The Light Within Ch. 04

Perikos said nothing and I felt the walls close in on me even more. It was more of a tomb than a closet, an awful, cold, dark steel tomb and the only way out suggested the very real possibility of being torn apart by inhuman monsters.

Something in the blackness around me moved and my eyes focused enough to see a thick, dark shape enter the tiny room by my feet. I saw Perikos in front of me but I couldn't feel him and it took my brain a moment to catch up with the punctured bubble of relief that had welled in my heart.

"Stop messing with my head. You're not really here."

The image of Perikos wound around my calves and I could feel his smooth, tempered coils of muscle tighten around me. I was losing my mind.

"I am real, Little Shade. I am really inside you. I share the feeling of your heartbeat, I mitigate your pain. This is me."

It so clearly wasn't though. He continued to wind around my hips and waist, over my shackled wrists and around my shoulders. I could almost see him in the dark and I could certainly feel every stroke, even his lightest brush against my skin but intellectually I knew he wasn't really there. If Brogn walked in he would see me writhing on the floor, muttering to myself and squirming like a bitch in heat. I was letting my imagination get way, way away from me. Perikos was so good at manipulating my thoughts, my nerves, my expectations that he made it easy to just let it happen. But didn't I have to draw the line somewhere between wishful thinking, between fantasy and reality?

"Why?" Perikos asked. His tempo was slow and scorching hot. He wound more tentacles around my neck, the tips of which came to rest on top of my head.

"B-because! It's important to know the difference. How else can you function in society? How else can you be a fully functioning person capable of looking after yourself?"

"You forget, Little Shade, it is no longer your responsibility to function in human society. You are certainly fully functional, and while you have proven yourself adept at self-preservation, it is not your responsibility to look after yourself anymore. Your body is collection of nerves and electrical sensory input. I am giving your body information that gives you the physical sensation of my presence in a more concrete way, as my presence inside you is proving unsatisfactory in reassuring you of our intimacy. When we are together, when we have won and you are quite safe from external threats, I will not confuse your senses by presenting them with technically inaccurate information unless you request it. But here, in this place, I have an obligation to fulfill to you. Relax your body and let me worry about our reality."

His grip on my waist and thighs intensified and the tentacles around my neck squeezed gently.

I tried to argue, to remind him that we were equal now and that playing with my head didn't make everything okay but the tendrils on top of my head pressed me down until a smooth, thick tendril pushed past my lips.

"Shhh," Perikos cooed as he stroked my hair and pushed a few damp strands away from my face.

I knew it wasn't real. There was nothing in my mouth, it was an entirely false sensation and I fought my way through it to try and keep talking. So strange to have the feeling of a mouthful of phallus overlaid with the empty, hollow feeling of my tongue brushing the roof of my mouth unimpeded. Then he pushed deeper, past my gag reflex, until he sat in my throat again, creating that passageway for air so I could breath even as he tricked my brain into thinking he was filling my throat.

"Please, Little Shade, I do not wish to fight you with this. I would far rather spend my efforts pleasing you than thwarting your attempts to disbelieve my caress."

I was lying partly on my side and he adjusted my legs, hooking the top one under my knee and pulling it up to my chest. A few tendrils there began to knead and squeeze and coil around my breasts. He pushed them hard against my body, till they bulged obscenely around his tendrils. He prodded and twisted my nipples, and continued to knead the meat of them as he moved. He began to mirror his attention to my breasts on the globes of my ass.

"Do you remember the first time I filled you? Of my own volition, at least.? In the charred ruins of that old Kragosi village?"

I remembered in an instant he had taken me so hard it forced me to my knees and he rode me like an animal. I knew right then I wasn't his equal. He had me quivering to be filled even moments after he admitted he was feeding on me, that I was his only sustenance, but still I bent over at the slightest suggestion. I needed him so badly.

"I barely knew you then. Certainly I knew you were special, for I had never tasted anything like you in all my experience. I rode your arousal hard and I knew what you wanted because your body begged for it every second we shared contact. Every moment I almost held you down and fed and but did not, your disappointment was palpable. I touched your body but it was your mind and emotions that fed me. It was how I was capable of manipulating your wishes, not your real, physical body that held allure. Among my people, softness and pliability is more commonly associated with age or sickness. I assumed you were soft because humans were weak and fragile."

