Give Them Eyes to See

The setting sun cast long shadows through the garden, painting the ground in alternating bars of black and gold. Here the priests mostly tended to decorative flowers, though a few patches of land around the side of the cathedral were staked out for carrots, potatoes, cabbages, and various other small crops. The initiates and lower-ranked acolytes labored there as an exercise in industrious humility, to give them an appreciation for those who worked close to the land and to rid them of the conceit that membership in the priesthood placed them above the concerns of common folk.

But Volosasz was not here for the initiates. Those of higher ranks tended to the flower gardens, a more leisurely and elegant pursuit, and even the high priestess herself would occasionally be seen wandering among the colorful blooms. That would be the coup of the year, to find the likes of her enjoying the garden beneath his perch--but she would be flanked by trained, alert bodyguards, making an invisible extraction impossible. He disliked making a scene: confrontations led to manhunts, and tracking him would be much more difficult if people were uncertain whether there was anyone to track in the first place.

A confrontation would be unnecessary this evening, however. The elven maiden tending to the flowers below him wore a sky-blue robe of simple cut, rather than the more voluminous and embellished dress she would have worn for ceremonial or sacred duties. Her long, wheat-colored hair was tied back and secured in part with a thin tiara inset with a small sapphire upon the forehead, and a matching gem dangled from a silver necklace just above her breasts. Together with the green sash wound around her waist like a belt with trailing ends, and elbow-length gloves of matching color, her accoutrements marked her as a priestess of moderately high rank. Likely she had some authority over some task in the cathedral.

Her lone attendant stood at a respectful distance, eyes dancing between his charge and the rest of the garden. It was empty but for the two of them--and for Volosasz, crouched upon a heavy tree branch in the corner of the garden. Neither of them had any chance of seeing him, with the setting sun in their eyes and the distance--a hundred feet or more--separating them. Even elven eyes lacked the sharpness that his possessed. He relaxed against the tree trunk, arms folded, and waited patiently.

The pair conversed. He swiveled his ears forward to try to catch the words, but at this distance he couldn't hear anything meaningful; they went back and forth for a bit. The priestess smiled and waved the attendant toward the cathedral; he hesitated, said something. She laughed--that, Volosasz heard, lilting and musical--and shooed him. He bowed, turned, and headed back for the building. The priestess returned to tending the flowers, surely intending to just finish up her task before heading back herself. For a minute, maybe two, she was alone.

Fools.

As soon as the attendant was out of sight, Volosasz slipped down from his tree branch, unfurling his wings with a single silent flap to break his landing. Masked by the long shadow cast by the tree, he stalked forward toward the priestess on silent, feline feet. Tall rows of flowers flanked him to either side as he slipped between them, making swift progress toward his quarry. She was humming to herself as he approached, absorbed in the task of pruning wilted leaves from a flowering plant. The thought that she was in danger never even seemed to occur to her; she placed a great deal of faith in the walls surrounding the garden, for she never once looked up.

Only within the last few steps did the woman realize something was amiss. She paused, hesitating in her task, yet before she could turn to look behind her, he sprang forward. His tentacles, having rested looped around his waist until that moment, unfurled like taut ropes snapping; four arms wrapped around the woman from behind. He placed an upper hand across her mouth while both lower arms pinned hers to her sides. One tentacle twisted around her legs in a tight coil, and another lashed her bodily to him.

She squealed into his hand and twisted in his grip, but the battle was already lost: there was nothing that this delicate elf could do in the face of bindings like these. He bent his head close, tucked the tip of his beak against a long, delicate ear. "Make a noise and you die," he whispered. He flexed the tentacle wrapped around her chest and brought its tip--a leaf-shaped pad lined with razor-sharp bone spines--to her throat. She instantly ceased to whimper.

"Good girl." He wasted no time. She was light, and he was strong: after one quick glance around to make sure no one had seen him--and they hadn't--he bolted in the direction he had come, hauling his captive along with ease. The escape over the wall was the riskiest endeavor; with only one limb free, climbing would prove slow and awkward. A wing-assisted leap over it was faster and smoother, yet at greater risk of being spotted. But speed was paramount, and he opted for the leap, picking up in a run for the last few yards and vaulting upward. He beat his wings heavily, carrying himself and the woman over the wall, and landed with a heavy thump on the other side. The tree line was but fifty feet beyond the wall, and he took for it at a sprint, the shadows of the woods covering his escape. By the time the sun had set, he was well within the trees, and no sound of pursuit rose behind him.

Confident that he had evaded detection, he released the woman. She yanked herself free the moment his hands relaxed, and pivoted on him, hands raised to strike. Entirely predictable and ill-advised, her impromptu assault ended as soon as it began, her wrists caught in his lower hands. She kicked at his ankles; he twisted her arm. A ripple of pain crossed over her face, and her struggles came to an abrupt halt.

"You beast," she spat. Her voice would have been pretty, had the effort of holding back the pain in her wrist not strained it so.

"So you noticed," Volosasz replied. With a free hand he took her chin; she made as though to yank herself away, but the slightest bit of additional pressure on her wrists made her rethink her resistance. She had to content herself with a furious stare. It was a shame, really; her delicate facial features were pretty, for an elf's, or would have been had they not been distorted with anger and indignation. "I'll give you some options," he continued, without missing a beat. "You can play along, and I'll let you walk on your own two feet, or you can continue to fight, and I'll truss you like a butchered lamb. I'd prefer not to have to carry you."

"They won't let you get away with this. Whatever you think you're doing, they'll find you."

Volosasz exhaled. Of course she was going to make things difficult. It was no surprise, of course; priests and priestesses were notoriously strong-willed. But even strong faith tended to waver in the face of immediate temporal threats. Courage, he'd found, was not an inexhaustible resource. He twined a tentacle around her once more, starting from her hips and coiling upward around her like a creeping ivy, until the last loop of it wound around her neck and the spiked tip hung in the air inches from her face. He flexed the muscle against her throat, and the first shadow of fear crossed over her eyes.

"I used to enjoy bluster," he said, conversationally. "I thought it was exciting. But you always end up saying the same things. It's boring, and when predators get bored, dangerous things happen. Do you understand?" He made to meet her eyes; she averted hers. He angled the razor pad on his tentacle so that it remained firmly within her field of view.

She was quiet for a few moments; he felt her swallow hard against the grip of his tentacle. "I... understand."

"When I let you go, you're going to behave?"

Her brows knit. She was obviously torn. He'd seen those complex emotions pass through the eyes of more than one priestess in the past--that primal, instinctual fear for one's safety warring against the indignation of conceding to an enemy. But her faith was not one that taught the virtues of resistance at all costs, nor of the value of pride. Though pride she had, as all people had, she would be better suited than most to set it aside and justify her safety thereby.

"I can't fight you, obviously," she replied, voice soft. "Or outrun you, I imagine."

"Mm, you're right. So you'll not try?"

She shot a severe look at him. "The Pure Lady will punish you, you know." He lifted his brows and tightened his grip around her throat. She rose up on her tiptoes as if she could escape the tentacle's hold. "I'll--I'll not try," she conceded.

