FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

[b][u][center]The Demon-Touched

Chapter 3: Holy Humiliation

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

Three days passed, and during that time, Bonolo spent every evening doing everything that she could to figure out how to make her new demon powers work. The power rested in her chest and along her feathers, and it was through the use of her feathers that she could channel the power. She’d found that out during the encounter with the imp whose wings she had broken, but that was hardly the only use, she’d discovered.

It turned out that her power was focused around air and what it could do. What she’d done to the imp was blow dryness into his wings, hot air that had aged them in seconds, with the feather being the focus and her breath being the ‘casting’ of her will onto the subject. As soon as she’d figured out that it was air that she controlled with her power, she’d taken to creating bubbles of thinner air around her head once they reached the lowlands, giving her a chance to breathe and speak normally. It was an immense source of relief, and it was something that made her life that much easier.

Surprisingly, her understanding of her power was something that shocked the stranger that served as her partner. Even after she explained what she’d done, he still stared at her in surprise, almost as if he didn’t understand. She tried to explain again, but he didn’t let her, instead pulling her further down the road. With her soul still loose, she didn’t dare slow down, and the thin-air bubble around her head required a certain amount of focus to maintain. Silence became the rule during the day, and during the night, she had the distinct feeling that she wasn’t allowed to talk about demon magic.

If the three days were difficult, the nights were all but impossible. Every time that she closed her eyes to fall asleep, the voice of the demon was waiting for her. The bird was always there, always waiting in the dark. It would reach out for her, and she felt his talons through her chest more than once, trying to pull at what remained of the anchor-point of her soul. She would wake, screaming and howling, and the stranger would only stare at her with his loosened soul. No comfort, no reassuring words, only the reminder that this was going to keep happening until more days had passed.

On the morning of the third day, when they had been traveling for an hour and she was just pulling out another feather from beneath her tunic to refresh the thin air around her head, her partner pulled her up short. Blinking, she turned to look up at him, and the veiled man pointed ahead.

“Behold. Arish.”

Arish must have been the name of the town, because that was the only thing laying ahead of them. It was bigger than her village, nearly three times the size, and a stone wall surrounded it on all sides. They could see all of it from where they stood on top of the foothills that rolled the land on the way down from the mountains, and her eyes flicked from place to place. So did the eyes of her soul, and even after three days, the disjointed way of looking at things still gave her a headache.

However, it no longer confused her. She was able to understand what she was seeing, and she knew where it was coming from. She just didn’t like it. The town had four different squares filled with people and carts and cloths of many colors. Here and there, tall houses could be seen, so large that they would have dwarfed the greatest of the huts of her people.

Standing in the center of town, however, was a large spire of a building, one that loomed over the rest of the town. It was topped with four golden triangles, each one shining in the sunlight that beamed down on the town, and the light itself was cast around the town, shining on the streets as the triangles turned at the top of the spire. The building itself had to be over a hundred feet tall, and it utterly dominated the rest of the town.

“What is that?” she asked, pointing at it.

“That is the church.”

“That…that’s a church?”

“Yes. And the light is their defense. The only demons allowed in town are the ones summoned by the church, and only then because they’re protected against the light,” he said, kneeing his camel. “Come along.”

“What will happen to us?”

“It will hurt.”

“…How badly?”

“Have you ever burned yourself in a fire?”

“Yes?”

“Think of that, but on every exposed piece of flesh.”

Bonolo winced. Ever since her encounter with the demon, she’d been…underdressed, she supposed, was the polite word for it. Her lower half was still covered by something that might have been called a skirt, if one forgave the various rips and tears that ran through it. Her upper half, however, had been covered by little more than a scarf. Her feathers covered her chest enough to protect her modesty, but the idea of being touched by the light and burned across her entire upper body did not sit well with her.

“Do you have…more clothes?” she asked after a moment’s hesitation.

“No.”

“Nothing?”

“Just this.”

