It's Not Black & White Ch. 05

Author's Note: And here comes a new chapter - somewhat late, unfortunately. Real life is as busy as ever, but we do still take time to write. For the past two weeks there has been more, so we hope to bring more writing to market within a shorter timeframe. There is still plenty planned for this duo (about 25 chapters so far), and we have a lot of fun writing their interplay. Please let us know what you think and if anything can be improved. We thank you for your continued reading :).

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"I will be occupied with house duties today. With my sister." Viara cocked her head and motioned curtly to the small box on the table. "The left one, slave."

Haern lifted the adornment, an exquisite piece in silver with a glinting blood-red ruby the size of a thumb's nail. He brought it to her ear.

"Well? Put them in."

He met her eyes and fiddled with the lock to secure the earring and she grimaced. Not as though I've spent hours fastening earrings.

"Clumsy. Do better next time." She murmured and pulled slim, dark digits through her white hair.

Haern made as if to turn and leave.

"Did I say you could leave, male?"

"I...no, mistress."

"So stay where you are."

"May I at least put...something on?"

"No." Viara raised her brow and demonstratively eyed him from head to toe.

He was nude. Haern had to fight the urge to grit his teeth - she would have noticed that - and take the humiliating scrutiny, as though he was a beast for the market.

"It pleases me this morning to watch you squirm in nudity. Remember that you rivvil are so...primitive." She shook her head.

"Primitive, mistress?" Though he knew part of what she would say already.

Viara 'tsk'ed'. "Yes, male. Primitive." She stood, circling him. "Surely you are...were...are considered well-built for a male of your species."

He didn't respond.

Her eyebrow rose further. "Need I fetch a human slave - a female - and question her in your presence?"

Dear gods. He cleared his throat. "I...was considered...strong. Mistress."

A small smile tugged on the corner of her lips. "I thought as much. Then why..." her hand traced the surface of his pectorals, his stomach, and shamelessly drew along his cock, though the way she gripped and emphasized certain muscles made it clear that her target was not the organ. "...so much shame regarding nudity?"

"It is our way, mistress."

"A foolish way." She shrugged, and her morning dressing gown, a silvery-gray, sheer thing against which the nipples of her breasts had poked, fell to the floor. She wore nothing else, and unlike three nights prior, wore no affectation or advanced powders or paints. She spread her legs and traced her own, gently curved belly, opening her sex with two fingers to show pink flesh.

He looked away.

Again, she 'tsk'ed', and snapped two fingers. "Look, slave."

Haern swallowed and looked.

"Shame? I am beautiful. The way the goddess made me. In her image. Watch me. Drink me in. I allow it."

"Allow-!"

Her eyes flared and she stepped closer. "Many of my allies would have you flayed alive before allowing you to witness such beauty." Her voice was tight, but low. "I...I say you may witness perfection. Kneel."

He met her eyes, looking down, before slowly kneeling. He then had to look up instead.

"I am beautiful. What do you think, slave?"

"You are vile. Mistress."

Far from an outburst, she smiled. "I know you think me so, slave. But...am I beautiful as well?"

He swallowed. The simple truth was that even compared to his former companion, Viara, taking away the tone of her skin and her vile nature, was objectively more beautiful and shapely. But Torm curse me before I say such a thing.

She stepped closer still. "Kiss me. Taste me." A gesture with her hand implied exactly where she wanted that.

Haern did as he was bid, planting a kiss on her sex. She smelled of soap as well as the exotic scent he'd come to associate and dread from her, with the taste ten times the intensity.

Viara inhaled. "Such foolish shamefulness. Stand. Look at yourself, male. You are strong. Powerful - for one of your kind. Had you been drow, you would have been allowed to rise to some prominence, in accordance with such power. You could have even sired offspring. Even as a slave, you are of the most powerful in our house." her eyes sparkled. "And you are mine. I own you." She bared her teeth.

"Yes, mistress."

"Say it, male."

"I...I am yours."

Her smile grew, and she nodded. "Good. Such foolishness, that shame. That our distant cousins mimic the same..." she shook her head. "You are not to wear clothing in these chambers when we alone. I want you to accommodate to our ways."

"Mistress, ple-"

"No, slave! I will not have you following the ways of surface savages. It reflects poorly on me as your mistress if you can handle yourself no better than a freshly-caught choss-hauler. You are a house slave. My house slave."