Immediately he released her. This time, she didn't fight back, nor did she flee, though she did stagger away from him to lean against a nearby tree. Elf or no, she was a pampered priestess, not a ranger, and she wouldn't have gotten more than ten feet away from him in those delicate slippers of hers. The forest would grant her no succor tonight.

"What do you want with me?"

"That's a complicated question. First, for you to start walking. We've still got some ground to cover, and I'll wager that my night vision is better than yours, so you're going to want to pick up the pace." He pointed. She hesitated, turning to look in the direction he indicated--there was nothing obvious there, no clear path, only trees and brush--but when he clicked his beak, she started to walk.

He came up behind her and rested a hand on her right shoulder; she hunched her shoulders but didn't pull away. "You're kidnapping me."

"Well, I wasn't hired to kill you. Not exactly."

She glanced back at him over her shoulder, and he nudged her forward to keep walking. "For what? Ransom? Who hired you?"

"It's a little more complicated than that, like I said. Let me go ahead and answer the obvious questions all at once. I don't intend to kill you, though I will if you get so difficult to handle that there's no other option. I'm not going to ransom you off. This isn't about money, and while you might not believe me, it's not personal, either." He paused, ears angling back. This part was always surprisingly unpleasant for him. It always reminded him of the sword hanging over his own head, something he preferred not to think about when it was at all possible. "It's just politics," he said at last.

"Politics? Who could possibly have any political grudge against me? I'm an archivist!"

"It's not you. It's your order." An archivist. Pity she couldn't have been a diviner or a celebrant, one with a more intimate tie to her goddess. Likely it was that she had no particular training in the divine secrets, aside from whatever minor blessings might be given to her authority as a result of her consecration. But intimate or not, she wore the sash, and she was consecrated to a deity. She would do.

"My order? The crown recognizes us; all of the houses support us without exception. Even the beast tribes accept our missions. We have no enemies!"

"Everyone has enemies, even if they don't know it yet."

She lapsed into silence for a few minutes. Surely she was debating with herself whether he represented some heretical sect. She'd be dismayed to know how close to the truth she was. If she suspected it, though, she didn't give voice to her suspicions, and simply allowed herself to be shepherded through the forest by his prodding.

It had grown dark by this point, dull and fitful moonlight replacing the sun and casting only scattered beams of light across the path that they cut through the trees. The priestess's pace slowed, her steps becoming less certain despite his hand on her shoulder. Though the colors had faded into a mostly black and white palette, he could still see every detail around him perfectly. He did his best to guide his captive between the largest obstacles, though she still stumbled now and again on the odd root or stone.

"What's your name?" he asked after perhaps twenty minutes of silent hiking.

Surprise at being asked the question quickly turned to suspicion. "You care about that?"

"I wouldn't have asked otherwise."

More skeptical silence. "Illyria," she offered at last. She frowned, perhaps unaware that he could see her as clearly now as he could when the sun was still over the horizon.

"Mm. Is that all? Just Illyria?"

She rolled her shoulders, discomfited by the prospect of answering his questions without resistance; her uncertainty was written across her from top to bottom. Whatever training a priestess of the Pure Lady received, masking their emotions was not among it. Ultimately, she gave into his prodding. "Illyria Tevathandal."

He trilled a quiet laugh. "Sun-blossom. Charming." The bare-skinned ones had such overwrought names.

She was alarmed. "You speak Dulendin?"

With a perfectly native accent, he replied in her language, "You'll keep no secrets from me, darling Sun-blossom."

She didn't answer in kind, but kept to the common tongue they had been using. "You mock me."

He followed her lead. "Not at all. But I see your surprise. I'm no stranger to assumptions. I thought it would be better to disabuse you of them sooner rather than later."

"You're very... urbane, for a kidnapper."

He shrugged. "I'm too lazy to be cruel. And I don't have anything against you personally."

"But you're still doing it." Was she trying to weasel her way out of it? He sympathized with the impulse. In her situation he'd have done the same, and in a way he even respected the effort. She was subtly positioning herself to persuade him to release her, but he'd dealt with too many of her kind already to be taken off-guard by negotiations. All the worse for her. A shame.

"Fear is a powerful motivator," he answered quietly.

"You don't have to--"

He cut her off by squeezing her shoulder tightly, digging his talons through her robe and against her skin. "Let's not talk about it. It's not going to change anything. You'll like me better when I'm not upset." His voice was hard.

She didn't press the issue. He had felt her tense beneath his grip, and stumble in the darkness in the moment that her concentration wavered. "I can hardly see a thing," she said. It had only grown darker the further they had hiked.

"It's not far now." Indeed, he could already see their destination ahead, an overhang leading into deeper darkness and a narrow cave entrance beyond. The overhang itself was almost completely masked by trees; from most angles it would look like nothing more than a wooded hill. He pushed against her back. "Keep going."

Just before the cave entrance, she tilted her head as though to look back at him, though she must have been blind in the darkness. "What's your name?"

He clicked his beak. "Volosasz." No reason to keep it a secret from her. Soon it wouldn't matter whether she knew his name or not.

"Just Volosasz?"

"Just Volosasz."

"It's a strange name--"

It was a name given to him in the deep darkness, far beneath the surface. He didn't want to explain that to her, to explain how the masters of that cruel and lightless place had raised him up, so he was relieved to have an excuse to cut her off. "Watch out. Ahead of you there are two trees; you'll be able to slip between them, and then into a cave beyond."

"A cave?" She sounded skeptical. Disappointed, even as though she had expected her own furnished chambers in which to enjoy her captivity.

"I'm a beastman, after all," he replied, droll.

"I never--"

"You were thinking it," he interrupted her before she could begin. She didn't deny it, only turned her head forward and blindly groped for the indicated trees. Slowly she worked her way past them, and he followed close behind.

"I've never seen anyone like you," she ventured. "Even among the beastmen. You're almost a..."

"A gryphon?" She nodded. "I am, after a fashion, I suppose. Though I don't know if there are any others like me around."

"May I ask...?"

"I'd rather you not. It will just make me upset. Suffice to say my father was a coeurl. You sometimes call them displacers on the surface. My mother was... not." His mother was a raven, a sad young woman taken captive during a surface raid. Or so he managed to glean from his father's recollections--he had no memory of her, as she did not survive his childhood. He had his suspicions as to why.

She sucked in a breath and halted mid-step, until he pushed her forward again. "A displacer! I thought I saw--I mean, in woodblocks, but I'd not thought--"

He clicked his beak. "More limbs than I know what to do with, yes. Though I suppose that's not strictly true. I knew exactly what to do with them this evening."

She apparently didn't appreciate his humor, and lapsed again into silence in spite of her curiosity. The displacers did not live on the surface; they scarcely existed except as legendary beasts written of in bestiaries compiled by people who had never been beneath the surface, or the inhabitants of tall tales told by adventuresome explorers. Few who ever actually encountered one lived to return to the surface to tell about it, and so they enjoyed considerable obscurity there. It wasn't a surprise that an archivist would have seen reference to one--but she must have never imagined she'd actually meet one. He wondered if she was reevaluating her prospects of escape, now. What little reputation his kin had among the surface elves was deathly, and for good reason.