“Can I –”

“No. Keep your eyes open and you won’t have to worry about it.”

She wasn’t entirely worried about the light. The thought of walking naked through a settlement that was filled with people that she didn’t know also sat ill with her, true. She’d never exposed herself like that before, not in her village, not for anyone. Even with the feathers that covered the worst of her half-nudity, she still felt uncomfortable when the stranger looked at her for any longer than a few seconds, and it would only be worse once they reached the town proper.

“You’re not giving me a choice, are you?”

“No.”

Bonolo gritted her teeth, but she didn’t get a chance to say anything else. The stranger was already on the move, and she had the choice of either staying where she was and getting left behind, or following behind him and suffering through the humiliation of what was waiting in Arish. Hoping that she was making the right choice, she fell in behind him, following him down the road.

When they arrived, the guards immediately stiffened at the gates. One man, paler than even the most isolated and hermit-like of her village, lowered his spear and pointed it at them, but the stranger on his camel held out his hand.

“Church-owned,” he said.

“…Papers?” the spear-wielding guard asked.

The stranger nodded, hopping down from the camel. As he handed her the reins, he reached into his wraps and pulled out a double-tied length of parchment. He handed it over, and the guard passed it to his colleague. The leather binding around the parchment came loose, and they unrolled it to read the contents.

[i]Church-owned?[/i]

She didn’t know what that was supposed to mean, but the idea of being owned by anyone just felt wrong. She didn’t know what was going on, but there was nothing good about it, and she needed an explanation – soon.

The second guard nodded, rolling it up before passing it back to the stranger. Patting the spear-wielder on the arm, the two men let out a small but noticeable sigh of relief.

“Sorry. Can’t be too careful these days. The imp population is growing, you know, and most of ‘em aren’t under church control anymore.”

“Then it’s a good thing that I am not an imp, isn’t it?”

“Uh, well, yes, sir. Sorry, sir. You, uh, you two can pass through.”

Bonolo handed the reigns back to the stranger, keeping her eyes straight ahead to avoid seeing if the guards were staring at her chest or the rest of her exposed body. She already knew that she was darker than either of them, and that would have been enough to get their attention, but the feathers were the main thing. She kept staring straight ahead, her cheeks burning from being so close to naked.

Still, they were inside. As they walked past the gates and the great wooden barrier closed behind them, she glanced up at the stranger.

“Church-owned?” she whispered.

“Those that were partially turned by demons, but are bound by the church. Owned by them, leashed by them.”

“And…are you?”

“No. Never have been, never will be.”

“Is it…bad?”

“Very.”

She should have guessed, considering that he’d said that the church was behind the demon that had been summoned at her town. If they were cruel enough to summon demons to do their dirty work, then they would be horrifying as masters. She wondered what they would do when they found the high priest.

Bonolo thought back to the village, remembering the dead bodies, her dead father. She remembered how the demon had chuckled at her helplessness, and how she would have died were it not for blind luck. Even now, her soul –

The eyes of the ghostly thing turned without her noticing, and for a moment she was staring backwards at the gate. She could just make out one of the guards on the walls looking after her, grinning and gesturing at her to one of his fellows. The way that he wobbled his hands like breasts made it clear what they were talking about.

“Ugh…”

She rubbed her forehead, doing what she could to pull the ‘gaze’ of her soul to point ahead of her again. She didn’t have the strength to deal with it bobbing around all the time.

Instead, she focused on that fear, and the anger that followed. She focused on how it felt to know that her life had been ripped from her, and how it would have been much worse if the stranger hadn’t shown up. The church had been willing to see the entire population of warriors and watchmen stripped from the village, to have everyone dead for the sake of some…some bargain that someone up here wanted to make. That was worth being angry about.

For that matter, it was worth killing for.

They walked through Arish towards the church, and whether intentionally or not, the stranger continued to keep them to a path that kept the light off their backs. Every so often, the trails of light would swing around and reflect off a nearby window, but while that hurt, it didn’t give the burning sensation that he had described. So far, it wasn’t as bad as it could be, and she was thankful for that.

