head. “To try and take something from Egorian is to try and steal something from the high courts of the Archdevils themselves. Whatever infighting they have, they will close ranks to try and keep an outsider from making a fool of them. We need more power than we have to actually succeed here.”

“…Power…”

Vitus glanced at Shereeza again. The Hellhound in him perked up its ears, and he groaned as he knew it was thinking the same thing.

[i]Pack,[/i] it thought.

[i]Can you do it quickly?[/i] he asked. [i]Hazel…she took a long time.

She was strong. Stronger than this one. And more protected.

So you can…do it?

She will be Pack.

And she will…be healed?

She will be Pack. Strong. Safe. And better.[/i]

It wasn’t much, but it was something. He rubbed the back of his head, hardly believing that he was thinking this, but he followed the thought as rationally as he could. He traced it through his head, thinking about every possible outcome from it.

If it happened the way that he was imagining, then Shereeza would become a Hellhound just like him, though perhaps one with less agency. She would take on the fur and flesh and power of a creature of hell, becoming part demon. Her soul would be held, either by him or by Melchiresa, and if the latter, then she would be bound to an afterlife that was nothing more than pure torture.

[i]One more day is worth it,[/i] she’d said. [i]Life is worth it.[/i]

“Vitus?”

“…If we had two Hellhounds, instead of one…would that make a difference?” he asked.

“…It would do something. I don’t know if it would be enough, but it would add to our chances.”

“And if I were to change Shereeza…to make her into a Hellhound, properly…would that go to Melchiresa?”

“Yes.”

“I was really hoping for a different answer,” he muttered, covering his eyes with a growl. “Fuck…”

“I told you before, Vitus. There is no test here. There is no simple way out where you get to avoid all the bad things that you’re afraid of. The most that you can do is minimize them.” Katya nodded at the elf. “At the very worst, you’ve given her years of life as something stronger than she is, something that can take the pain and give it back. If nothing else, you have given her that.”

“In exchange for a life that will be hell – literally – the moment that her soul passes on.”

“Would you pay the price?”

“…I don’t know.”

“She won’t ask. It is up to you. It would help us, and it would help her, but you are the one that has to make the decision.”

Vitus knew that, and worse, he knew that there was one more reason to make that decision. If the elf’s soul went to Melchiresa, then there would be a little bit of a payment towards the Demon Lord, something that might take some of the anger that she held toward him and assuage it a little. It wouldn’t be the same as changing Neena, but it would at least be a soul given to her, something that she could play with.

That would make her less angry at him, and more likely to listen if he ever had to talk to her again. And he hated that it was even a consideration for him.

He growled between gritted teeth, turning and thumping his forehead against the side of the wagon. It didn’t make it any better, and he slumped against it with a deep sigh.

“Piers.”

“What?”

“Whatever you hear, don’t turn around.”

“…”

“I’m serious. I know how you feel about this, and I know you’ll disagree, but I need you to keep your eyes right on the road and trust me. This…this is for the best.”

“…I can’t not look,” the one-armed man said. “I can’t look away from something like that happening.”

“Then you have to not interfere. Katya?”

“He won’t.”

“Good.”

He looked at the sleeping elf once more, shaking his head as he felt the same urges that he had felt in Bloodrun. The urge to take, to rut, to bring the bitch under him and rut her until there was nothing but the hound within left. She had to become his Pack. She had to become his. It was so strong, so powerful, that his cock all but leaped from his sheath beneath his pants, getting harder and harder to contain inside.

And yet, there was still some part of him that was too afraid to just do it. That part, that desperate part that wanted something better, that was afraid to be wrong, that wanted it taken from him and made someone else’s choice, held him back. He growled through gritted teeth, shaking his head.

“Katya.”

“Hmm?”

“Say…say the word. Say the word so I can just…do this…”

“I will not give you a command.”

“Not that word. The…the other one.”

“…Ah. [i]Stud.[/i]”

Vitus growled as the word seized him by the balls, a deep, dark power rising from within him. His already hairy body burst out with patches of red fur with black accents, his legs twitching and shivering as his heels came off the ground. Little by little, he warped, the Hellhound aspects that he’d hidden behind illusion and magic coming out properly. His face bent and cracked, pulling forward into a muzzle, and his ears continued their growth up and out over the side of his head.

