Caelel Silverhawk knew she was making history. In the long annals of Heaven, so few angels had fallen that many a demon she had met thought the very idea was a myth - and even those that had (if they had) had never returned to face the punishment that befit the crime of turning away from the Creator's light. She did not know a single instance of Purification being carried out on this scale - especially not after the offending angel's wings had been removed. The aching stumps she felt against her shoulder blades reminded her too painfully that history did not always come easily. She could hear the heavy weight of the Proctor moving behind her.
The angel that had taught her everything she knew - the angel that had seen countless generations of war-angels through their training and into the fires of the eternal war against Hell - stood behind her, shirtless, nearly nude, his golden body anointed in oil, his scarred features set and determined. And Cae?
Cae arched her back ever so subtly. She tightened her buttocks and bit her lower lip. She craned her head over her shoulder, giving him a look that dared him. A look that goaded him. A look that said:
Well? Come on. Do it. Do it.
Do it
.
The Proctor did not seem taken aback by the sensual movement of her body...but his eyes did flick down for just a moment. They flicked back up again - and she wondered, had the settled on her delicious ass? She grinned, ever so slightly...and that was enough to set him over his edge. The whip cracked and a harsh flare of brilliant, almost silver pain crashed along her back. The blow had landed below her wings, horizontally along her skin. It drew a bright line of reddened skin that shone like she was being heated in a blacksmith's forge, gold turning to ruby under pressure and heat. The line crossed diagonally, tapering off near her hip. A thin line of steam rose from it as the throbbing pain eased and slumped through her body.
In the aftermath of pain, there was supposed to be a blinding clarity. An awareness of the vastness of Creation and the depths of one's Sin.
Instead, she merely felt sensation. The coolness of the floor against her stretched toes, the ache of her shoulders, the bite of the chain around her wrists. Her nipples were hard enough to cut glass and her sex was glimmering with arousal. She ducked her head forward and her hair tumbled around her cheeks as she tightened her hands into fists.
"Harder."
The Proctor, drawing his arm back, hesitated. "What?"
She lifted her head and laughed. "I've been smacked in bed harder than-
ahh
!" She cried out as the whip cracked down again. This line crossed with the first, another ruby bright slash across her. The stinging sensation overlapped, overwhelmed, then cascaded through her as she arched her back against the whipping. Her ragged breathing filled the air and she wished so badly to flex her wings - the stifled movements of her stumps was not enough. She clenched her teeth, then continued. "...than that. Out of practice, Pro-
ahhh
!" She cried out again as he whipped her again...then again and again. The blows started to fall faster and faster and each time they struck, she bucked her hips, writhed, strained against the chains.
Tears beaded at the corner of her eyes - but her moans and gasps were never the piteous mewls of someone begging release. Or. At least. Not
that
release. Not the release the angels had come to witness. They had expected shame. Well, she would feed them none.
"Yes!" She cried out as the next blow landed at the nape of her neck, then looped around - the whip having its own wily, serpentine mine. Some mischance or deliberate effort caused it to look around her throat and draw tight, squeezing the air from her...just enough to be felt, not enough to truly choke her. Around the tightening, she let out a gay giggle, and groaned. "Harder! Choke me...I've been a
bad
angel." She laughed again as, with unseemly haste, the Proctor stepped close and wrenched the whip free, using his hand to tug it from around her neck without actually choking her more. His proximity, his heat, made her loins ache as she strained her hips to try and buck against him, which caused him to withdraw as if she was the one who had the whip, the chains, other implements of punishment and piety.
Cae laughed again. She had Citri whispering in her ear.
Use your flame. Burn them with your passions.
It was all about territory, wasn't it. Ceding ground, giving her room to maneuver. She looked away from the Proctor and to the onlooking crowd. Many were confused. Some were stunned. Others more, appalled. But she saw a few that had an expression she knew so well. She had felt it, masklike, on her face, in her early days in the Realm of Ruin. When she had first see Ruti's member, vast and tumescent and just begging to be kissed. Licked. Caressed. That attentive, focused, shocked look, that face that said:
What am I seeing? Why can I not look away?
Her grin was feral.
The Proctor snarled. "I know what you're doing," he said, his voice low.
"Oh?" she panted. "Is it working?"