Her fear about being stared at for being naked turned out to be only occasionally worth having. Most of Arish ended up catching a glimpse of her feathers and immediately looking somewhere else. It took her seeing four different people do it to realize that they were as afraid of her as could be, and that they couldn’t bring themselves to look at her.

[i]Are…are we that terrifying?[/i]

Yes, they were. With what she could do with the air and her magic, and what the stranger could do with that fire, there was definite danger there. Worse, the people around them didn’t know what she and he could do. All they knew was that they were Demon-Touched, and that meant that they were no longer ‘people.’

She wasn’t sure if that was better than being stared at or not.

Eventually, after winding and weaving through one street after another, they reached the church. It loomed taller than any other building in the town, and to get to the front door, one had to ascend quite a few steps. Very, very well-lit steps, as a matter of fact.

“Oh no,” she whispered.

“Brace yourself. This is going to hurt.”

“I hate you. I hate you so much. I hate you so, so – MMMMMPH!”

If it wasn’t for the death-grip that she had on the stranger’s leg, she would have fallen, and if she’d fallen, she honestly wasn’t sure if she would have been able to get back up. As it stood, everything from her waist up and from her knees down felt like it had been dropped into a fire. No, worse, because the fire just would have been outside. This made it feel like her blood had been set alight, and each breath ravaged her. The magic around her head, the thin air that had allowed her to talk normally, felt like it had turned into a small sun around her face.

Why didn’t she scream? Because she didn’t have the air for it. It had been punched out of her by the raw wave of pain that had started it all.

She hung off the stranger’s leg, hissing through her clenched teeth as he rode his horse up to the front door of the church. Every step was nothing less than agony, the light burning right down to her bones, her blood feeling like it was burning its way out of her body. Bonolo wanted to scream, but the air didn’t come to her. There was no air for this. There was nothing but pain in the light of the church.

One step, another, and another, and she didn’t understand how she wasn’t leaving behind charred footprints. Every new step felt like she was walking through charcoal, over it, into it. She felt like she was buried in it.

By the time they reached the shaded doors, she felt ready to die. The stranger dismounted, and he dragged her into the relative comfort of the arched doorway as she caught her breath.

“You’ll live,” he said.

“Why…why…”

“Why does it hurt, or why did I make you do that?”

“S-second…”

“Because you needed to know.”

“I didn’t…I didn’t…”

“You did. Better it happen here where you can recover than in a fight.”

She wanted to hit him, but she remembered what happened the last time that she’d tried that. Instead, she clenched her fists at her side as he knocked on the door.

“It didn’t do anything to you. Not physically. It just hurts.”

There was no lie there, as far as she could tell. Her body hurt, yes, but there were no marks, no burns along her arms or legs where the light had touched her. It had only hurt. That didn’t make it go away, but at least she knew that it wasn’t something that had actually crippled her.

The door finally opened, and a young man in a white and blue robe opened the door. He looked at the stranger, then at her, then held out his hand.

“Demon-Touched. Papers?”

The stranger offered the same scroll that he had offered the guards, and the priest – at least, she assumed he was a priest – took it. They stood there, just barely out of the burning light, for nearly a minute before the priest passed it back.

“What brings you to Arish?” he asked.

“An assignment from further on. Something that was done in the south.”

“And what was that?”

“I must speak to your high priest.”

“I could demand to know,” the priest said.

“You could, but then you’d be the one in trouble, not me. Do you want to assume the responsibility for failure?”

“…I’ll take you to the high priest.”

They were allowed in. Unlike the flat interiors that she was used to in the buildings back home, the church seemed to take great delight in swooping up and around the center of the room. Spiraling walkways ran up along the inside of the spiral, ramps that ran up to different platforms and all the way up to other floors. Even the ground rolled, rising and falling in different places, creating different spaces for people to stand or sit.

