On Ashen Wings

Centurion Rygen blinked in the sudden light. He tried to move but he was chained to the cell wall, his hands manacled in front of him. In the open cell doorway was the silhouette of a woman.

It was some cruel trick. A type of torture he had not been warned about when he first signed on to the Baronial Guard. The demons had devised it to break the souls of the soldiers they captured. Rygen would not succumb, he told himself. Not quickly, at least. Not without a fight.

The woman walked into the cell. Rygen's eyes adjusted to the light and he saw that it really was a woman. She was tall and lithe, her belly taut with a hint of muscle, long slender legs and a face as beautiful and cruel as cut diamond. Her skin was too reddish to be human -- it was almost the colour of wine. Her hair was flame red and writhed around her head like a nest of snakes. She wore a leather bodice studded with metal rivets, and a skirt of leather pleats tipped with tiny metal skulls that jangled as she moved. Tattoos snaked around her in intricate blades patterns, over the curve of her breasts below her bodice, down her thighs.

'Do you know where you are?' she said.

Rygen did not answer. It was a trick. A lie.

'You are in the Citadel of the Abandoned,' she said. Her voice was not the harsh harpy screech he had expected -- it was smooth and honeyed, mocking. She walked a couple of steps closer. He could smell her -- she was spicy and earthy. Rygen couldn't deny it -- it was the smell of sex. 'And you will tell me all you know of Kadmeia City's defences.'

Rygen smiled grimly. 'You will get nothing out of me.'

She knelt down in front of him so her face was level with his. 'I do not want to harm you, but I will, if that is what you make me do.' She ran a finger along his cheek. 'Worm,' she said quietly. 'Chained, broken worm. Your valour will not work with us. The demons of this Citadel have broken better men than you. But if you insist on this charade, then let us begin.'

She stood again and unhooked a whip from the waist of her bodice. 'See what you have brought upon yourself?' she said. And she began.

***

Rygen had felt pain before, but this was different. It turned from pain, through some mental barrier into pleasure. As the thrashed him he felt himself giving into it, coping with it by turning it into something he yearned for.

He became a different man, pushed into a different state. He lost control of who he was long before he lost consciousness.

***

When Rygen awoke, she was beside him, curled up with her arms around him. He recoiled. Her eyes opened, full of hurt.

'Don't hate me, my darling,' she said in a singsong voice. 'You poor, poor thing. Look at you. How you wept. How you begged.'

'Take your hands off me, monster,' he said.

She knelt over him. 'I know what you feel,' she said. 'Life can be so cruel. Fate has cast you aside, poor mortal thing.'

'It was no fate. You keep me prisoner here. You torment me. Do not pretend it is something beyond your control.'

She straddled him and he bucked to throw her off, but he was held fast by the chains. She put a hand on his chest and pushed him down. He was weak, and he couldn't resist her.

'I can make it better,' she said. She undid the top buckle of her bodice. 'All your troubles can be over. Would you like that?'

Her bodice fell away. Her breasts were full, her nipples dark against her reddish skin. She put a hand against the back of his head and pushed him close. The side of his head was pressed to her breast, her nipple touching his lips. It wasn't a choice to kiss them -- it was the way to had to be. There was nothing left in him that could decide anything else.

She tasted of spice and sweat -- not the foulness of a man fresh from battle but a sweet, salty tang of sex. He took her nipple into his mouth and felt it harden between his lips. She breathed in deeply, her breasts heaving against him, and he felt he could lie there forever in the valley between them.

'That's good,' she said. 'I know you want to be close. You can. You can have all of me.'

Something clicked and the remnants of her clothing fell away. She stood, and for a moment Rygen was hit by the fear that she was going. But her waist was level with him now and he was looking at her smooth pussy, sleek and beautiful. She took a half-step forwards and he kissed her there, too, as she ran her hand over the back of his head and down her neck. She tasted wonderful, like some exotic spice. She parted her legs slightly and he licked her, his tongue running along her lips and then finding the delicate hood of flesh over her clitoris. She sighed as his tongue touched it, teasing the hood back and licking up and down over the nub of flesh.

The sound of her breathing was intoxicating. She gasped in a breath as if surprised by his tongue flicking over her, then let it out in a long shuddering sigh as the pleasure was released inside her. He wanted to bury himself there, to be inside her in that heady warmth and darkness. He lapped deeper into her, pushing between her lips and back over her clitoris. She spread her thighs further so he could taste deep inside her, where the taste was salty and powerful, pure sex on his tongue.

'Wait,' she said, her voice small and delicate. 'I'm nearly there.' She pulled his head away and knelt down over him, tugging down the leather-panelled trousers he had been captured in. His cock was hard and she let out a little breath as she saw it. She took it in her hand and put her head down low. She licked the tip of his cock and Rygen shuddered now.