But more than anything, the Hellhound’s need to rut was building with each successive step that he took toward the sleeping elf. His cock throbbed and burst through his pants, ripping them apart. The red rocket of a shaft bounced, throbbing, spitting pre-cum across the wooden floor, and his tail wagged as the Hellhound muscle spread through his limbs, his abs, his pecs, his ass. Oh, he felt it back there, the cheeks spreading slightly, revealing a bestial pucker to the winds, his balls dropping, his cock bigger and harder than ever.

And more than that, it was that need. That inevitable, dominating need to take someone, to bring them in and show them where they belonged. It hit him hard and it made him want the elf.

Craved her.

Required her.

Vitus was all but a passenger behind his own eyes as the Hellhound half of him grabbed the elf’s shoulder. Clawed fingers that could have ripped her apart without question gently rolled her onto her stomach, flipping the blanket up. She was barely starting to lift her head when he had his cock between her thighs, and then…

Then he was inside. And he regretted nothing.

#

Egorian was a city of darkness and blood, and the latter flowed more freely than the former with the various red lamps that dotted the streets and glowing red soul-stone that hung from the buildings on every corner. It was like descending into a mine of horrors for Robin, and the constant sight of slavery, abuse, and worse on the streets – all in the name of discipline and progress as the city constantly expanded within itself – had sickened the were-rat. It was something of a novel experience, admittedly; it was the first time that she had felt anything like that since her flight from Absalom.

The Hellknights escorted her to a prison facility. She had no idea where it was. They had only taken the bag off her head when they wanted her to see an example of the city and how it was run, and what would happen to her if she tried to flee from them. Robin saw it and learned a different lesson: if she didn’t fear the consequences, they had little to threaten her with.

The facility that they took her to was dark, dark enough that she imagined that it could have been underground, but it was just as likely to have been built into some great tower or even the city walls, from how thick they had looked as they approached. Her surroundings, lacking a window of any sort, told her nothing. The stonework, as rough and yet solid as anything else she had seen so far, could have been part of a home, a dungeon, or a palace. It had nothing to set it apart.

Which meant that escape was going to be next to impossible without more information.

The squad of Hellknights crossed the room to a desk at the far side. A massive tome lay on one side of the desk, and a much smaller one on the other. The latter was closed, and the former was open.

“Name of prisoner?” a red-skinned, almost too-calm individual on the other side asked, his face featureless save for his mouth.

“Robin Adair,” the Tiefling that had taken charge of her said. “A were-rat captured during a raid on the Leontina estate.”

“Ah, yes. Her crime?”

“Being a slave without a proper owner.”

“That’s a lie,” Robin muttered.

“I suppose it isn’t accurate, at the very least,” the Tiefling said, chuckling. “Thank you for correcting me. A slave that escaped her owner without finding a new one.”

Robin opened her mouth and closed it again shortly after. [i]That[/i] was more accurate; by telling Vitus to run, she had essentially left him, and she hadn’t had a new owner to take charge because she’d been busy beating the shit out of the Tiefling standing over her and holding a chain that ran down to her arms bent behind her back. In a world of technicalities, it was, essentially, a truth.

The clerk nodded, writing that down with surprising penmanship for a blind being. He closed the book, gesturing to the other.

“No, I don’t think we’ll need to write her name in the Book of the Dead. Not for some time, at the very least,” Onoria said.

“Very well, ma’am. Do you require a torture chamber for this one?”

“Not one of the pain-inflicting ones. Are there any on the third floor that are open?”

Third floor, which meant above ground. That eliminated the underground dungeons, then. Robin stored that little fact away in the rear of her mind. The clerk looked through the big book again, tracing his fingers along words that he should not be able to see, but apparently could.

“Hmmm – yes, we do have one available.”

“Book it out until the end of the month. This one doesn’t break from pain; I need something special for her.”

“As you say, Knight Salvus.”

“And payment will be sent by the end of the day.”