It felt like someone had tried to recreate the rolling hills at the base of the mountain here, and it made her dizzy to look at it. They made it so that it would be impossible to get anywhere quickly in the church, and unless that was the intention, she wondered why people would bother to design something like this.

At least the light wasn’t burning inside. There was only the sunlight streaming through different windows.

“You may come with me, but the female stays here,” the priest said.

“What?” Bonolo blinked. “I didn’t –”

“She will stay,” the stranger said.

She slowly looked up at him, her eyes narrowing. He didn’t respond. Instead, he gestured for the priest to lead, and they started making their way towards the ramp. When she tried to follow, he glared over his shoulder, pointing for her to stay where she was. Any protest was silenced by the glare, and by the words of his ghostly form leaning back.

[i]You will have your revenge. For now, stay quiet, and out of trouble. Do not cause a disturbance.[/i]

She didn’t know how to talk back in that silent way, so she had little choice but to stand there. Crossing her arms, she let out a slow sigh, leaning her head back against the wall and staring up at the ceiling.

[i]He better not take this from me. I deserve the satisfaction just as much as he does…I deserve…I deserve this…[/i]

Clenching her hands into fists, she imagined what she’d do when she got her hands on the local high priest. If he was the one responsible – and she’d give him the chance to clear himself, but if he was – then she was going to…she was going to…well, she was going to do something. All the magic that she had was more than good enough to hurt someone, these days, and she planned on making sure that he hurt a [i]lot[/i] with everything that she had been forced to go through.

She imagined taking away his ear, forcing him to gasp for breath. She imagined blowing the heat of the desert through him, burning away the moisture in his body the way that she had dried out and rattled the imp. She fantasized about leaving him flooded with air, too much in his lungs, making them pop.

That was a nice one. Very satisfying, indeed, to imagine his chest exploding on the inside.

“My, my, what do we have here?”

Bonolo blinked, her head drawn out of her fantasies of revenge. Standing in front of her, looming almost a head taller than her, was another priest. While the young one had been robed in white and blue, this one’s robes were almost entirely blue, and he wore an amulet of the sun over his chest. He looked down at her, his eyes flicking down to her breasts, and then to her skirt, before looking back at your face.

“I’ve not seen you before. Are you newly owned?”

“I…I came here with another.”

“The one that’s been taken upstairs?”

She nodded.

“Ah, that explains much. Well, you need to be catalogued for the church records, then.”

“What do you mean?”

“Come with me. A brief examination, and I’ll issue you the papers that you’ll need for church business.”

He gestured for her to follow. Whatever protests that she had died on her lips. The stranger had said to keep from causing a stir, from causing trouble, and that meant going along with this for now. She followed, trying not to feel too self-conscious, and more, trying not to show too much ignorance.

They followed the edge of the room, eventually finding a door that led into a side hallway. A number of rooms were left behind, each of them closed, until they took a turn to the right. The older man opened a door to a stone-floored room, one with two desks and a circle in the center.

“Stand there,” he said, and she did. “And take off your skirt.”

“What? You – no!”

“You will, Demon-Touched,” he said. “This is a full exam. That means that I have to see everything. For the records, you understand.”

“…”

“If you will not submit, I will call the guards.”

Which would be making a scene. She had to go along with it, at least for now. Bonolo nodded, stripping off her boots, and then her skirt. The feeling of standing naked in front of someone was made all the worse from the way that the priest stared at her, his eyes obviously doing more than just professional observations. His stare went right to her sex, and she shivered as it felt like he was molesting her right then and there.

“We haven’t had a Demon-Touched of your color before,” he said, laying out several rolls of parchment. “Is your skin naturally this dark, or was it paler before the touch of a demon?”

“It was always like this.”

“This dark? This very dark?”

“It was.”

“Spread your legs, Demon-Touched.”

Biting her lips, she did as she was told. Chills ran down her arms as the priest approached, his hand brushing between her legs and thrusting up against her sex. He spread her lips down there, leaning down and looking up.

