A/N – Warning: this chapter contains depictions of slavery

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Aiasthlyn

˚

I can not recall the last time I have had this much fun. 
Unadulterated and indisposed fun.

I am sure I have entertained some measure of it recently, but as a ruler, one was never truly without their crown. There was always another faithfully watching.

There is no one watching now. No one of substance that is, and I… I have had my fun.

“Give it up, elf!” A voice above yells above the brewing storm. “There is nowhere left to run!”

Nowhere left to run? I laugh, letting the sound caress the sharpened ears of the fools surrounding me. How very bold of them to assume that I am not exactly where I want to be.

“Laugh while you can!” The vampire sneers with a maddened laugh of his own. “You will pay for this! Do you hear me, elf?!? You will pay for all of this!”

Tilting my head back, I close my eyes and pay my attention skyward as the first odd droplets fall, dampening the winds that travel through them. Those droplets quicken as the world begins to weep, and then sob, until a monstrous downpour erupts around us.

I enjoy the shower, even as it washes away the blood coating my skin, robbing me of the proof of my endeavours to cleanse this world of its vapid infestation. The weeping seems to be for me, because nature seems to sense that here is where those efforts pause, and I am sorry to disappoint it so, but I have already decided that this is where I will let them best me.

I part my eyes and let my gaze fall upon the vampire who rages on behalf of his peers, Astaroth. 

Astaroth is the latest tasked with my capture, and the only vampire I have let live long enough to know their name. I let him live because, unlike his predecessors, Astaroth is not vying for my life, but my capture. That was far more amenable to my plans, but unfortunately for Astaroth, I could not let my capture appear to be an easy one, hence the loss to his numbers and his bubbling rage. 

It makes him uglier than he already is, twisting his foul features into a grotesque expression of jagged fangs and a brutalised nose. Like a gargoygle given life, he glares down at me from his perch above with red irises so incensed that they burn within his skull. 

He looks as if he means to prove his own words, but his grip on his blade is too stiff, and there is no overlooking how his gaze skitters over me with fright. Despite his words, he is not sure that he can make me pay for the comrades I have taken from him. In fact, he already presumes that he is destined to join the bodies piled beneath my blood-soaked soles.

He just might. I am still deciding his fate, but the majority of those who remain are blessed by Ythene’s Plan to live another day. For as much as I would love to, I can not overindulge.

It has been an eventful handful of fins in which every vampire that has crossed my path has lost their life by my brutal hand. Word spread quickly after that of the ‘wild elf’ killing vampires, and soon, a bounty for my head, dead or alive, was set.

I did not favour being thought of as ‘wild’ by a species so unbecoming, but the best disguises were ones based on others’ already crafted perceptions. So I shucked my shoes and fineries, and played my part while I culled their numbers without remorse or restraint, and it was not long before they were hunting me in their droves.

Prey chasing after their predator… yes, it was fun, but fun never lasted in my life.

Parting my gaze from Astaroth’s seething form, I drag it over the vampires under his command that line every inch of the crater I stand sentry within. They make for a sea of bodies meant to put an end to the anarchy I have stirred, but there is not a single face amongst them that seems confident that they shall do so.

I straighten myself, letting my heavy shoulders roll back, and the simple movement triggers a fearful shudder to echo through them all. 

They are still scared and only stay where they are because Astaroth demands it and because I appear exhausted. Me, who allows my chest to heave and my Sael to hang from limp fingers. They have seen me slay each of the bodies I now stand on, but I, too, must eventually get exhausted, yes? I must have limits— I can see the pondering in their eyes, that meagre hope that they must cling to because they are the last line of their defence.

“This ends here!” Astaroth declares, and his vampires immediately ready their stances.

“Well then,” I whisper as I raise the shining beauty joined with my soul and point it directly at him, “…end it.”

Sneers, cursing, and then all call to action that they all obey— one last valiant attack.

Vampires join the torrential downpour and rain down from the skies, a seemingly never-ending torrent of bodies fixed on assuring my demise. Thunder breaks as I raise my Sael and let it fly.

