These scenes are set during “King of Flames,” after Lydia is rejected from the Pool of the Ancients.
Aon held the shattered, broken frame of a body in his arms. She was tiny and frail. Every movement she took fractured a new bone. Her labored breaths were scratchy and pained. She was in agony.
She would not live long.
It was for the best.
Yet he wept. He wept, for those mismatched, mangled eyes looked up at him, and he knew they were sightless. Yet in them was reflected such love; such pure and simple adoration that he knew…it was all that she could feel. Her mind was empty of anything else but that.
He held her in his arms. She would die within minutes. Her body could not support life; the tragic, malformed creature was not meant to live.
She loved him, after all.
And nothing in this forsaken world was meant to feel such a thing.
Such was the law of nature.
But he would hold her while she died. Hold her while her breaths became more shallow with every passing attempt. While her heartbeat began to still, her thin, deformed lips tried to speak, tried to tell him that she loved him.
She was meant to die.
It was for the best.
And yet, he wept.
Rising from his dreams took time. It took precious moments he did not know if he could spare. The girl was Edu’s prisoner, and while he was left sifting through his memories, she may be dead or dying.
The thought gave him a sense of urgency that surprised him. Why did he care so, over the little blonde poppet that looked at him with such curiosity and fear? Rarely did the mortals ever capture his attention; rarer still did he pay any mind to those who Fell to his world that were not inked in black.
But this creature had Fallen and been tossed aside. Removed of the mark that brought her here, and yet given no others to replace them. She was gloriously entertaining to him by her own benefit; but now that this development had occurred, she was also dangerous.
For nothing like her had ever been seen before. Not in any recorded history of their ancient world.
And he coveted the things he found interesting. Be they books, artworks, or, in this case, a beautiful blonde child.
He hungered for her. That complicated matters deeply, but my, how it made the game far more challenging.
Navaa.
“Yes, my lord?”
He called to his second in command—his regent—from this place of slumber. He did this often while he was slumbering, keeping track of the waking world through his servant.
There was a girl. Tossed aside by the Ancients. Her name is Lydia.
“I know of her. I was there when she was rejected.”
Where is she now? Does she still live?
“Edu has her. The spies say that she is in the cell and has befriended some wench named Evelyn. I think he plans to execute her soon.”
Whatever for?
“For fear of what you may do with her.”
Aon laughed. Howled at the humorous irony in the situation. That utter moron likely suspected some great conspiracy at work. When truly, all he wished from the girl Lydia was far more in line with Edu’s favorite pastime.
Keep her safe as long as you can. I will wake soon.
“Of course, my king.”
But he was some time before he could fully rise. Ten or eleven hours, if his guess was accurate. He wished to see her again—to ensure that she might be safe. As he was rising from the pits of his dark slumber, he reached out to her mind. His strength was growing already, and this time he was the one who found her dreaming mind. He clutched it in his grasp and dragged it into his.
She stood there atop the black glass of this neutral place he had made for them; free of distractions or lingering memories. A place of nothingness where she could not run or escape from him. A place where she had nothing to focus on but him. He would be the center of her world for as long as he could have it.
He watched with a grin behind his mask as she looked about, trying to come to terms with her sudden appearance in this strange place. Yet, she did not think to turn around. The monster is always behind you. Aon let his metal prosthetic drift down onto her bare shoulder.
With the barest touch of the cold metal on her, she whirled about and staggered away from him. He knew he made quite the imposing figure. It was by design, after all. But there was something different in her eyes. Gone was the heady, intoxicating fascination with him. What he saw in her eyes now was pure terror, free of the bouquet of delight, excitement and dread that had made her so alluring to him. What he saw was simply what was reflected to him every day of his miserable life by all those who surrounded him.
“You have finally come to fear me, I see.”
“You’ve attacked me. Twice!”
Well, of course. You are my prey. Who wouldn’t have wished to see what you looked like when you were in such pain? “I suppose technically I have,” he waved his hand dismissively. “First, in this state of dreaming, it hardly counts. Second, both times it was only to wake you from your slumber.” That, and it brought me pleasure that would make you pale if you understood what it belied.