He continued to squeeze and pinch my ass and breasts. He tugged them hard before tightening his coils around my breasts and ribs so that my flesh spilled out over and under my tendrils. He pulled my ass cheeks apart and pressed them together and then pinched each of them at their widest part.

"I understand now, as I did not then, the allure of what nature has designed to be deliberately soft. It makes you pliable and accentuates your weaker physicality. I can feel your muscle beneath the softness and remind myself it is only me you wish to be weak for."

Four thin tendrils reached between my thighs and pulled my pussy lips open. I thought of the moisture gathered there and my mind flashed back to Brogn's boot, covered in a sheen of indecent arousal.

"Do not think about that. Do not be so foolish as to feel guilty or shameful because of Brogn. I was converting your pain to arousal and Brogn is pathetic enough to condemn what he cannot easily possess. I am here with you now, holding you open so I can thrust inside you and stroke your body from the inside out. Think of yourself prone and bound, think of my body simultaneously holding you still, lodged in your throat, rubbing you hard and holding you open for easy access. Good, Little Shade. Well done. Now I will begin to fill you up and all you need to do is relax. You cannot stop me, so just let go."

He fed his thick, blunt tip into me and gathered my hair in his tendrils and then paused as my pussy contracted around him. Suddenly I was full and he bumped against my cervix before withdrawing completely and then stretching me wide open all over again. The thought that he wasn't really there, that I only imagined he was plunging in and out of me, never occurred to me after that. The fullness, the perfection of being cuffed and caged and plundered by Perikos was too much to deny. He was purposely avoiding my clit as he slithered in and out of me, fast and hard but that was the fun of it, wasn't it? What could I do about it besides just let go and let it happen?

"Yes, Sweet Shade, yes, you understand. You bring me so much pleasure, so much pride." The tendrils coiled around my thighs and midriff tightened their hold and righted me to my knees. Perikos slammed me up against the metal wall, careful to tighten his hold on my hair and spare me the blow. He pressed my body hard against the wall and I gasped for breath around the tendril in my mouth and throat.

He pounded into me again and again, driving my hips against the cold metal. My shoulders ached from the strain of the manacles but I didn't want Perikos to relieve that kind of discomfort. He pressed my head against the wall so my cheek was flush with the metal, and refocused his attentions on my ass and thighs.

"Did you like it when my Second would strike you? That he reveled in your discomfort, your shame?" The tendril around my throat constricted slightly. "Would you like me to do that now? Answer honestly."

Shadow did like to slap and spank my ass and thighs and breasts, and I hated it and loved it in equal measure. I supposed that as long as Perikos was there I knew the pain would always feel good and the fear would always be tempered in mind-bending, puddle-making arousal.

I felt a small, sharp spank to my left ass cheek. Then one on my right. Then five, hard, heavy and fast right across the middle.

I squeaked into the tentacle in my mouth and Perikos stroked my hair as he drove the other one into pussy, hard enough I would have begged him to let me come if I could. I felt him grow in me, swelling in size till he'd stretched me as wide as I could stand and still he kept ploughing into me, his rhythm steady and unrelenting.

"Soon we will be free from the Loyalists and free from the Kragosi," he whispered to me. His thrusts never slowed. "I can give you what you deserve for all that you have done for me and for the Resistance. I can make you happy, Little Shade. I will keep your body occupied and your mind excited."

I thrust my hips back against him, moving my body in time to his thrusts and the tentacles coiled around me tightened their hold even more.

"I like you in chains, Little Shade. Soon I can put you in more. Would you like that?"

I was sweaty and my limbs were taut like an overtuned piano. This was it, I could feel it boiling up inside me. Yes, some part of brain thought being Perikos' literal and figurative slave for all eternity was just about the best idea there was. Just the King's fucktoy. Hadn't I masturbated to that endlessly as a young girl? I had never imagined the king as a sightless, shapeshifting tentacled alien, but hey, I'd matured since then.