“My my. You’re dark on the outside, but still a lovely shade inside. Is that the same?”

“Nnnngh…I think so…I haven’t looked…”

“Well, perhaps we should feel…”

Her eyes widened as his finger slipped inside. Unwilling pleasure followed, and she gritted her teeth as she held her hands at her side. The stranger’s words kept echoing in her head, reminding her not to cause a scene, not to cause trouble, but this…this wasn’t fair. This wasn’t right.

“Well, you certainly respond as a woman should, but best be sure that it’s as a woman should, and not as a demon makes you.”

Another finger slid inside, and she whimpered, pushed up on her tiptoes as the priest wiggled his digits deeper. They were hard, firm, and uncomfortable to put it mildly, but they were pressing against parts of her that sent most-unwilling pleasure through her body. His hand was cupped to bump her little button every time that he clapped his hand against her sex, and she started to get wet down there.

“Ah, yes, that’s what we’re looking for. If you’re tainted, we can tell from this. A simple little sample. Well…perhaps a little more…”

She could see the erection through his robes, and Bonolo wanted nothing more than to kick him in the balls. It got even worse as he reached up with his other hand, running his fingers along her feathered breasts.

“It’s clear that the demon struck you here…has it increased your sensitivity?”

“What…what does that matter?”

“Now, now, Demon-Touched. Tell me what it did.”

“Nnngh…it tried…tried to kill me.”

“I meant about your breasts. What did it do to your breasts?”

With every passing second, the priest was less of a strange old man and more of a threat. He groped her breast, even as he started fingering her harder, almost painfully hard. A dark pleasure came out of it, yes, but it was wrong, wrong to feel that from someone like this.

Someone like this…someone that had probably been part of the destruction and killing at her village.

The sudden rage gave her the strength to pull back. She stepped away from him, pushing him back with a stiff shove to the chest. He stumbled away, giving her space to pull at one of her feathers.

“What are you doing? I didn’t say you could – ulk!”

She breathed over the feather, not out, but in. As she pulled the air over the feather, the priest grabbed at his throat. He coughed, sputtering, and he stumbled forward. He wheezed, trying to breathe, but all she had to do was breathe in again, and his air was stolen from him. The old man couldn’t even speak. Not one word passed his lips, even as they moved in a desperate attempt to say something. To plead for his life, to accuse her of something? She didn’t know, and she didn’t care.

[i]No more. No more. No [b]more![/i][/b]

With all that fear and anger swirling through her, it was only a matter of time before she took it further than she meant. She breathed in one last time, and the priest collapsed. It took her a full minute to realize that she’d just killed him.

Bonolo’s eyes widened, and she dropped the feather. Stumbling backwards until she hit the wall, she stared without comprehension at the body. It had been one thing to kill the imp, but to kill a person, even someone this horrible…

[i]Why…why was that so easy?[/i]

There was only one answer. She had to run, run and find the stranger. Find him and get out of here fast. She left the room, running down the hall, and burst back into the main chamber. There, coming down the steps, was the stranger. He had someone else in hand, someone in a blue robe. She barely noticed, running up the ramp to him.

“I made a mistake. We have to –”

“We’re leaving. And we have our target.”

“…What?”

The stranger shook the blue-robed man. He looked about thirty years old, no more, and had a soft brown beard that ran halfway down his chest. Of all the figures that she expected to be responsible for what had happened, this innocent-looking man was far from the one she would have imagined.

“Meet the high priest. He’s coming with us. Willingly. Right?”

“R-right.”

“Come on. Let’s go. You can tell me what happened on the way.”

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

Summary: Bonolo is brought to the town of Arish, and gets her first experience with the church, as well as with the difficulties of being around other people again.

Tags: M/F, fingering, groping, vaginal fingering, human, hybrid, bird, fantasy, semi-racism, magic, demon, corruption, death, pain, series, patreon,