He wondered if he had spoken aloud for a moment at the narrowed-eyed silent accusation that the little spitfire levied his way. “Yes, yes,” he admitted. “Very well. I enjoy tormenting you. That, I will not deny. But that was the secondary motivation, I assure you.” He kept the admission of precisely what manner of enjoyment it brought him pinned away in the back of his thoughts.
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” She snapped at him, taking another step away from him. Where did she intend to run, in a world that did not exist, and even more so, one that he controlled?
“No. I suppose it would not,” he said as he tilted his head slightly to one side. What was this that he saw? What was this painted on her features? He recognized it, but he did not quite understand what he had done to garner such a thing. “But this is new. This is not terror I see on your face, is it?” How dare she become corrupt like the others. How dare she sink to the level of all the rest! “It is disgust.” He could not keep the rage out of his voice as he felt himself bristle dangerously at what he saw upon her face. I disgust her. She is revolted by me, now! “What has that glorified little barmaid in the other cell told you?”
If she wished to fear him, he would give her good reason. He stepped towards her, stalking her, and he watched her eyes grow wider as she shrank away from him. It lighted in him the fire of a dark desire that would threaten to consume her if he were not careful. “Has she told you all about my reputation? Regaled you with tales of those who enter my care and in what state they return? That even amongst a society of monsters and demons, I am reviled?”
Aon lunged at her, and Lydia screamed, tripping over her feet and nearly toppling backwards. He caught her wrists in his hands and he spun her around so that her back was to his chest. In her moment of stunned fear, he pinned her against him. One arm banded around her, with his metal claws around her throat. He dug the tips in, just barely, promising to do much worse if she dared move.
Oh, this was heaven.
She was trembling. Shaking in fear. She smelled like summer, and she was so damnably warm against him. He wished to press her naked body against his and feel her quiver in terror as he took her, claimed her, made her cry for mercy and release.
But now he disgusted her. Gone was that trepidation and awe. His desire was gone in a flash, replaced with anger like the crack of lightning. She turns her nose up at me like all the rest. “Well?” he howled down at her furiously.
“She said y—you,” the girl stammered and could barely get her words out. “torture people. Peel their skin off. Bleed them dry. Boil them in water up to their necks and—”
He had been mentally checking the items off the list as she said them. Yes, yes, yes, and—wait. He supposedly had done what now?
Cackling in laughter, he felt a sick grin split the features she would never see. He schooled the amusement out of his voice, leaving only a practiced sick kind of cruelty. “That is a new one.” And not a half-bad idea. Really, these idiots give me more ideas than they realize. “And do you believe her?”
“Should I?”
“Edu will kill you quickly,” he snarled down at her. The realization that she had come to despise him like all the rest hurt him to an extent that he did not understand. He was so very excited to play with someone who did not eye him with such loathing. Now, she was like the others. “He will not savor the deed. Do you know that he is the kinder of us? Oh, how his heart used to be so filled with compassion and sympathy. Now, he is nearly as cruel as I. It is by my hand he has come to be this way.”
“Why’re you doing this?” Lydia tilted her head back away from his gauntlet, even if it forced her to press her head against his shoulder. How he wished she would stay there. Or, perhaps more so, that she would wish to be there.
“Edu will destroy you because he despises me. Now, not by my actions, but by their words, you find me revolting as well.” Aon threw her from him suddenly. The movement sent her to the ground, and she landed hard on the smooth surface. I will give you a reason to fear me, little one. “All that little wench has told you? It is spoken truth!”
“Aon, I don’t understand. If she wasn’t lying, then why are you angry?”
Images flashed through his mind suddenly. Tearing at him like jagged shards of ice. He whirled away from her, snarling in his throat, clenching his fists at his sides as the memories crashed over him like rubble from a collapsing building.
“Tell me you lie, my king,” the Priest begged him. “Tell me you did not do this!”
“Qta is dead, and by my hands.”
“But why?” The Priest’s only visible pale eye was wide in horror. His features were painted with such loathing. He once wore the expression of a friend. Now, he saw Aon for what he truly was; a demon and a fiend. “Tell me what the others have spoken is false.”