The ones I kill are the ones I know are not veering for the shackles their fallen comrades failed to clasp onto me. I leave those to carry out their mission and allow myself to be distracted by the rest. 

My Sael sails through the air, dancing with me as I slice open bared throats. Blood gushes, but the rain washes it away as the final threads of those necks give, freeing the head from the body. They topple, three at a time, and join the pile underfoot.

But not too much— not so quickly, I remind myself as I slow myself so that I might suffer the abuse of their sharpened nails that dig into skin and pull from all directions. I let myself slide amongst the water and blood, let myself misstep as a warrior exhausted and at the end of their life force might.

I become sluggish and make enough mistakes that they just manage to slip the first manacle around my wrist and snap it shut. A thrum of magic throbs within it, meant to weaken me, no doubt, but it is no greater a wound than a gnat taking a bite.

I do not squash their hopes, though, feigning instead as if it ails me as I sink to one knee and let my Sael slide from my grasp. It falls heavily before it answers the silent call of my magic and cloaks itself to my core, where none of the prying hands that dive for it may find it.

Soon, another manacle snaps around my right wrist, releasing another thrum of magic that washes through the wet air the same way their electric burst of hope does as they grab onto the links of the attached chains and pull.

They pull as best as they can, adding all their strength from either side to detain me, shouting and groaning into the night sky as they do. Amongst it all, I can hear Astaroth’s voice yelling for them to keep pulling, and for others to get my ankles.

I play the fighter, tugging enough to make them strain to keep my arms spread apart, but ultimately give in. They shackle my ankles too, bring me down to my knees, and they do not let the victory slide from their grasp as what is left of their numbers pile atop every inch of my person to force me down and keep me there.

My face is pressed against the icy skin of the lifeless, but I do not let myself think about it or react. I hold my breath and keep it beneath the stifling weight of their bodies stacked atop me and their hands on every inch of my person— invasive, unrelenting hands that twist my flesh, pull at it, and attempt to break the bones beneath as they cling to me. 

Thunder booms overhead, and what a sad song nature’s protest is, but I alone hear it as the vampires celebrate their ‘victory’.

There are gasps of disbelief, murmurs of fright and demands to find my sword. They think it’s slipped between the slain bodies, but they do not know that it is embedded within my skin, behind the same shield that hides my true form from them. I could die, and they still would not find it.

“Get him up!” Astaroth’s familiar voice roars as he steps through the puddling mix of blood and water that half of my face is forced into.

Breath still held, I keep my eyes closed until I am lifted and the steady rainfall rids me of the thick mixture. When I open my eyes, Astaroth stands closer than he has ever let himself be. He stares down at me with large, red eyes while his entire body heaves with exhaustion 

He thinks he’s done it. He can not believe that he has, but in his eyes, beyond the disbelief, there’s the satisfaction, the already building thoughts of his reward, and pride. So much sickly pride that soon washes that disbelief away and inflates his pride instead, slotting it back into the place I had torn it from.

“I told you,” he whispers as he steps closer, his eyes gleaming, “this ends here.”

I do not reply, and he seems to take that as further proof of my subduction.

Stooping down further, he brings himself to my height so that he can look me straight in my eyes as I do him.

“I lost more than half of my coven because of you!” He whispers, quiet at first and then louder. “Half of my fucking coven!”

Spittle flies from his lips, and it is his luck that it does not assail my skin, or this pretence in its entirety would fall away.

“You’re lucky it is not up to me what happens,” he chuckles while he shakes his head. “So lucky,” he glares at me, hatred bubbling until he lets himself blink, “but maybe not… maybe not, because what they’ve got planned for you is worse.”

They.

“Do you know what happens now?” He asks, turning his voice purposefully quiet and well-kept as he shuffles closer. “What they will do to you for this?!” 

I simply blink at him.

If he believes that my capture allots me fear, then he is sorely mistaken.
I can feign weakness and such for this little game, but all the suns in the universe would meet their end before I allowed them to think that they captured my spirit.

Left without a response, Astaroth’s frown returns to its previous space as he sneers at me, exposing his uneven fangs as if he means to use them. He’s wiser than that, it seems, because he retracts them and himself with another curse.