He growled softly. "You will
rue
this...mockery." He snapped his fingers twice and the cart that carried his tools for the Purification was shifted around. Cae watched as the Proctor stomped over to the cart and wondered which implement he would select next. His hand drifted over the metal pear, the clamps, the collar, the gag...then, to her surprise, continued on to the decorative candles surrounding them. He picked one up, lifting it from its seat with a quiet grunt. The flame flickered as wax beaded in the tiny cup that the wick created. The scent of the candle struck her back to some of her earliest memories. It was a sacred candle, holy. Blessed. The tingling in her nose made her almost want to sneeze.
"I didn't think I was mocking anything..." Cae whispered, her voice husky. "Did not the Creators give us body? Flesh, supple and true, with which to touch and feel and
love
? Your scripture claims she brought our world into pain - if so, why is there so much-"
The Proctor tilted and a droplet of bright, hot white wax splashed onto her breast, coating an area roughly the size of her thumb, a single droplet beading down against her achingly hard silver nipple. The burning sensation of the wax against her skin drew from her a sound between a mewl and a moan. She hung limp as the sensation eased ever so slightly as the Proctor watched her face. His eyes flashed furiously.
"Your lies will not warp my will," he murmured.
Another droplet. This one swept past her tit and instead skidded along her belly after almost missing her entirely. The beads caught and rolled along the runnels of her muscles and each stinging caress made her want to sob with the sensation. How could something feel so painful and so blessed at once? Steam rose from the beading wax as it clung, then hardened against her skin. She panted softly, her wing-stumps twitching. She wished so badly to spread her wings, to show the whole world what she felt. Instead, she lifted her chin, and crooned quietly.
"Is that the best you have, blackguard?" she whispered, huskily. "Or are you working yourself up to it?"
Another droplet, this against her shoulder. Before she could even hiss in pleasure-pain another droplet came, then another. One caught on her hip, another on her buttocks, staining her golden skin with white. She moaned quietly as the beads dried and hardened against her. She was looking as if she had been flecked with paint and the steam rising off the wax reminded her of the holy incense they burned at the front lines of battles. The smell of it was intoxicating and delicious. She let out a throaty chuckle.
"Are you hard?"
"You really are a hell-bitch, aren't you?" The Proctor whispered behind her. He held out the candle and she felt the heat of the flame against the nape of her neck. Droplet after droplet seared her back, her buttocks, sliding between the crack, teasing her taint. One droplet clung and crawled with the same tenacity as Lord Arral's lips, seeking out the folds of her cunt, but it was extinguished between her thighs, pricking the sensitive insides of her legs before it went cool. She panted softly, raggedly, trying to keep herself from sobbing with the sensation. When she was able to speak again, she hissed out.
"Y-You know what demons called me?"
Another droplet. It blazed against her exposed bicep now - he was holding the candle above her outstretched arm. The bead dripped and formed a glittering stalactite hanging from her elbow.
"I assume they called you slattern...easy use whore, for you spread your thighs for each of them, didn't you, Fallen One?"
Droplet on her shoulder. Then, risking her hair, a droplet splashed her cheek. She cried out aloud - but she shaped her voice, as she would sculpt a line of spearmen on the battle, to present their blades to onrushing cavalry. She made the sound a joyous moan, her hips bucking as she grinned wide and wicked.
"Mostly they called me
General
," she grinned. "But when they were losing, they enjoyed calling me
bitch
." She snapped her head, shooting a look at the Proctor - her eyes speaking the question as loudly as her body did:
And what are you, oh war-angel? Oh sword of Heaven?
The Proctor drew his candle back. When her eye flicked down, she saw that the loincloth he wore about his broad hips was showing a faint stiffening. Despite his efforts, he was beginning to have the oh so natural reaction of a woman enjoying everything one does to her. In that subtle shifting, the Proctor could feel the battlefield slipping beneath him, sliding away as inexorably as a general seeing a flank give way to a sudden charge. Cae had read the journals of generals who had lost and survived - a rare treasure in the Realms, where many a head rolled for that kind of failure. Those that did not hide in their sniveling accusations of the other side's unholy natures spoke of the feeling of powerlessness, of knowing that orders would not be heeded, that desperate commands might come to officers already dead, to bolster the will of soldiers who had already given way to fear, to panic, to the knowledge of their defeat.
She saw that look in the Proctor's eyes.
"You're wingless," he growled softly. "What do you think you can accomplish? You've already lost it all."