“What they have told you is spoken truth!” Aon howled in rage, his gauntlet igniting into black flame. He would tear the Priest apart if he was not careful. He would send another soul to join Qta’s in the void.
“Then why do you act as though you are the one who has been wronged?”
Lyon would not understand.
No one would.
His war was over.
May they send his wretched soul to the void.
Her voice snapped him back into this time and place, shaking him out of his consuming memory. “You can pick on me all you want. But I’m not the one you’re mad at. You hate them all, don’t you? Worse, you can’t—”
Do not dare speak the words!
For the very first time, he wondered if she were real. If she were a true, flesh-and-blood soul. Or perhaps she was a demon of his own making, a creation of his insanity sent to torment him. It would explain his desire for her, his own keen fascination with her glimmering blue eyes and what may lie within. His desire to protect her from Edu. None of it made any sense.
Unless she wasn’t real.
She must be an imp created by his unholy mind to needle and pester him. How else would she think to say the words that dared come out of her mouth? He had broken off what he knew she was about to say by sending her flat to the ground. He kneeled over her, straddling her waist, pinning the phantasm to the ground.
She felt real.
But didn’t all his more lucid imaginations?
He wrapped his metal claws around her throat and tightened. How she squirmed and writhed beneath him. Was it the completion of his narcissism to wish to do sinful acts to this creation of his own mind?
Hands twisted in his vest. Holding onto him even as she tried to push him away. Something about her touch shook him free from his madness. Strings that had become so hopelessly tangled snapped free.
She was real. This was a dream. He was rising from his slumber to save her. How laughable that was. Words of the others had reached her ears and she had been told to fear him. And now, it seemed she was a bit more observant than he had given her credit for.
“I can’t what?” he hissed down at her. He would have the girl finish her sentence before he tortured her for it, at least. It was only fair. She hopelessly stammered beneath him, and he tightened his grasp around her throat. Oh, how she writhed when he did that. Tonight, it was out of fear. Perhaps someday soon, he would have such a reaction for another reason. If she lived that long. One thing at a time. “No. You began your foolish brigade of words. You will finish it! I can’t what?”
“You can’t stand that they hate you back.” The girl whispered and cringed, turning her head and waiting for the death blow.
You clever, fiendish little thing. If I had dreamed you up, you would not nearly be half as entertaining. He laughed. He laughed for he knew she would never be free of him. If she did not die in the next few hours from Edu’s hand, he would never let her go. Never let her forget that she dared speak to him in such a way. He would ply his trade and have her licking his shoes in servitude.
In one week, he vowed, he would have her call him Master.
He put his flesh and blood hand into her blonde locks, twisting them in his gloved hand and leaned his weight on it, keeping her pinned and unable to move, as he wandered his hand down from her throat. “How very keenly observant. Do you think you understand me now, my dear?” Do you think to be so bold? No one has ever wished to wander into the darkened corridors of my mind. No one has ever been invited. You think you are?
“No, I—”
“Are at your wits’ end, I know. Terrified and tormented. But you chose the wrong man on whom to vent your frustrations.” He could not bend her to his will if she did not respect him. She had a mighty tongue upon her—and if he wished to teach her what it was better used for, he must remind her that she had angered who was, to her, a god.
But this next moment was to be savored. Most of all, by him.
He drifted his hand slowly down her body. Let his metal claw meander downward, and how tempted he was to slice her clothing free from her as he went. No, not tonight. Make tonight about respect. About fear.
His hand lingered over the swell of her breast. Like a child at a cookie jar, what he wanted was right there. Yet he forced his hand to continue lower. He drifted his claw to her side and rested the tip of his pointer finger against her, between two of her ribs.
“I’m sorry, I—”
“No,” he stopped her. No excuses. “You are no such thing. You only wish to avoid what I am now going to do to you in return for your cutting remarks.” He couldn’t resist the pun as he pushed the tip of his razor-sharp metal nail into her.
Lydia cried out.
It was the most wonderful sound he had ever heard. He would not let her leave until he had more of it.
“This time, you shall not wake up until I allow it. You will learn to treat my kindness with more respect.”
The girl was writhing in agony. She tried to arch her back, but it only drove his finger deeper into her body. She whimpered and her hands in his vest tightened as she kicked beneath him. “This has been you being kind?” she said through a gasp up at him.