“Indeed, Knight Salvus. Or you shall have to pay for it in other ways, of course.”

The Tiefling snarled, and Robin bit back a chuckle. Nice to see the shoe on the other foot, for once.

The rest of the knights disbanded from the squad, taking seats in the large room or moving down halls to other chambers. Robin didn’t have a chance to study them for long before she was being dragged forward, pulled along by the thick chains. Her body, since reverted to a human through acts of severe self-control, ached at the constant tug and strain that she was put through.

“Now, I suppose, as a courtesy, you would like to know what’s going to happen to you?” the Tiefling said as they climbed the stairs.

“Not really.”

“Ah. Still holding onto hope?”

“That, and the fact that you haven’t succeeded yet.”

“True, I have not.” Onoria chuckled. “But that should not make you feel better. Lasting out the minor tortures is something of a rarity, that is true, but the more tortures that we go through that don’t work, the more that we get to understand our victims. For me, it tells me that you have gone through a great deal of hardship in your life. Perhaps more than was entirely fair, perhaps something that you brought on yourself, but whatever it was, you went through something that you didn’t deserve to go through, and that hardened you.

“As such, you expect pain. You expect things to be difficult, to have the world against you. To be put through torture is to continue to receive what you expect, which means that you are already ready to take it. That’s just life for you, isn’t it?”

Robin didn’t answer that. She could see several ways that this could go, and none of them were particularly good for her. The Tiefling looked back at her as they reached the third floor, smiling.

“Whereas if you get something that feels good…”

“Heh. Are you telling me that you’re going to rape me, then?”

“Hardly. That is reserved for later, if this doesn’t work. And there are certain qualities to being raped by devils that I doubt that you’ve hardened yourself against. But there is something else, something that wouldn’t work on most people, but…may work on you.”

“May? You’re not sure?”

“You are a unique individual, Robin. Almost as unique as a certain one-armed man that I met in Westcrown.”

Robin’s heart dropped out of her chest, though she managed to keep it from showing on her face.

“There’s something he had that you have, too. A certain determination that’s been lacking in Cheliax, a conviction to a belief that most of our citizens do not have. The beliefs are wrong in your case – and perhaps in his, though I imagine that he could be brought around – but they are there, nonetheless.

“But I believe that, with the right education, your convictions could be turned to something more correct, more useful to Infernal Cheliax. Someone with your fighting strength and focus could become a ferocious bodyguard, or greater, if given the right person to hold the leash.”

“I have someone to hold my leash. And I plan on getting back to him sooner than later.”

“Oh. I have struck a nerve. Good.”

They left the stairwell and walked down a long, slender corridor, one that pushed in on them and curved downward rather than upward at the ceiling, almost as if the stone was melting in the desert heat of Cheliax. Every step felt as if she was walking into a tunnel rather than a hallway, and she feared that would collapse on her with every step.

All around her, the air echoed with the sounds of other prisoners. They were held apart with thick stone walls and nothing but slits in the wall to allow the knights to speak with them. The walls didn’t even have doors; they only had a brick that could be removed or put back in to speak to those inside.

And yet, the air was filled with…moans. Not screams, or shrieks, but moans. Robin’s ears twitched as she looked back and forth, trying to understand –

“Here we are. Your chamber.”

Onoria reached out and touched the wall, resting her armored gauntlet against it. The stone wall shimmered, then faded, leaving a door-sized hole in it. The Tiefling turned to face her, smiling.

“Someone without a Hellknight’s gauntlet and the proper magic would only rest on stone. One with just one or the other? Well, their hand would meld with the stone itself, leaving them trapped for one of us to find.”

“…”

“Get in.”

Robin shrugged and stepped inside, her mind awash with too many thoughts to count. The possibility that Piers had met this woman and talked with her – and perhaps more from the tone of her voice while she’d been talking about him – but also the thought of what else could happen here. Pleasure? Pain? What else could be done that the Tiefling believed could break her after the long, unsuccessful journey from the estate to the city? What else could she possibly have in mind?