The rain pours between and around us while his vampires await his next command. He seems to ponder what that should be while he takes a deep shuddering breath, and how interesting that he soothes himself in such a mundane way that he has no real need for.

“Do not lower your guard for an instant,” he eventually grumbles to the remnants of his coven while his unblinking eyes remain fixed on me. “Control his every step and watch his every breath until we reach the cage.”

A cage? 

I almost free myself at the suggestion of such a thing.
A cage— as if I am an animal, as if I might be as low as one of them.

My lip peels back, rising with indignation.

“Don’t like that, hm?” Astaroth guesses before his lips lift to form a thrilled grin. “Wait until you reach the trainers.”

My insides tighten, but I do not allow an external reaction to those words to show as faultfully as I did the last. I arm myself with my glamour and do not let it waver.

I will not be harmed by Astaroth or his ‘trainers’. I will only allow them to cage me as long as I need to obtain information helpful to my charge, at which point, I would inflict on them ten times the cruelties I inflicted upon their peers, starting with Astaroth.

What is left of Astaroth’s coven are sure to heed his warning as I am hoisted to my feet and dragged towards the cage. They measure every step I take by their direction, and react to each of my breaths, never once loosening their invasive touch on my body.

I spot the cage long before I near it. Its sleek metal bars shine under the moonlight, dripping with water where the rain does not crash through its open bars. 

My body stills, forcing them all to do this same, and this time it is no pretence. 

The vampires all hold their breath.

No matter what my mind says, my body and spirit alike revolt against the notion of this, of letting myself be caged. It is disgusting and barbaric, and I do not want it.

“Do not let him go!” Astaroth yells, already preparing for the worst, while I stare unflinchingly at the cage.

I do not want to be caged… but I do not have a choice.

Unfortunately, like my title and my crown, no part of this is up to me. I have a charge, and this is the way it will be fulfilled.

The vampires force me forward, and I let them.

They are extra careful with me the closer I am hauled to the cage’s open entrance, but I control myself and my magic, and when we reach the thick bars, I let myself be forced inside. The door is quick to slam behind me, and then lock with its own thunderous click that is louder than the ones above.

I straighten inside, twisting, but there is nowhere to go. The cage is large enough to fit me without forcing me to strain my neck, but it is not large enough to allow much movement, and this too pulses with magic. 

As they step back, the vampires free their held breaths, relaxing for the first time since they had surrounded me in that pit, but while theirs is freed, I find myself holding onto mine.

It is not the cage, for as suffocating as it is, I know I can escape it. The magic within might be greater than the magic with the shackles at my wrists and ankles, but it is not enough to restrain me— that is not what gives me pause.

It is how they all suddenly look at me that brings a certain stillness upon me.

A horde of them, with their dead eyes that fill with life, all staring at me from every angle of this open cage. Not with hatred. That has subsided for the time being, placed aside to make room for this… For this look, which I have witnessed too many times in this realm already, for me not to notice it.

Lust.

It leaves my skin cold, and it has nothing to do with nature’s cries, but the disgust and apprehension that roil within my stomach. 

“Long journey ahead, elf,” Astaroth muses quietly while his eyes rove over my body, “…long journey ahead.”

I strengthen my glamour and mask the shudder that quietly passes through me.

˚

The journey is just as long as it was promised to be, but it passes without any of Astaroth’s suggested hardships.

I could not recall the face of the one who tried to touch me. I only remembered the daring fingers reaching for me, and the unwavering understanding that I needed to make an example of it, here and now.

Those fingertips had barely breached the inner walls of the cage before they were locked in my grasp, becoming the point from which I tore the limb from the owner’s body. While the blood sprayed wildly about, I slung the limb around my neck as one might an adornment and seated myself within the centre of the cage.

None had been brave enough to retaliate, and none since has dared to try again.

In fact, not even the cage was to be touched anymore. They slid two poles through the bottom bars and used the ends of them to hoist the cage and me into the air. Now, my transport was without the risk of touching me and incuring my wrath. 