The floor of the cave entrance sloped downward at a sharp angle, and Illyria slowed her descent accordingly, hands groping along the walls to either side to steady herself. The air was pleasantly cool and damp, and soon even the last shimmering hint of moonlight had been thoroughly vanquished in the winding tunnel. It wouldn't be long until they reached the hollow that served as his safe house on the surface.

Just before the final bend in the tunnel, she stopped and sucked in a sharp breath. She stiffened from head to toe, then shook her head violently and turned to push back against him. "No--no, I can't go in there!" Her efforts to stumble past him in the dark were stymied by the narrow tunnel and the grip of four strong hands on her arms.

"You will," he said quietly.

"No, please--"

"I'll drag you if I have to." He had anticipated her reaction. This wasn't simple fear--the den itself was shrouded from prying eyes, arcane and divine alike. Within its confines, Illyria would be invisible to her goddess--and her goddess invisible to her.

"I can't feel her." She clutched at his bare chest, fingers digging into the feathered ruff. "I can't feel her! You have to let me out!" It was likely the first time in decades that the woman hadn't felt the tangible presence of the divine at the fringes of her awareness.

His pity would not be her salvation. He pushed her backward, easily overpowering her. Her protests rose in a crescendo until at last he twisted a tentacle around her throat once more. Only then did she stop fighting, though her pleas continued as he dragged her past the threshold and into the den. A heavy, floor-length curtain served as a door--the better to muffle any sounds from within, should a passerby be walking past the cave entrance at an inopportune time--and beyond it was a roughly circular room with minimal furnishings. A plain wooden chest held his few material possessions--clothes and a handful of writing materials--and a desk next to it was stacked with writing supplies.

A gap in the wall across from the "door" led into a tunnel that traveled further into the den. Next to it, on the floor, lay what passed for a bed: a thick, circular mattress densely stuffed with cotton and feathers and piled atop with rumpled sheets and wrinkled pillows. Scattered feathers and shed fur marked it as his. It was toward the bed that he dragged the whimpering priestess.

When he pushed her down onto the bed, her complaints momentarily cut off in a surprised yelp. In the next moment he was kneeling above her, hands taking her arms two apiece. He read shock and confusion and alarm on her face as he deftly secured her to the wall--a series of chains and manacles, bolted securely into the stone just above his bed, served as anchor points for the elf's unruly limbs. He only bothered to chain her wrists; there was no way she'd slip free of her cuffs, and she lacked any other troublesome limbs that needed to be bolted down.

He stood, leaving her to lie there, and seated himself at his writing desk. The chains rattled vigorously in the darkness behind him as he laid out a fresh sheet of paper and unstopped a bottle of ink.

"You're not even listening! Say something!" In the darkness, absent his touch, her fear turned instantly from separation from her goddess to the dread that she might have been left alone. He hadn't been paying attention to the content of her begging--it was all the same, and he'd heard it all before, babbling devoid of content--but the prospect of being abandoned was more terrifying than the reality of being chained.

Without answering, he dipped a pen into the ink and began to write.

Worshipful Ones, Conquerors of Above and Below, Heralds of the Deep Darkness,

_ _

I bid you greetings and offer you a gift of tidings which will surely please you. A maiden has been procured of the surface elf-folk, an archivist of the faith of the Pure Lady of the Forest (whose usurpations will never be forgotten). Her name is Illyria Tevathandal, and she bears a true and efficacious bond with our hated foe. You may confirm that she was taken without witnesses or evidence and that my presence remains unsuspected.

_ _

By the time you receive this message, the priestess in my care will have been addressed with finality.

_ _

Your Faithful Servant,

VS

Volosasz set the pen aside and folded the letter. Illyria had gone quiet in the interim, perhaps listening for the scratching of his pen to assure herself that he was still there. She couldn't see him, of course. He could see her, staring out blindly into the emptiness before her eyes, pupils wide and straining for a flicker of light that would not materialize.

"You were writing something," she ventured. Her voice was quiet, hesitant.

"You have good ears."

"Was it about me?"

"Yes."

Perhaps the reality of her circumstance was finally beginning to sink in, for she squeezed her eyes shut and attempted to pull her arms over her chest--a gesture forbidden by the short chains that held her. "What did you say?" Her voice was beginning to quaver. "In the letter."

"Nothing special. The same thing I always say. They... don't like it when I don't keep in contact. This should mollify them for a few months." He stood and crossed the room toward her.

"You sound as though you don't like them very much, whoever they are."

Perceptive woman. "I don't." He knelt above her again, and she tensed to feel him touch her; his knees straddled her hips to either side, and though she tried to draw her legs up, his weight was more than enough to keep her pinned flat.

"Then why--"

"I don't like to talk about it." He leaned down, ran the fingers of one upper hand through her long hair. She turned her head aside, but there was no prospect of her truly escaping his touch. "Talking isn't going to change anything. Never has."

"Maybe I can help--"

He seized a handful of her hair and yanked back, forcing her chin up with a yelp. "Talking about it will make me upset. Do you want to make me upset?" His other upper hand tensed against his bed, claws threatening to cut into the heavy fabric.

"N-no," she whispered. Her breath was quick, shallow.

He didn't immediately release his grip. Everyone thought they could help him, as though a few kind words or vague promises of support had any power whatsoever to effect change. An empire's full military might couldn't change anything--this woman's goddess herself couldn't change anything. And the proof of it lay in his bed right now, pinned between his legs. One more priestess erased from the surface, one less servant of the light. Gone forever, without a trace.

"What are you going to do to me?" Fear.

In response, he brought his lower hands up along her sides, feline paws tracing parallel lines above her robe. In tandem, they drifted inward, fingers brushing over the modest slopes of her breasts. She hissed, arched beneath him, twisted futilely.

"Don't..."

His grip firmed, fingers closing around her breasts. Her mouth fell open in a gasp and she clenched her eyes closed ever more tightly. Behind him, he wound his tentacles around her ankles and slid them upward, crawling beneath the hem of her robe like twin snakes winding across her smooth skin. She tested them, pulled this way and that, but they were pure muscle, and she had no leverage. No hope. All she could do was wait as he wound his grip around her inch by inch.

He released one breast and with his free hands hiked her robe up, exposing her legs and thighs to the cool cavern air. His tentacles pried her legs apart with ease, and he repositioned himself to kneel between the now-spread limbs.

"You mustn't," she pleaded, gasping. "You have no idea what you're doing!"

She was wearing a simple undergarment of modest design. He extended his claws and tore it from her thighs with a single powerful yank, shredding the cloth into pieces as it went; the dreadfully loud sound of tearing fabric hung ominously in the air. Beneath the tattered ruins of the garment lay skin that had never seen the sun, and a trim thatch of hair above maidenly folds. He felt an uncomfortable tightness in his pants, and loosed his waistband with one hand as he gazed down at her.

"I know," he said. "Shh."

