A Deal with a Devil

This story makes more sense if you've read chapter 1 (it's short!). It features non-consensual themes, as well as violence of the non-sexual variety.

***

Tamaryst's head felt as though it were spinning madly. She took a step forward, carefully navigating her way through the shattered bars that once divided the cell room in two, and followed after the cloaked demon that had just brushed the metal bars out of the way as easily as she might brush a cobweb out of her way. Then it moved for the door and pulled it open with casual grace, to her eye totally unaffected by the resounding crash when the cross-bar on the door's opposite side tore through its brackets and went crashing to the ground. She opened her mouth, flapped it shut, and tried again before the surprised voices on the other side of the door caught her ear and gave her focus.

She realized the room was quite small as the door was hefted out of the way, made of unassuming stone blocks and dominated by a broad wooden table in its center. Three men, lightly armored, sat around the table and stared through the doorway with varying degrees of shock on her face. In the fractions of a second it took her to process them in return, worry tugged gently at her heart; she considered herself a capable hunter, and even a decent fighter. Against one person she could probably win; against two people, if she were armed, she might be able to turn things to her favor in the cramped room; taking on three people without a weapon seemed more like she was accelerating her execution rather than making an effort to escape.

The nearest guard broke from his shock and reached down for the hilt of the knife strapped to his belt. Instantly the thoughts in her head vanished and she lunged for him, bowling into his chest roughly and inadvertently sending the table rocking into the other two men as she and the closest man went tumbling to the ground. Chaos erupted elsewhere in the room, but she and the guard were caught in a struggle over the hilt of his knife, still sheathed, that she could not turn away from. She'd closed the fingers of one hand around the knife's hilt and he had seized her wrist, and their other hands had caught each other. They struggled, breathing constricted and gazes locked on the weapon, and finally she manage to inch it out of the blade and turn it toward his unprotected stomach. She twisted sharply, and his grip slackened lifelessly.

She swallowed and stared down at the blood pooling on the dying man's chest. Then the background sounds of struggling registered, causing her to nimbly launch to her feet, twist around, and consider the scene.

One of the guards hadn't managed to untangle himself from the table. Still seated, he was trapped against the wall whit the large wooden slab of a table jammed firmly beneath his ribs, something slender and gray had wrapped itself around his throat several times. He scrabbled weakly at the constriction at his neck, unable to defeat the obstacles of the bench, the table, and the wrap all together. She couldn't see one end of the thing around his neck, but she followed the other end over the table and, she noted with a dull sense of surprise, into the robe Asiishma wore.

It's a tail

, she thought blankly, gaze drifting up from where it disappeared to study the back of the man who had the demon pinned against the nearest wall, one vambrace-plated arm grinding against its neck. Its hands were planted against him, but the man didn't seem at all subject to the supernatural power she had felt before. She blinked twice, sluggishly absorbing the information before it clicked. With a startled lunge forward, she brought the bloodied weapon in her hand up and drove the point diagonally into the side of his neck. It scraped along the side of his spine, caught on a protrusion of bone, and then clipped past it to sink deeper until the hilt sank firmly against his shoulder. When he began to crumple to the floor she allowed the hilt to pull free from her hand, leaving it blood-slicked and empty. She stared at Asiishma's face, who was staring back at her with a strange look, for a few seconds before looking down to the red streaks across her palm. She shivered.

She was a hunter. She was used to stalking, to killing cleanly and honoring the dead for what they offered. She was used to combat, as well, but not to the point of killing someone. This was different, with blood and dying gasps and...

"For a murderer, you seem unnaturally disturbed by fighting to keep yourself alive." The demon's words cut through her thoughts and pulled her gaze up from her hands in order to stare at its face. It was still regarding her with a thoughtful expression, amber gaze unreadable. She cleared her throat softly and looked back down at her hand without answering. Asiishma stepped away from the wall, the third guard crumpling forward and down against the tabletop as the coiled tail finally unwrapped from his neck. Brushing past her, the succubus moved for the intact door on the far side of the room and said,

"Good work, pet. Your things should be around somewhere. Get what you need. We have to find the baron and then get out into the city before things become too chaotic here."