Perikos tugged gently on my hair, pulled himself all the way out and swelled his girth even more before positioning himself at my swollen entrance. He had been holding me open all the while and I'd been too in the moment to notice.

"Hold still, Little Shade. I do not want to hurt you."

But how can you? I wondered. You're not even really there...

The massive tip thrust inside of me and a keen, ecstatic pain tore through me just in time to demonstrate very clearly the inaccuracy of that thought. It left me bucking away, sweating and panting but Perikos had managed to lodge the very tip of a massive tentacle inside me.

"On the count of three I will drive it in all the way and you will realize this was what you needed all along, Jayn. Stay still now. Are you ready?"

No, I thought, still gagged and reeling from just the tip. I could feel the girth of it heavy between my thighs, its width keeping me from closing them entirely.

"One. Two. Three."

I was at once wider, happier and in more pain than I could ever remember feeling there and then a small, hard tentacle clamped down like a steel trap over my rock hard clit.

The shock waves had subsided and I lay on my side again, just like before, switching and achingly empty.

"I meant it," Perikos sang softly, his voice resonating through my chest.

"Meant it?" My head was still foggy as I grasped at cobwebs and tried to remember whatever Perikos had been talking about while I had been imagining having my brains fucked out, for want of a better term. Only on thing came to mind. "The chains?"

Perikos was silent for a moment and then I heard the light tinkle of bells. Laughter. "No, I was not referring to the chains, but if that is your preference – "

" – it isn't," I half lied.

" – then I will be happy to accommodate you. I was referring to my promise to you. You will be safe and you will be cared for because negating your worries and fulfilling your desires is the least I can do after all you have given us. And all you will continue to give us."

Before I could ask exactly what else I would continue to give, the brig door slid open and a Kragosi guard even more massive and repulsive than Brogn loomed down over me.

It grunted an awful, bathroom noise.

"It wants you to stand," Perikos told me.

Easier said than done considering my arms were still chained behind my back and I didn't have enough room to roll to my feet. I tried twice and only succeeded in whacking the crap out of my elbows before slumping against the wall again.

It mustn't have been feeling very patient because it grasped a meaty fistful of hair and yarded me upwards. After only a second the sensation shifted from agony to a heady, ticklish feeling but the second of agony was enough to spring me to my feet.

It pulled me by my hair into the awful room with the examining table again and held me still while it reached beside the table to a tray with a thick metal band on it. The guard snapped around it me neck tight enough that I had to deliberately slow my breathing to keep from freaking out.

The guard moved quickly and something under my chin snapped like the clasp of a metal buckle. He tugged twice on a thin metal cable and I realized as my stomach performed an awful little flip flop, that I'd been collared and leashed my the Kragosi before I even realized what was happening.

The guard turned, leash in hand and pulled me towards the bay doors. I felt more naked now than during my first few days at Kragosa and I began to shake uncontrollably. Something about the leash made me feel wildly vulnerable.

"Just imagine I'm holding the other end," Perikos said only to me. His tone was warm but the sentiment was obviously shallow. He was trying to cheer me up, and it might have worked if I wasn't about to be used as bate and led into a den of ravenous aliens by a group of sadistic and disgusting prison guards with a personal vendetta against me.

Brogn and three other guards loomed in front of me. The one that brought me in handed the leash to Brogn, who wound it around his wrist to shorten the lead. In his other hand he unholstered a small, snub-nosed blaster with some sort of jury-rigged mod on top. His mouth split into a jowly leer beneath his snout and he aimed right at me.

I sidestepped him without even realizing I had moved and I felt my fist close around something behind me. My arms were still chained; I had no idea what I'd grabbed. It felt hard and heavy, like some kind of resin, maybe. Brogn's eyes narrowed and I saw a small, perfect circle of light on the far wall and traced its beam back to the mod on Brogn's gun.