He nodded. Haern had started to recognize the not-so-subtle signs that Viara was wound tight for one reason or another. And, judging by how things had been going the past few weeks, there was one sure way to make sure she unwound and became easier to co-exist with. It would be a stretch to call it 'living'.

"May I...please you, mistress?"

Viara seemed taken aback for a moment. "Why, slave?"

It wasn't as though he could say 'because you're acting like a spoiled teenaged brat pulling the wings off insects, and getting you to scream settles you down more than a jug of Cormyrian red'. So Haern said nothing but simply waited.

Viara shook her head. "I have things to do. Perhaps tonight." A small smile. "Still, you shall have a reward for asking. Can it be that you are beginning to settle in your role?" She laughed at his glare. "Perhaps not - yet, at least."

Haern stood quietly.

Viara cocked her head. "I have noted your...reticence and care, slave. You are accommodating well. You are...a good slave." She stepped closer and looked up at him. "I have heard of troubles others have with their newly-caught slaves. Beyond the first days, you have given me few."

"Is that your way of saying 'thank you'?"

The drow actually smiled faintly. "It is my way of saying you are doing what you are supposed to - and in some ways, you remind me of my former body-servant, Loren. He was skilled at his tasks as well."

Haern frowned. That's a first. "What...where is Loren then?"

Viara turned and shook out her hair, her attention back to her decor and clothing. "He died."

"Oh. How?"

His mistress looked over her shoulder, gaze suddenly sharper. "Why?"

"I..." he shrugged. "I apologize, mistress. I was curious."

She turned and met his eyes for several moments. "An ambush. Not an hour outside the city. My first patrol excursion after my arms training was complete."

"Oh. Monster, mistress?"

She chuckled. "No, slave. A rival with her house guard. Nereen." She bared her teeth. "I was foolish. I should have brought more slaves and warriors - not Loren alone." Viara shook her head "He was slain quickly, for he would not stay silent or still as they violated me. They had to slay him - though if he had stayed silent, I would have done the same."

Haern's stomach grew cold. "...Violated, mistress? They beat you?"

Viara met his gaze, unblinking. "Violated, slave. I would have said otherwise. They...what you call rape, I suppose. Nereen was thorough and directed her guards as they took turns. She thought it would make me weak. Uncertain." She chortled. "The bitch was wrong - though she found that out less than a cycle later when I disemboweled her myself."

Haern stared.

"What, slave?" She cocked her head.

"You...you were raped, mistress? Gang-raped?"

"Years back." She shrugged. "It is a not-uncommon way for rivals to humiliate one another - though I hear it was not as popular a century ago or so. A member of the first house started the practice, and others saw the appeal."

"...I am sorry, mistress." He found that he was.

Viara frowned. "I was weak, slave." She said it slowly, explaining something to an infant. "I should have not allowed myself to be put in the situation in the first place. I have not repeated the same mistake. And I took my revenge. That is what matters. All of the males who participated in the defilement on her order died screaming, and Nereen...well, the bitch died screaming loudest of all. "

"I..."

Viara stepped closer. "Do you...pity me, slave?" Her eyes were shards of crimson and seemed sharp enough to cut just then.

Haern swallowed - thought of lying - but then decided against it. "No...woman or man should have to face the like, mistress."

She snorted. "If you have the power, the might to take what you will - and your opponent is the weaker, then you may do what you will. The strong survive, slave. Women are the stronger, yet if you were on the surface and saw a weak rivvil sin'dossa you wanted, why should you not take what you will?"

"That...is not right, mistress."

"Might makes right, slave." She clenched her fist demonstratively. "I rule you because I am the more powerful."

He didn't respond. They're insane.

"I have done the same, slave. Some upstart house Ta'vorn slattern from the school of fighters through herself my better. She did not think the same after I spent three hours in the baths with her before she was allowed to return home." Viara bared her teeth. "Humiliated."

"I...understand, mistress." And found that he did start to understand how a woman like Viara might come to be shaped.

It might have been that at one point, a Viara, innocent as any elf was born and reared in the house. Yet their practices and rituals had perverted her sense of morals as well as the sense of value in life, or someone else's life. For a moment he tried to see beyond what she was, wondered if what she presented was a front or a barrier of some kind, because whatever else she'd been had been perverted and destroyed by growing up here.