The title further served to snap Tamaryst out of her conflicted thoughts, birthing a warm knot of resentment low in her gut. She wryly surveyed the bloodied disarray in the room, biting back the query of how much chaos was too much, then edged toward the bundle of furs stacked atop a hide backpack in the far corner of the room. She lifted the set of furs and twisted them over her shoulder, sighing in relief as the wrapped around her back and across her chest, the familiar weight of the garb settling into place as it hid the thin, sleeveless, cotton shirt she wore. She flipped open the pack, taking stock of the scant rations within and the absence of what little money had been there, then turned her attention to the four foot shafts of wood leaning up against the corner. Each had been identical, tipped with matte, sharp metal heads bound with brown strips of sinew, although two of the heads had been broken off somehow and were now missing. A bitter taste in her mouth, she took the sole intact weapon and looked the short spear over, gaze falling on each of the grip-bindings upon the wooden length before she straightened and turned about to face Asiishma. It nodded to her, pushed open the door, and beckoned her through it.

They passed through empty stone halls, and she battered down the last of the nerves that had overtaken her previously. As they quietly explored the halls comprising what seemed to be this wing of the building, Asiishma evidently knowing just where she wanted to go, it explained to her in a melodious, entrancing voice,

"This whole wing of the castle was constructed well before this baron's time. The family's staff was far larger then, of course. Now he only keeps the guards for the prison here, and that was all the more convenient for trying to keep me subjugated, by his rationale. Nothing to feed on. It worked well for a time, between the scarcity of those to find and the sheer zealotry of these Fhlerites." It led her up a worn staircase, ascending flight after flight as it continued to speak. "They probably did not fully consider the ramifications of putting you in with me, Ryst. Tribal mystics are so malleable when it comes to things like... Well, anything." She bristled silently and kept following.

They turned out onto the fourth and final floor, stepping onto an opulent purple rug that was a sharp contrast to the austerity elsewhere in the castle. Tamaryst quickly scanned over the large room the stairway opened into, soon deciding that the room had been designed to be an expansive foyer of sorts. Tall brass-worked lamps stood at either side of the chamber, supplementing the light coming from a set of windows along what she assumed to be the northern wall. Two elaborate, polished doors carved from a dark hardwood stood in the middle of the far wall, and to their left stood a middle-aged, sleepy-eyed guard who became distinctly less insouciant as he took note of them. Falling into a practiced combat stance, he began reaching for the sword sheathed at his hip and, rather than confront them directly, began fluidly moving for a velvet rope hanging near the closest window. The head of Tamaryst's spear buried itself in the side of his neck, sending him to the ground in a sprawl.

"You threw away your only weapon?" Asiishma curiously asked her, watching as he shuddered and died upon the lush carpet. A shudder worked through her, and with a little nod she explained, quietly,

"I don't think it would have helped me if he got close enough."

"Stay out here," it commanded after turning its gaze to silently watch her for ten long seconds. After another few it pivoted forward, form swaying gracefully beneath its cloak as it advanced upon the elegant doors. She started moving toward the prone man, pausing at the gravelly, masculine tone that voiced a bewildered question from within the adjacent room after the demon pushed both doors open and uttered a sickly-sweet,

"My darling! It has been far too long."

She shuddered again, glancing over the furnishings that seemed to indicate a sitting room before both doors slammed shut behind the cloaked demon, stifling the sounds of scuffling that struck up soon after. As screams started to filter through from behind the door she shook herself against a chill, crouching down to gently work the spear free from the dead man. Her eyes caught upon his sightless gaze. Four men, soon to be five, had died because she had been willing to make a deal to save herself. It hadn't even been an hour since that moment, either, she thought as she began to bite at the inside of her low lip harshly enough to send pain flickering through her cheeks. How many more would follow? She numbly thought that she hadn't deserved to die, and lost herself in staring at the bloody stain forming on the rich purple rug beneath the corpse's neck.