"No, you don't--I'm--I'm a virgin, consecrated--"

Did she imagine that would deter him, and not inflame him further? His loins ached at the confession, though he knew it for a fact already. With one hand he shoved his loosened pants down his legs even as he leaned down above her, bringing his beak close to one slender ear. "I know."

It must have dawned on her, at last, what he meant. That he really did know, that he really did understand what he was doing. Carnal urges alone did not compel him. A whimper escaped her lips, and tears welled at the corners of her eyes. He lowered himself close to her, feathers rustling her robe where she still wore it. He'd scarcely undressed her, and it was only in the last few moments that he kicked off his own pants to the floor. His cock throbbed with a familiar, ravenous hunger. Every mewling whimper, every teardrop, made him want her more. It was a dire and predatory lust. She was weak. Prey. The tapered, barbed flesh touched hers; his precum painted her skin in slick wetness. He guided himself to her entrance, nudged himself within the heat of her body just so.

Her chains rattled in one last futile gesture; her legs kicked uselessly against his tentacles as they bound her. There was no escape. "Please," she whispered, in the end. "Just... don't be cruel..."

"I won't," he promised, and with a forward roll of his hips, pierced her. He felt the resistance right away, Illyria's maiden-veil, and without hesitation he pushed, firm and unyielding. It stretched, broke--she cried out, arched sharply beneath him as though she had been struck. He plowed ahead, forcing her muscles apart around him, his precum slicking her inner walls and easing his invasion. It took three firm thrusts to force himself within her altogether, and each one tore a whine from Illyria's throat. The fur of his sheath kissed her folds, now, and for a moment he held himself still within the vise-grip of her virgin loins.

It was done, as quickly as that. Untold decades of sanctification wiped away in an instant, a priestly vow undone in a single swift stroke. Purity and holiness extinguished in the dark, and not even her goddess could see to grant her comfort. Her tears flowed freely; she knew it as much as he. She had been desecrated, and there could be no return.

But he was not finished. There was more, not merely the shattering of a maiden's chastity. He drew back, preparing to rut her, and his barbs caught her flesh, dragging sharply against her from within. She yelped again, writhed, kicked at the air until he reversed himself and drove into her. Another gasp from her, exciting him, encouraging him. He began to thrust into her in earnest, the uncomfortably tight grip of her pussy easing with each successive stroke, and more as his precum slathered her insides. The thrusts grew wet, with sloppy, squishing sounds forming a liquid undercurrent to Illyria's moaning cries. He smelled the sharp coppery tang of blood in the air.

Within a minute he had pushed ahead to a firm, strong rhythm. As the physical sting of her deflowering faded into a dull ache, the priestess grew quieter, biting back her groans as best as she could, though each forward buck of his hips practically forced the air from her lungs in a nonstop succession of gasps and huffs. She was soft and warm and exquisite beneath him. Elves retained their youthful vigor for so much longer than the other races, even as they grew and matured, and though Illyria was no goddess-like figure herself, her slim hips and subtle curves excited him.

He stroked her hair as he rutted her, drew another hand against one of those modest breasts. His hunger drove him, but he was making himself gentle for her--as gentle as such a violation could be, when visited upon her by a beast such as himself. Beneath his touch, he felt a hard nub under the fabric of her robe, there at the peak of her breast, and the response drew out ever more of his lust. His rhythm quickened, his thrusts gained force. Harder, faster, until he felt the familiar blooming seed blooming in the pit of his belly, an exquisite joy, a bright sun to reach up toward.

His pace picked up even more. Beneath him, Illyria's stoic endurance crumbled piece by piece, and again she began to groan with each stroke of the rut. It excited him. He pushed harder, desperate, ravenous, gluttonous even; the thrusts grew more difficult, stiffer, and he knew his knot was beginning to swell. She felt it, too, twisting and moaning in alarm with each successive thrust. He forged ahead, the wet popping sounds of the half-formed knot forcing its way in and out of her almost drowned out by the priestess' cries. And then, just like that, with a final pop, the knot tied within her and did not slip out on the backstroke.

Illyria groaned, writhed. It would be an ache like she had never imagined, to be knotted like this on her first night. He could barely endure the pressure, himself, and once he was secure within her his climax was but a few grinding strokes away. He took them without hesitation, and the heat in his belly blossomed. His heavy balls, mashed up against the priestess' skin, tightened and hiked, emptying themselves into her with ruthless efficiency. She sucked in a gasp and her eyes bolted wide open as she felt him cum inside her--that heavy, laden flood of gryphon seed poured into her bare pussy, painting her insides with his virility. Her hands, secure in their manacles, clenched and unclenched in the open air as though she wanted to grasp onto something.

And then it was over. There was no sound but Illyria's heavy breathing, and the thundering of his own heartbeat in his ears. He slumped atop her, hands falling loose, wings drooping to form a black-feathered canopy above them both. Even his tentacles slackened--and when they did, she made no effort to kick herself free of them. She lay there as he did, stunned, aching, sweating, tears streaking her face.

She said nothing in the fifteen minutes it took for his knot to subside. Nor did he: there was nothing to be said. After a few minutes she turned her head aside as though to stare at a wall that she could not see anyway; he took to idly stroking her hair, and for once she did not pull away or try to shake him free. Equilibrium returned, and with it, a profane contentedness. For all the horror he had visited upon her, the rut had brought him to an exquisite peak of pleasure. It was not by his will that she be desecrated, and absent the sword hanging over his head, he did not imagine it would have happened. But nonetheless, having done it, he could barely find regret in his heart. Her still body, beneath him, felt good. Warm. Soft. The pounding of her heart, the shallowness of her breath, was a validation of his prowess. He had destroyed her, and in the wake of that desolation all he felt was satisfaction.

In time, he withdrew, pulling himself free with a wet pop that spattered cum across Illyria's thighs, streaked with her maiden's blood. She shuddered and arched at the release, but soon slumped back into quiescence. He cleaned himself on the edge of her robe and stood to stretch. She lay there unmoving, splayed across his bed, the perfect image of a ruined maiden. Leaving his pants behind on the floor, he crossed over to the inner passage leading out of the den, when she surprised him by speaking up.

"Wait."

He paused at the threshold, looked back at her. She was vaguely looking in his direction, trying to pinpoint him by sound. "Hm?"

"I, ah... maybe it's not appropriate, but..." She hesitated. "I should hate you, and--and I do, but... thank you for not... being so cruel."

His ears perked. That was genuinely novel, and he wasn't quite sure what to do with such unexpected gratitude. He clicked his beak thoughtfully. "I told you that I didn't hate you," he said at length. "No reason to be cruel. You're going through enough already. Ah--you're welcome, I suppose." It was ridiculous, to be thanked for being only gently raped. All the more for him to accept it. But these were dire moments, and every person had their own means of coping, and though he ought to have laughed at her gratitude, he could in the end find nothing amusing about it. It was genuine, however twisted. Not for the first time he pitied her lot.

"Are you--are you going to leave me?" She sounded worried. To be left alone in the dark must have frightened her. It must have frightened her very much, that she would rather be together with a rapist.

"For a short time. I have to prepare something."