As the ‘wild elf’, I kept the limb around my neck despite the stink, a reminder should any suffer a faulty memory.

I count three fins before a tarp of some sort is placed over the cage, and not for espionage, or they would have done so from the start. It seems an attempt to filter my senses, which is foolish and useless. 

I might not be able to see where I am being taken, but my magic substitutes for the impalement in spades. It leaves a littering of my mark, so I might be able to retrace my steps should I need to, and it leads the way, highlighting to me our destination long before we reach it.

Their presence is distinct in the way no other lifeform on this planet is, and perhaps, that is because they are not living, but it is indistinguishable.

If they possess a core to connect to, then it is cold and often silent, but from time to time, it sparks imperceptibly in the oddest of circumstances—like the shared reactions they subconsciously exhibit.

This is how I know when we are nearing the destination, because I sense them through my magic— the way those dormant cores stir with anticipation and fear.

˚

When the tarp is removed, the structure that awaits is… lifeless.

It is large, dark, as if constantly shrouded by shadows and a depressing reflection of the real structure that I know hides beneath its hidden layers. My magic roots it out without effort, but can not explore its depths wholly, for what remains has already bleached this Earth of its light.

Unease wafts through me as I caress my Sael.

To be in a place so void of nature’s touch is no place an elf should be, and instincts are quick to remind me of that, but I have stores of my magic, enough to decimate whatever lived within those empty depths when the time to make my escape approached.

This was all a pretence. Nothing out here or down there could ever hold me.

The only doors to the square structure open as we near them, allowing a fresh set of vampires to spill out one after the other. These are different from Astaroth and his company in almost every way.

The vampires that emerged, five in number, are dressed in simpler clothing, with rubber boots and leather aprons that cover the front of their blood-stained shirts. They wear gloves that are thick and stink of chemicals as heavily as they do suffering.

Their deeds waft from them each, a putrid testament of what lies beneath this surface that makes my nostrils burn.

Of the five, one steps forth from the line, a pale, needle-thin man with sunken features that seem indicative of him, as I find it hard to imagine any of these lot are starved of blood. His hair is a fiery auburn that sits just above his shoulders, shaped oddly, as if boxed, but neatly kept from his face. There is not a single hint of hair anywhere else on his body.

“Astaroth,” he greets with a hollowed voice that carries without straining itself.

“Vasile,” Astaroth returns, and though his back faces me, I hear his muted scorn. “We caught the elf.”

“I have eyes,” the vampire, Vasile, replies while he leisurely lifts his gaze and lets it land upon me. His eyes remain dull as he stares back at me. “Tell me, how did you manage such a feat?”

“Use those eyes and look around,” Astaroth sneers venomously, “we managed at the loss of half of my bloody coven.”

“That does not explain the how,” Vasile replies without once parting his gaze from mine.

“It does,” Astaroth retorts with an offended huff.

“It will not to Diablos.”

A shift occurs then, so sudden that one might miss it if they were not paying attention, but I feel it. There is a change in the atmosphere the moment the name is uttered.

Diablos.

I remember it from my accounts— the eldest recorded vampire and the closest thing this species has to a leader. He is the one who is responsible for every inch of these uncivilised practices.

Was he the ‘they’ Astaroth had spoken about? Was he here right now?

“I ask again,” Vasile continues when Astaroth does not fill the silence on his own, “how did you manage it?”

Astaroth, proud but shamed, holds his tongue for only a moment before he gives. “We exhausted him,” he mutters, head ducked but not enough to spare Vasile of the glare he fixes upon him. “We trapped him in a sinkpit and waited until he was exhausted to use the shackles.”

“And the cage,” Vasile notes, his eyes still on mine.

“And the cage,” Astaroth agrees.

“We weren’t sure the cages would work,” Vasile comments as his eyes narrow by a measure. “The Vorgium have few archives on the elves.”

“You weren’t sure they would work, but you sent us out there with them anyway?” Astaroth challenges, though I am sure he must know that it will bear no fruit, not to him at least, it bears me with information.

“A gamble that is correct was never a gamble at all.”