The cell was small, no more than eight feet by eight feet, and chains hung from the ceiling, just far enough apart that she knew that her arms wouldn’t go straight up. Her captor dragged her over to them, undoing the leash-chain around her arms and letting them loose for no more than a second before ‘helping’ her pull them over her head. More chains were pulled down, shackles pulled tight around her wrists before the chains themselves were pulled up, the slack disappearing and –

“Nnngh…”

Robin grunted in discomfort as she was pulled up and off her feet, dragged into the air. She hung in the metal cuffs, feeling them digging into her wrists to an uncomfortable level, and huffed as her legs could no longer support her. Onoria kept pulling the chains until she hung at least two feet off the ground, unable to point her toes and touch it.

“That will do.”

“Hmmph. What’s the point of this one? Long-term torture?”

“Of a sort.”

“I see. And what – mmph – is this going to accomplish that pain could not?”

“You have a conviction. And part of that conviction is that you are in the right. That you are somehow better, or more moral, or otherwise above people like me. You believe that I am wrong, and you are right, and as a result, nothing that I say or do will shift that.”

Robin didn’t say anything. As the Tiefling pulled her ankles to the floor shackles, pulling them apart, Onoria continued.

“However, everyone carries shame. Every mortal that has ever walked this earth carries a sense of something that they don’t like. Some part of themselves that they loathe, something that they fight against to feel [i]good[/i] about themselves. It is a piece that they think isn’t good enough, isn’t right, isn’t suitable for the rest of the world to see. It is the part of themselves that they keep hidden, buried, so that nobody can see and nobody can judge them on.

“And that is the part that this room is designed to bring out. Here, I will expose you for what you are. Here, you will be allowed to show that part of yourself, and you will see where it takes you.”

“Under you?”

“Under [i]everyone.[/i]” Onoria gestured around the room as the wall sealed behind her. “This is where you will break, Robin. Here, the real you, the secret you, will come out, and you will be face to face with the part that makes you inferior. The part that requires an owner to set right. The part of you that must be purged if you are ever to be a free woman again. It is that simple.”

As Robin tried to process and understand that, the Tiefling walked around her. She couldn’t see what the other woman was doing, but she heard the Hellknight pick something up from the back of the room. She wanted to turn, but she didn’t; she kept her eyes facing forward, waiting, bracing herself.

Then, a tingle. She gasped, her eyes going wide as she felt a sudden heat at the base of her spine, something that was no different to what she’d felt when Katya had used her powers to force a transformation on her. Her eyes went wider and wider as she felt her tail wriggling out from the base of her spine, growing longer and faster than it should have done, pushing past what little remnants of rags that she still called clothes and spilling down past her legs. The tip touched the floor before it stopped, leaving her shaking.

“What…what is…”

“It’s a special sort of moonstone. It releases the same sort of power that forces a lycanthrope to transform into their bestial shape,” Onoria said as she walked around again. “Temporarily, of course, but it is quite potent.”

“Mmmph…and you think…this…is my shame?”

“I think it’s certainly possible that it holds [i]some[/i] shame for you. Shame of being subhuman. Shame of being a beast. Shame of having the [i]instincts[/i] of one, too.”

The Tiefling waved the brick of moonstone over Robin’s chest before she could respond, leaving her gasping as the weight of her breasts increased, filling out, almost doubling as they spilled forward. Her nipples pushed past the few fragments of fabric that still covered them, and she hissed as her own sensitivity came back to her, her own wanton need as a female rat…a rat that could…

[i]Oh no…[/i]

The shame was there, diminished, but there. If it hadn’t been for her run-ins with Katya in the past, it would have been worse, but it was there, and she could feel the magical aura of the cell pressing in on her from all sides. It was thick with power, with darkness, and she knew that if it could, it would make her feel all the more humiliation for her bestial shape.

[i]Oh, no…[/i]

[b][u][center]The End[/center][/u][/b]

Summary: Vitus thinks on some darker possibilities, and Robin reaches her prison.

Tags: M/F, F/F, Human, Hellhound, Were-Rat, Wererat, Tiefling, Elf, Various Species, Magic, Mind Control, Bondage, Transformation, Fantasy, Series, Breast Growth, Arousal,