Yet he found nothing of the sort.

If there had been a flicker of this at one time, it had been snuffed out a long time ago. What was left was...her. Her and no more.

"Buttons, slave. The last two." Viara tossed her head, exposing her back in a gown which left a considerable portion of her spinal column and musculature bare.

He closed the small buttons with care. Her skin was warm to his touch.

It was only when she'd bid him what he was to do and left, that he realized that the scent of her perfume no longer seemed to bother or give rise to anxiety or rage. Or any other feelings of direct discomfort, for that matter.

He was about to perhaps go for a bath - a bath by himself would be a welcome change - when a guard came in and pointed at him, indicating for him to follow.

"Why?" He demanded.

The drow seemed about to draw his blade, then seemed to decide against it. "The matron mother demands your presence."

A cold sphere of ice settled in the pit of his stomach - and he swallowed. Haern towered over the guard - at least a head more - yet he walked with care and took pains to seem humble as they passed through the dimly-lit corridors of the house.

They came at last not to the grand hall, as he'd been expecting, but to a smaller chamber - though calling it "small" would have done disservice to most manors.

It was a grande suite, with a palatial, raised platform holding a circular bed with a frame seeming wrought from twisted iron spikes, like the thorns of a rose. The furniture in the chambers were of the same design. A faint, reddish-purple light gave the room a more-than sinister caste, with the only yellow light from a very small taper on a small table.

Yet it was neither the bed nor the furniture that caught Haern's attention. An elaborate case of stairs lead what seemed straight into the air - for the ceiling of the room must have been at least sixty feet high - and after perhaps thirty steps of black, wrought iron, a platform seemed to hang suspended. At the very least, he could not see how it stayed upright. Yet it was what lay perhaps thirty feet in the air that caused him to blink.

A near-perfect oval shape of transparent liquid - water - hung seemingly in nothingness. Within the shape, he could see the blurry, dark figure of an elf moving with swift and graceful motions of her legs and arms.

"Move, Rivvil!" A sharp prod from the tip of a blade caused him to climb the steps.

Reaching the platform, he saw a reclining bed with a number of pillows, a small table with what he now knew were refreshments. A figure, light-skinned, kneeled by the edge of the platform.

There was a woman in the water, at times above the surface and at times below, paddling and crawling back and forth across perhaps thirty paces of suspended water.

Catching her eye was enough to recognize her, even before she seemed to veritably leap from the water and land in perfection with two wet taps on the metallic platform. Her hair plastered to her scalp, neck, and back, and she met his eyes. Her lips twisted and she motioned without looking using one hand. The figure moved and started toweling her dry.

Idly he reflected that despite Viara's younger age, her mother showed none of the signs of age that humans would have with the same age gap. The matron mother's stomach was a smooth, flat shape split by a soft line down the middle to a faint indent of her navel. Her legs and arms were toned, yet slim. Haern was certain with the two women standing next by one another, he would have a hard time discerning them apart going only by their torsos.

"Slave."

That voice, though. Where Viara might have a modicum of warmth - in the same way that a candle in a snowstorm might her mother was glacial through and through.

"Matron mother."

"I see my daughter has not yet taught you to kneel."

He knelt - perhaps a tad quickly, for her lips actually quirked.

"Good." She sat, leaned back and drank from the goblet in reach from the bed. "You can cease your gaping."

Haern was about to respond, then realized that he in fact had been gaping - at the water.

"It is an enchantment, Rivvil. Our house wizard spent months decades ago creating the spells - and it needs maintenance, of course. Yet...it is pleasant." Her voice was almost conversational.

"I...it is impressive, Matron Mother." And it was.

"I wanted results, slave. And I did not fetch you to discuss the features of my chambers." She motioned impatiently. "Come. Closer, slave. No! You may leave." The last was to the guard. "We will be fine. Go!"

The drow bowed and left. Half a minute later Haern heard the chamber's large doors close with an echoing 'thud'.

promised rewards in return. Do you have results?"

"I..."

"It has been days." Her voice grew quieter. "I'm not known for being patient."

"I have...tried, Matron Mother."