“Oh, yes, my darling. Even this…is child’s play.” As he spoke, he pushed his finger further into her body, sinking it past the first knuckle, then the second, slipping past the barbed layers of his metal gauntlet like the points of an arrow. “If you have decided to revile me as all the others, I will give you due cause of your own.”
He watched in bliss as she struggled and thrashed beneath him, but then she went still. Her eyes were glazed over as she was slipping into mental shock from the pain. Here in this world of dreams she could not die. But her mind could still suffer the agony just as it could in the waking world. Worse, even, for her mortal body could not force this pain to stop.
It was beautiful. She was beautiful. He wanted her now, worse than ever. But could she survive him? Even at his most gentle, could she withstand what he would bring her? He leaned down and pressed the metal forehead of his mask against hers. He did not know what inspired him to do it. It was a tender, affectionate gesture he did not ever remember granting anyone.
Never had he wanted to touch someone like he wished to touch her.
“Lydia, my darling. I know what I am asking of you now is cruel. I know you think I am a monster. Perhaps you are correct. I am, at the very least, a madman, and you must forgive me for the games I play. For I am so very old, and I delight in the most sinful of things.” He kept his voice low, soothing, talking to her as if he would a lover on a spring morning. He wanted her. Her pain had awoken everything in his body, and the desire that burned in him was now trapped painfully in his clothes. Luckily, she was in far too much agony to realize what was pressed up against her abdomen. “But I will never hurt you,” he promised her suddenly.
He blinked.
What was he saying?
Words poured from him, drawn from some unknown well. “Not like this. Never in the waking world. Only if you desire it. But you must be strong for me, Lydia. For if you cannot withstand this…if you cannot hold your own against the rising tide of what I will bring, you will be destroyed. And I fear I will let no one else destroy you now, but me.”
She was still glazed, her eyes unfocused, as she twitched periodically in agony beneath him. But at his soothing tone, she seemed to be trying to blink back into awareness. “Yes, darling. Lydia,” he cooed. “Come now, Lydia. You can do this. Show me you can do this.”
She let out a single sob, and tears streamed down her cheeks. She moved, and he pulled his head away from hers and let out a small, thoughtful hmh as she did. Aon hadn’t expected her to come around, truth be told. She was simply full of surprises.
“There you are. I thought I had broken you so soon.”
“Fuck…you…”
He chuckled, and his heart soared at her words. Not for that he thought she meant them—far from it—but because she had the strength to levy invectives at him. “There will be time for that later. For what I came to tell you, my little darling, before you angered me so perfectly,” he could not help it. His arousal was too strained, too much it wished to be sated. He twisted his finger in her body, and she gagged and couldn’t even muster a scream through the pain. He stifled a moan and kept himself from rutting against her for relief. But it took him a beat to find the means to speak without it affecting his voice. “was that I will wake within the day. And when I do, I plan to come rescue you from Edu.” He painted on an air of thick sarcasm. “What wonderful news, don’t you think?”
Damn him, he still sounded as though hot iron had been poured into his voice. It felt as if it were coursing through his veins. Her eyes grew wide, and she looked up at his masked face in shock and…
Oh, by the Ancients…
Even through the pain, the sultry tone of his voice brought a flush of pink to her cheeks.
I will have her. I will make her kneel to me. I will destroy her. I will remake her into a perfect image. She will serve me until the end of her days. I will have every part of her.
How he wished to tell her all the things he would do to her. Instead, he swallowed down all the sinful descriptions and chose, quite wisely instead; “Won’t you be so…happy…to see me?”
“Aon,” she began, and he wanted her to say his name again, and again, and never stop. “Let me go.”
Never. Not now, not until you are dust, my delicious mortal. “No. I fear that is one thing I have neither the power nor the desire to grant.” Aon inched himself closer, lowering his head to rest his metal cheek against hers and let his voice whisper quietly into the ear. “Oh, what glorious fun you will be.”
If he did not stop this dream now, he would not end it until she was weeping or begging, or, knowing himself, both.
He tore his finger from her body, and she shattered the dream with her scream.