He didn't know who he was, or where. He wasn't soldier at all -- he wasn't anybody. All there was, all there had ever been, was this beautiful creature slowly sliding his cock into her mouth. It was warm and wet in her mouth and she ran her tongue around the head of his cock. Rygen leaned back, the pain from before completely forgotten as he felt his climax rising inside him, a fire below his belly growing hotter and hotter. He touched her hair, running his fingers down through the silky red locks, and the feel of her hair cascading over his thighs was almost enough to bring him over the edge.

She let go of his cock, and straddled him. She pushed him into her, and the feeling of her tight lips sliding over him was wonderful. She looked into her eyes as he slid into her up to the hilt and she began to buck her hips up and down. She closed her eyes and moaned quietly, just enough to tell him she was losing control.

Her wings unfurled. He touched one of them -- they were smooth and downy, quivering as she moaned. His other hand pushed into the small of her back, pushing her onto him as she moved. She bucked faster and faster, throwing her head back and moaning out loud. He was gasping, too, and he knew he would only last a few moments more before she would be too much.

Her breath caught and she threw herself forwards onto him, his face buried in her slender neck. Her gasps were muffled against him as she bucked wildly, riding out her climax as her pussy squeezed around him. He came, too, the fire forcing its way out of him as he released. He slumped back, his cock quivering as he pumped his seed into her, and she rode with him, every movement in harmony as she held him close and he pulled her back onto his cock as the last few convulsions burst inside him.

Rygen lay down on his back, suddenly deflated as if a great weight on him had been released. Warmth spread through him, radiating from the winged woman who lay on top of him with her arms around his neck. Her hair spread across his face and that was how he lost consciousness, bathing in the smell of her.

***

When Rygen awoke, the pain was back. The sex with his winged captor felt like a dream, half-remembered, but the pain was real and he could recall every lash across his back. Had it really been him, making love with that creature? Had it really been her?

The only thing that seemed a real memory was the smell. It was still on him, the half-spice, half-sweet taste of her hair.

He could hear raised voices outside the cell. He strained at his chains to hear. One of the voices was stern and female -- hers, as she had spoken when administering his punishment. The other was sneering and obsequious, almost a squeal.

'I care not,' she said. 'Does the prince know how many I have broken? How ,many victories are owed to information I have extracted? His demands are unreasonable. What he asks would kill this one before he speaks.'

'But mistress, O beauteous one, O wondrous one,' said the sniveller, 'his majesty was most specific. In three weeks the armada shall sail. Events have been put in motion. The dukes cannot be recalled.'

'Damnation! What manner of rule do we live under when a filthy imp like you can relay me such an order?'

'His majesty would be hurt to know that Your Flawlessness disagrees with his methods.'

'Take that tone with me again and I shall scoop out your eyes,' she snapped. 'You are dismissed. Begone.'

Rygen heard a sound like a sudden flame igniting and then being snuffed out again. The bolt of the cell door thudded back and Rygen slumped back down again, to give the impression that he was still insensible.

She walked in. Her wings were furled and her hair was pulled back in a complex knot. She looked severe and ruthless, nothing like the doe-eyed creature from before. 'Vermin,' she said. 'It is time.' She took a whip from her belt again. This time its tip was split into several lashes, each one twined with shards of metal. 'This can be avoided if you merely tell me what I want to know.'

'I take it,' said Rygen, 'that it is the bad girl's turn.'

She lashed him across the chest. Rygen yelped and tensed -- the white-hot slashed of pain across his chest flared and didn't fade for a long moment.

'Speak out of turn,' she said, 'and your punishment shall only be more severe.'

'I know this is how you break us,' said Rygen. 'First pain, then pleasure. First we're scared of you, then we're desperate for your touch. And soon enough we can't tell the difference any more. We need you, we need the pain, because we can't feel anything any more. And that's when we tell you anything you want.'

She lashed again, this time cracking the whip against the floor. 'What do you know of it! You are a slave! You have no right to think?'

'And all because of the prince,' said Rygen with a smirk.

She lunged towards him and kicked him in the chest. Her dainty feet were clad in steel and he was thrown back against the wall. 'Prince Scorvex,' gasped Rygen. 'We know of him. The Lord of Pain. The Dark Son of the Void. He conquered you all a thousand years ago. You serve him because he owns you.' He looked up at her, and he saw the shock in her eyes. 'You are the slave.'

A look of disgust passed over her face. Then she thrashed him so hard he was certain that he was dead.

***

A long time passed. Rygen could not be sure how long, because he was barely alive for much of it.

He was aware of being poked and prodded by tiny hands, and of impish creatures scuttling over. Washes of pain as they tended to the wounds on his back. Splashes of water as they cleaned him.