She drew a slow, shuddering breath and exhaled it with measured effort. "You'll come back soon?"

"Soon." He hesitated, then returned to the bed and knelt down over her. He released the locks on her manacles, and with naked surprise Illyria rubbed at her wrists with newly freed hands. "I trust you won't make me come after you."

"N-no. I won't." Oddly enough, he believed her. He drew a hand through her hair one last time and departed, leaving her alone upon his bed.

The next room over was spacious, but no more furnished than the last. What began as a natural cavern had been cleared and smoothed somewhat, and a wide, rectangular platform erected in the center out of cut stone. It was an altar, of a sort, though without the kind of rich adornments that his captive priestess would have been familiar with. The only markings upon the stone were words, in one of the dark elven tongues, carved around the periphery: _Whosoever shall call upon the deep darkness shall be reborn, and he shall be given eyes to see._Manacles were attached to points around the edges by means of short iron chains, bolted to the stone just as those around his bed were.

The rest of the room, save for a space around the altar and a path leading to it, played host to hundreds of squat, black candles. It would take time to light them all, but light them he must: the next step of his task demanded it. It was, he thought, a purely symbolic gesture, but the minds of gods were inscrutable to their mortal followers. Even recalcitrant and unwilling followers--perhaps, especially to recalcitrant and unwilling followers. It was no use rehashing the matter, though. He did what he had to do.

A tinderbox sat atop the altar, ready for use. Next to it lay the only other tool the ceremony would require: a polished wooden mask, fashioned into the snarling visage of a coeurl. The image was androgynous, stylized--while it clearly evoked his father's species, it bore no resemblance to any living displacer. Another symbol, of sorts, a sign of the whole species rather than any individual example. Its interior was plain and unadorned, while its exterior was painted in midnight purple, like his own fur, so deep as to be nearly black. In the cave's absolute darkness, it was black. Inset amber discs made up the eyes, though the mask itself had no holes through which to see, and only a single narrow gap between the fangs through which to breathe. It was not a mask anyone was meant to wear for long.

He brushed his fingers over it with a frown, ears flatting, then took up the tinderbox and began his work. After lighting one of the matches within, he used it to light each of the candles in turn, beginning with the outermost and working his way around the room. Gradually, by degrees, color returned to his vision as the light accumulated, though even in the dim candlelight the room was painted in shades of black and grey. Against the dreary backdrop, even the deep dark purple of the coeurl mask atop the altar--and his own matching fur from the waist down--stood out vividly.

He'd completed about a third of the room when the shuffling of footsteps from the entrance caught his attention. He looked up to see Illyria standing there, frowning, her arms folded tightly beneath her breasts. She was not looking at him: she was looking at the lit candles, eyes distant and unfocused. She still wore her priestess' robe, rumpled and stained from her rape, the half-loosed sash of her rank sagging low on her hip; she made no move to right it or tighten it anew. Her slippers had gone missing, somewhere, and she stood on the cold floor in her bare feet, with wet spots blooming between them as she slowly dripped his cum from between her thighs. Her long hair was loose, frazzled. She looked a mess, but seemed to take no notice of it.

She must have felt his eyes on her in time, for she started and looked his way abruptly before averting her eyes again. "I-I'm sorry. I saw the light, and--"

"It's all right."

She stared at the ground. "I don't like the dark."

He resumed lighting the candles. "Why is that?"

"I... don't know. I think it's because I can't see. I don't like being blinded, not knowing where I am, what's in front of me or behind me." She smiled weakly. "I have good ears, but it's not the same."

If only she knew. At the same time, he doubted she would appreciate what was in store for her. He was growing eager to be done with it; he almost would have preferred she fight him tooth and claw to the very last. It would have made this part easier.

"Are these words?" He glanced up, saw her standing at the foot of the altar, looking at the inscription. She made no mention of the chains. "Some of the letters look familiar."

"It's a deep language, yes."

"Do you read it?"

"I made the carvings myself."

That surprised her; she must have thought him nothing more than a brute. He supposed he hadn't given her much reason--his earlier letter-writing aside--to think otherwise. "What does it say?"

He didn't want to tell her. She was being cooperative right now, and calm. He found himself unwilling to break the spell that kept her standing here in relative peace despite what he had done to her half an hour ago. "It's a... prayer of sorts. Believe in your god and you'll have enlightenment, that sort of thing. I'm sure you're familiar with the formula."

She almost smiled at that. "Yes. Do... you believe?"

He turned himself back to the candles, tail lashing restlessly at the question. If she knew his body language, she'd know to drop the subject, but he suspected she hadn't spent more than a few minutes among any beastmen, no matter their species. So, after a moment, he replied with careful hedging, lest she continue to press the matter. For some reason, he didn't want to lie to her, though it would have made things easier. "If you ask me whether I believe such a god exists, and has power, then yes." He'd seen it firsthand. One could not help but believe after that. But power alone did not inspire in him loyalty. Nor was existence sufficient cause for worship.

She must have heard something in his voice, because she did not pursue the question further. Indeed, she was silent as he continued his task. There were a great many candles left remaining, and he wasn't sure whether he wanted to continue having a conversation with the woman for the time it would take to light them all. One didn't usually have friendly chats with one's victims, did they? Yet he found himself surprisingly ungrateful for the silence.

When he glanced up again, he stopped. At the other end of the room, Illyria had lit one of the slow matches from the tinderbox and was lighting candles along with him His ears angled back. "What are you doing?"

She paused, without looking up. She didn't need to, though, for Volosasz to catch the flash of guilt that crossed her face. "I don't want to just... sit and wait, afraid." When she resumed lighting the candles, her hands were trembling. "I want to get it over with. Whatever it is. I can still meet my fate with dignity, even if she can't--even if she can't see me do it." She wiped at her eyes with the back of one hand.

"She'll know, sooner or later. Won't she?" He shrugged. "Who knows what gods really know, I suppose." He wasn't going to deny her aid, though the fact that she offered it in the first place troubled him. She must have imagined she didn't have much time left to live. In a sense, she was right.

She shot him an uncertain smile, as if she wasn't quite sure whether to thank him for the sentiment, and then returned to the candles. Together they made swift work of the rest, and by the end, the once-dark room was bathed in a warm glow. It was too bright for his preferences, but still a much more pleasant sort than daylight on the surface.

He wet his fingers and snuffed out his match, and then reached over and did the same to hers, even as he took her arms in his other hands. She stiffened at his touch, tried instinctively to turn away, but he forced her to face him. She looked aside until he took her chin in his hands and tilted her face upward to his. Courage aside, the closer she crept to the final moment, the more she feared. Unable to look away, she simply closed her eyes.

"Are you... going to kill me, now? Sacrifice me?" Her voice wavered.

"No."

Her eyes opened abruptly, and the plain relief in them almost sparked a flame of guilt in his breast. His answer was so plain and certain that it could not be a prevarication, and she saw that. "I--I'll yet live, then. Will you release me, after... you do what you wish to do?" She glanced sidelong at the altar, and the mask laid atop it.