"You mean to say you have nothing of use? You have made no progress, slave?" There was steel in her voice now. "My guards noted my daughter - as well as you - travelling to the sybarite Xylara De'vorn. You mean to say you heard nothing?"

"I...heard things."

"And has my daughter bedded you? It has been ten cycles."

Haern was about to lie, then swallowed and shook his head. "No, Matron Mother." He met her eyes.

The woman's lips compressed. She inhaled, tapped her fingernails on the edge of the bed's frame with a faint 'tick-tick-tick' and then nodded. "Speak then."

Haern's gaze fell on the figure by the bed who had handed the Matron mother her towel. She still wore a concealing garment and her head was bowed, though he saw that her hair was fair - as was her skin.

The matron motioned impatiently. "My bodyslave is of no concern, slave. She would rather die than to betray a single one of my secrets. No?" The last word was a verbal whip-lash aimed at the figure kneeling.

"Yes, mistress." The voice was free of any objection, and filled with absolute obedience.

So Haern spoke. He spoke of what he heard during the gathering. He said what he could remember - and tried hard to phrase the words as they had. The names that had been said. The matron impatiently waved him past her daughters sex-craze with her friends, then started with surprise at some of the names mentioned. When it came to the interrogation, her eyes widened.

"You...resisted the sybarite's dweomer, slave?"

He frowned. Was that what he had done? I suppose i did.

"There is willpower in that - and not an inconsiderable one." She seemed annoyed. "I should have foreseen the slattern's use of the like. You were in luck. They would have killed you - my daughter as well - without a second thought, had you been forced to speak the truth." She was far from mollified though, as was evidenced when she hurled the goblet down the platform, sending it to crash down on the floor below.

The kneeling slave flinched ever-so-slightly.

"It is...of value then, Matron Mother?"

"Some. I can see my daughter's - and her compatriots - machinations perhaps somewhat more clearly. Yet i need more. You have revealed of your past, slave? Of your...relationship?" She word came out with a bitter twist.

Haern swallowed, but inclined his head. "Some. Slowly. I want it to seem...natural, Matron Mother."

"How does my daughter use you then?"

He drew a deep breath and looked down at the metallic floor.

"We have no time for such idiocies, slave. Speak."

"Fingers. Tongue." he allowed quietly. "Other things, but usually the two. Matron mother - you yourself told me not to hasten things. I have been careful exactly because of this..." He trailed off under her gaze, then spoke again. "I believe your daughter has come to...rely on me more than before. I button her gowns I wash her. She asks me questions. She offers me to purchase me slaves for...pleasures. I believe i am making...progress."

The matron mother tapped her fingers. "Slaves? And you have not accepted?"

Haern shook his head.

"Why?"

"I have...no desire mistress."

"...Desire?" The matron stared. "You are a male. You perform, and even when you do not perform, what your kind thinks of is rutting."

"Not all, Matron mother."

She snorted. "Or is it that you are somehow malformed? Incapable?"

Haern felt his teeth grind "No, Matron Mother."

"Undress."

"Matron-"

"Take off your clothes, slave, or i will cut off a finger." The matron mother hissed.

He swallowed but did as he was bid. Will i be undressing for the entire household before long? Vile, spider-bitten daughter's of..." he trailed off, looking up and trying to ignore her scrutiny.

The Matron had risen from the bed, in the nude as well. "Not a poor specimen. I saw you in the poor shape you were in. You look...passable, for a rivvil, clean and groomed. An impressive member." She did not touch it, but hovered with her hand. "Large. Powerful muscles." She looked up at him, half a head shorter. "No...visible flaws, at least."

"I...can perform, matron mother. But more time is needed."

The drow pursed her lips then motioned with one hand. "Milia. Come!"

The slave at the bed moved without hesitation, coming to stand beside her.

"Go." She pushed the slave forward. "Look at him. Your eyes are more apt and used to the forms of rivvil than mine. What say you?"

The slave lowered her hood and Haern blinked. The face below was elven - but light of skin, perhaps even one of the high elves. She had high cheekbones, slightly tilted eyes, slim brows, pink, curved lips and smooth, wheat-colored hair - though in the light it was closer to light-red. Her face also had a crescent scar from one cheek to the bottom of her nose, marring what might have otherwise been elven perfection in beauty.