I feel my brow twitch, but my glamour keeps it hidden from Vasile’s vigilant eyes.

“I want my reward,” Astaroth states, giving up on engaging with the strange man. “I captured the elf, brought it here. Now, I want my reward.”

“Adriana will see that you have it,” Vasile murmurs before he finally dislodges his gaze from me and settles it upon Astaroth once more, “after which, you must report to Diablos. He will want your account personally.”

What little blood circulates in Astaroth’s body drains itself from his face at those uttered words. His lips part, but Vasile refuses to entertain another rebuttal as he turns and gestures a hand over his shoulder.

The silent response is heard by two of his companions, who step forward and take hold of two of the poles’ ends. Where four of Astaroth’s men carried me, two do the job now before they follow the dark path they emerged from.

I stay alert within as I am carried beyond the threshold, and inside, the cold, listless depths.

When the doors shut behind, light in its vastness is stolen. There is no outer light, for there are no windows. There are only the electric lights that are sparse and scattered above, and already diminish in number the further they walk along the wide, empty path.

“Astaroth is the last we expected to catch you,” Vasile states into the dark without turning around. He continues leading the way with his gloved hands clasped behind his back. “I thought it would be Lysander.”

I hold my tongue, retaining every sliver of information delivered to me without returning the favour.

“If this is a trick, then maybe he will,” he muses as he turns a corner, carrying us deeper into this structured casket. “I suppose I would be dead before ever knowing.”

Again, my brow twitches. If they knew there was a possibility of my escape, then why would they bring me here? To one of their strongholds? 

I keep the questions to myself to uncover as Vasile reaches the end of this winding path, where a steel door awaits. It is larger than all the rest we passed and staggering in its enormity. It is old— tellingly old and far more finely crafted than any other inch of this barren prison.

It opens without a call or action, pushing back into even darker depths where more obscurely dressed vampires await. My gaze shifts beyond them, to the short end of a new barred path that spills into an attached staircase that spirals downwards, as if leading to this realm’s Hell.

“Diablos wishes to see you, but not before you are ready to tell him everything,” Vasile states as the vampires beneath me walk this new path, “and to be ready to speak your truths, you must be punished,” he continues as we near the stairwell, but while he heads for it, the vampires beneath me move towards the barrier, “and to be punished, you must be broken.”

As the vampire speaks the words, those beneath me lift the poles and shift me and the cage over the barrier. My heart skips a beat as I peer down into the darkness waiting beneath, the depths of which I can not see.

“My job is to break you.”

The vampires release the poles, and in the cage, I plummet.

My back slams into the side of the bars as wind rushes under me. I reach for my magic, cling to my glamour and strengthen its layers to cushion my fall, but even so, when the cage’s steel bars crash onto hard stone without warning, and my head and body slam against it too, I feel pain.

It rattles through me as one long vibration that sings the tune of agony. My mind rings to echo it, and my body is quick to do the same. It protests, demands I erase the pain, but I can not spare my magic, not yet and not so recklessly.

I suffer the pain, breathing through it as I numbly roll from my side onto my front.

“It will be a long road,” Vasile continues from above as he begins his careful descent from the top, “but time is our friend and you have much to atone for.”

His voice sails through my mind like a whispering blade covered in poison, while I stir, shifting on my knees. Raising my head is an agony, but I force myself to do it so that I might peer into the darkness and gauge what lives in these depths.

My vision sways for a moment before it rights itself, clearing enough for me to make out the bars waiting nearby that are not my own, and then… the bodies within them… so many bodies.

My stomach roils, threatening to empty.

They line each of the opposing walls, eight— no ten cages, larger than mine— far larger, and in each, there is at least one curled body that trembles.

Their hearts beat fretfully, their hushed breaths parting just as quickly, and while they are not all the same, for some have dropped, wispy wings at their backs, and others, scales along their skin, they all have a band of leather wrapped around their necks.

It is then that the realisation settles in, that they do not solely mean to make me pay with pain and torture, but that first, they mean to make me… a slave.

No chance of it. None. 