"I'm not going to keep you chained up here," he said carefully. He still didn't want to lie to her, though it would be simple and easy. "You won't be kept in a cage, though freedom is not always a clear idea to define. You won't be able to go back to your church."

Her face fell, but the hope he'd lit within her would not be extinguished so easily. "I wouldn't have been, anyway. Not after..." She pressed her thighs together, and her cheeks flushed hot in the warm glow of the candles. "Perhaps there would be a role for me as a lay sister, but not... not as I was. You saw to that."

"No, I suppose not." He pulled her toward the altar; she resisted at first, feet dragging, but she could not prevent him from taking her, and soon enough she came alongside the altar with him of her own volition. "Lay down, on your back."

She looked over the altar anxiously. It was cold and hard and rough, but it would be no worse than lying on the ground outside. Only the manacles showed true menace, gleaming in the candlelight. She bit her lip, but at a firm squeeze upon her shoulders and a palm planted against the small of her back, she climbed atop the slab with halting, hesitant gestures. Already as she was arranging herself, he began chaining her to the rock, first her ankles and then her wrists, leaving her spread out with her arms above her head. She lay there, limbs trembling, eyes closed, silent throughout the process.

He removed her tiara and set it aside on the altar's corner, and brushed her hair back from her forehead with a taloned hand. Then, setting his jaw and clamping his beak tightly, he drove the claw of his lower right thumb into his lower left palm. Dark blood welled up around the wound, a deeper red than would be seen from the likes of the elf woman before him. He bit back the pain and, retracting his claw, daubed his fingers in the pool welling in his palm.

Upon Illyria's forehead he drew a bright, wet sigil. Its simple design--a circle cut through with two angled lines like a V, and a horizontal stroke bisecting them all--belied its weight of meaning. The elf was as good as branded, now, with the sign of the deep darkness. At his touch, her eyes fluttered open and she looked up at him, upside-down in her perspective. Her brows furrowed in consternation. "What are you doing? I smell..."

"Blood," he confirmed. "Mine, and now yours."

Confusion crossed her face. "I don't understand."

"You will." He took up the dormant mask, then, and upon the unadorned interior drew a symbol to match the one he'd made on Illyria's forehead; the old, dark, bloodstained lines he traced over left him confident that the two signs would match when he placed the mask upon her. With the simple symbols drawn, he tore a strip from the trailing end of her sash and wound it around his hand as an impromptu bandage.

"Please, tell me what you're going to do." He heard swallowed panic in the priestess' voice, saw her flex her wrists against her bindings.

He held her head still between his lower hands. "Hush. It will come whether you know it or not." His upper hands took up the coeurl mask and arranged it above her.

Her eyes were wide, pleading. "Please--"

He pressed down with the mask, covering her face completely and mangling her protest into a muffled, wordless groan. She tried to toss her head, found it clamped between his paws like a vise, moaned again. She would not be able to see any more, trapped again within the darkness enforced by the mask's claustrophobic confines. She pulled at her chains, and they rattled against the stone as he began his incantation.

"By my seed, I prepare this vessel, deep one below, that you may gift her with your sight." The language matched the one written around the altar's edge; even were she not panicking, the elf would not have been able to understand. It was her doom not to truly comprehend what was happening to her until it was already done: the darkness was not known for giving its victims time to prepare, not even to steel themselves against the inevitable. "By my blood, I mark this vessel, deep one below, that you may know her." The mask was growing warmer beneath his hands. "By my call, I open this vessel, deep one below, that you may enter her."

An unnatural breeze fluttered against his cheek, sent candle flames dancing. Wild, erratic shadows from the flickering lights rioted along the cave walls, and a fearsome dread boiled up within the pit of his stomach. He tightened his grip, both upon the elf and upon the mask, in part to steady his own trembling and in part to further secure her against her increasingly panicked thrashing. She was babbling something in her own tongue, now, but he could not focus on translating the muffled words; whatever pleas she invoked to him or to her goddess, they were lost, unheard and unanswered.

"By my will, I seal this vessel to you, deep one below, that you may bind her body and her soul!" A distant booming rumble rose up as though from deep within the earth beneath Volosasz's feet, and the unnatural breeze whipped into a sharp, stinging burst of blinding wind. In an instant, the color vanished from the room as hundreds of candles simultaneously extinguished, and a sharp, painful electric jolt drove his hands away from the mask and the woman wearing it.

At the same time, Illyria screamed, once, high and shrill; her back arched up sharply and she pulled hard enough on her chains to bruise her wrists and ankles. The cry soon cut off as though she'd been gagged, and though her head now thrashed freely, no longer held in his hands, the mask refused to slip free. For his own part, all Volosasz could now do was stagger back and lean against the wall to watch.

He would not see the first changes. Was that why he'd left her in her clothing, as haphazard as it now was? He used to strip them, lay them out bare upon the altar. He'd seen every inch of the change, knew it by heart. He could follow it with his mind's eye, trace its path over her body as surely as if he could see beneath her robe. First her skin would darken around her loins, sprout deep, near-black purple fur there, and like the creeping advance of an invading army would inch its way up and down. Where the fur blossomed and the bare skin vanquished, she would burn deep within. Muscles would tighten, thicken, grow dense. Here and there, bones would crack, shift, reform--

There. He could hear her pelvis reshaping itself, audible even over her strangled moans. Further up and down, the plague of darkness would creep, turning pale noon to midnight. And when it reached her sides, her ribs--there again, the cracking, the ragged gasps, the sudden wheezing of someone whose lungs are no longer functioning properly. The pain would be secondary to that suffocating span, though it would be only a few heartbeats before her lungs, newly strengthened and bolstered, reformed to grant her another deep breath when she was certain she'd drawn her last.

And then, he saw it, right on time: as her bones changed, the sides of her robe bulged, just beneath her elbows. What began as a subtle tightening of the fabric swiftly turned to the clawing press of something twisting within, trying to get out, as the cloth grew ever more confining. By panic and instinct, Illyria flailed, pushed, and protractile claws suddenly rent the sides of her robe, shredding holes in it to free a pair of newly formed arms. Purple fur covered them from root to fingertips, and unbound and uncoordinated, they clawed at the altar, at her bindings. Blindly she pawed at her mask, pulled upon it, but her frantic efforts were in vain. It would not release her. Not until the change was complete.

Her shoulders lifted subtly, then, not merely from the metamorphosing elf's restless struggle against her chains. Her shoulder blades bulged with thick knots of muscle even as coeurl fur spread over them, and soon those knots were writhing, extending. Like creeping vines, inch by inch broad cords of raw muscle squirmed their way free of her robe, escaping through the ragged holes her own new hands had torn. Slowly they spread, as the dark power seizing her forced them to grow and lengthen, foot by foot. Growing these tentacles would be the longest and most deliberate of the changes, they denser in muscle and longer than even the second pair of arms that had burst from her sides. They first fell from the sides of the altar, drooping toward the ground and piling up there like coils of rope; at last, when the darkness was satisfied, their tips bulged and shuddered, and split open as a flower would, to unfurl the leaf-shaped, bone-spiked pads that would evermore be one of her deadliest weapons.