Awareness slowly came back to him. He was in a different cell, the white stone discoloured with his blood. Reddish light bled in through a barred window. Sometimes, when he was barely conscious, something dark and scuttling would enter and push food into his mouth, but it always tasted of blood.

Sometimes he imagined that skin was pressed against him, the soft skin of her breasts or the sleek lips of her pussy. Sometimes it was her wings, downy and caressing, wrapped around him like a blanket.

Most of the time he didn't dream of anything at all.

***

She was in the doorway standing over him. At her feet was a wooden bucket of water and a rag.

'You are awake,' she said. It wasn't a question. She tapped the bucket with her foot. 'You're filthy. Clean yourself.'

Rygen reached over to the rag. The skin of his back was tight where it had scarred over. He realised that he was naked, and she was right -- he was crusted with dried blood and the imps hadn't washed him for a long time.

The door swung closed behind her. She knelt down over him and he was sure she would push him back down to the floor, just to watch him squirm weakly as he tried to get up.

Her lips were almost touching his ear.

'I can get us out of here,' she said.

***

The Citadel of the Abandoned rose from a sea of blood surrounded by cliffs of jagged obsidian, churning beneath a baleful read sun. It had infected the land around it, turning grasslands into plains of ash and mountains into shuddering heaps of spoil that belched lava down their sides. The Citadel itself was black stone shaft crowned with gnarled, bladed battlements, so it looked like a fist punching up through the shoreline towards the sky.

At this distance, the Citadel's corruption was isolated, an island of wickedness surrounded by the savagely beautiful northern coast from which Prince Scorvex had staged his invasion. The mountains dwarfed it, and they led down to rolling steppe which seemed to go on forever.

Her name, Rygen had discovered, was Aelantia, and she had known enough about the layout of the Citadel of the Abandoned to get Rygen to the main gates and simply walk out, assuring the imps who challenged her in the name of the Prince that her bedraggled prisoner was to be thrown from the battlements to drown now he was of no further use.

'The Prince will know you are gone,' said Rygen, jumping down the last ridge of rock onto the plateau where a few hardy trees and grasses had sprung up, sheltered from the coastal winds.

'And soon,' replied Aelantia. She was wrapped in a long dark leather travelling cloak, her wings furled tightly behind her. She brushed her hair out of her eyes as it was caught by the winds. 'None of us have defied him in a thousand years.'

'Are you worried he will find you?'

'The invasion will fail,' she said. 'The dukes can't be held back. They've already set sail and not even the Prince can keep them from landing to besiege the Kadmeia. But they don't know how to get in. you wouldn't tell us.'

'Then they'll lose,' said Rygen. 'Believe me. I've seen what they're using to defend that place.'

'Our last hope was to capture someone who could disable the defences,' continued Aelantia. 'So nwith the dukes fighting a losing battle the Prince will have his hands far too full to hunt me down. I'm not worried he'll find me. I'm worried what your people will think of me when we find civilisation.'

'I'll vouch for you,' said Rygen. 'I'm a Centurion of the Baronial Guard. They'll accept my word.'

Aelantia looked back at the citadel, then followed Rygen down the ridge.

'When did you know?' said Rygen.

'Know what?'

'That you were going to escape. And take me with you.'

'When you told me I was a slave,' she said. 'I fought with it after that, but I would never have beaten it. You were right. I had always known it, right from the start. But it took another to say it. That was what made up my mind.'

Rygen laid out his own cloak on the ground in the shelter of a large rock. 'We can rest here,' he said. 'The weather should hold. Then we can make our way to the plains and find some nomad tracks. They're allies of Kadmeia and they'll see us to safe harbour.'

Aelantia sat down on the cloak. 'It's beautiful here,' she said. 'I've never seen it.'

'There's a lot more than this. When you see the gates of Kadmeia, you'll understand what beauty really is.'

'I've got a fair enough idea already,' she said. She shrugged off her travelling cloak.

She was naked underneath. Her whip-belt and bodice had been left behind. Even her feet were bare, and Rygen couldn't help but sit down beside her, take one foot in his hand and kiss her tiny toes. Her nipples hardened in the breeze and she parted her legs to feel the sun on her sex.

Rygen knelt over her and kissed her lips. They tasted as good as the rest of her, sweet and wet like fruit. He held her close to him. The cloak slipped off her wings and they unfurled, their shadow falling over him.

He pulled his clothes off and slid over her. She was warm and soft, and she put her arms around his back and pulled him onto her.

'You can take me,' she said. 'I won't own you and you won't own me. But you can have what you want from me if I can take it from you.'

'You have it,' he said. 'All of me.'

She gasped as he entered her, her body quivering as if she was feeling his touch for the first time.

'You smell good,' he whispered in her ear.

The sun dipped behind the mountains, and they made love as darkness fell.