"The worm has taught you some clever tricks in such a short time," Brogn said, his voice oily and measured. "If you do anything like that again, I will have my men hold you down and I will personally cut off each and every finger. You do not need your fingers to be an alien fuck slut, now do you?" He reached behind and deftly yanked the heavy stick I held in my hand and showed it to me. It was seventeen centimeter bladed sidearm that I'd somehow pulled from the guard to my right.

Brogn cuffed the guard on the side of the head and returned his knife to him. A reasonable amount of agitated grunting ensued as he and the rest of the guards outfitted themselves with various blasters, rifles and solar lights but I was still stuck in that odd second and a half between when I considered the very real possibility that Brogn was aiming to kill and when I'd managed to dodge the light and disarm the guard without even realizing what I was doing.

I felt a sharp tug on my leash and a shove from behind and we loaded the landing shuttle.

"Did you do that?" I asked Perikos wordlessly.

Radio silence. Not cool, not even a little, especially considering my circumstances. Maybe Perikos felt a massive, deal-breaking tantrum coming on, because he didn't stay quiet long.

"I am sorry for being distracted but I am busy calculating you current location based on number of changing variables – "

"Oh, for fuck's sake, don't lie to me right now." My tone sounded very unforgiving inside my own head. "Can't you see I have more important things to worry about? Look, I never made it through Union special ops training, so why don't you just try something new and give me the straight goods when I ask for them. You know, just for a change."

"Very well. I did not believe Brogn had any intention of shooting you but your fear was significant and it overwhelmed my common sense. I couldn't risk the possibility he might so I took over a moment."

The shuttle was standing room only and utterly silent. Not even grunting or gassy noises. Maybe they were almost as scared as I was.

"So you can do that now? 'Take over'? Move me around like a rag doll?" I didn't even sound as miserable about it as I thought I would. Hell, better a rag doll than Loyalist livestock, if it came to that.

"Insofar as you permit it, perhaps."

"Hmmm. Can't you also play with my head enough to make me see and feel things that aren't real? Enough to change my sensory input completely? You could probably tweak the circumstances so that I did whatever you wanted whenever you wanted it So that I ever thought whatever you wanted. Total control."

Perikos said nothing until we felt the gentle bump of shuttle landing. The bay doors to the shuttle pressurized and unlocked.

"That would defeat the purpose of loving you."

My pulse quickened so fast I wondered if the guards could hear. I could have vibrated. It wasn't until we stepped out into the chill and absolute darkness that the gravity of plan occurred to me again.

Brogn shortened my leash so that I was forced to stand almost flush against him. The biggest of his guards stepped in front of us, assault rifle in one hand, hand held solar floodlight in the other. The two remaining guards mimicked his posture, taking their places behind and beside us. I wasn't sure whether or not to be grateful that I was precious cargo.

We marched. The guard behind would give me a light shove every now and again if I moved too slowly. The darkness here was absolute; there were no glowing red mushrooms and the low cloud cover made even the tiniest glints of starlight invisible. Each Kragosi guard had a light but the four hostile beams boring out into the vast darkness seemed all at once too weak. Woefully inadequate, not to mention a walking advertisement of our alien nature here.

"I am utterly amazed as to how well you function here when your primary sense organ is so crippled," Perikos told me, his tone oddly conversational. "Where I as limited as you are, I would be nearly helpless. 'Seeing' through your eyes has given me great insight."

"Not that I don't like to hear praise, but could we maybe talk about this later? I have a lot of my mind," I thought at him. I tried to look down to scan the ground as I walked but Brogn kept me on such a short lead it was all I could do to pump my legs fast enough to keep up with them under the heavy gravity. Judging by the amount of grunting going on around me, at least they were feeling the strain too.

Ten minutes on we came to a wide river, or at least I assumed it was a wide river, judging by the sound of it. I had no idea exactly why Brogn or the Loyalists thought it prudent for us to hike across a great expanse of planet before getting to the drop point, or why exactly we were standing gormlessly around the fast-moving river when I knew all Kragosi ships were outfitted with global navigation devices.

The guard in front of us turned and I could only suppose he was telling the Warden something he didn't like, because soon Brogn and the two other guards were squealing and snorting in a sort of half-tone that sounded like a stage whisper.