Here now the fur had spread up along her collarbone, up to her elbows--and at the other end, it crept out from beneath the hem of her robe to paint her calves. Where the advancing tide swept beneath the green fabric of her gloves, soon they stretched and split; the wave of change brought thickness and muscle to her limbs, and rents spread rapidly in the doomed articles, leaving them stretched and torn, no more than ruined lattices of cloth laced amidst patches of emerging purple fur. Her hands flexed rhythmically, clenching and loosing, seizing at the air as though seeking a hold on something, anything. Soon they stiffened into claws, tensed, half tore the gloves apart there, too, and at last five sharpened claws on each hand sliced free of the gloves at her fingertips.

Volosasz glanced back to her bare feet; unlike her gloves, her lost slippers would survive the night, though she could never wear them again. Her feet were enduring worse than her hands, the bones cracking and lengthening, her very posture and the form of her extremities changing in their fundamentals. Bones lengthened, muscle built, the skin thickened into black pads where it was not coated in fur, and in the end the manacles held a pair of graceful, digitigrade paws by the ankles. She would never walk upon flat feet again. As he watched, he saw something else, too, squirming between her legs: a long, sinuous tail lashed back and forth just beyond the hem of her robe, a third cord of muscle to match her tentacles, though this lacked the savage spikes that they bore.

A choking sound drew his attention back to her head. His ears flattened; this would be the worst moment for her, the most frightening and raw. Darkness had spread everywhere he could see, passing beneath the edge of the mask, and even her once-flaxen hair grew black down its length as though it had been dipped neatly in ink. She shook her head back and forth violently, as if sheer vehemence could forestall the last stage of her transformation, and her flailing knocked her tiara clattering to the ground. Words would be beyond her at this stage, if she could even form the thoughts to make them; that delicate elven visage was even now being broken and reborn beneath the artifact's grasp. Jaws extended, teeth sharpened into fangs. He could not see it, but he could hear her distress at it, even muffled by the mask.

And then, instantly, the garbled groans ceased. Illyria's entire body stiffened, arched, tense as a taut bowstring. Her head tilted back, held itself still. It was the final moment, the final change, as her brain itself cast off the last shackles of her former race and took upon itself a form suited to what she had become. Her image blurred, flickered madly as though seen beneath raging and restless water. For one heartbeat, she seemed to vanish entirely, before reappearing precisely where she had been. Her body continued to stutter, appearing and reappearing in random directions within inches of where she lay, but as the seconds passed the convulsions grew shorter and the images stayed closer to her body. When she finally slumped into a still, quiet pile, the erratic displacement of her image had stopped entirely.

He did not immediately approach. He watched and waited as she lay there, drawing slow and ragged breaths. Her tentacles twitched where they had fallen from the altar, but they proved little livelier than the rest of her. By chance, her head slumped to the side, and the mask--its task completed--slipped effortlessly from her face and clattered to the ground.

Her own parents would not recognize her--nor anyone who had ever met her in her life. There was no trace of the elf remaining, not even in her eyes. Though he saw no color in the darkness, he already knew they would shine with the same amber that his did; they were half-open, looking at him, slit pupils widening and narrowing in turn as she tried to focus. They were a coeurl's eyes, set above a blunt, whiskered snout. He felt a passing moment of envy. She was more of a coeurl than he was. But it was only his father's blood that carried the magic, not his mother's, and the deep gods had precious little use for hybrids.

"Where... did the color go?" she whispered hoarsely. Even her voice was different, now, robbed of its lilting pitch and replaced with something richer and smokier. Her femininity had been tempered with feline power, though no less real for the change. He could not help but notice, now, how her robe had grown tight and ill-fitting in her change; while it suffered less than her gloves had, what was once a comfortably relaxed garment had become tight and pinched in places. The bust of the robe could hardly contain her breasts, now, and they strained the fabric despite having undergone only modest growth. The deep gods had given her a... good body.

His nares flared and he blinked his attention away from her chest to focus anew on her eyes. "It's dark," he answered, and a flicker of confusion crossed her face before she tilted her head to look at the extinguished candles ringing the room.

"The candles..."

"They went out. You're seeing in the dark. There is no light here."

She blinked, once, uncomprehending yet in the wake of the chaotic ritual. "No light? But..." Slowly, it began to dawn. She looked down at herself, at her unfamiliar body scarcely fitting into her old clothing, at the extras_that should not have been there. Haltingly, still unfamiliar with using them, she lifted her lower pair of arms and flexed her hands. It took her a moment to realize that despite having a pair of hands chained, she also had one free. She sucked in a sharp breath. "What did you _do?!"

He approached, cautiously, eyes on the coiled tentacles that yet dangled loosely from her shoulders. She would necessarily be exhausted, and any control over her new body would be limited and graceless, but she might yet lash out. "What I had to do," he said carefully. It was true, but there was something else to it, something more, that left him conflicted. There had been a potency, a thrill, in watching her change so thoroughly and so swiftly. It spoke of awesome power in the deepness below him, and had he not hated them and their ilk... no. He set his conflict aside; he could debate himself another time.

Her free limbs slumped against the stone and her eyes closed. "This... was your goal all along. To erase me." Her voice was quiet and distant, distracted. Her own thoughts would be alien to her for a while, and she already showed the signs. It was difficult to sustain indignation in the face of exhaustion and confusion.

"To remake you." He dared venture to the altar's side, but she did not lash out.

Her eyes reopened into slits, though, and she tilted her head up to look at his face. "Not even you believe that," she said.

He felt the impulse to look away and suppressed it. "No, I suppose not. But it's more complicated than..." He trailed off, then beat his wings in frustration. "I do what is expected of me, regardless of what I think about it."

She reached out with a free hand, fumbling along his side until she grasped at one of his wrists. Her grip was weak, but she took hold of him as strongly as she was able regardless. "Someone like you shouldn't be so... shackled. Not like this."

He couldn't help but laugh; the rough caw echoed off the stone walls. "Talk of shackles, coming from a priestess."

Her eyes slipped closed again, but she kept hold of his wrist. "Joyous service has a meaning behind it, a... a purpose. And it is mutual, that bond. We didn't follow her out of fear, or hatred. She wouldn't have allowed it. She wished to see us fulfilled, too." Before he had a chance to respond, she rattled the chains that still bound her to the altar. "Could you please remove these? They're starting to hurt."

With the subtle muscular growth in her limbs, the manacles had indeed grown tight around her wrists and ankles; the prior leeway between her skin and the iron had completely vanished, and the edges of the metal dug into her like a ring left on too long. He released her, and she sat up, stiff and groaning, rubbing at her wrists.

"You've ruined my clothes as well as my body, I see." She dangled her legs over the edge of the altar and plucked at her robe; it was mostly intact, save for a few tears at the seams, but the garment was so tight now that he could discern the contours of her body beneath it. "Wouldn't it have been better to take them off first?"

"I usually do." A part of him wished he had, now; the sight of her so tightly dressed was already arousing in him fresh desire regardless of his recent satiation. It was difficult to draw his eyes from her breasts, where the robe's bust left particularly little to the imagination. A tear in the center of the neckline had torn a few inches straight down along the line of her cleavage, tempting the eyes.