She didn't notice that the screaming had stopped until one of the doors separating the reading room from the foyer swung open. She watched Asiishma step out, one arm lifted, the gray skin of its hand and forearm completely hidden by darkening blood upon its skin. The demon was holding some globular lump of muscle or flesh, a little larger than its fist, and bit sharply into the heart as it turned an exultant golden stare toward her.

Tamaryst vomited on the carpet.

***

Tirth was a sprawling city of alabaster-white buildings and verdant green parks. It was ruled over by a well-respected lord who resided the palatial estate that sat almost in the city's center, just beside the river Elaim. Five barons (four now, unbeknownst to the rest of the city) frequented their own, smaller, private estates within the city when not busy governing their allotments of the surrounding land. In general the city was large, clean, and almost entirely without crime. A hefty affluence from years of fertile lands and favorable trades contributed to this peace, supplemented by the city's extraordinarily harsh punishments for crimes of any sort. Furthermore the increasingly-popular religion built around the god Flehr stressed the value of generosity, inspiring many many of the upper class to convert some of their land within the city to publicly-accessible gardens, or to fund inns that occasionally operated at a deficit, or to find some other way to help their less-privileged neighbors.

Tamaryst had little time to appreciate the sights as she was ushered along the streets beside Asiishma. She hadn't quite managed to recover after throwing up, even though it yielded little more than bile and a trace amount of water. Her heart kept pounding rapidly as she followed the demon through stairs and hallways that eventually led to a discreet exit onto the back of the baron's grounds, where a cold sweat had broken out over her skin. Asiishma had taken to guiding her by hand then, directing her shambling gait through busy thoroughfares, narrow side-streets, and green courtyards. Then they were inside a large wooden room and it was speaking to a portly woman behind a counter, soft laughter coming from the demon and vague, friendly smiles from the other woman. She thought the woman briefly looked to her throat, inspecting the thin metal band Asiishma had snapped around her neck just before they left the castle. She couldn't remember why.

Before she managed to focus on the conversation the demon was firmly guiding her away from the bar, past tables full of people she hadn't noticed before, and up a flight of worn but solidly-build stairs. It pushed her down the hall at the top of the stairs, then through a doorway at the end and into an expansive bedroom. Heavy white drapes framed a window on the far wall, a desk with a steeply-angled surface and a chair to her left, and a wide bed to her right. Against the far wall and beneath the window stood a long porcelain tub with curved-over edges, standing atop knobby legs. It was still bright outside and the window provided the room ample light, but there were two glass-covered lamps bracketed to each of the room's walls. A few steps carried her over to the bed, and with a twist she sank down onto the plush blanket covering it. As her eyes settled on the ground a few feet in front of herself Asiishma paced the room in one slow circuit, eventually turning to approach the door and pull it open. As the din from the lower floor filled the room again she glanced up, spotting the young man in a white shirt that exhanged a wooden tray to the demon in exchange for a small pouch. A moment later the door was closed, the succubus pressing a mug of tepid liquid into her hands. She sipped at it experimentally, blinking in surprise at the taste of partially-cooled mint taste, then gulped down a little more with a shiver of relief as the liquid washed over the acidic aftertaste of bile that still lingered in her mouth.

"Delirious," Asiishma was saying. "You allowed yourself to become delirious." There was something in its tone that made her chest tighten slightly in a pleasurable way, even though it was obviously dissatisfied with her. She sipped at her tea quietly, began to take in her surroundings more cognizantly, and listened. "You are going to have to do some quick growth if you want to last long into this journey, Ryst. I offered you the deal that we made because you have the potential to be strong. If you do not prove to live up to that, things will not go well at all for you."

She finished the last of the tea, hiding a trace of a smirk behind the mug's lip. It gave her a small flicker of pleasure to know that the demon wasn't entirely satisfied by the arrangement, either. Its hand was suddenly beneath her jaw, cupping her chin gently and directing it upward until her gaze met the golden eyes a short distance in front of and above her. She inhaled cautiously as she looked up at it, the faintly animalistic, musky scent that greeted her nose causing her to shift fractionally atop the bed. It tilted its head to the side, commenting with a mixture of approval and derision,

"You're willful. You also need to rest, and I can't afford to break you yet. Sleep, pet."