I would not suffer this. Not this. No.

Ythene would sooner perish under my hand before that day came.

I loosen the hold I have over my magic, letting it heal the lingering surges of pain in my body, before I reach for my Sael. I had let them capture me and bring me here, meaning to get a glimpse of their society as their prisoner, not as their slave.

I would find another way. One that did not cost me my personage.

Astaroth was surely still close, close enough for me to track, and if he knew where he was to report to Diablos, then he would know where to send me to free the vampire’s head from his shoulders.

Surely, that, at the very least, would lead me to my charge.

The plan is barely formed in my mind, a concept I can not even hope to see through, before… a shift of wind passes in a caress I know too well now to attest to chance, especially when I am buried far too deep for such currents to pass on their own.

…no…

Ythene had used the same touch the morning of the Choosing, when I had begged her not to burden me with this, and again when I arrived on this hellscape of a planet. She uses wind because she knows that it is my mother’s gift, and because Ythene is cruel.

The wind wraps around me, almost apologetic in its hold, before it skitters past, moving down the hall of imprisoned bodies to waft against the one at the very end, the one with the smallest of this abused number.

Vasile is still speaking by the time he reaches the bottom of the steps with his attendants, but I can not hear him or consider his words as my mind and my core focus on where Ythene is leading me.

Might this be the man I saw in my charge?

My cage lifts again as the two vampires retake their positions as if they had not just tossed me from such heights, walking along while Vasile lights the empty torches lining the walls in the blink of an eye.

It illuminates the space, but makes those caged scurry further into their shadows. My heart aches for them each, but there is nothing I can do now, not like this, not until I know what Ythene wants and then I will free them all.

The vampires carry me to the end of this desolate path, to the only empty cage left that sits beside the one Ythene has placed her attention upon.

The body inside appears even smaller up close, with bones that press against marred skin. The scent of him suggests a male, and he, like the others, curls himself against the furthest corner, and covers his face with shaking hands.

Hope stirs within me, and doubles with crippling speed as the vampires set my cage within the larger one, leaving a key just within my reach before hastily stepping out. They lock the main door and step behind Vasile, who is still speaking.

“I have never failed to train a slave,” he states primly, before his lips flatten into a determined line. “I will not fail with you.”

With that, he leaves, taking with him the pair of vampires. They make their ascent far faster than their descent, and in a flash, they are gone. I hear the large door above slam shut behind them, leaving us with only the flickering lights of the torches for as long as they will remain alit.

I do not waste time getting myself out of this foul cage. I pull the bars and step out to press myself instead against the set that separates me from the body that carefully begins to unwind.

It is still shaking, terribly so, and my heart breaks within my chest as I wrap my hands around the bars. I will pry them free next, and take us both, and all else out of the portion of Hell, but then his head lifts.

Matted, dark strands shift over one boned shoulder enough to bring large, amber eyes to mine, and I still where I am.

This is not the man at the centre of my charge. This is not even a man, but a frail, scared boy, and yet…. Ythene’s winds whirl around him all the same.

—————————–

…this is going to be a tough one

Thoughts????

Thoughts on our first Kalem appearance?!?!? Thoughts on how Aias was ‘captured’ and everything he learned??? The Diablos mention?!?!?

Honestly, coming into the book I didn’t expect to feel bad for Aias in this stage, cause we know he can leave when he wants to, but writing this chapter exposed me to the fact that in his own way, Aias has to suffer his own torture because he can’t leave. He doesn’t even want to be here, it’s all this stupid fucking charge and he’s too damn loyal to his realm and family to not go through with it.

and Kalem my baby, ughhhhhhhhh. I already know the next set of chapters are going to fuck me up, but this whole section of the vampires’ story is fucked upp….

I’ll leave trigger warnings as we go, but I hope to update fast enough that we don’t linger in this part of Aias’ story too long!

If you ‘enjoyed’ this chapter, please vote and comment, and the next update will be up next Thursday/Friday!!!!! 

Besides that, Patreon extras will be coming from Monday along with a sneak peek!!!

Until next time,
Byeeeeeeee Humanssssssss