She caught him staring, and tilted her head. "But you didn't do it with me. Why not? You obviously... like... this." She looked down at herself, frowned, and pulled at her clothing again. She didn't sound particularly upset at his attention--she was clearly more concerned by her change.

"I suppose I thought you deserved some dignity."

She looked up again. "That's oddly sentimental, for someone willing to do this in the first place. You didn't even know my name a few hours ago."

Volosasz seated himself atop the altar next to her and draped his hands, all four of them, into his lap. "Most of them, they scream and kick and claw at me, the whole way through, from the time I take hold of them to the time the ritual's finished. You didn't. I suppose I wanted to..." He shrugged. "Reward you, or thank you. I didn't think deeply about it."

"You could have not gone through with this. Left me alone, let me go."

He shook his head. "It wasn't--"

She cut him off. "You enjoyed it." He blinked, taken aback by her sudden display of vehemence; in the gap, she pushed herself off the altar. Her legs were yet weak, but with one hand on the stone surface she stepped to face him. "You raped me, and you liked it. I could feel it." She leaned in close, planted a hand on his hip, took two of his wrists in her other hands. "You were excited. You wanted_to do it." Her hands tightened around his wrists, and she looked away abruptly as her intensity faltered. "And I... ought to hate that you did it. I ought to hate _you for doing it. I--I did, I think. Now I'm not even sure. It's like someone else's memory, and it was only just a moment ago."

He wrapped his hands around her wrists in turn. "It's complicated. Like I said."

She nodded, slowly. "I keep... reaching for the anger, as if I know I'm supposed to find it there. But it's not. It's just not there. I tell myself I should feel... miserably upset that you did this, but I'm not. I'm not even sure that I'm upset about this body. I keep trying to hold onto that indignation, that first sense I felt when I came to, but even now it's just... water through the fingers." She shook her head and laughed bitterly. "A fine change you've wrought, when you rob me even of my ability to protest it."

"It's better for you, in the long run, not to be resentful about this forever."

"I suppose so. And better for you, not coincidentally." She squeezed his wrists and then pulled herself away, stumbling on uncertain legs. "One fewer vengeful heart seeking retribution years down the line." She frowned down at herself. "How do you keep your balance like this?"

He gestured toward her rear. "The tail helps." He brought his own around to drape across his lap in demonstration.

"I suppose I'll have to get used to it. There's too much here. There's too much of me. I can barely keep this all straight."

"You'll learn."

"I'd better, or else I might grow a vengeful heart anyway." She drew in a slow breath, and exhaled sharply. "What happens now? Is this it? Is that all you wanted, to rub out an elven priestess from the world?"

He shook his head and took to his feet again. "No. I'll hand you over to some priests from down below. My contacts, I suppose you'd call them. It'll be a little while before you head down, so you'll have time to get used to your body."

"Priests? What are they going to want with me?" Some measure of trepidation had returned to her voice. She must have thought he was simply going to let her run free.

"I don't know, to be honest. They don't tell me. Maybe they just let you go down there, maybe they doll you up like a priestess of the deep dark, maybe they put you to work making more coeurls."

Illyria frowned. "Making more--?" When she grasped the implications of his words, one of her hands drifted unconsciously to her stomach. "I think not!"

He laughed again. "Think all you want. I don't know what they want from you; I was just making guesses. But whatever it is, I doubt you'll have much of a choice down there. But maybe I'm wrong about that, too. They always did seem to honor pure-blooded coeurls more than half-breeds like me. My father certainly seemed like he had the run of the place, and I scarcely ever saw anyone tell him otherwise."

"I certainly hope so. But I'm not eager to meet them, not knowing what's coming."

"I don't blame you, but there's nothing to be done about it."

"I could run." She offered the alternative with a hint of pride in her voice, as if she perhaps believed her new body would give her some advantage in the flight. Certainly she was now stronger than she was before, and faster besides, and equipped with fearsome natural weapons. She had some cause for pride, if yet misplaced.

Volosasz was unfazed. "You're as uncoordinated as a kitten right now. Assuming you did stumble your way out of the cave and through the woods, I'd find you within an hour, if it took that long. And, I'm sorry to say, you're not going to find the sunlight as pleasant as it used to be. It won't kill you, but spend a few hours on the surface in the middle of the day and you'll find yourself wishing for the cave again. I'm somewhat used to it, but I think you would find it especially unpleasant."

She frowned and turned aside, arms folding. "Yes, fine, I take your meaning. It's not as if I have anywhere to go, looking like... this. Do you have fresh clothing, at least?"

"I've got some pants in the other room. As you can see, I don't wear anything over my wings, so if you want to borrow my clothes..." He shrugged expansively, passed his eyes over her chest. "I wouldn't complain."

"I'm sure you wouldn't." She hesitated, then sighed. "I ought to be offended by that... that suggestiveness, but I'm not. One more thing that I looked for and couldn't find."

His beak gaped in a grin, the first honest one he'd felt in hours. "Taking a liking to me already."

She tossed her head and looked away from him. "Don't overreach. You're still a monster." She made to walk away and exit the room, but lost her balance almost immediately; he came up behind her and steadied her with his hands on her sides and arms.

"A monster you're still in need of, for a while yet. You need sleep, and then food. We'll handle clothing afterward. I'm sure we can find something that suits you." She sighed again, annoyed at her continued dependency, but she didn't protest as he led her out of the altar room, supporting her unsteady legs.

She remained quiet as he led her back to his bed, still damp from their encounter there; he realized, as he lowered her onto it, that she was half asleep already, the stress and exhaustion of the kidnapping and ritual finally catching up to her. She had no more protest within her as he laid her out, still dressed, and draped a blanket over her, but as he stood and turned to leave he felt a pull against his ankle. He looked down to find one of her tentacles wound loosely around him.

"You'll still be here when I wake?" For a fleeting moment, he heard the elf again, afraid of being left alone.

"I'll be here."

"Good..." The grip around his ankle slackened, and he stepped free of the muscular cord. She was fast asleep by the time he took the tunnel back into the altar room.

Inside, he plucked her discarded tiara and the coeurl mask from the floor, and held them aloft before him. A sort of symbolism, he supposed. One life traded for another. Did the deep god whom he invoked see it in the same way? They were fond of signs and symbols, weren't they? If only he saw them as more than a savage taskmaster--but in the deep darkness, love did not come easily, and chains, whether metal or mental, were the only reality anyone knew.

He placed the mask upon the altar, and returned to the main chamber carrying the gem-studded tiara. He'd keep it as a reminder, he thought. She'd be with him for a few days, but he had no delusions of ever encountering her again after he turned her over to the priests below. He'd never met any of the other priestesses whom he'd turned, nor knew of their fates in any but the vaguest terms: alive, or so he was told, though in what capacity it was not deemed fit for him to know. This woman, though, Illyria--he'd hold onto this part of her. It was one thing they couldn't take from him.

But before then, there was still much work to be done.