As she heard the command Tamaryst felt a surge of warmth flooding from the demon's cupped hand, moving in a slow wave across her face, head, and then down her neck. The wave left a fuzzy sensation in its wake, unknotting her muscles and weighing down her eyelids. She opened her mouth to speak, or at least tried, but before she could form a question she felt the world spin and plunge into a comfortable blackness.

***

The room had darkened slightly when Tamaryst's eyes cracked open to blearily survey it. It was night outside, but each of the lamps now burned brightly, replacing the absent sunlight with a warm, orange glow that suffused the room. The slim metal band around her neck was digging into her spine slightly, so she shifted her head against the pillow propped beneath it. As she moved, she realized that she was naked beneath the sheets that covered her, prompting her eyes to fly open and the comfortable post-sleep haze to vanish. She blinked twice, clearing her throat and propping herself up on one elbow as she looked around, her other hand rising to pinch at the bridge of her nose and wipe sleep from the corner of her eyes.

The room was largely as she remembered it. She lightly bit at the tip of her tongue, breathing in and partially noting the faint musky scent that lingered in the room and seemed to incite hints of desire within her. Releasing her tongue, she lowered the hand at her nose and scanned the room further. Her clothes were in a neat stack on the chair that sat before the desk, on wall opposite the bed. The brown cloak Asiishma wore was folded atop her clothing, she realized, and the demon itself was luxuriating in the porcelain tub by the window, head resting back against the curved lip and gray arms draped high to rest on either side of the tub. At the other end of the tub several feet of tail stuck up into the air, forming a flexible, pointed tip that sinuously flicked back and forth at a relaxed, slow pace. As she watched the succubus cracked its eyes open, rising with a gentle flex to sit back against the tub's curved end, golden eyes fixing upon her. It watched her for a short time, then cracked a smirk and leaned forward to rise from the tub with a quiet swirl of water.

"It's about time you woke up," it told her as it stepped down onto the room's wooden floor. Her eyes followed its first sculpted leg out of the tub and down, settling upon its feet and then slowly rising to take stock of the creature. Everything about it - from the flare of its hips into its thighs; or the subtle inward curve of its waist and smooth abdomen; the tight fullness of its breasts, crested by darker nipples that had pebbled firmly despite the room's warmth; its slim neck and sharp jawline, high cheekbones and openly-tempting gaze; the damp sheen that covered its gray skin; even the sway of its hips as it slowly departed the tub and started walking for the bed - seemed perfectly sculpted to arouse lust in any man, or, she realized as she stirred slightly, any woman. Another darted glance confirmed that it was hairless beneath the neck.

As it drew closer to the bed she pulled back, the hand above the covers gripping them gently to keep herself covered while her other arm twisted, digging an elbow into the mattress to pull her toward the far corner. She didn't have a plan, exactly, but she knew that had no intention of letting the demon have its way with her simply because it wanted to. It reached the bed before she reached the opposite end, leaning forward to plant one hand near one of her legs as its knee curled forward and up, allowing it to sinuously climb onto the mattress. Determination steeling itself within her, she reached forward in a stopping motion with her free hand, cautioning,

"No cl-"

"Yes," Asiishma interjected, nimbly threading the fingers of its nearest hand through those on her outstretched arm in a mockery of the intimate gesture. It tightened its grip and slid forward, weight coming down and unreal power pushing her hand down, past her head to press firmly into the pillow beneath her. The rotation caused her weight to slide off her other elbow, and as she sank flat atop the bed the succubus continued moving forward, throwing a knee over her in order to settle over her hips.

"Yes," it repeated. "You need to learn two things, Tamaryst Coval." She blinked at the full use of her name, the tension that had begun to grow in her thighs as she prepared to buck the demon off suddenly relaxing. "First," it continued, staring down at her with amused superiority, "You need to realize that by your own promise

you are mine

. That is not going to change." Its knees tightening on her sides as she shifted a little, it continued, "Second, you need to learn that, deep down, you are content with that arrangement."